Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

Startled, the three of them instantly obeyed.

“I am sorry to say,” I continued blandly, “that none of you is the sole beneficiary.”

A silence of a different sort. “You mean we have to share it?” Donald asked warily.

“In a way.”

“What the devil does this will say, then?” Nigel was getting very edgy. What a shame, poor lad.

“It’s a question of which will,” I answered.

“What the hell do you mean?” Nigel roared. “You mean he wrote more than one? That’s no problem. The relevant one is the one with the later date. When did-”

“Please!” I held up my hand, looking very grave indeed.

“Which will?” Nigel’s voice went satisfactorily out of control. No pretensions to being artsy-craftsy now. “Were there three of them?”

“No.”

“How many, then?” Mary squeaked impatiently.

“Seventeen.”

Puzzlement at first, then:

“Seventeen? You mean drafts?” Donald asked weakly.

“No, Mr. Paxton. Seventeen wills all fully signed and witnessed and in order. All different in content.”

Nigel broke the stunned silence. “The latest is the valid one, you fool. Which is it?”

I was delighted to tell him. “All seventeen wills are dated the same day. All posted that day, too.”

“But there must be a way of telling which was signed last. Weren’t you present? What the hell were you playing at?” Donald was growing squeaky, Nigel and Mary gaping like goldfish.

“I was not present. All the signatures are valid; all of them, Mr. Carter informed me, were witnessed together by the same two people, a postman and the gardener. Just the signatures; they weren’t told what the documents were, I gather.” You bet they weren’t. They might have spoiled his fun.

“But who are the beneficiaries?” Nigel yelped.

“Each will leaves everything to a different person.”

A nice moan from Mary now, but Nigel’s brain was meeting the challenge admirably. “You mean there are seventeen people all thinking they’re sole legatees?” A short laugh. “Of course the old chap was out of his mind. We can overthrow this easily if-” a glance at the other two-”we stick together.”

Good. Another excellent line coming up for me to deliver. “Certainly, Mr. Carter. Provided, of course-”

Instant attention now. “Provided what?” he snarled.

“You have no objection to risking your inheritance. The will asserts that Mr. Silas Carter is writing this in full possession of his faculties-”

“So what? That means nothing-”

“And,” I continued happily, “that-to translate into lay terms-if anyone disputes this and tries to upset the will, they lose their inheritance.”

“So what the hell happens now? It goes to court? They’ll see it’s nonsense…” Nigel suddenly saw the problem.

“Indeed. Which will be the valid will out of the seventeen?” I took up the reins again. “In such cases, it is usually far more effective to present the court of probate with a way out of the dilemma.”

“Which would be?” Mary asked eagerly.

“All seventeen of you have to meet to agree to a solution, the most obvious of which is that the net estate be divided among all of you.”

“But even we three never agree on anything,” Donald wailed.

“Perhaps that is what Silas had in mind,” I murmured, although at a rough guess a million or so after tax would provide quite a few feathers to adorn their nests.

The gruesome three looked at each other. “All right.” Nigel obviously spoke for all of them. “We’ll have to go along with it, I suppose. Who are the other fourteen lucky devils?”

I paused. Now for my best line, which I flatter myself I then delivered with elegance and simplicity:

“I don’t know.”

They didn’t quite follow me at first. Then reality struck. “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Donald yelled, in a tone he would never have used within a mile of one of his feathered friends.

“Just that,” I replied. “All Mr. Carter sent me was a letter telling me the situation, and just one will. He did not tell me who the other beneficiaries were or where the relevant wills might be found.”

A terrible silence now.

“Then how do we know there were any more?” Mary was excelling herself. “It could be an elaborate joke. Dear Uncle was so fond of teasing people. He obviously just wrote the one will-to me. Of course.”

Nigel glanced at Donald. “Who was the legatee in the will you hold, Bone?”

Now, I don’t like being addressed as Bone, and it was therefore with particular pleasure that I put on my best boring-lawyer look of reproof. “I regret I am unable to say. It would be unethical until I have either gathered in the other wills or established whether this is indeed a practical joke.”

Donald’s lip was trembling. “Then we don’t know-” he warbled.

“Precisely.” I could not help it. I beamed. “None of you knows whether you have inherited a single bean. It could all, as you yourselves have pointed out, be Mr. Carter’s little joke.”

After speaking to the family, it did not take long for me to realise how Silas Carter had met his end. At first I had remained inclined to the view that the gruesome threesome had conspired to bring about his death, but discarded this notion. Those three couldn’t agree on anything, much less to keep mum about murder. For I had no doubt at all that’s what it was. I decided to have one last look at the scene of this crime, and having visited Silas Carter’s bedroom with William at my heels, we then repaired to the living room.

“Only those three knew about their presumed inheritance, of course,” I said casually. “He’d told them, but none of the others.” I paused. “Certainly not you, William.”

He flushed. “He didn’t leave me one, the rotten skinflint.”

“So that’s why you murdered him, didn’t you?”

He went very white, and I quickly pressed Venus’s left breast for the whisky. The estate had been paying to keep the supply going. “Me?” he squeaked.

“He told you he wasn’t leaving you a penny, and you knew he meant it, didn’t you? When you found out about those new wills, you saw your opportunity to get your revenge. If by bad luck the death was queried, there would be plenty of more likely suspects than yourself in the frame.”

“How could I have known about those wills?”

“Easily, William. He could get all those wills signed without you, but he couldn’t post them without you. You wheeled his chair, you saw them go into the box even if you didn’t put them in yourself. You probably stamped them, too. Envelopes with wills inside are a distinctive shape, and each one was addressed to a firm of lawyers. So after that you asked him what he was going to do for you, who’d looked after him so faithfully for all those years.”

“That don’t mean I murdered him.”

“Someone did, and it could only be you. The others all assumed the pills were in the water, and only you knew Silas never drank water at night, only whisky. You crushed them up in the whisky glass, removed it in the morning, and put traces of crushed pill in the water beaker.”

“There’s no proof.” William watched me carefully. “You can’t go to the rozzers.”

“No proof, but I could stir the waters, so to speak. With a murder investigation, probate on those wills could be held up for a long time.”

“So what? Nothing coming to me.” He looked at me uncertainly when I did not comment. “What are you going to do, then?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, William.” And I did.

Now here we sat two years later, enjoying our last glass of whisky together at Silas’s expense. My fees had added up nicely. It had taken nearly all this time before we had finally sorted out the truth, and then we had to hold the meeting for those of the seventeen who wished to attend, and negotiate the agreed division with those who didn’t. Two had died in the meantime, leaving further complications with their estates; three preferred not to attend the meeting, but the other twelve met at a most interesting and lively gathering. The Court of Probate duly agreed the resulting settlement, and at last I was free of my obligations to Mr. Carter.