by Helen Reilly
“Yes, Inspector. I’ve been Luke’s lawyer for the last fifteen years.”
“Ever hear of a man named Borrow in connection with him?”
Stone frowned piercingly at the broad shoulders of Cluett, the driver behind the wheel of the swiftly moving car.
“Borrow, Borrow?” he murmured tentatively. “No, I can’t say I have, as far as I can recall. He was the man who was killed in the show window, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” The Scotsman sighed. He hadn’t expected a great deal but he had been hopeful. The thread was so tenuous. If he could only get a couple of loops of it in his hand, a lead or the shadow of an indication of a lead. He turned toward the lawyer again.
“Can you tell me whether or not Luke Cambridge made a will?” he asked.
“He most emphatically did,” Stone rejoined. “He’s made two or three. After his sister Hetty died in 1921 he made a new one. And then again long about 1925, no, it was 1926, when Gregory’s first wife died. Luke was very fond of her. He made another will then, the will that’s now in existence.”
“You’re sure there is a will in existence, Mr Stone?”
“Quite positive,” the lawyer said. “Last March Luke changed one of the codicils and only last week he had me send the copy of the present will, which I kept in my safe, over to him together with a couple of leases I had drawn up.”
This was news. McKee was careful not to betray his interest.
“I suppose there must be some reason why he wanted the copy,” the inspector said casually.
Stone shrugged. “He was a secretive old fellow, you know, almost abnormally so. I didn’t ask any questions but this I can tell you, he was contemplating some change in the document, or at least that is my very strong impression. He called me at my office in Carmel late Thursday afternoon and asked me whether I was going to be busy that night. When I said no, not particularly, he said he might need me and would I stand by in case he put through a late call? I did, but the call never came.”
The car sped around a curve where the sun slanted in bold planes through the woods close to the road.
“That was Thursday,” McKee said ruminatively. “Do you know what was in the latest will, Mr Stone?”
The lawyer hesitated. “Oh well,” he said after a moment, “Luke’s dead and this is pretty serious business. Besides, it’s going to be produced right away anyhow. Yes, I have a general idea of what is in it. Luke left a legacy to his brother Gregory and something to Leslie. There are various bequests to different local institutions. The rest of the estate, the bulk of it, goes to Ellen. She’s Gregory’s daughter by his first wife, to whom Luke’s been partial ever since she was a child.”
McKee digested this in silence. Money to Gregory and through Gregory to Irene. Money to Leslie and through Leslie to Muriel. Money to Ellen and through her to Toby Newell whom someone had apparently tried to bump off. Most of these people were or could have been in Garth and Campbell’s when Franklin Borrow was shot and killed. All of which got him exactly no place as far as linking the two murders was concerned. What about Judith Borrow? What about Savage and, above all, what about Jones? The pattern refused to form itself even in outline, however nebulous.
“Where was the will kept, Mr Stone?” the Scotsman asked as they swung into the bend that led over the bridge across the little river into Edgewood.
“I imagine it would be among the papers in Luke’s study,” Stone said, “since he was evidently contemplating some alteration in it.”
But neither Luke Cambridge’s will nor its copy was in his study. They drove straight to the old house on the hill. A careful search of every nook and cranny in the book-lined room that included the desk, the drawers of the table, a filing-cabinet and a small cupboard hidden in the wainscoting to the right of the fireplace was fruitless, a blank. The rest of the house produced no more tangible result. Wherever Luke Cambridge’s will was it wasn’t in the house.
“How about the bank? He has a box there,” the lawyer said. He was plainly worried.
An investigation of Luke’s safety-deposit box in the Edgewood Bank which the two men made in company with the cashier, ruthlessly snatched from a late Sunday breakfast, was equally fruitless. Narrow corridors were traversed, doors unlocked, bolts pushed back and combinations manipulated in vain. The will or its copy was not to be found.
Back in the Cadillac McKee said to the puzzled lawyer, “Luke might have destroyed his will prior to death.”
