Unnatural death
“Did you get into touch with anybody?”
“Yes. I went to Crofton—which was mentioned in my grandfather’s
letters—and saw a lawyer in the town there—a Mr. Probyn of Croftover.
You know him?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Yes. He was very kind, and very much interested to see me. He showed me
the genealogy of the family, and how my grandfather should have been the
heir to the property.”
“But the property had been lost by that time, had it not?”
“Yes. And, unfortunately—when I showed him my grandmother’s marriage
certificate, he—he told me that it was no certificate at all. I fear
that Simon Dawson was a sad sinner. He took my grandmother to live with
him, as many of the planters did take women of colour, and he gave her a
document which was supposed to be a certificate of marriage signed by
the Governor of the country. But when Mr. Probyn inquired into it, he
found that it was all a sham, and no such governor had ever existed. It
was distressing to my feelings as a Christian, of course—but since there
was no property, it didn’t make any actual difference to us.”
“That was bad luck,” said Peter, sympathetically.
“I called resignation to my aid,” said the old Indian, with a dignified
little bow. “Mr. Probyn was also good enough to send me with a letter of
introduction to Miss Agatha Dawson, the only surviving member of our
family.”
“Yes, she lived at Leahampton.”
“She received me in the most charming way, and when I told her who I
was—acknowledging, of course, that I had not the slightest claim upon
her—she was good enough to make me an allowance of £100 a year, which
she continued till her death.”
“Was that the only time you saw her?”
“Oh, yes. I would not intrude upon her. It could not be agreeable to her
to have a relative of my complexion continually at her house,” said the
Rev. Hallelujah, with a kind of proud humility. “But she gave me lunch,
and spoke very kindly.”
“And—forgive my askin’—hope it isn’t impertinent—but does Miss Whittaker
keep up the allowance?”
“Well, no—I—perhaps I should not expect it, but it would have made a
great difference to our circumstances. And Miss Dawson rather led me to
hope that it might be continued. She told me that she did not like the
idea of making a will, but, she said, ‘It is not necessary at all,
Cousin Hallelujah, Mary will have all my money when I am gone, and she
can continue the allowance on my behalf.’ But perhaps Miss Whittaker did
not get the money after all?”
“Oh, yes, she did. It is very odd. She may have forgotten about it.”
“I took the liberty of writing her a few words of spiritual comfort when
her aunt died. Perhaps that did not please her. Of course, I did not
write again. Yet I am loath to believe that she has hardened her heart
against the unfortunate. No doubt there is some explanation.”
“No doubt,” said Lord Peter. “Well, I’m very grateful to you for your
kindness. That has quite cleared up the little matter of Simon and his
descendants. I’ll just make a note of the names and dates, if I may.”
“Certainly. I will bring you the paper which Mr. Probyn kindly made out
for me, showing the whole of the family. Excuse me.”
He was not gone long, and soon reappeared with a genealogy, neatly typed
out on a legal-looking sheet of blue paper.
Wimsey began to note down the particulars concerning Simon Dawson and
his son, Bosun, and his grandson, Hallelujah. Suddenly he put his finger
on an entry further along.
“Look here, Charles,” he said. “Here is our Father Paul—the bad boy who
turned R.C. and became a monk.”
“So he is. But—he’s dead, Peter—died in 1922, three years before Agatha
Dawson.”
“Yes. We must wash him out. Well, these little setbacks will occur.”
They finished their notes, bade farewell to the Rev. Hallelujah, and
emerged to find Esmeralda valiantly defending Mrs. Merdle against all
comers. Lord Peter handed over the half-crown and took delivery of the
car.
“The more I hear of Mary Whittaker,” he said, “the less I like her. She
might at least have given poor old Cousin Hallelujah his hundred quid.”
“She’s a rapacious female,” agreed Parker. “Well, anyway, Father Paul’s
safely dead, and Cousin Hallelujah is illegitimately descended. So
there’s an end of the long-lost claimant from overseas.”
“Damn it all!” cried Wimsey, taking both hands from the steering-wheel
and scratching his head, to Parker’s extreme alarm, “that strikes a
familiar chord. Now where in thunder have I heard those words before?”
CHAPTER XIV
Sharp Quillets of the Low
“_Things done without example—in their issue
Are to be feared._”
_Henry VIII_, 1, 2
“Murbles is coming round to dinner to-night, Charles,” said Wimsey. “I
wish you’d stop and have grub with us too. I want to put all this family
history business before him.”
“Where are you dining?”
“Oh, at the flat. I’m sick of restaurant meals. Bunter does a wonderful
bloody steak and there are new peas and potatoes and genuine English
grass. Gerald sent it up from Denver specially. You can’t buy it. Come
along. Ye olde English fare, don’t you know, and a bottle of what Pepys
calls Ho Bryon. Do you good.”
Parker accepted. But he noticed that, even when speaking on his beloved
subject of food, Wimsey was vague and abstracted. Something seemed to be
worrying at the back of his mind, and even when Mr. Murbles appeared,
full of mild legal humour, Wimsey listened to him with extreme courtesy
indeed, but with only half his attention.
They were partly through dinner when, a propos of nothing, Wimsey
suddenly brought his fist down on the mahogany with a crash that
startled even Bunter, causing him to jerk a great crimson splash of the
Haut Brion over the edge of the glass upon the tablecloth.
