Touch and Go

Kemp pursed his lips.

‘Reliable man, this doctor?’

‘Absolutely. Don’t think we didn’t check.’ Van Gryson was terse.

‘What about the servants and the nurses?’

‘Lennox, you gotta remember we couldn’t go around badgering folk. It was a tricky enough situation for our firm. There was a bit of a time-lapse before we—er—discovered about the second will.’

Kemp raised his eyebrows. ‘How come?’ He felt he might as well slip into the idiom.

‘Well, as I said, Miss Janvier went on holiday that night. Her secretary didn’t get round to doing the filing for a week or two …’ His voice trailed off.

Kemp could barely hide a smile. So things like that could still happen even in the best-run offices.

‘And in the meantime your firm assumed there was only the earlier will and so took no action?’

‘In the meantime—’ Van Gryson gulped as if he’d swallowed a draught of bitter medicine—‘Mr Eikenberg and I attended the funeral flanked on either side by Messrs Madison and Horth in good black overcoats with velvet collars …’

Kemp let out a soft whistle.

‘Showing a proper respect as the heirs-at-law … I can restrain my curiosity no longer, Dale. Indulge it before it bursts out of me. You have a copy of this later will?’

Van Gryson withdrew a single sheet from his folder, and held it out between thumb and forefinger as if it was a leaf of stinging nettle. Kemp reached over and took it from him.

‘OK, OK,’ said the big American. ‘I guess you can stand the shock.’

Then he got up and took his hunched shoulders for a walk round the room like a boxer who has just put his man on the canvas.

It was a simple carbon on flimsy with the name of the testatrix and the names and addresses of the two witnesses written in hurriedly beside the attestation clause. The will itself was brief and to the point:

After cancelling all previous dispositions, Muriel Probert, widow, left everything of which she died possessed to her ex-husband Lennox Kemp, of Newtown, England, in recognition of the great service he had rendered her in the past. It was dated the fifth day of April in the present year.

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_26174510-5d46-5baa-be1e-cf803cdf0188)

Lennox Kemp had only just seated himself at his desk the following morning when Elvira brought in the mail. She looked down at him with mild disapproval. ‘I waited,’ she said, ‘because you’re late. You don’t look very well.’

‘If you must know, I’ve got a hangover, and I didn’t get much sleep.’

‘Well, if you will go out on the town …’ She put the letters down in front of him. ‘Black coffee’s what you need.’

Despite two strong cups of it, Kemp still found it hard to concentrate on his correspondence; there were too many other things on his mind. He wanted a clear head, he wanted a second opinion. He thought of Tony Lambert, his most intelligent colleague and an expert on probate, but dismissed the idea. He couldn’t talk it over with anyone else, not yet. The last thing Dale Van Gryson had said to him before they parted enjoined confidentiality.

‘Give us time, Lennox. Let us get this thing straightened out at the New York end. It’s only six weeks since the death, we can procrastinate for a while …’

‘But there’s got to be a showdown at some time,’ he’d told the American, ‘it can’t be kept under wraps for ever. Not unless …’ Kemp hadn’t finished the sentence, watching the expression on the other man’s face.

Van Gryson had said nothing but Kemp grinned to himself now. He knew damned well what was in that astute counsellor’s mind—perhaps even in the corporate mind of his firm:

‘Unless I, Lennox Kemp, disclaim any interest in the estate of the late Mrs Probert, and no meeting has ever taken place between myself and any of her trustees …’

It had gone unsaid, and might very well remain so, but the very idea of himself running a clutch of dubious gambling dens in Las Vegas was enough to make him choke over the breakfast table the two of them had shared in the hotel that early morning.

They had discussed the matter more soberly than on the previous night, Kemp probing for information, Van Gryson prevaricating and, in Kemp’s view, revealing the depths of his ignorance. Kemp had been struck by the difference in their approach. The American’s main concern was how to keep his firm out of trouble, which meant carrying out the duties of trustees and executors while keeping the snake in the basket by sitting firmly on the lid. Kemp, who was often ruefully aware that he’d have made a better detective than a solicitor, was more taken up with the investigation possibilities.