Stone was forthright. He shook his head. “Not a chance, Inspector, not a chance in the world. At least in my reading of the man. And don’t forget I’ve known him a great many years. He wasn’t exactly a pharisee but he had very decided convictions and one of them was that every man ought to make a will. I believe that he was going to make changes in his, changes that might possibly have had to do with the fact that his niece Ellen was going to be married. But it’s my firm belief that he wouldn’t have disposed of the old will until he’d made a new one and it was signed, sealed and attested.”
McKee had no reason to doubt what Stone said—which raised a new and interesting question. Luke’s will and the copy of the will had apparently been taken from its accustomed repository, which might have been the desk in the study. Irene had searched the desk, nimbly and with dispatch, the previous evening as soon as Luke was dead.
This wasn’t conclusive. Too long an interval had elapsed between the time of Luke’s death and his own arrival at the house on the hill for him to be sure with any certainty of exactly what had taken place there. Check on the whereabouts of all concerned or all who could have been concerned during that interval.
The Scotsman said to Cluett, waiting for orders behind the wheel of the Cadillac, “Drive to Gregory Cambridge’s. No,” he changed it, “stop first at Leslie Cambridge house, it’s on the way.” He settled back and put a match to a cigarette. Besides matters touching on the will there were other questions he wanted to ask that young gentleman.
“But, Inspector, come in. Oh, Mr Stone, come right in.
Muriel Cambridge pulled wide the door of the pretty ivy-hung, half-timbered cottage that Gregory had built for his son. She had a basting spoon in one hanfl and her cheeks were flushed. She wore a gay chintz apron over the neat blue silk dress with ruffles at the neck and sleeves.
Stone smiled down at her paternally. “Hello, Muriel, my dear. How are you?”
Her answering smile was tremulous. “You’re here about— about Luke, aren’t you, Mr Stone?” Her large, prominent, handsome eyes filled. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? But there—you probably want to see Leslie, don’t you? It’s Anna’s day out and I’m getting an early dinner. He’s in the living room. Here.”
She opened a door and called, “Leslie darling,” with a hint of sharpness in her tone that didn’t jibe with her apparent grief over her uncle’s demise.
Leslie Cambridge was lying back in a deep-winged chair to the right of the fireplace, his feet on an ottoman in front of him. He wore bedroom slippers and a pair of decorative white silk pajamas under an expensive lounging robe. The Sunday papers were strewn round him in a semicircle.
Muriel entered the room in advance of the two men. “Leslie, dear.” She hustled forward and began to pick up the papers. McKee couldn’t be sure whether or not a meaning look flashed between husband and wife.
Leslie rose and greeted the lawyer and himself. He looked uncertainly from Stone to the Scotsman. His smile had uneasiness in it. “Sit down, won’t you?” he said. “Have a drink?”
There was a half-finished scotch and soda on the taboret beside the wing chair. Stone cleared his throat to hide his disapproval. “Much too early in the day for me, Cambridge,” he said gruffly.
McKee also declined and got down to it. He didn’t beat about the bush. He took an envelope from his pocket and out of the envelope he took a canceled check. The check was dated December third, was made out to Leslie Cambridge. The amount was two thousand five hundred dollars. It was signed by Luke C
ambridge and endorsed by Leslie.
McKee showed the check to the younger man. “Your uncle gave you this check, didn’t he?”
Leslie Cambridge accepted the check the Scotsman extended. He examined it on both sides and handed it back. He said with a mingling of bluster and wariness, “Yes, that’s right. So what?”
McKee eyed him steadily. “You and your uncle had a quarrel about money the night Franklin Borrow was killed, didn’t you, Mr Cambridge?”
The young man was plainly disconcerted. “Borrow, Borrow—what the hell’s the idea? What’s Borrow got to do with me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
McKee smiled. “If you think back I believe you’ll recall that you paid your uncle a visit on Thursday night. During that visit Luke issued an ultimatum to you. He gave you a week’s grace. A week’s grace for what?”
