Lessons for Survivors

by Charlie Cochrane

  “It is. A nice easy delivery to get our eyes in.” Jonty shared a happy glance with his friend. “Those two minutes straddled midnight, I assume?”

  “You assume correctly. Simon first, then Peter. You’d be amazed at how many people—intelligent, sensible people—can’t solve that one. Maybe I should try another. Although they were born at the same time, of the same parents, they were not twins.” Bresnan sat back in his chair, looking just like Dr. Panesar did when he’d propounded some miraculous theorem in the SCR and was waiting for anyone to dare argue against it.

  “That’s not possible.” Orlando sat forwards, hands pressed together, intent on the riddle.

  “Of course it is, if Mr. Bresnan says so.” Jonty leaned on his elbow, his second-choice thinking position. The best place to work anything out was entwined in each other’s arms, but that couldn’t be used now. “It’s a play on words somehow, I bet.”

  Bresnan nodded. “You could say so. And germane to this case, Professor Coppersmith, I promise you.”

  “Hold on.” The tip of Jonty’s tongue protruded from his mouth, as it always did when he had his best thinking cap on. “Not twins. Therefore . . . triplets or quadruplets or something. There was a third child who died, perhaps?”

  “Absolutely. You show the true discernment of a St. Bride’s man, Dr. Stewart.”

  Orlando snorted, cross at not having solved the problem first, although it was more a matter of linguistic pedantry than logic. He really needed to sharpen his wits again on these sorts of things. Couldn’t have a mere scholar of the Bard getting one over on a Professor of Applied Mathematics, not when it came to solving puzzles.

  Bresnan, if he’d heard the snort, politely ignored it. “There was a third child, Andrew, named after my grandfather. He did not survive the first day. He was very ill, and so was my grandmother. The children had to be taken and nursed by someone else for the first few weeks.”

  “Your grandmother survived, though?” Orlando thought fleetingly but fondly of his own beloved grandmother.

  “She did, although she was never the woman she had been, understandably. She died when my mother was five. My uncles would have been barely a year old. I remember seeing pictures of her when I was a child, and thought she was very beautiful. Said to be clever, with it. My mother inherited her looks and my uncles her brains.”

  Orlando wondered where the grandfather had come in all this but kept his counsel to himself. Maybe he was reading too much into a few words, although Bresnan seemed to be a man who used words carefully, as his riddles had illustrated. He rose, rescuing the pot from under the cosy and offering another cup of tea all round. It seemed an apt moment to wet their whistles and whet their brains.

  “The way you spoke at the start implies that your uncles are also dead.” Jonty’s eyes were alight, the thin lines around them like aureoles and the scar on his cheek almost disappearing into his smile. A greyhound in the slips, indeed.

  “That is correct. Uncle Peter died the best part of a year ago and Uncle Simon followed him just two months past. And now we come to the nub of the case.” Bresnan took a sip of his tea, as if fortifying himself. “Simon left me a substantial legacy in his will, part of which—the much smaller part—I am to receive in any case, while the larger part is dependent on me satisfying his executors on a particular point. If I haven’t achieved this by the twentieth of October, his birthday, then the remnant of the legacy will be given to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. It is not an insubstantial amount, certainly to me.”

  “That seems very unfair.” Orlando couldn’t help bridling at what he perceived as innate meanness of spirit.

  “I felt that at first, but I’ve considered the matter carefully since and I believe Uncle Simon felt so strongly about this . . . case . . . that it was the only way he could see of pursuing it. It’s an issue of justice and the truth, so you might say it would be highly unfair if it were not to be resolved.” Bresnan looked as if he meant every word. He didn’t seem to be rationalising away the potential loss of the money and his aspirations with it. “Not, I hasten to add, that I begrudge the hospital a penny. If I do inherit, then I’ll make sure I give them a handsome emolument. But I would like to travel, to see things I’ve only dreamed of, and this would make that possible.”

