“You’ve just come back from Adelaide’s funeral, haven’t you?” said Sir
Lulworth to his nephew; “I suppose it was very like most other funerals?”
“I’ll tell you all about it at lunch,” said Egbert.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It wouldn’t be respectful either to your
great-aunt’s memory or to the lunch. We begin with Spanish olives, then
a borshch, then more olives and a bird of some kind, and a rather
enticing Rhenish wine, not at all expensive as wines go in this country,
but still quite laudable in its way. Now there’s absolutely nothing in
that menu that harmonises in the least with the subject of your
great-aunt Adelaide or her funeral. She was a charming woman, and quite
as intelligent as she had any need to be, but somehow she always reminded
me of an English cook’s idea of a Madras curry.”
“She used to say you were frivolous,” said Egbert. Something in his tone
suggested that he rather endorsed the verdict.
“I believe I once considerably scandalised her by declaring that clear
soup was a more important factor in life than a clear conscience. She
had very little sense of proportion. By the way, she made you her
principal heir, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Egbert, “and executor as well. It’s in that connection that
I particularly want to speak to you.”
“Business is not my strong point at any time,” said Sir Lulworth, “and
certainly not when we’re on the immediate threshold of lunch.”
“It isn’t exactly business,” explained Egbert, as he followed his uncle
into the dining-room.
“It’s something rather serious. Very serious.”
“Then we can’t possibly speak about it now,” said Sir Lulworth; “no one
could talk seriously during a borshch. A beautifully constructed
borshch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to
banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought. Later on, when we
arrive at the second stage of olives, I shall be quite ready to discuss
that new book on Borrow, or, if you prefer it, the present situation in
the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. But I absolutely decline to talk anything
approaching business till we have finished with the bird.”
For the greater part of the meal Egbert sat in an abstracted silence, the
silence of a man whose mind is focussed on one topic. When the coffee
stage had been reached he launched himself suddenly athwart his uncle’s
reminiscences of the Court of Luxemburg.
“I think I told you that great-aunt Adelaide had made me her executor.
There wasn’t very much to be done in the way of legal matters, but I had
to go through her papers.”
“That would be a fairly heavy task in itself. I should imagine there
were reams of family letters.”
“Stacks of them, and most of them highly uninteresting. There was one
packet, however, which I thought might repay a careful perusal. It was a
bundle of correspondence from her brother Peter.”
“The Canon of tragic memory,” said Lulworth.
“Exactly, of tragic memory, as you say; a tragedy that has never been
fathomed.”
“Probably the simplest explanation was the correct one,” said Sir
Lulworth; “he slipped on the stone staircase and fractured his skull in
falling.”
Egbert shook his head. “The medical evidence all went to prove that the
blow on the head was struck by some one coming up behind him. A wound
caused by violent contact with the steps could not possibly have been
inflicted at that angle of the skull. They experimented with a dummy
figure falling in every conceivable position.”
“But the motive?” exclaimed Sir Lulworth; “no one had any interest in
doing away with him, and the number of people who destroy Canons of the
Established Church for the mere fun of killing must be extremely limited.
Of course there are individuals of weak mental balance who do that sort
of thing, but they seldom conceal their handiwork; they are more
generally inclined to parade it.”
“His cook was under suspicion,” said Egbert shortly.
“I know he was,” said Sir Lulworth, “simply because he was about the only
person on the premises at the time of the tragedy. But could anything be
sillier than trying to fasten a charge of murder on to Sebastien? He had
nothing to gain, in fact, a good deal to lose, from the death of his
employer. The Canon was paying him quite as good wages as I was able to
offer him when I took him over into my service. I have since raised them
to something a little more in accordance with his real worth, but at the
time he was glad to find a new place without troubling about an increase
of wages. People were fighting rather shy of him, and he had no friends
in this country. No; if anyone in the world was interested in the
prolonged life and unimpaired digestion of the Canon it would certainly
be Sebastien.”