He had been careful, however, to lay fairly and squarely before Van Gryson his own view of the position at law.

‘I don’t know whether it’s the same under the United States legal system,’ he’d said, ‘but here in England a will contained in a copy or even a completed draft may be admitted to probate on an application to the Court if proper evidence as to its being made can be adduced, supported by the necessary affidavits—in this case those of Miss Janvier’s and the two witnesses.’

‘Madison’s lawyers would counter that by saying how could they be sure it was Mrs Probert. We haven’t even got a photostat copy showing the signature.’

‘Sworn statement by the chauffeur confirming time of the visit to your office,’ said Kemp promptly, ‘along with identification of the deceased from photographs shown to Miss Janvier. I think we can discount any suggestion of an impostor should they bring it up.’

‘What about evidence of the existence of the second will after the death?’

‘That’s where the crunch will come … I have to admit it’s crucial to any such application on a lost will to the probate courts in this country.’

‘The other side would have a field-day on that one,’ Van Gryson agreed gloomily. ‘They’ll say Mrs Probert had second—or even third—thoughts. She destroyed the new will after she got home.’

‘Could she have done that without someone on her staff knowing? You say she could scarcely rise from her bed … Even torn-up paper has to be dealt with.’

‘She could have burned it.’ Van Gryson was by now entering into the spirit of playing devil’s advocate; presumably it made a nice change from government contracts.

‘Do you know if she smoked? She used to when I knew her. It’s unlikely, of course, in a cancer patient but even doctors indulge such foibles when all hope has gone. How else would she have a lighter or matches at her bedside?’

Van Gryson had begun to take notes. He looked up.

‘I’ll make inquiries, Lennox. As to her flushing the will down the john, Miss Janvier gave her the will in one of our special envelopes. Difficult to dispose of—the fibres would’ve blocked the pipes.’

‘What if she simply got rid of it on the ride home from your office? Having had, as you put it, third thoughts?’

‘We’ll have to question the driver again. He’d have noticed. He knew her well from all those trips to the hospital. The car was ordered from the security desk downstairs in the lobby of the apartments and she always had the same chauffeur because she liked him. She had become sensitive about her appearance on those visits to the hospital and he was a sympathetic man.’

‘Right. Now, what about those servants?’

‘Florence Hermanos had been with Muriel for many years in Las Vegas as her personal maid, and latterly as her trusted friend and companion. That’s why she took her with her when she came to New York.’

‘Was she the one called Florence Bate mentioned in the first will? I saw her name above mine.’ He quoted: ‘To my personal maid and friend, Florence Bate, all my jewellery except the ruby necklace.’

‘You’ve a quick memory, Lennox,’ said Van Gryson admiringly. ‘Yes, she’s the one. And under that will it meant a considerable fortune. Apparently your Muriel was a collector of jewels, mostly rubies. She told us Leo Probert gave them to her on each anniversary.’ He hesitated. ‘I didn’t like to tell you this before, Lennox, but we found no rubies, neither your necklace nor anything else, not in the apartment nor in the bank. There was some stuff in a box on her dressing-table but nothing of great value.’

‘So the rubies are missing along with the will? Interesting, don’t you think? Tell me more about Florence. How’d she get to be Mrs Hermanos?’

At that point Dale had thrown down his table napkin.

‘I told you before … We’d no cause to go prying into the affairs of the servants. It was a delicate enough matter for us without blowing it up out of all proportion. We had to tread very softly, and the last thing we wanted to do was alienate these people.’

‘I’d have gone through them with a fine-tooth comb,’ said Kemp succinctly. ‘You said José Hermanos and Florence were a marrried couple, she was the housekeeper and he was a sort of handyman-cum-butler—an unlikely combination.’