The Scotsman’s voice changed abruptly. A threatening note entered it. “Come on, Mr Cambridge. Let us have the straight goods. What did your uncle give you this money for?” McKee tapped the check he held in the palm of his hand.
The kitchen door had opened an inch or two. A fold of blue silk was visible through the opening. Muriel Cambridge was listening behind the door, just as she had watched and listened on the night in question.
McKee looked back at Leslie. Leslie didn’t answer. His loose mouth was working. The Scotsman continued with the indictment.
“That was Thursday night. You spent all day Friday looking for quick money in New York.”
“What do you mean?” the young man demanded. He was still trying to carry things off with a high hand.
McGee replied by ticking off the places to which Leslie had gone.
“All right,” Leslie said. “Suppose I did. That had nothing to do with my uncle. That concerned my own private affairs.”
McKee smiled, not pleasantly. “You’ve been getting sums of money from your uncle for some time, haven’t you, Mr Cambridge? And all at once your source of revenue was cut off. Your uncle refused to yield any longer. Not only that, but he threatened you. And last night he died suddenly. You were in that house yesterday afternoon, weren’t you?”
Leslie threshed about aimlessly. He shifted the robe on his shoulders, pushed back rumpled hair from a tall, narrow forehead. His skin was mottled. The thin neck rising from the ornamental pajamas twisted itself from side to side.
“I was in the house, I was in the house. But so were a lot of other people. What of it? Just because I got a little money from Uncle Luke once in a while why pick on me? What about Ellen? He gave Ellen everything she wanted. She was there and so was Irene. And what about the Borrow girl the police got hold of?”
The kitchen door had closed softly. McKee eyed its smooth surface. He didn’t call to the woman on the other side of it. If Leslie was tangled up in Luke Cambridge’s death without doubt Muriel knew all about it. He went further than that, she was the stronger of the two and might have taken the lead.
“Where were you between seven and eight o’clock last night?” the inspector asked suddenly.
Leslie said sulkily, “I don’t clock my movements, Inspector. But as you’re so curious, I was right here in this house with my wife having dinner.”
There was nothing more to be done at the moment. Proof was what was needed. Neither of these people was going to give away more than had already been given. McKee turned to Stone. He said, “We’d better be getting on.” And the two men left the house. They were not ushered out by their hostess.
The reception they got at the comfortable house under towering oaks on the far side of the Cambridge estate was entirely different in tone. The atmosphere there was one of order and quiet, impregnated by the somberness of the death of the head of the family. The housemaid’s smile was muted. Gregory Cambridge’s “Good morning” was grave as he rose from behind the desk to greet McKee and the lawyer. He bowed to McKee, shook hands with Stone.
The inspector answered his questions without subterfuge. Gregory Cambridge listened attentively, solid and compact in a well-tailored double-breasted dark blue suit. McKee asked no direct queries about the will. Just as well to let its absence be disclosed in the normal course of events. Instead he said,
“I hope you won’t take any offense at the question I’m going to ask you now. You understand that in an investigation of this kind we’ve got to check on all details, however slight, in order to get the picture clear.”
Gregory Cambridge stared. “That’s quite all right, Inspector. I understand, go ahead.”
McKee smiled appreciatively. “Would you mind telling me then your whereabouts, where you were between seven and eight o’clock last night?”
“Not at all,” Gregory Cambridge answered promptly and without hesitation. “I was here in this house.”
Light footsteps sounded crossing the hall outside. Irene Cambridge entered the room. She wore a severe black dress with small white collar and cuffs that emphasized the ivory tones of her skin, the coppery gleam of her smooth shapely head. She saluted the lawyer and the Scotsman pleasantly. She was carrying a sheaf of envelopes in her hands.
“Other people I thought we ought to let know, Gregory,” she said and put the envelopes down on the desk.
McKee said, “I’m glad you’re here, Mrs Cambridge. I’ve just put a question to your husband. He has very kindly answered me. I’m going to put the same question to you. Merely routine. Where were you between the hours of seven and eight last night?”
