Nettie Cranning, red-eyed with grief, gave Bertha Cool her hand and said, “Do come in, Mrs. Cool. You’ll pardon me, but this has been a terrible shock to me — to all of us. My daughter, Eva Hanberry, and this is my son-in-law, Paul Hanberry.”
Bertha invaded the reception hallway with brisk competence, shook hands with everyone, and forthwith proceeded to dominate the situation.
Nettie Cranning, a woman in the early forties who devoted a great deal of attention to her personal appearance and had cultivated a mannerism which was just short of a simper, quite evidently tried to be a perfect lady at all times.
Her daughter Eva was a remarkably good-looking brunette with long, regular features, thin, delicate nostrils, arched eyebrows, a somewhat petulant mouth, and large, long-lashed, black eyes which seemed quite capable of becoming packed with emotion if occasion presented.
Paul Hanberry seemed very much a masculine nonentity, drained dry by the relatively stronger personalities of the two women. He was of average height, average weight; a man who created no particular impression. As Bertha Cool expressed it afterwards in her letter to Donald Lam, “You could look at the guy twice without seeing him.”
Christopher Milbers promptly effaced himself into the background, hiding behind Bertha Cool’s dominant personality as though he had been a child tagging along when his mother went to school to “investigate” the administration of a discipline of which she did not approve.
Bertha lost no time getting to the point.
“All right, folks,” she said. “This isn’t a social visit. My client, Christopher Milbers, is getting things cleaned up here.”
“Your client?” Mrs. Cranning asked with cold, arch reserve. “May I ask if you’re a lawyer?”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Bertha said promptly. “I’m a detective.”
“A detective!”
“That’s right.”
“Well, good heavens!” Eva Hanberry exclaimed.
Her husband pushed his way forward. “What’s the idea of having a detective in on the job?” he asked with a ludicrous attempt at bluster which made it seem as though he might be trying to bolster his own courage.
Bertha said, “Because there’s ten thousand dollars missing.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Are you,” Mrs. Cranning asked, “accusing us of taking ten thousand dollars?”
“I’m not accusing anybody,” Bertha said, then waited a moment and added significantly, “yet.”
“Would you kindly explain exactly what you mean?” Eva Hanberry demanded.
Bertha said, “When Harlow Milbers died, he had ten thousand dollars in his wallet.”
“Who says so?” Paul Hanberry asked.
“I do,” Christopher Milbers announced, coming forward a step so that he was standing at Bertha Cool’s side, “and I happen to be in a position to prove my statement. My cousin was intending to negotiate for the purchase of some very rare contemporary historical books: Because of certain considerations which needn’t enter into the discussion, the purchase was to be for currency. He had ten thousand dollars in currency in his possession the day he died.”
“Well, he hid it somewhere, then,” Mrs. Cranning said, “because it wasn’t in his wallet when he died.”
“No, he didn’t,” Christopher Milbers said. “He always kept five—”
Bertha Cool brushed him backwards and into silence with a sweeping gesture of her arm. “How do you know it wasn’t in his wallet when he died?” she demanded of Mrs. Cranning.
Mrs. Cranning exchanged glances with the others, and failed to answer the question.
Eva Hanberry said indignantly, “Well, good heavens, I guess if we’re responsible for things here, it’s up to us to look through the things a dead man leaves, isn’t it?”
Paul Hanberry said, — “We had to find out who his relatives were.”
“As though you didn’t know,” Christopher Milbers said.
Bertha Cool said belligerently, “I didn’t come out here to waste time in a lot of arguments. We want that ten thousand dollars.”
“He might have concealed it in his room,” Nettie Cranning said. “I’m quite certain it wasn’t in his wallet.”
“It most certainly wasn’t in his wallet by the time I got it,” Milbers said, growing bolder as Bertha Cool’s direct tactics got the others on the defensive.
“All right,” Bertha observed. “That’s a starting point. We’ll go look at the room where he died. How about the other rooms? Did he do any work here in the house?”
“Good heavens, yes. Lots of it in the library,” Mrs. Cranning said. “He worked there until all hours of the night.”
“Well, let’s take a look in the library. Which is closer?”
“The library.”
“Let’s go there first.”
“The bedroom’s been searched anyway,” Paul said. “He—”
Mrs. Cranning silenced him with a glance of savage disapproval.
Eva said in a low voice, “Let Mother do the talking dear.”
Mrs. Cranning, with considerable dignity, said, “Right this way,” and led the way into a spacious library. In the doorway, she made a little sweeping gesture with her hands as though turning the room over to the visitors and, incidentally, disclaiming all responsibility for herself.
Paul Hanberry looked at his watch, suddenly jerked to startled attention, said, “Gee, I forgot a telephone call,” and walked hastily toward the back of the house.
Almost instantly the attitude of the two women changed. Mrs. Cranning said in a more conciliatory voice, “Are you absolutely certain that he had the money with him?”
“Probably in his wallet,” Milbers said. “The banker is positive that’s where he put the five thousand dollars he drew out Thursday.”
Nettie Cranning and her daughter exchanged glances. Eva said defensively, “He wasn’t ever alone in the room with Mr. Milbers. You know that as well as I do. Mother.”
“Not before he died,” Mrs. Cranning said, “but—”
“Mother!”
“Oh, all right! But you were the one who brought the matter up.”
“Well, you as good as accused—”
Mrs. Cranning turned to Bertha with a smile. “Of course, Mrs. Cool, this is a great shock to us and a great surprise. We want to do everything we can to help you — if you want our help.”
“Oh, certainly,” Bertha said dryly. “And you’ll really be surprised to find how much I can do.”
The library was a huge room lined with shelves of books, many of them bound in a leather which had turned a dark, crusty brown with age. In the centre of the room was a long table, and this table was fairly littered with books lying open, piled one on top of the other. In the centre was a writing pad and a pencil. The top page of the pad was scrawled with notes written in an angular cramped hand.
Mrs. Cranning said, “I don’t think anyone’s looked through here except Mr. Christopher Milbers, who asked to look through the whole house. It’s just the way poor Mr. Milbers left it. He gave orders that no one, under any circumstances, was to touch any of the books or things in this room. They were all to be kept just as he left them. Sometimes there would be days on end when I couldn’t get at the table to dust it because it was so littered with things that I couldn’t touch.”
“It’s hardly a place where a person would leave ten one-thousand dollar bills,” Bertha observed.
Mrs. Cranning’s silence showed that she felt the same way.
Christopher Milbers said, “I have already examined the notes that are on that pad of writing paper. They have to do with one of the campaigns of Cesar. They have no bearing whatever on the subject under discussion. In fact, I found then singularly uninteresting—”
Bertha Cool moved away from him and swept through the room in a hurried search.
“I feel,” Milbers said, “that we may concentrate our search in the bedroom. However, I think we are all agreed that the search is destined to be fruitless. So far as I am concerned, it is merely a necessary preliminary before lodging a formal charge.”
“Against whom and for what?” Eva Hanberry demanded with swift acerbity.
Christopher Milbers detoured the suggestion very adroitly. “That,” he said, “is entirely in the discretion of the detective.”
“Just a private detective,” Mrs. Cranning sniffed. “She has no authority to do anything.”
“She is my representative,” Milbers announced, managing to put great dignity into the statement.
Bertha Cool ignored this discussion. On the trail of money, she was as eager as a hound on a scent. She walked over to the library table, glanced at the open books, riffled the closely written pages of the pad, paused halfway through to read what had been written there, and said, “Who gives a damn about that old stuff?”
After a moment’s silence, Christopher Milbers said defensively, “My cousin was interested in it.”
“Humph!” Bertha said.
Once more there was an interval of silence.
“Any drawer in this table?” Bertha asked.
Quite apparently there was none.
“I think we may as well adjourn to the bedroom,” Milbers said.
Bertha once more regarded the pad of paper with so many of the pages filled with scrawled notes.
“What becomes of this stuff?” she asked.
“You mean the notes?” Mrs. Cranning asked.
“Yes.”
“They were given to his secretary to be transcribed; then Mr. Milbers would read them and correct them for final revision. After that, they’d go into his notebook. He had dozens of notebooks filled with data, and when he’d get—”
“How about these pads?” Bertha asked. “The way he wrote, a pad didn’t last him very long.”
“I’ll say it didn’t. Sometimes I’ve seen—”
“Where’d he get the extras from?”
Mrs. Cranning indicated a panelled bookcase. “Supplies are in there. He always kept a sheaf of pencils properly sharpened, a whole stack of these writing pads, and extra—”
Bertha brushed past her and walked over to the cabinet. She jerked open the door, looked at the orderly rows of stationery and supplies, then turned suddenly to Mrs. Cranning and said, “What makes you think Paul took it?”
“Took what?”
“Took the ten thousand dollars.”
“Why, I never thought any such thing, Mrs. Cool. You’re positively insulting. I don’t think you realize that Paul is my son-in-law and a very dutiful—”
“Does he play the races?” Bertha asked.
The quick glance of dismay which passed between mother and daughter was all the answer Bertha needed.
“Humph!” Bertha said. “Thought so. Probably telephoning in to his bookie right now. I’m going to tell you something. If he means anything to you, you’d better get the truth out of him. If he took it, he’s probably still got most of it left.”
Paul Hanberry came into the room just in time to catch the last couple of words. “Who,” he asked, “has got what left?”
“Nothing, dear, nothing,” Eva Hanberry said with such perturbed haste that it was quite obvious she had a guilty desire to change the trend of conversation.
Hanberry’s face flushed. “Listen,” he said, “don’t think you can make me the fall guy in this thing. I’ve known for a long time that I was just a supernumerary. You two women are just too damn sweet for words. Hell, you should have married each other! I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you, Eva, that when a girl grows up and gets married, she’s supposed to—”
“Paul!” Eva said sharply.
Mrs. Cranning cooed sweetly, “This is neither the time nor the place, Paul, for you and Eva to air any domestic differences.”
Eva Hanberry endeavored to divert attention by making a sudden frantic search of the cupboard. “After all, he might have left it in here,” she said, her words having the expressionless rapidity of the patter employed by a sleight-of-hand performer in attempting to cover up some bit of trickery. “After all, he was in this room a lot, and it’s quite possible that—”
“If you don’t mind,” Milbers said, pushing forward assertively, “I’ll do the looking.”
Bertha paid no attention to him. Her broad, capable shoulders blocked the entrance of the storage space as she started shovelling out the pile of stationery.
“Here’s a drawer back here,” she said.
“Of course, he couldn’t have got to that with all the pads of paper in the way,” Christopher Milbers observed. “Still—”
Bertha opened the drawer.
The others pushed forward. “Anything in there?” Milbers asked.
“Some pen points, stamps, and a sealed envelope,” Bertha said. “Let’s see what this is. The envelope looks promising.”
She opened the envelope, pulling out an oblong of folded paper.
“Well, what is it?” Mrs. Cranning asked as Bertha Cool’s silent interest in the paper gave evidence of its importance.
Bertha Cool said, “I have in my hand a document dated the twenty-fifth day of January 1942, and purporting to be the last will and testament of Harlow Milbers. Any of you folks know anything about this?”
“A will!” Christopher exclaimed, pushing forward.
Paul Hanberry said, “Wait a minute. What date did you say that was, January twenty-fifth? Why, I’ll bet that’s—”
“Bet it’s what, Paul?” his wife asked as he quit speaking abruptly as though wondering whether he should continue.
“The paper he had me sign as a witness,” Paul said. “Don’t you remember? I told you about that Sunday when Josephine Dell was out here. He called us both into the room and said he wanted to sign something, and wanted us to witness his signature. He signed in pen and ink, and then turned over a page and had us sign as witnesses.”
Bertha Cool turned over the first page of the document, inspected the signatures on the second page, and said, “That’s right. Two people have signed as witnesses: Josephine Dell and Paul Hanberry.”
“Then that was it. That was his will.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mrs. Cranning asked sharply.
“I told Eva he had us sign something in here. I thought he said it was a will.”
“I never thought it really was a will,” Eva said hastily to her mother. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think much of it. I remember Paul was out washing the car, and Mr. Milbers tapped on the window and asked him to come in and—”
“What’s in that will?” Christopher Milbers demanded sharply. “What does it say?”
Bertha, who had been reading the document, looked over at Milbers and said, “You aren’t going to like this.”
“Well, come on,” Paul Hanberry said, somewhat impatiently. “What’s it all about?”
Bertha Cool started reading the will:
“Know all men by these presents that I, Harlow Milbers, of the age of sixty-eight years, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, and being utterly weary, not of life (for I like that) but of the people who insist on living it at the same time I do, make this my last will and testament, in words and figures as follows: “I have only one living relative, Christopher Milbers, a cousin, a damned hair-splitting hypocrite. I have nothing in particular against Christopher Milbers except that I don’t like him, that his personality irritates me, that he says too much about too little too often, and suppresses his own opinion upon controversial subjects because he hopes thereby to receive a measure of my bounty when I am dead. “Much of the distaste with which I regard a final dissolution is due to a contemplation of the ghoulish glee with which my polysyllabic relative will prate about the sanctity of family, the true bond of relationship, and the inscrutable ways of Providence, all the while gleefully contemplating the material advantages which will ensue to him with the probating of my will. “Taking all of these things into consideration and realizing the necessity of making some provision for my beloved cousin, in order to conform to the conventions and not to disappoint said beloved cousin too greatly, because, after all, he has taken time to write me long, uninteresting letters, I therefore give, devise, and bequeath to my said cousin, Christopher Milbers, the sum of ten thousand dollars ($ 10,000.00).”
