“I say, it’s been very kind of you looking after me like this. I wish, if you’ve any time to spare in the next day or two, you would drop down to Chilthorpe and help me to make the case out. Or is that asking too much?”
“Not the least. The Bishop goes off to a confirmation to-morrow and I shall probably have time on my hands. If you think I could be of any use, I’ll certainly look in. I like Chilthorpe; every prospect pleases and only the chops are vile. No, I won’t come in, thanks; I ought to be getting back now.”
Angela was a little inclined to be satirical at her husband’s prolonged absence; but she seemed to have killed the time with some success. She had not even been reduced to going round the early Perp. church. They made short work of the way back to Chilthorpe, and found Leyland eagerly awaiting them at the door of the hotel.
“Well,” he asked, “have you found out anything about Mottram?”
“Not much, and that’s a fact. Except that a man who strikes me as a competent observer thought he had noticed a certain amount of excitement in Mottram’s manner last week, as if he had been more than ordinarily anxious to get the Bishop to stay with him. That, and the impression made on the same observer that he was keeping dark about something—had something up his sleeve. I have seen the house; it is a beastly place; and it has electric light laid on, of course. I have seen the housekeeper, an entirely harmless woman, partly Irish by extraction, who has nothing to add to what we know, and does not believe that Mottram habitually employed any of the Pullford doctors.”
“Well, and what about the Bishop?”
“Exactly, what about him? I find his atmosphere very difficult to convey. He was very nice to me and very hospitable; he has not the overpowering manners of a great man, and yet his dignities seem to sit on him quite easily. He is entirely natural, and I am prepared to go bail for his being an honest man.”
“That,” said Leyland, “is just as well.”
“How do you mean? Have you had the answer to your telegram?”
“I have, and a very full answer it is. The solicitors gave all the facts without a murmur. About fifteen years ago Mottram made a will which was chiefly in favour of his nephew. A few years later he cancelled that will absolutely and made another will in which he devised his property to certain public purposes—stinkingly useless ones, as is the way of these very rich men. I can’t remember it all; but he wants his house to be turned into a silly sort of museum, and he provides for the erection of a municipal art gallery—that sort of thing. But this is the important point: His Euthanasia policy was not mentioned at all in the later will. Three weeks ago he put in a codicil directing how the money he expects from the Indescribable is to be disposed of.”