“Oh, the news got here as early as that?”
“Yes, that secretary of his wired to me, Brinkman. It was kind of him to think of me, for I know the man very little. I forget the exact words he used, ‘Regret to say Mr. Mottram died last night, useless your coming,’ something of that sort.”
“Do you know if he meant to make any long stay at Chilthorpe?”
“Brinkman would be able to tell you better than I could; but I fancy they generally spent about a fortnight there every year. Mottram himself, I daresay you know, came from those parts. So far as I knew, this was to be the regular yearly visit. Honestly, I can’t think why he should have been at pains to ask me down there if there had been any idea of suicide in his mind. Of course if there was definite insanity that’s a different thing. But there was nothing about him to suggest it.”
“Do I understand that Mottram belonged to your—that Mottram was a Catholic?”
“Oh, dear no! I don’t think he was a church-goer at all. I think he believed in Almighty God, you know; he was quite an intelligent man, though he had not had much schooling when he was young. But his friendship with us was just a matter of chance—that and the fact that his house is so close to us. He was always very kindly disposed toward us—a peculiar man, Mr. ‘Brendan,’ and a very obstinate man in some ways. He liked being in the right, and proving himself in the right; but he was broad-minded in religious matters, very.”
“You don’t think that he would have shrunk from the idea of suicide—on any moral grounds, I mean?”
“He did defend suicide in a chat we had the other day. Of course my own feeling is that by the time a man has got to the state of nerves in which suicide seems the only way out he has generally got beyond the stage at which he can really sit down and argue whether it is right or wrong. At least one hopes so. I don’t think that a person who defends suicide in the abstract is any more the likely to commit suicide for that or vice versa. Apart from grace, of course. But it’s the absence of motive, Mr. ‘Brendan.’ Why should Mottram have wanted to take his own life?”
“Well, My Lord, I’m afraid I see these things from an uncharitable angle. You see, my business is all connected with insurance; and Mottram was insured with us, and insured heavily.”
“Well, there you are, you see; you have the experience and I haven’t. But doesn’t it seem to you strange that a man in good health, who digests his meals, and has no worries, should take his own life in the hope of benefiting his heirs, whoever they may prove to be? He had no family, you must remember.”