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“Well, I think so—but I shall have to find a few more clues.” She paused and added: “Chief-Inspector Taverner thinks that Brenda did it, doesn’t he? Or Brenda and Laurence together because they’re in love with each other.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that, Josephine.”

“Why not? They are in love with each other.”

“You can’t possibly judge.”

“Yes, I can. They write to each other. Love letters.”

“Josephine! How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve read them. Awfully soppy letters. But Laurence is soppy. He was too frightened to fight in the war. He went into basements, and stoked boilers. When the flying-bombs went over here, he used to turn green—really green. It made Eustace and me laugh a lot.”

What I would have said next I do not know, for at that moment a car drew up outside. In a flash Josephine was at the window, her snub nose pressed to the pane.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s Mr. Gaitskill, grandfather’s lawyer. I expect he’s come about the will.”

Breathing excitedly, she hurried from the room, doubtless to resume her sleuthing activities.

Magda Leonides came into the room, and to my surprise came across to me and took my hands in hers.

“My dear,” she said, “thank goodness you’re still here. One needs a man so badly.”

She dropped my hands, crossed to a high-backed chair, altered its position a little, glanced at herself in a mirror, then, picking up a small Battersea enamel box from a table, she stood pensively opening and shutting it.

It was an attractive pose.

Sophia put her head in at the door and said in an admonitory whisper, “Gaitskill!”

“I know,” said Magda.

A few moments later Sophia entered the room, accompanied by a small elderly man, and Magda put down her enamel box and came forward to meet him.

“Good morning, Mrs. Philip. I’m on my way upstairs. It seems there’s some misunderstanding about the will. Your husband wrote to me with the impression that the will was in my keeping. I understood from Mr. Leonides himself that it was at his vault. You don’t know anything about it, I suppose?”

“About poor Sweetie’s will?” Magda opened astonished eyes. “No, of course not. Don’t tell me that wicked woman upstairs has destroyed it?”

“Now, Mrs. Philip,”—he shook an admonitory finger at her—“no wild surmises. It’s just a question of where your father-in-law kept it.”

“But he sent it to you—surely he did—after signing it. He actually told us he had.”

“The police, I understand, have been through Mr. Leonides’ private papers,” said Mr. Gaitskill. “I’ll just have a word with Chief-Inspector Taverner.”

He left the room.

“Darling,” cried Magda. “She has destroyed it. I know I’m right.”

“Nonsense, Mother, she wouldn’t do a stupid thing like that.”

“It wouldn’t be stupid at all. If there’s no will she’ll get everything.”

“Ssh—here’s Gaitskill back again.”

The lawyer reentered the room. Chief-Inspector Taverner was with him and behind Taverner came Philip.

“I understood from Mr. Leonides,” Gaitskill was saying, “that he had placed his will with the Bank for safe keeping.”

Taverner shook his head.

“I’ve been in communication with the Bank. They have no private papers belonging to Mr. Leonides beyond certain securities which they held for him.”

Philip said:

“I wonder if Roger—or Aunt Edith … Perhaps, Sophia, you’d ask them to come down here.”

But Roger Leonides, summoned with the others to the conclave, could give no assistance.

“But it’s nonsense—absolute nonsense,” he declared. “Father signed the will and said distinctly that he was posting it to Mr. Gaitskill on the following day.”

“If my memory serves me,” said Mr. Gaitskill, leaning back and half-closing his eyes, “it was on November 24th of last year that I forwarded a draft drawn up according to Mr. Leonides’ instructions. He approved the draft, returned it to me, and in due course I sent him the will for signature. After a lapse of a week, I ventured to remind him that I had not yet received the will duly signed and attested, and asking him if here was anything he wished altered.