“No, I’ll do that. When would you like it to be?”
“At once, if you can. I should like to see you before—well, straightway, if you can.”
The Inspector turned from the instrument to ask: “How far off are they? They want to see me now. Can I get a car?” The heat of the afternoon was increasing, and he felt he had walked enough.
Being reassured on these points, he replied that he could be with Mr. Fisher in five minutes, and hung up the receiver.
CHAPTER VIII.
Mr. Fisher was a small, precise man, with little indication of age or youth, except in the greying of his close-cropped hair. He had a formal and somewhat hesitant manner, springing rather from habitual caution in the choice and use of words than any lack of confidence in his own capacity.
“I must thank you, Inspector Pinkey,” he began, “for your courtesy in calling upon me at such short notice, and on so vague a pretext. I am expecting several gentlemen here in about twenty minutes, and I shall be glad to give you a short explanation before they arrive of the business which calls them here, and, I hope, receive such information from you as will simplify the position.”
“Are you asking me to meet these gentlemen?”
“That must be for you to decide. I hope it may not be necessary.”
“Well, I expect you’re right. We’d better not decide that till I understand what the trouble is. I need scarcely say that I shall be glad to give you any help I can consistently with my own duty. In fact,” he added, “I was going to ask a somewhat similar favour from you.
“There’s a man named Redwin hanging about here who used to be Sir Daniel’s secretary (by the way, I wonder what he wanted a secretary for?), and was kicked out, so it is said, a few days before the death occurred. I’m rather anxious to learn anything I can about that.”
Mr. Fisher hesitated. He glanced at the clock. It was evident that he was unwilling to be diverted from that which was on his own mind. But it was a difficult request to rebuff, in view of that which he had to make.
“I need scarcely say,” he replied, “that I shall be glad to give you any help that I can. I believe Mr. Redwin actually came to see us. He would have seen our Mr. Weedon—our managing clerk at this branch. I do not know much of what passed, but I can tell you definitely that we are not acting for him.”
“So I was told. Perhaps if I could have five minutes with Mr. Weedon? We should still have time for a talk before the other gentlemen are due to arrive.”
Mr. Fisher hesitated again. He looked once more at the moving hand of the clock, which was now at two forty-five. “If you will excuse me a moment,” he said, “I will ascertain whether he is here now.”
Having said this, he did not ring for the information, though there was an office telephone on his desk, but went out of the room. The Inspector judged that the probability that he would be introduced to Mr. Weedon before the coming interview was not great.
He was left alone for about three minutes, when Mr. Fisher returned alone.
“Weedon,” he said, “is engaged with a client, but I have had a few words with him. We will do all we can, of course, but your request places us in a rather difficult position. My view, with which I hope you will agree, is that if certain information is communicated to us with a request that we will act professionally upon it, such information is confidential, even though we may decline the business. It is confidential up to the moment when we decline to act, and remains so up to that point.”
“And there it naturally ends?”
“That is a reasonable presumption.” He paused, and added with an impressive deliberation: “Mr. Redwin, after having been told that we were not prepared to act for him, made the gratuitous remark that we could please ourselves, but she’d be sorry before he’d done.”
“She?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning Lady Denton, of course?”
“It is a natural deduction, which I am not prepared to dispute.”
“I may conclude that he had some plan of blackmailing her, with which a firm of your reputation naturally declined to be mixed up?”
“That must be your own conclusion. It is not a question to which I am in a position to give a negative reply.” He added, as though fearing that he had said too much: “Blackmail is, of course, a particularly vague word. I am not sure that a legal definition exists. If I may offer a word of probably quite needless advice, I would suggest that anything coming from that source should not be lightly believed. I am told that he has been heard—outside this office—to express a strong animosity against Lady Denton, and I should suppose that he is a clever and unscrupulous man.”
He glanced at the clock again, which was now at six minutes to three. “Will you permit me now,” he asked with a slight smile, “to put another matter before you?” The Inspector was not clear that he had gained much, though it might be another pointer on the right road, and, in any case, as much as Mr. Fisher could fairly give. He felt that he could no longer delay to listen to the business which brought him there.
“Yes,” he said, “it was kind of you to let me in first.” And as he settled himself to listen, a clerk came in with a strip of paper which Mr. Fisher read, and then said: “Ask Mr. Strange to wait a few minutes; and Mr. Wheeler, and Mr. Borman, if they get here before I ring.”
He commenced at once, as the clerk went out, speaking rather more rapidly than his habit was, though still with some deliberate precision.
“I must be brief, and come to the point by a shorter road than I meant to take. There is a question arisen in an acute form regarding a certain clause in an insurance policy under which Sir Daniel Denton’s life was covered for a large amount. It is a matter which immediately concerns the local branch of the London and Northern Bank, whose manager is waiting to see me now. Mr. Borman, the solicitor to the bank (whose country agents we are), is on the way here, and I have asked Mr. Wheeler, Sir Daniel’s own solicitor, to be present also, as I suppose he will be acting for Lady Denton, whose interests may be at stake.”
“I suppose the question is whether he committed suicide?”
“Yes, in the first place—yes.”
“And that implies that his life was insured for some large amount within twelve months of his death?”
“Yes, but there is an explanation of that. Of course, the verdict of a coroner’s jury is final on such a point. We understand that the inquest is now adjourned sine die. If you could assure me that it is likely to be held within fourteen days—”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t do that. But I think I can go as far as to say that, on Sir Lionel Tipshift’s evidence, it’s unlikely—extremely unlikely—that any jury could return a suicide verdict. I should say that the policy will be almost certainly paid.”
“I was inclined to anticipate that reply. Unfortunately, that conclusion only raises a further question of a more delicate kind. There is a rumour that reached the bank yesterday—I am not at liberty to say how, but you know how important it is that a bank should be fully informed, and how numerous their sources of information are—a rumour which is probably quite baseless, and which I should not mention but that it is unavoidable, that there was a suspicion that Sir Daniel had died by his wife’s hands—that, in fact, a warrant had been already issued for her arrest.”
“I can tell you definitely that that is untrue.”
“I am pleased to hear it. I have met Lady Denton socially, and the rumour appeared incredible. Can you tell me that it is a quite baseless report?”
“I don’t know that I ought to say more