THE LEGACY
Audrey and Miss Ingate were in the late Mathew Moze's study, fascinated--as
much unconsciously as consciously--by the thing which since its owner's
death had grown every hour more mysterious and more formidable--the safe.
It was a fine afternoon. The secondary but still grandiose enigma of the
affair, Mr. Cowl, could be heard walking methodically on the gravel in the
garden. Mr. Cowl was the secretary of the National Reformation Society.
Suddenly the irregular sound of crunching receded.
"He's gone somewhere else," said Audrey.
"I'm so relieved," said Miss Ingate. "I hope he's gone a long way off."
"Are you?" murmured Audrey, with an air of surprised superiority.
But in secret Audrey felt just as relieved as Miss Ingate, despite the fact
that, her mother being prostrate, she was the mistress of the situation,
and could have ordered Mr. Cowl to leave, with the certainty of being
obeyed. She was astonished at her illogical sensations, and she had been
frequently so astonished in the previous four days.
For example, she was free; she knew that she could impose herself on her
mother; never again would she be the slave of an unreasoning tyrant; yet
she was gloomy and without hope. She had hated the unreasoning tyrant; yet
she felt very sorry for him because he was dead. And though she felt very
sorry for him, she detested hearing the panegyrics upon him of the village,
and particularly of those persons with whom he had quarrelled; she actually
stopped Miss Ingate in the midst of an enumeration of his good
qualities--his charm, his smile, his courtesy, his integrity, et cetera;
she could not bear it. She thought that no child had ever had such a
strange attitude to a deceased parent as hers to Mr. Moze. She had
anticipated the inquest with an awful dread; it proved to be a trifle, and
a ridiculous trifle. In the long weekly letter which she wrote to her
adored school-friend Ethel at Manningtree she had actually likened the
coroner to a pecking fowl! Was it possible that a daughter could write in
such a strain about the inquest on her father's body?
The funeral had seemed a function by itself, with some guidance from the
undertaker and still more from Mr. Cowl. Villagers and district
acquaintances had been many at the ceremony, but relatives rare. Mr. Moze's
four younger brothers were all in the Colonies; Mrs. Moze had apparently no
connections. Madame Piriac, daughter of Mr. Moze's first wife by that
lady's first husband, had telegraphed sympathies from Paris. A cousin or so
had come in person from Woodbridge for the day.
It was from the demeanour of these cousins, grave men twice her age or
more, that Audrey had first divined her new importance in the world. Their
deference indicated that in their opinion the future mistress of Flank Hall
was not Mrs. Moze, but Audrey. Audrey admitted that they were right. Yet
she took no pleasure in issuing commands. She spoke firmly, but she said to
herself: "There is no backbone to this firmness, and I am a fraud." She had
always yearned for responsibility, yet now that it was in her hand she
trembled, and she would have dropped it and run away from it as from a
bomb, had she not been too cowardly to show her cowardice.
The instance of Aguilar, the head-gardener and mechanic, well illustrated
her pusillanimity. She loathed Aguilar; her mother loathed him; the
servants loathed him. He had said at the inquest that the car was in
perfect order, but that Mr. Moze was too excitable to be a good driver.
His evidence was true, but the jury did not care for his manner. Nor did
the village. He had only two good qualities--honesty and efficiency; and
these by their rarity excited jealousy rather than admiration. Audrey
strongly desired to throw the gardener-mechanic upon the world; it
nauseated her to see his disobliging face about the garden. But he remained
scathless, to refuse demanded vegetables, to annoy the kitchen, to
pronounce the motor-car utterly valueless, and to complain of his own
liver. Audrey had legs; she had a tongue; she could articulate. Neither
wish nor power was lacking in her to give Aguilar the supreme experience of
his career. And yet she did not walk up to him and say: "Aguilar, please
take a week's notice." Why? The question puzzled her and lowered her
opinion of herself.