“Got it!” said Lord Peter.
Bunter in a low shocked voice begged his lordship’s pardon.
“Murbles,” said Wimsey, without heeding him, “isn’t there a new Property
Act?”
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Murbles, in some surprise. He had been in the
middle of a story when the interruption occurred, and was a little put
out.
“I knew I’d read that sentence somewhere—you know, Charles—about doing
away with the long-lost claimant from overseas. It was in some paper or
other about a couple of years ago, and it had to do with the new Act. Of
course, it said what a blow it would be to romantic novelists. Doesn’t
the Act wash out the claims of distant relatives, Murbles?”
“In a sense, it does,” replied the solicitor. “Not, of course, in the
case of entailed property, which has its own rules. But I understand you
to refer to ordinary personal property or real estate not entailed.”
“Yes—what happens to that, now, if the owner of the property dies
without making a will?”
“It is rather a complicated matter,” began Mr. Murbles.
“Well, look here, first of all—before the jolly old Act was passed, the
next-of-kin got it all, didn’t he—no matter if he was only a seventh
cousin fifteen times removed?”
“In a general way, that is correct. If there was a husband or wife—”
“Wash out the husband and wife. Suppose the person is unmarried and has
no near relations living. It would have gone—”
“To the next-of-kin, whoever that was, if he or she could be traced.”
“Even if you had to burrow back to William the Conqueror to get at the
relationship?”
“Always supposing you could get a clear record back to so very early a
date,” replied Mr. Murbles. “It is, of course, in the highest degree
improbable—”
“Yes, yes, I know, sir. But what happens now in such a case?”
“The new Act makes inheritance on intestacy very much simpler,” said Mr.
Murbles, setting his knife and fork together, placing both elbows on the
table and laying the index-finger of his right hand against his left
thumb in a gesture of tabulation.
“I bet it does,” interpolated Wimsey. “I know what an Act to make things
simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don’t understand
it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a law-suit to
disentangle it. But do go on.”
“Under the new Act,” pursued Mr. Murbles, “one half of the property goes
to the husband and wife, if living, and subject to his or her
life-interest, then all to the children equally. But if there be no
spouse and no children, then it goes to the father or mother of the
deceased. If the father and mother are both dead, then everything goes
to the brothers and sisters of the whole blood who are living at the
time, but if any brother or sister dies before the intestate, then to
his or her issue. In case there are no brothers or sisters of the—”
“Stop, stop! you needn’t go any further. You’re absolutely sure of that?
It goes to the brothers’ or sisters’ issue?”
“Yes. That is to say, if it were you that died intestate and your
brother Gerald and your sister Mary were already dead, your money would
be equally divided among your nieces and nephews.”
“Yes, but suppose they were already dead too—suppose I’d gone tediously
living on till I’d nothing left but great-nephews and great-nieces—would
they inherit?”
“Why—why, yes, I suppose they would,” said Mr. Murbles, with less
certainty, however. “Oh, yes, I think they would.”
“Clearly they would,” said Parker, a little impatiently, “if it says to
the issue of the deceased’s brothers and sisters.”
“Ah! but we must not be precipitate,” said Mr. Murbles, rounding upon
him. “To the lay mind, doubtless, the word ‘issue’ appears a simple one.
But in law”—(Mr. Murbles, who up till this point had held the
index-finger of the right hand poised against the ring-finger of the
left, in recognition of the claims of the brothers and sisters of the
half-blood, now placed his left palm upon the table and wagged his right
index-finger admonishingly in Parker’s direction)—“in _law_ the word may
bear one of two, or indeed several, interpretations according to the
nature of the document in which it occurs and the date of that
document.”
“But in the new Act—” urged Lord Peter.
“I am not, particularly,” said Mr. Murbles, “a specialist in the law
concerning property, and I should not like to give a decided opinion as
to its interpretation, all the more as, up to the present, no case has
come before the Courts bearing on the present issue—no pun intended, ha,
ha, ha! But my immediate and entirely tentative opinion—which, however,
I should advise you not to accept without the support of some weightier
authority—would be, I _think_, that issue in this case means issue _ad
infinitum_, and that therefore the great-nephews and great-nieces would
be entitled to inherit.”
“But there might be another opinion?”
“Yes—the question is a complicated one—”
“What did I tell you?” groaned Peter. “I _knew_ this simplifying Act
would cause a shockin’ lot of muddle.”
“May I ask,” said Mr. Murbles, “exactly why you want to know all this?”
“Why, sir,” said Wimsey, taking from his pocket-book the genealogy of
the Dawson family which he had received from the Rev. Hallelujah Dawson,
“here is the point. We have always talked about Mary Whittaker as Agatha
Dawson’s niece; she was always called so and she speaks of the old lady
as her aunt. But if you look at this, you will see that actually she was
no nearer to her than great-niece: she was the grand-daughter of
Agatha’s sister Harriet.”
“Quite true,” said Mr. Murbles, “but still, she was apparently the
nearest surviving relative, and since Agatha Dawson died in 1925, the
money passed without any question to Mary Whittaker under the old
Property Act. There’s no ambiguity there.”
“No,” said Wimsey, “none whatever, that’s the point. But—”
“Good God!” broke in Parker, “I see what you’re driving at. When did the
new Act come into force, sir?”