Irene Cambridge thought for a moment. “All the time, you mean, Inspector?”
“If you can recall.”
“Well,” she said reflectively, “Gregory and I mixed the cocktails and then we dressed and then we came downstairs and then Toby came in, and at about a quarter-past eight
we had dinner. I’m afraid that’s as close as ”
She paused. Ellen Cambridge was standing in the open doorway. Newell was behind Ellen. The girl’s face which bore the marks of strain and tears was pale. She was staring intently at her father. Her breast was heaving a little under the black sweater above the black pleated skirt that outlined her full but youthful figure. She had evidently overheard what her stepmother was saying. She started to speak impetuously and apparently without thinking.
“But, Dad,” she said, her gentian-blue eyes wide open, and got no further.
Toby Newell threw an arm around her shoulders. “Good morning, Mr Stone. How are you, Inspector?” he said, perhaps a shade too quicklv and with too much force. “Is there anything new?”
His fingers, strong, lean brown fingers, were pressed hard against the girl’s pretty shoulder under the black wool. Whatever Ellen Cambridge had been about to say had been cut off stillborn. It might have been an accident, it might have been design. McKee couldn’t be sure. He put the same question to the newcomers that he had asked the husband and wife.
Ellen said, “I was in my room reading. I got dressed and then we had dinner.” She spoke quietly but there was agitation beneath her quietness. She tried to control it.
Newell said, “I was in the factory with our foreman, Hepburn, until around eight. We were cleaning up the orders for next week. From the factory I came straight here.” Some minutes later, after conversation about the release of Luke’s body, the time of the funeral and other formalities, Stone and the Scotsman took their departure. As the Cadillac ran down the hill toward the road below with the two men inside it McKee said, looking at the tree into which Toby Newell’s car had crashed several nights earlier,
“By the way, Mr Stone, if Luke Cambridge’s will or the copy of the will should never turn up who would inherit?” The lawyer replied, “If no will is discovered he will be considered to have died intestate. That means that the entire estate will go the the next of kin. And the next of kin in this instance is Gregory Cambridge. Does that answer what you want to know?”
McKee said, “It does.” He didn’t elaborate. But he knew more than that. He knew that Irene Cambridge had searched Luke Cambri
dge’s desk the previous evening and consequently had had a chance to remove the document under discussion. That was all he did know. It wasn’t good enough.
He was to learn more a short time later when Stone left him. Gregory Cambridge was lying as to where he had been and what he had done on the previous night. He was not at home with his wife between seven and eight o’clock. Detective Carson had established through the local newsman that between seven-twenty and seven twenty-five Gregory Cambridge had been down in the village buying a newspaper and a magazine.
Why, McKee asked himself, standing on the corner unmindful of the bleak wind, since the errand was an apparently innocent one, had Gregory Cambridge gone out of his way to cover it up, a covering process in which not only his wife but his prospective son-in-law had given him aid and succor? Because it was this, or an indication leading to this, that Ellen had been about to blurt out when Newell had thrown a sudden arm around her shoulder.
CHAPTER 17
IT WAS at half-past three that afternoon that the call from the homicide squad came in. From noon McKee had been receiving, checking over and digesting reports from the men working on various angles. He had a chat with Rasmussen and a talk with the county prosecutor. Another even more exhaustive search of Luke Cambridge’s house had failed to yield any trace of the will, a will that had been in existence and a copy of which had been returned to Luke by his lawyer less than a week earlier.
McKee took the receiver off its prongs on the old-fashioned box against the wall in the shabby hotel bedroom, two removed from Judith Borrow’s. Lieutenant Shearer of his own squad was on the other end of the wire. Shearer said,
“Got a reply from that Walnut Springs query addressed to the man who was a friend of Borrow’s, Inspector. It’s pretty long. Is Kent there? Good. If you’ll put him on I’ll dictate it to him.”
Kent rose from the cracked marble-topped table where he was transcribing notes on a portable typewriter. He took Shearer’s message down in shorthand, hung up, ran it off and handed the finished sheets to the inspector.