“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.”
