“I couldn’t have been more careful to avoid it.”
“Well, it’s—can you make anything of it yourself?”
“The only idea that occurred to me is that possibly Brinkman wanted me to be away from the house for some reason; and chose this way of making sure that I was.”
“M’m!—it’s possible, of course? But why should he want you to be away—especially if he’s going to be away too?”
“I know, it doesn’t really make sense. I say, Leyland, I’m awfully sorry about this.” He felt absurdly apologetic, though without seeing any way of putting the blame on himself. “Look here, I’ll tell you one thing: it’s not in our bargain, of course, but I don’t think there’s any harm in telling you. Simmonds didn’t know about the Euthanasia policy. Or rather, he did expect it to come to him at one time, but not this last week or two, because he’d heard about the codicil leaving it to the Bishop—heard, at any rate, that it wasn’t coming to him. So I’m afraid your theory about Simmonds wants revising.”
“It has already been revised. This is very interesting: you say it’s certain Simmonds knew about the change of plan?”
“Yes. You can guess the source.”
“And do you suppose he had any idea where the new will was kept? Whether it was up in London, I mean, or in Mottram’s own possession?”
“That I couldn’t say. Does it make much difference?”
“A lot of difference. Look here, you’ve been dealing openly with me, so I’ll give you some information in return. But I warn you you won’t like it, because it doesn’t help your theory of a suicide a bit. Look here.” He glanced round to see that nobody was watching them, then took an envelope from his pocket, and cautiously shook out into his open palm a triangle of paper. It was blue, lined paper, with an official sort of look about it. It was obviously a corner left over from a document which had been burned, for the hypotenuse opposite the right angle was a frayed edge of brown ash. The writing on it was “clerkly”—there is no other word to describe its combination of ugliness with legibility. Only a fragment of writing was left on each of the three lines which the paper contained, for there was a generous allowance of margin. It was a bottom right-hand corner that the fire had spared; and the surviving ends of the lines read: