The Mystery at Underwood House (An Angela Marchmont Mystery) by Clara Benson Page A

afraid,’ replied Angela. ‘I was just on my way to call on Louisa when I saw you and was hoping you could spare me a few minutes. I wanted to take a look at Philip Haynes’s will, as you did not have your keys with you last time I visited.’
    ‘ Ah, the will. I must confess I’d forgotten about it, but—oh! Yes, of course, that reminds me of something I meant to tell you the last time we spoke, which had completely slipped my mind. The inevitable consequence of age, I fear. It did not seem important at the time—and indeed I may have been guilty of not taking it very seriously when she told me about it, but it has since occurred to me that it may possibly have a bearing on this case.’
    ‘ Oh?’ said Angela, her curiosity aroused.
    ‘ Yes. Shall we sit here? It is such a beautiful morning it seems a shame to cower in my stuffy old office as though we were afraid of a little sunshine.’
    He indicated a bench placed in such a position as to afford weary walkers a restful view of the Downs beyond the edge of the little town. They sat. Angela regarded him expectantly but for a few moments he appeared to have forgotten his purpose as he stroked his chin and his features gradually gathered into a perplexed frown. At length he seemed to come to himself and turned to Angela with a wry smile.
    ‘ I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘But I wonder whether I mayn’t after all be making a mistake in telling you this, since her story was vague in the extreme and is, when all is said and done, quite unlikely to bear any relation at all to the business at hand. I should hate to set you off on a wild-goose chase.’
    Angela laughed.
    ‘ If you were hoping to dampen my curiosity with that I’m afraid you have failed miserably,’ she said. ‘Now I am simply dying to hear it. Don’t worry about sending me off on a false scent—I have no intention of taking any action precipitately.’
    The lawyer’s eyes twinkled in acknowledgment.
    ‘ Yes, I ought to have remembered that the surest way to arouse a lady’s interest is to tell her that there is nothing to tell,’ he said. ‘Very well, then, but remember that there may be nothing in it. The person to whom I am referring is Winifred Dennison. Some time ago she came to me with a confused tale in which, in short, she accused a person or persons whom she was not willing to name of having cheated her out of a large sum of money.’
    ‘ Indeed?’ said Angela.
    ‘ I believe I mentioned to you before, and probably you have heard it from others, that Winifred was an extremely unworldly woman. She was the type to be taken in by any hard-luck story one might care to tell her, and as a result she was frequently the object of charlatans, swindlers and other persons of questionable character claiming to represent good causes of various kinds. When she came to me with this tale, therefore, I confess I paid little attention to it, as I assumed that she had once again been “stung”, as the vulgar phrase has it, by a petty confidence-man with a plausible story. It was not until after she died and it was discovered that all her money had gone that I began to think that perhaps there was something in it.’
    ‘ Do you remember what she said, exactly? When was it that she came to you?’
    ‘ It must have been about a year ago—not long before she died, as a matter of fact. It was late in the afternoon and I was about to go home which, I am ashamed to say, may have influenced my actions—or rather lack of them. She drifted into my office in the peculiar way she had, scattering scarves and hat-pins as she went, and said she wanted to consult me about a private matter. I had just begun to hint that perhaps a more suitable time could be found in which we could converse at our leisure, when she launched suddenly into a highly confused account of a fast-growing investment fund into which somebody—she would not say who—had persuaded her to put a large sum of money. The fund was meant to