She was similarly absurd in the paramount matter of the safe. The safe
could not be opened. The village, having been thrilled by four stirring
days of the most precious and rare fever, had suffered much after the
funeral from a severe reaction of dullness. It would have suffered much
more had the fact not escaped that the safe could not be opened. In the
deep depression of the day following the funeral the village could still
say to itself: "Romance and excitement are not yet over, for the key of the
Moze safe is lost, and the will is in the safe!"
The village did not know that there were two keys to the safe and that they
were both lost. Nobody knew that except Audrey and Miss Ingate and Mr.
Cowl. The official key was lost because Mr. Moze's key-ring was lost. The
theory was that it had been jerked out of his pocket in the accident.
Persistent search for it had been unsuccessful. As for the unofficial or
duplicate key, Audrey could not remember where she had put it after her
burglary, the conclusion of which had been disturbed by Miss Ingate. At one
moment she was quite sure that she had left the key in the safe, but at
another moment she was equally sure that she was holding the key in her
right hand (the bank-notes being in her left) when Miss Ingate entered the
room; at still another moment she was almost convinced that before Miss
Ingate's arrival she had run to the desk and slipped the key back into its
drawer. In any case the second key was irretrievable. She discussed the
dilemma very fully with Miss Ingate, who had obligingly come to stay in the
house. They examined every aspect of the affair, except Audrey's guiltiness
of theft, which both of them tacitly ignored. In the end they decided that
it might be wiser not to conceal Audrey's knowledge of the existence of a
second key; and they told Mr. Cowl, because he happened to be at hand. In
so doing they were ill-advised, because Mr. Cowl at once acted in a
characteristic and inconvenient fashion which they ought to have foreseen.
On the day before the funeral Mr. Cowl had telegraphed from some place in
Devonshire that he should represent the National Reformation Society at the
funeral, and asked for a bed, on the pretext that he could not get from
Devonshire to Moze in time for the funeral if he postponed his departure
until the next morning. The telegram was quite costly. He arrived for
dinner, a fat man about thirty-eight, with chestnut hair, a low, alluring
voice, and a small handbag for luggage. Miss Ingate thought him very
interesting, and he was. He said little about the National Reformation
Society, but a great deal about the late Mr. Moze, of whom he appeared to
be an intimate friend; presumably the friendship had developed at meetings
of the Society. After dinner he strolled nonchalantly to the sideboard and
opened a box of the deceased's cigars, and suggested that, as he was well
acquainted with the brand, having often enjoyed the hospitality of Mr.
Moze's cigar-case, he should smoke a cigar now to the memory of the
departed. Miss Ingate then began to feel alarmed. He smoked four cigars to
the memory of the departed, and on retiring ventured to take four more for
consumption during the night, as he seldom slept.
In the morning he went into the bathroom at eight o'clock and remained
there till noon, reading and smoking in continually renewed hot water. He
descended blandly, begged Miss Moze not to trouble about his breakfast, and
gently assumed a certain control of the funeral. After the funeral he
announced that he should leave on the morrow; but the mystery of the safe
held him to the house. When he heard of the existence of the second key he
organised and took command of a complete search of the study, and in the
course of the search he inspected every document in the study. He said he
knew that the deceased had left a legacy to the Society, and he should not
feel justified in quitting Moze until the will was found.
Now in these circumstances Audrey ought certainly to have telegraphed to
her father's solicitor at Chelmsford at once. In the alternative she ought
to have hired a safe-opening expert or a burglar from Colchester. She had
accomplished neither of these downright things. With absolute power, she
had done nothing but postpone. She wondered at herself, for up to her
father's death she had been a great critic of absolute power.
* * * * *
The heavy policemanish step of Mr. Cowl was heard on the landing.
"He's coming down on us!" exclaimed Miss Ingate, partly afraid, and partly
ironic at her own fear. "I'm sure he's coming down on us. Audrey, I liked
that man at first, but now I tremble before him. And I'm sure his moustache
is dyed. Can't you ask him to leave?"
"Is his moustache dyed, Winnie? Oh, what fun!"
