The Moving Toyshop

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‘Quite a considerable fortune,’ Mr Rosseter enunciated with relish. ‘In the region of a million pounds.’ He looked at his visitors, pleased with the effect he had created. ‘Large sums, naturally, were swallowed up in estate and death duties, but well over half of the original amount is left. Unfortunately, Miss Emilia Tardy is no longer in a position to claim it.’

Cadogan stared. ‘No longer in a position—’

‘The terms of the will are peculiar, to say the very least of it.’ Again Mr Rosseter polished his glasses. ‘I have no objection to telling you gentlemen of them, since the will has been proved, and you may discover the details yourself from Somerset House. Miss Snaith was an eccentric old lady – I might say very eccentric. She had a strong sense of – ah –family ties, and had, moreover, promised to leave her estate to her nearest surviving relative, Miss Tardy. But at the same time she was a woman of – ah – old-fashioned views, and disapproved of the kind of life her niece was leading, travelling and living, as she did, almost wholly on the Continent. In consequence, she added a curious proviso in her will: I was to advertise for Miss Tardy in the English newspapers, with a certain specified regularity, but not in the Continental ones; and if within six months of the date of Miss Snaith’s death Miss Tardy had not appeared to lay claim to her inheritance, then automatically she forfeited all right to it. In this way Miss Snaith proposed to revenge herself for Miss Tardy’s way of life and for her neglect of her aunt, with whom, I believe, she had not communicated for many years, without on the other hand transgressing the letter of her promise.

‘Gentlemen, the period of six months came to an end at midnight last night, and I have had no communication from Miss Tardy of any kind.’

There was a long silence. Then Fen said:

‘And the estate?’

‘It goes entirely to charity.’

‘To charity!’ Cadogan exclaimed.

‘I should say to various charities.’ Mr Rosseter, who had been standing all this time, relapsed into the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘In point of fact, I was occupied with the details of the administration when you came in; Miss Snaith appointed me as her executor.’

Cadogan felt blank. Unless Rosseter was lying, a superb motive had been whisked away from under their noses. Charities did not murder elderly maiden ladies for the purpose of obtaining benefactions.

‘That, then, is the position, gentlemen,’ said Mr Rosseter briskly. ‘And now if you’ll forgive me’ – he gestured – ‘a great deal of work—’

‘One more thing, if you’ll be so kind,’ Fen interrupted. ‘Or, now I come to think of it, two. Did you ever meet Miss Tardy?’

It seemed to Cadogan that the solicitor avoided looking Fen in the eye. ‘Once. A very strong-willed and moral person.’

‘I see. And you put an advertisement in the Oxford Mail the day before yesterday—’

Mr Rosseter laughed. ‘Ah, that. Nothing to do with Miss Snaith or Miss Tardy, I assure you. I’m not so unpopular’ – he grinned with unconvincing roguishness – ‘as to have only one client, you know.’

‘A curious advertisement—’

‘It was, wasn’t it? But I’m afraid I should be violating a confidence if I were to explain. And now, gentlemen, if ever I can deal with any business for you…’

The Dickensian clerk ushered them out. As he departed, Cadogan said wryly:

‘My only second cousin. A millionairess. And she leaves me nothing – not even a book of comic verse,’ he added, remembering Mrs Wheatley’s comment on this prepossession of Miss Snaith. ‘Well, it’s a hard world.’

It was a pity he did not look round as he spoke. For Mr Rosseter was gazing after him with an odd expression on his face.

The mild sun gleamed on the thronged street outside. Cycling undergraduates pushed between the jams of cars and buses, and the housewives of Oxford shopped.

‘Well,’ said Cadogan, ‘was he telling the truth?’

‘We might know,’ said Fen aggrievedly, as they pushed along the crowded pavement, ‘if you hadn’t started off by behaving like something out of a mental home.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t suddenly foist these impostures on me. There’s one thing, the centre of interest seems to have shifted from Miss Tardy to Miss Snaith and her millions.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s shifted to Mr Rosseter.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You see’ – Fen cannoned into a woman who had suddenly stopped in front of him to look at a shop window – ‘you see, any ordinary solicitor, if two total strangers rushed into his office and demanded details of his clients’ private affairs, would quite certainly just kick them out. Why was Mr Rosseter so candid, so open and informative? Because he was telling a pack of lies? But as he quite rightly remarked, we can check what he said from Somerset House. All the same, I don’t trust Mr Rosseter.’

‘Well, I’m going to the police,’ said Cadogan. ‘If there’s anything I hate, it’s the sort of book in which characters don’t go to the police when they’ve no earthly reason for not doing so.’

‘You’ve got an earthly reason for not doing so immediately.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The pubs are open,’ said Fen, as one who after a long night sees dawn on the hills. ‘Let’s go and have a drink before we do anything rash.’

4 (#ulink_cbef6de4-2105-534c-a42e-127be4f0ebdc)

The Episode of the Indignant Janeite (#ulink_cbef6de4-2105-534c-a42e-127be4f0ebdc)

‘Which in effect,’ said Cadogan, ‘leaves us exactly where we were before.’

They were sitting in the bar of the Mace and Sceptre, Fen drinking whisky, Cadogan beer. The Mace and Sceptre is a large and quite hideous hotel which stands in the very centre of Oxford and which embodies, without apparent shame, almost every architectural style devised since the times of primitive man. Against this initial disadvantage it struggles nobly to create an atmosphere of homeliness and comfort. The bar is a fine example of Strawberry Hill Gothic.

It was only a quarter past eleven in the morning, so few people were drinking as yet. A young man with a hooked nose and a broad mouth was talking to the barman about horses. Another young man with horn-rimmed glasses and a long neck was engrossed in Nightmare Abbey. And a pale, rather grubby undergraduate with untidy red hair was talking politics to an earnest-looking girl in a dark green jersey.

‘So you see,’ he was saying, ‘it’s by such means that the moneyed classes, gambling on the Stock Exchange, ruin millions of poor investors.’

‘But surely the poor investors were gambling on the Stock Exchange too.’

‘Oh, no, that’s quite different…’

Mr Hoskins, more like a vast, lugubrious blood-hound than ever, was sitting at a table with a dark and beautiful girl called Miriam. He was drinking a small glass of pale sherry.

‘But, darling,’ said Miriam, ‘it will be simply awful if the proctors catch me in here. You know they send women down if they catch them in bars.’

‘The proctors never come in in the mornings,’ said Mr Hoskins. ‘And in any case, you don’t look a bit like an undergraduate. Now, just don’t you worry. Look, I’ve got some chocolates for you.’ He pulled a box from his pocket.

‘Oh, you darling…’

The only other occupant of the bar was a thin, rabbit-faced man of about fifty, greatly muffled up in coats and scarves, who was sitting by himself drinking rather more than was good for him.

Fen and Cadogan had been running over the facts of the case as far as they knew them, and it was the result of this investigation which had prompted Cadogan’s remark. Those facts boiled down to dispiritingly little:

1. A grocery shop in Iffley Road had been turned into a toyshop during the night, and then back into a grocery shop.

2. A Miss Emilia Tardy had been found dead there, and her body had subsequently vanished.

3. A rich aunt of Emilia Tardy, Miss Snaith, had been run over by a bus six months previously, and had left her fortune to Miss Tardy under certain conditions which made it as likely as not that Miss Tardy would never even become aware of her inheritance (if Rosseter was telling the truth).

‘And I suppose,’ said Fen, ‘that he wasn’t allowed to communicate directly with any known address of Miss Tardy. By the way, I was meaning to ask you: did you feel the body at all?’