A Murder Is Announced

‘After that, he treated me more or less as a junior partner. Oh! they were exciting days.’ She sighed. ‘I enjoyed it all thoroughly. Then my father died, and my only sister was left a hopeless invalid. I had to give it all up and go and look after her. Randall died a couple of years later. I had made quite a lot of money during our association and I didn’t really expect him to leave me anything, but I was very touched, yes, and very proud to find that if Belle predeceased me (and she was one of those delicate creatures whom everyone always says won’t live long) I was to inherit his entire fortune. I think really the poor man didn’t know who to leave it to. Belle’s a dear, and she was delighted about it. She’s really a very sweet person. She lives up in Scotland. I haven’t seen her for years-we just write at Christmas. You see, I went with my sister to a sanatorium in Switzerland just before the war. She died of consumption out there.’

She was silent for a moment or two, then said:

‘I only came back to England just over a year ago.’

‘You said you might be a rich woman very soon…How soon?’

‘I heard from the nurse attendant who looks after Belle Goedler that Belle is sinking rapidly. It may be-only a few weeks.’

She added sadly:

‘The money won’t mean much to me now. I’ve got quite enough for my rather simple needs. Once I should have enjoyed playing the markets again-but now…Oh, well, one grows old. Still, you do see, Inspector, don’t you, that if Patrick and Julia wanted to kill me for a financial reason they’d be crazy not to wait for another few weeks.’

‘Yes, Miss Blacklock, but what happens if you should predecease Mrs Goedler? Who does the money go to then?’

‘D’you know, I’ve never really thought. Pip and Emma, I suppose…’

Craddock stared and Miss Blacklock smiled.

‘Does that sound rather crazy? I believe, if I predecease Belle, the money would go to the legal offspring-or whatever the term is-of Randall’s only sister, Sonia. Randall had quarrelled with his sister. She married a man whom he considered a crook and worse.’

‘And was he a crook?’

‘Oh, definitely, I should say. But I believe a very attractive person to women. He was a Greek or a Roumanian or something-what was his name now-Stamfordis, Dmitri Stamfordis.’

‘Randall Goedler cut his sister out of his will when she married this man?’

‘Oh, Sonia was a very wealthy woman in her own right. Randall had already settled packets of money on her, as far as possible in a way so that her husband couldn’t touch it. But I believe that when the lawyers urged him to put in someone in case I predeceased Belle, he reluctantly put down Sonia’s offspring, simply because he couldn’t think of anyone else and he wasn’t the sort of man to leave money to charities.’

‘And there were children of the marriage?’

‘Well, there are Pip and Emma.’ She laughed. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous. All I know is that Sonia wrote once to Belle after her marriage, telling her to tell Randall that she was extremely happy and that she had just had twins and was calling them Pip and Emma. As far as I know she never wrote again. But Belle, of course, may be able to tell you more.’

Miss Blacklock had been amused by her own recital. The Inspector did not look amused.

‘It comes to this,’ he said. ‘If you had been killed the other night, there are presumably at least two people in the world who would have come into a very large fortune. You are wrong, Miss Blacklock, when you say that there is no one who has a motive for desiring your death. There are two people, at least, who are vitally interested. How old would this brother and sister be?’

Miss Blacklock frowned.

‘Let me see…1922…no-it’s difficult to remember…I suppose about twenty-five or twenty-six.’ Her face had sobered. ‘But you surely don’t think-?’

‘I think somebody shot at you with the intent to kill you. I think it possible that that same person or persons might try again. I would like you, if you will, to be veryvery careful, Miss Blacklock. One murder has been arranged and did not come off. I think it possible that another murder may be arranged very soon.’

***

Phillipa Haymes straightened her back and pushed back a tendril of hair from her damp forehead. She was cleaning a flower border.

‘Yes, Inspector?’

She looked at him inquiringly. In return he gave her a rather closer scrutiny than he had done before. Yes, a good-looking girl, a very English type with her pale ash-blonde hair and her rather long face. An obstinate chin and mouth. Something of repression-of tautness about her. The eyes were blue, very steady in their glance, and told you nothing at all. The sort of girl, he thought, who would keep a secret well.

‘I’m sorry always to bother you when you’re at work, Mrs Haymes,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want to wait until you came back for lunch. Besides, I thought it might be easier to talk to you here, away from Little Paddocks.’

‘Yes, Inspector?’

No emotion and little interest in her voice. But was there a note of wariness-or did he imagine it?