The jurymen, unequal to the intellectual strain which seemed to be demanded of them, returned an open verdict. The Coroner thanked them, and made them a little speech which had not really much bearing on the situation. He pointed out the superiority of electric light over gas; in a house lit by electric light this could never have happened. He called attention to the importance of making certain that the gas was turned off before you got into bed, and the almost equal importance of seeing that your window was well and truly opened. And so the inquest ended, and Mottram, who had expressed no desire in his will as to where or how he should be buried, was laid to rest next day in the churchyard of the little town which had seen his early struggles, and Pullford remembered him no more.
As soon as the inquest was over, Leyland and Bredon met by arrangement to discuss further the bearings of the new discovery. They avoided the inn itself, partly because the day’s events had left it overcrowded, partly because they were afraid, since Bredon’s experience the night before, of speaking to a concealed audience. A slight rain was falling, and they betook themselves to the back of the inn, where a rambling path led along the river-bank through the ruins of an old mill. Next the disused mill-wheel there was a little room or shed, whose gaping walls and roof afforded, nevertheless, sufficient shelter from the weather. A “rustic seat,” made of knobby branches overlaid with dark brown varnish, offered uncomfortable repose. Draughts at the back of your neck, or sudden leakage in the slates above you, would cause you now and again to shift your attitude uneasily; but, since the Load of Mischief did not abound with amenities in any case, they were content with their quarters.
“I confess I’m a little shaken,” admitted Bredon. “Not that I see any logical reason for altering my own point of view; but I don’t want it to be suicide now as much as I did. The Bishop is such a jolly old man; and he could so obviously do with half a million, if only to put in new wall-paper. He might even give his secretary a rise. I tell you, I hate the idea of advising the company not to pay up. It can afford the money so easily. But I suppose I must have a sort of conscience about me somewhere, for I’m still determined to get at the truth. This codicil, you say, was put in less than three weeks ago?”
“Just about that. As nearly as I can calculate it must have been just before, not after, Mottram’s visit to the Indescribable.”
“The thing becomes more confusing than ever. If he did want to endow the Diocese of Pullford, why did he offer to resign his Euthanasia claim on condition that we repaid half his premiums? And if he didn’t want to endow the Diocese of Pullford, why did he take the trouble of altering his will in its favour?”
“Remember, when he drew up the codicil he may not have seen the specialist.”
“That’s true too. Now, look here, supposing he hadn’t put the codicil in, what would have become of the Euthanasia money? Would it have gone, like the rest, into these silly schemes of his about art galleries?”
“No; it wasn’t just a vague will, nothing about ‘all I die possessed of.’ The whole thing was itemized very clearly, and no allowance had been made at all for the disposal of the Euthanasia money. Consequently, if he hadn’t made the codicil, the Euthanasia money would have gone to his next of kin.”
“In fact, to this nephew? Really, I begin to want to see this nephew.”
“You have seen him.”