  “There’s no need to apologise to us for wanting to collect your rightful bequest. We’ve experience of people being given conundrums to solve as part of a legacy.” Orlando thought of his own puzzle, tracking down his real family, the search for his own real name. “Tell us what you’re required to do.”

  “I have to establish the case for my aunt having murdered my uncle.” The silence following the remark spoke louder than if it had raised a cacophony of disapproval.

  “Heavens,” Jonty said finally, breaking the silence with a single shot rather than a volley. He opened his notebook, which had lain alongside his teacup, almost forgotten in the puzzles and wordplay. This was no simple riddle suitable for the drawing room; this was murder most foul.

  Orlando couldn’t decide whether to be pleased at the nature of the case. He liked a nice, juicy, unlawful killing, or at least he always had before the war. He looked at Jonty, who’d turned unnaturally pale and was still bent over his notebook, as if all the death he’d seen at the front had taken away any pleasure in dealing with it now.

  “Please can you give us the details?” Orlando spoke quietly, suddenly in the throes of inner debate about whether he wanted to proceed.

  Bresnan nodded. “The particulars of the will were simple. The body of it said what I’ve already stated. A codicil outlined Simon’s belief that Peter’s wife, my Aunt Rosalind, had done away with him—Simon’s words, not mine—although he had no proof, and little cause for suspicion other than his instinct. He must have long had his suspicions, to have written the main part before Peter died.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Of natural causes, or so everyone said. He’d had the influenza, although he seemed to be fighting it off and making a grand recovery. Then one afternoon, they found him dead in his chair in the conservatory. They thought he was dozing, but he’d gone into his long sleep.”

  “You say ‘they’ found him. Who was that?” Orlando kept to the facts of the case, eager to skip over anything to do with influenza. They’d lost Jonty’s parents to the disease and the thought of it still made him shudder.

  “Aunt Rosalind and the housekeeper, Mrs. Hamilton. They wouldn’t normally have disturbed him, but they’d had a plague of ladybirds in the house. The man had been in to treat them, and the ladies wanted to make sure he’d eradicated every one of the things from every corner.” Bresnan sighed. “When they’d finished, they went to the conservatory and found my uncle.”

  “What made Simon suspicious about his brother’s death? Would it be too presumptuous to suggest it was the usual cause, by which I mean a healthy legacy?” Jonty was busy keeping meticulous notes, and establishing motive had to be high on his list of priorities.

  “Exactly that. Perhaps he was being unfair, judging that it couldn’t have been a love match simply on the basis of disparity of age, but Rosalind was substantially younger than my uncle. Not even as old as I am.”

  “Now, or when they married?” Orlando, mind racing off, wondered whether there was a younger man lurking about in the case somewhere.

  “Both. She can’t be more than forty or thereabouts, now. When they were married, she’d have been thirty and he had just turned seventy.” Bresnan sipped his tea again, even though it must have been turning cold.

  May and December marriages—not so unusual, yet so often the cause for scandal or ribald remarks. Especially if there was money involved.

  “That makes ten years of marriage.” Jonty seemed pleased to have got his sums right. Even the dunderheads could have done that calculation, although some of Orlando’s present crop might have struggled with anything more complex. “And she stood to inherit the entire estate?”

&nbs
p; “She did, apart from some minor legacies to staff, past and present. Everything cleared probate surprisingly quickly.”

  “Your Uncle Simon didn’t lodge some form of objection at the time?” Orlando wondered why everything had been left for nearly a year. Surely any potential evidence would be long gone?

  “He didn’t, for two reasons. There was a peculiar clause in Peter’s will, as well. While Rosalind was to have a very comfortable allowance to live on, she wasn’t to inherit the bulk of the estate outright until a year had elapsed from his death. That year finishes on the thirty-first of October.”

  “So all the dates seem to converge.” Jonty steepled his hands before his chin, clearly relishing the way the little ends of the case were drawing together.

  “Exactly.” Bresnan laid out his hands, as if offering the mystery to both of them. “Perhaps this is meant to be. If she did kill him, then we’re to establish that fact before she can claim her money. I wouldn’t be surprised if Uncle Simon chose the date especially, the birthday being fortuitously placed.”