Miss Ingate's apprehension was justified. There was a knock at the study
door, discreet, insistent, menacing, and it was Mr. Cowl's knock. He
entered, smiling gravely and yet, as it were, teasingly. His easy bigness,
florid and sinister, made a disturbing contrast with the artless and pure
simplicity of Audrey in her new black robe, and even with Miss Ingate's
pallid maturity, which, after all, was passably innocent and ingenuous. Mr.
Cowl resembled a great beast good-humouredly lolloping into the cage in
which two rabbits had been placed for his diversion and hunger.
Pulling a key from the pocket of his vast waistcoat, he said in his quiet
voice, so seductive and ominous:
"Is this the key of the safe?"
He offered it delicately to Audrey.
It was the key of the safe.
"Did they find it in the ditch?" Audrey demanded, blushing, for she knew
that the key had not been found in the ditch; she knew by a certain
indentation on it that it was the duplicate key which she herself had
mislaid.
"No," said Mr. Cowl. "I found it myself, and not in the ditch. I remembered
you had said that you had changed at the dressmaker's in the village and
had left there an old frock."
"Did I?" murmured Audrey, with a deeper blush.
Mr. Cowl nodded.
"I had the happy idea that you might have had the key and left it in the
pocket of the frock. So I trotted down to the dressmaker's and asked for
the frock, in your name, and lo! the result!"
He pointed to the key lying in Audrey's long hand.
"But how should I have had the key, Mr. Cowl? Why should I have had the
key?" Audrey burst out like a simpleton.
"That, Miss Moze," said he, with a peculiar grin and in an equally peculiar
tone, "is a matter about which obviously you are better informed than I am.
Shall we try the key?"
With a smooth undeniable gesture he took the key again from Audrey, and
bent his huge form to open the safe. As he did so Miss Ingate made a
sarcastic and yet affrighted face at Audrey, and Audrey tried to send a
signal in reply, but failed, owing to imperfect self-control. However, she
managed to say to Mr. Cowl's curved back:
"You couldn't have found the key in the pocket of my old frock, Mr. Cowl."
"And why?" he inquired benevolently, raising and turning his chestnut head.
Even in that exciting instant Audrey could debate within herself whether or
not his superb moustache was dyed.
"Because it has no pocket."
"So I discovered," said Mr. Cowl, after a little pause. "I merely stated
that I had the happy idea--for it proved to be a happy idea--that you might
have left the key in the pocket. I discovered it, as a fact, in a slit of
the lining of the belt.... Conceivably you had slipped it in there--in a
hurry." He put strange implications into the last three words. "Yes, it is
the authentic key," he concluded, as the door of the safe swung heavily and
silently open.
Audrey, for the first time, felt rather like a thief as she beheld the
familiar interior of the safe which a few days earlier she had so
successfully rifled. "Is it possible," she thought, "that I really took
bank-notes out of that safe, and that they are at this very moment in my
bedroom between the leaves of 'Pictures of Palestine'?"
Mr. Cowl was cautiously fumbling among the serried row of documents which,
their edges towards the front, filled the steel shelf above the drawers.
Audrey had never experienced any curiosity concerning the documents. Lucre
alone had interested the base creature. No documents would have helped her
to freedom. But now she thought apprehensively: "My fate may be among those
documents." She was quite prepared to learn that her father had done
something silly in his will.
"This resembles a testament," said Mr. Cowl, smiling to himself, and
pulling out a foolscap scrip, folded and endorsed. "Yes. Dated last year."
He unfolded the document; a letter slipped from the interior of it; he
placed the letter on the small occasional table next to the desk, and
offered the will to Audrey with precisely the same gesture as he had
offered the key.
Audrey tried to decipher the will, and completely failed.
"Will you read it, Miss Ingate?" she muttered.
"I can't! I can't!" answered Miss Ingate in excitement. "I'm sure I can't.
I never could read wills. They're so funny, somehow. And I haven't got my
spectacles." She flushed slightly.
"May _I_ venture to tell you what it contains?" Mr. Cowl suggested. "There
can be no indiscretion on my part, as all wills after probate are public
property and can be inspected by any Tom, Dick or Harry for a fee of one
shilling."
He took the document and gazed at it intently, turning over a page and
turning back, for an extraordinarily long time.
