“Oh, but they might have moved—and taken her with them!” Judy turned to Peter, a new fear in her eyes. “You know about law. Tell me, if Irene is related to Sarah Glenn wouldn’t she inherit some of her property?”
“That depends upon the will,” he replied. “If she made a will before she went insane——”
“She did!” Judy interrupted. “She willed the property to her daughter and, in the event of her death, it was to go to her brother, Jasper Crosby. He’s a crook and a scoundrel,” she declared, “worse than Slippery McQuirk or any of Vine Thompson’s gang, if I’m any judge of character. You see, if Irene is related to the poet through Joy Holiday, how convenient it would be for him to have her out of the way?”
“You mean that Joy Holiday might have been Irene’s mother?”
“She couldn’t have been,” Pauline spoke up. “Joy Holiday has been dead for twenty years.”
“Supposedly! Her mother never did believe the body was hers, and even Emily Grimshaw says it didn’t look like her.”
“Where’d they get the body?” Peter asked.
“Jasper Crosby went to the morgue and got it. He identified it as Joy’s, and people paid no attention to his sister’s objections because they knew she was insane.”
“Then this girl, Joy Holiday, is legally dead. But if we can prove that there has been a fraud....”
“What fraud?” Dale questioned. “You don’t mean to tell us that this Jasper Crosby may have falsely identified some unknown girl’s body in order to inherit his sister’s property?”