  “Where does the money go otherwise?” Orlando looked up from his own note making.

  “To any living relatives of his father’s line. Which I suppose means me. I was an only child and both my uncles died without issue.”

  “What about those other bequests in your uncle’s will? Peter’s, I mean.”

  “The sums involved were quite small, nothing that would constitute a sufficient reason to commit murder.” Bresnan put his head to one side, considering. “No, not the price of a life.”

  “You’d be surprised what constitutes a reason to murder.” Jonty shuddered, perhaps at the memory of some of their past cases; sometimes motive was as slender as a spider’s thread. “And what seems a small amount to us might represent a fortune—or a lifeline—to some poor soul, especially if they were in desperate need. No hint of that?”

  “Not that I’m aware. And Simon mentioned no suspicion of any other person, just my aunt.”

  Orlando tapped his fingers together. “You said there were two reasons for Simon not raising his suspicions immediately. What’s the other?”

  “Not a scrap of medical evidence. Simon saw the body himself and didn’t notice anything untoward. When he began to wonder if there’d been foul play, he went back and spoke to the doctor.”

  “Who said . . .?”

  “That he was certain Peter was just another victim of that dreadful flu. Apparently he’d been tending him for the past week and had no suspicions of anything else being to blame. You’ll find Simon’s notes about that interview in my papers.”

  “If the doctor had been suspicious, he’d not have signed the death certificate.” Jonty nodded. “There was no inquest?”

  Bresnan shook his head. “Not at the time. And Simon couldn’t find enough solid evidence to justify applying for an exhumation, especially when he was trying to conduct his enquiries without raising Rosalind’s suspicions. The undertaker said Peter looked like he’d just fallen asleep. That’s in the notes too. I’ve verified as much of this as I can, and you can triple-check if required.”

  Orlando inclined his head gravely as though that would be the first job on his list, although they’d sub-contracted such seemingly mundane matters before. “Let us get the matter of the will absolutely clear. You have to clarify the case for Rosalind having murdered your uncle. Does that really mean you only stand to inherit the extra part of the money if Rosalind is proved guilty? Or will exonerating her count?”

  “The former only.” Bresnan gravely nodded. “Simon believed she would kill Peter and wanted to have that proven.”

  “Was Simon himself married?” Maybe there was some degree of jealousy present, either against Peter for having found himself a young wife or against the wife for having come between the twins. Maybe Rosalind had rejected Simon at some point in the past and he was taking his revenge from beyond the grave? Such rivalries and jealousies could run deep.

  “No, he was a confirmed old bachelor, much like yourselves.”

  Orlando hoped their guest didn’t know exactly how confirmed in bachelorhood he and Jonty were, although it might prove interesting to know whether Simon’s inclinations ran along the same lines as theirs did. Who could tell, at this stage, what might prove relevant? But he wasn’t sure he wanted to open that can of worms just yet. Better to go and do some groundwork, listen to local gossip.

  “Actually, may I ask why you thought of getting in touch with us, rather than a solicitor or the police?” Jonty asked insouciantly. He and Orlando didn’t mind taking on what the police hadn’t or wouldn’t, but they’d had a few run-ins with obstreperous inspectors along their detecting way and didn’t want to fall foul of anyone again. Especially when there was always the threat of their relationship being viewed a bit too closely. “They’re not threatening to strike again?”

  “I sincerely hope not.” Bresnan appeared horrified.

  “So do I.” Orlando hadn’t been in England when anarchy had let loose the year before, but he didn’t want it on his doorstep, thank you. Unless some kind soul wanted to come and steal that wretched motorcar. It would be quite in order for any policeman to refuse to deal with the matter.

