“My wife, who has always been wealthy in her own right, promised her first husband, Dimintry Barnard, that she would leave one hundred thousand dollars to his nephew, Chichester, whom he had legally adopted, and in making her will some years ago, she carried out her promise. Just before her last illness, she quarreled with Chichester over some unfortunate investments he had made for her, and incensed by his manner, declared she would revoke her bequest to him.
“On the last day of October my wife, then a very sick woman, sent for our lawyer, Charles Alvord, and bade him draw up a codicil revoking Chichester’s bequest. Alvord took his notes into my library, and without my knowledge, had Marjorie Langdon typewrite the codicil,” Duncan drew a long slow breath but said nothing, and the Admiral continued: “He also had her make a carbon copy of the codicil, thinking if the first was ruined in my wife’s effort to sign it, he would have the other at hand to substitute. But my wife signed the original copy, and I instructed Marjorie to put it in my safe. The next morning, on opening my safe, I found the unsigned copy of the codicil, and not the signed one.”
“And you believe——?” questioned Duncan.
“That Marjorie Langdon deliberately destroyed the signed codicil and placed the unsigned one in my safe, hoping the substitution would not be noticed until after my wife’s death.”
“The last is supposition only,” commented Duncan.
“Not so fast,” retorted Admiral Lawrence. “Marjorie was the only one outside our family and the lawyer who knew of the signing of the codicil; it was given to her to place in the safe. She only, beside myself, knew the combination of the safe, and Alvord, the fool, left the unsigned copy of the codicil lying loose on my desk, ready to her hand.”
“And Marjorie Langdon’s motive in destroying the signed codicil?”
“Her infatuation for Chichester Barnard.” The blunt answer shook even Duncan’s iron self-control, and he looked hastily away, lest the Admiral read his expression. “Marjorie was the last person to leave my library that night; I was the first to go there the next morning, and the codicil was gone.”
“In other words,” said Duncan slowly, “you contend that Marjorie had the motive and the opportunity to steal that codicil,” Lawrence nodded affirmatively. “What did she hope to accomplish?”
“To have Chichester Barnard inherit the hundred thousand dollars,” the Admiral rose heavily to his feet. “The other codicil remained unsigned, for my wife never regained her faculties before her death, having been first delirious and then unconscious until death mercifully released her.”