“People don’t always weigh the consequences of their rash acts,” said
Egbert, “otherwise there would be very few murders committed. Sebastien
is a man of hot temper.”
“He is a southerner,” admitted Sir Lulworth; “to be geographically exact
I believe he hails from the French slopes of the Pyrenees. I took that
into consideration when he nearly killed the gardener’s boy the other day
for bringing him a spurious substitute for sorrel. One must always make
allowances for origin and locality and early environment; ‘Tell me your
longitude and I’ll know what latitude to allow you,’ is my motto.”
“There, you see,” said Egbert, “he nearly killed the gardener’s boy.”
“My dear Egbert, between nearly killing a gardener’s boy and altogether
killing a Canon there is a wide difference. No doubt you have often felt
a temporary desire to kill a gardener’s boy; you have never given way to
it, and I respect you for your self-control. But I don’t suppose you
have ever wanted to kill an octogenarian Canon. Besides, as far as we
know, there had never been any quarrel or disagreement between the two
men. The evidence at the inquest brought that out very clearly.”
“Ah!” said Egbert, with the air of a man coming at last into a deferred
inheritance of conversational importance, “that is precisely what I want
to speak to you about.”
He pushed away his coffee cup and drew a pocket-book from his inner
breast-pocket. From the depths of the pocket-book he produced an
envelope, and from the envelope he extracted a letter, closely written in
a small, neat handwriting.
“One of the Canon’s numerous letters to Aunt Adelaide,” he explained,
“written a few days before his death. Her memory was already failing
when she received it, and I daresay she forgot the contents as soon as
she had read it; otherwise, in the light of what subsequently happened,
we should have heard something of this letter before now. If it had been
produced at the inquest I fancy it would have made some difference in the
course of affairs. The evidence, as you remarked just now, choked off
suspicion against Sebastien by disclosing an utter absence of anything
that could be considered a motive or provocation for the crime, if crime
there was.”
“Oh, read the letter,” said Sir Lulworth impatiently.
“It’s a long rambling affair, like most of his letters in his later
years,” said Egbert. “I’ll read the part that bears immediately on the
mystery.
“‘I very much fear I shall have to get rid of Sebastien. He cooks
divinely, but he has the temper of a fiend or an anthropoid ape, and I am
really in bodily fear of him. We had a dispute the other day as to the
correct sort of lunch to be served on Ash Wednesday, and I got so
irritated and annoyed at his conceit and obstinacy that at last I threw a
cupful of coffee in his face and called him at the same time an impudent
jackanapes. Very little of the coffee went actually in his face, but I
have never seen a human being show such deplorable lack of self-control.
I laughed at the threat of killing me that he spluttered out in his rage,
and thought the whole thing would blow over, but I have several times
since caught him scowling and muttering in a highly unpleasant fashion,
and lately I have fancied that he was dogging my footsteps about the
grounds, particularly when I walk of an evening in the Italian Garden.’
“It was on the steps in the Italian Garden that the body was found,”
commented Egbert, and resumed reading.
“‘I daresay the danger is imaginary; but I shall feel more at ease when
he has quitted my service.’”
Egbert paused for a moment at the conclusion of the extract; then, as his
uncle made no remark, he added: “If lack of motive was the only factor
that saved Sebastien from prosecution I fancy this letter will put a
different complexion on matters.”
“Have you shown it to anyone else?” asked Sir Lulworth, reaching out his
hand for the incriminating piece of paper.
“No,” said Egbert, handing it across the table, “I thought I would tell
you about it first. Heavens, what are you doing?”
Egbert’s voice rose almost to a scream. Sir Lulworth had flung the paper
well and truly into the glowing centre of the grate. The small, neat
handwriting shrivelled into black flaky nothingness.
“What on earth did you do that for?” gasped Egbert. “That letter was our
one piece of evidence to connect Sebastien with the crime.”
“That is why I destroyed it,” said Sir Lulworth.
“But why should you want to shield him?” cried Egbert; “the man is a
common murderer.”
“A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook.”