Audrey said to herself again and again, with exasperated impatience: "He
knows now, and I don't know. He knows now, and I don't know. He knows now,
and I don't know."
At length Mr. Cowl spoke:
"It is a perfectly simple will. The testator leaves the whole of his
property to Mrs. Moze for life, and afterwards to you, Miss Moze. There are
only two legacies. Ten pounds to James Aguilar, gardener. And the
testator's shares in the Zacatecas Oil Development Corporation to the
National Reformation Society. I may say that the testator had expressed to
me his intention of leaving these shares to the Society. We should have
preferred money, free of legacy duty, but the late Mr. Moze had a reason
for everything he did. I must now bid you good-bye, ladies," he went on
strangely, with no pause. "Miss Moze, will you convey my sympathetic
respects to your mother and my thanks for her most kind hospitality? My
grateful sympathies to yourself. Good-bye, Miss Ingate.... Er, Miss
Ingate, why do you look at me in that peculiar way?"
"Well, Mr. Cowl, you're a very peculiar man. May I ask whether you were
born in this part of the country?"
"At Clacton, Miss Ingate," answered Mr. Cowl imperturbably.
"I knew it," said Miss Ingate, and the corners of her lips went
sardonically down.
"Please don't trouble to come downstairs," said Mr. Cowl. "My bag is
packed. I have tipped the parlourmaid, and there is just time to catch the
train."
He departed, leaving the two women speechless.
After a moment, Miss Ingate said dryly:
"He was so very peculiar I knew he must belong to these parts."
"How did he know I left my blue frock at Miss Pannell's?" cried Audrey. "I
never told him."
"He must have been eavesdropping!" cried Miss Ingate. "He never found the
key in your frock. He must have found it here somewhere; I feel sure it
must have dropped by the safe, and I lay anything he had opened the safe
before and read the will before. I could tell from the way he looked."
"And why should he suppose that I'd the key?" Audrey put in.
"Eavesdropping! I'm convinced that man knows too much." Audrey reddened
once more. "I believe he thought you'd be capable of burning the will.
That's why he made you handle it in his presence and mine."
"Well, Winnie," said Audrey, "I think you might have told him all that
while he was here, instead of letting him go off so triumphant."
"I did begin to," said Miss Ingate with a snigger. "But you wouldn't back
me up, you little coward."
"I shall never be a coward again!" Audrey said violently.
They read the will together. They had no difficulty at all in comprehending
it now that they were alone.
"I do think it's a horrid shame Aguilar should have that ten pounds," said
Audrey. "But otherwise I don't care. You can't guess how relieved I am,
Winnie. I imagined the most dreadful things. I don't know what I imagined.
But now we shall have all the property and everything, just as much as ever
there was, and only me and mother to spend it." Audrey danced an embryonic
jig. "Won't I keep mother in order! Winnie, I shall make her go with me to
Paris. I've always wanted to know that Madame Piriac--she does write such
funny English in her letters."
"What's that you're saying?" murmured Miss Ingate, who had picked up the
letter which Mr. Cowl had laid on the small table.
"I say I shall make mother go to Paris with me."
"You won't," said Miss Ingate. "Because she won't go. I know your mother
better than you do.... Oh! Audrey!"
Audrey saw Miss Ingate's face turn scarlet from the roots of her hair to
her chin.
Miss Ingate had dropped the letter. Audrey snatched it.
"My dear Moze," the letter ran. "I send you herewith a report of the
meeting of the Great Mexican Oil Company at New York. You will see that
they duly authorised the contract by which the Zacatecas Oil Corporation
transfers our property to them in exchange for shares at the rate of four
Great Mexican shares for one Zacatecas share. As each of the Development
Syndicate shares represents ten of the Corporation shares, and as on my
recommendation you put £4,500 into the Syndicate, you will therefore own
180,000 Great Mexican shares. They are at present above par. Mark my
words, they will be worth from seven to ten dollars apiece in a year's
time. I think you now owe me a good turn, eh?"
The letter was signed with a name unknown to either of them, and it was
dated from Coleman Street, E.C.