"That's all right," replied Hemingway. "Mr. Dering was explaining the Law of Intestacy to me this morning. It would take too long to tell you about it now, but it's perfectly clear. Now, you just consider White's position, and stop making a lot of narrow-minded objections. The old lady's over eighty, by what the Chief just told me, so it's safe to say she isn't for this world much longer."
"She might go on for another five years, or more," said the Sergeant. "They say mad people are often very healthy."
"All the better for White if she did. You don't suppose lie wants her to die until Carter's murder has been forgotten, do you? Oh no! He takes a long view, does Mr. Harold White. By rights, we ought not to have known anything about mad Aunt Clara. If it hadn't been for Carter's way of lugging her into the conversation whenever he wanted money off his wife, I dare say we shouldn't. Maybe that was just one thing White didn't happen to know about. Now you answer me this! If Aunt Clara had kicked the bucket before Carter did, who'd have come into her money? Not White, my lad! Oh no! Miss Cliffe would have got the lot, because Carter had made a will on a half-sheet of note-paper, and had it witnessed, too. Unless Carter died before his aunt, White hadn't a hope in hell of ever seeing a penny of that fortune."
The Sergeant was slightly shaken. "I grant you it looks black," he admitted. "But how could he have done it, sir?"
"That," said the Inspector, "is what we are going to find out."
Chapter Sixteen
The Sergeant looked, if anything, more sceptical than ever, but Hemingway was paying very little heed to him. "The man I want is Cook," he said. "I want to know every movement White made from the moment Carter was seen approaching the bridge. Cook took all those first depositions."
"Yes, sir, but, as I remember, Jones and Miss White corroborated everything White said."
"Of course they did! Don't you run off with the idea that I'm thinking White's movements weren't as advertised! The point is, that as soon as it was established that he was out of sight of the bridge, and within a few steps of Jones and Miss White, no one paid a lot of heed to his subsequent movements."
"Subsequent movements?" repeated Wake slowly.