  “I’m not sure whether I’d call choosing you cowardice or discretion. I have no evidence against Rosalind, nothing to make accusations on. The death had been put down as natural causes, Uncle Peter was an old man, and there’d been no hint of scandal against my aunt.” Bresnan smiled. “Oh yes, I kept my ears open. I did a little bit of investigating myself, in the way of visiting Aunt Rosalind and talking to some of the people in the village about my uncle. All hidden under the façade of a grieving nephew showing the right degree of interest, but I’m afraid I didn’t turn anything up. My solicitor advised me to let the matter drop, as I didn’t want a case of slander on my hands.”

  “But you wouldn’t let it drop?” Orlando looked up again from scribbling his notes.

  “No. And not just for the money. I felt I owed Uncle Simon the courtesy of taking him seriously. He was neither a stupid man nor a malicious one. If he believed there was something suspicious about his brother’s death, then there must have been, even if it turns out not to be a case of murder.” Bresnan sighed. “I’d almost given up when I came across some fortuitous Cambridge gossip. I met an old friend of mine in Cheltenham for luncheon. Not a St. Bride’s man, I’m afraid. Someone from the college next door.” Bresnan seemed suitably ashamed at consorting with the old enemy.

  “Not everyone can be lucky enough to come here, I suppose.” Jonty grinned. “Although I’d be highly embarrassed if I’d been there. I wouldn’t admit the fact to anyone. Did you hear they made Owens head of the place last month?”

  “Never! That plagiaristic scoundrel.” Bresnan sat up, as though ready to dash over to the college next door and take up arms against such a scandalous decision.

  “Gentlemen, we’re digressing again.” Orlando felt he had to bring some sense to the conversation.

  “You’re correct. I apologise once more.” Bresnan bowed and continued. “As I spoke to my friend, I made reference to the need for a discreet and reliable investigator. I’m doubly afraid to say I pretended it was on behalf of one of my parishioners who had a personal matter to be dealt with. My friend made a bit of a joke about my going back to St. Bride’s, as she had her own Holmes and Watson.”

  Orlando took a deep breath before replying; if he heard one more comparison to those two, he’d strangle the comparator, or whatever the appropriate noun was. “We’re hardly that.” He’d have liked to say that they were better, as Jonty wasn’t as thick as Watson seemed to be and he was a lot nicer than Holmes.

  “We don’t take commissions for money, for a start.” Jonty clearly recognised the signs of Holmes-loathing and leaped in. “Waive every single payment we’ve been offered.”

  Orlando couldn’t remember being offered any payment, except a cake from Mrs. Ward when she’d mislaid her reticule, and it had turned u
p in the airing cupboard. He hastened to reassure Bresnan. “We do it for the public interest.”

  He hoped Jonty wouldn’t chip in and say, “He’s lying. It’s for the love of the chase.”

  “I’m pleased to hear that, as I’m not sure I would be able to offer any fee at present.”

  Orlando was about to make some caustic remark along the lines of, Do we seem like the sort of men who need to be paid to undertake our hobbies? But he noticed a warning expression on Jonty’s face and held his tongue.

  “Then that works out admirably.” Jonty’s smile was patrician but not patronising. “And of course, I refuse to write up the cases, unlike Watson. That’s mainly due to Professor Coppersmith’s language being too dreadful to report.”

  Bresnan smiled benignly, evidently enjoying the banter. “Then I shall rephrase myself and say I was advised to contact Coppersmith and Stewart and seek their advice for my ‘parishioner.’”

  Orlando heard Jonty mutter “Stewart and Coppersmith” and hid his grin by pretending to scribble some notes. “We hope we won’t let you down. We can’t guarantee results, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.”

  “I do appreciate it, and I appreciate the fact that you’ll do your best to help me.” Bresnan put down his cup and saucer, looking suddenly old and tired. “I wish that there was something I could do in return for your time and efforts, irrespective of the outcome.”

  Before Orlando could say anything, Jonty cut in. “Say a prayer for Professor Coppersmith, here. He’s a terrible old heathen and causes heaven more grief than any six righteous men put together.”

  “I will do just that,” Bresnan replied, clearly not believing a word of what he’d been told. “And for you, too, should you be in need of one.”