Bertha turned the page. Before starting to read the second page, she surveyed the startled faces of the people about her.
“You asked for this,” she said to Christopher Milbers.
Milbers, white-lipped with indignation, said, “It is an outage — the last word of a man who has placed himself beyond each of a reply. It was unkind. It was cowardly, but, of course—”
Bertha Cool finished his sentence for him as he became thoughtfully silent. “But of course, ten thousand bucks is ten thousand bucks,” she said.
Christopher Milbers flushed. “A mere bagatelle for a man of his means,” he said. “It is definitely insulting.”
Bertha Cool started reading once more from the will.
“To my secretary, Josephine Dell, ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00). “To Nettie Cranning, my housekeeper, Eva Hanberry, her daughter, Paul Hanberry, her son-in-law, all the rest of everything I own. “I don’t want Christopher Milbers to have anything to do with the business in court. Nettie Cranning is to be executor of my whole estate. “In witness whereof, and in a slightly whimsical mood, as though this preparation for the post-mortem distribution of my property had already freed me somewhat from the burden of earthly hypocrisies, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this twenty-fifth day of January, nineteen hundred and forty-two, subscribing the document in the presence of two persons whom I have called in to witness my signature and make it legal, declaring to them that it is my will, yet making certain they are unfamiliar with the contents thereof. (signed) Harlow Milbers.
“And,” Bertha Cool went on, “there’s an attestation clause for the witness following just below. I guess I may as well read it.
“The foregoing instrument consisting of one page beside this was executed in our presence and in the presence of each of us on the twenty-fifth day of January, nineteen hundred and forty-two by Harlow Milbers, who then and there declared it to be his last will and testament, and requested us to sign as witnesses, which we did in his presence and in the presence of each other, all on this twenty-fifth day of January, nineteen hundred and forty-two. (signed) Josephine Dell, (signed) Paul Hanberry.”
Paul Hanberry was the first to break the silence. “Jumpin’ geewhillikins,” he said. “The old man left his property to us! Why, when he asked me to sign that as a witness, I had no more idea what was in that will — I supposed, of course, it left everything to his cousin.”
“You remember the occasion of signing the will as witness?” Bertha asked him.
He looked at her as though she might have been completely crazy. “Why, of course,” he said. “I remember that. I’d forgotten about the will part of it. It was here in the library on a Sunday afternoon. He’d had Josephine Dell out to the house here, taking some dictation, and I was washing the car out in the driveway under the window. She came to the window and beckoned for me to come in. When I got in, the boss was sitting there at the table, holding a pen. He said, ‘Paul, I’m going to sign my will. I want you and Josephine to sign as witnesses, and I want you to remember, in case anyone asks you, that I didn’t seem any more crazy than usual’ — or something like that. Anyway, that was the general effect of it.”
Christopher Milbers said, “That is, of course, very much in the nature of a shock to me. I can hardly imagine Harlow, my beloved cousin, adopting such an attitude. However, the fact remains that we are at present engaged in searching for ten thousand dollars which seems to have mysteriously disappeared under circumstances which, at least, point the finger of suspicion—”
“Wait a minute,” Nettie Cranning said suddenly. “We don’t have to take that from you.”
Christopher Milbers smiled, the superior smirking smile of one who takes pride in a mental agility which has trapped some fellow mortal. “I have not made any specific accusation, Mrs. Cranning. The fact that you seem to resent my comments indicates that at least in your own mind—”
He was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.
“See who that is,” Mrs. Cranning said to her daughter.
Eva went quickly to the front door.
Christopher Milbers said, “I simply can’t believe it. It’s unfair. It’s unjust.”
“Oh, forget it,” Mrs. Cranning said. “You’ve got ten thousand bucks, and if you think that’s hay, you’re a horse.”
Paul laughed uproariously.
Bertha Cool said, “We’re still ten thousand dollars short.”
Voices sounded in the hall. Eva Hanberry came back into the room with Josephine Dell.
“Hello, folks,” Josephine called. “What do you think? I’ve got the swellest job. I’m going to work with a man who is employed by the government. He flies all over the country, and I’m going to do a lot of travelling myself. Some kind of labour investigations. He goes to one place, stays there for a month or six weeks, and then goes to some other place. Isn’t that just too grand for anything?”
Nettie Cranning said, “Wait until you’ve heard all the news.”
“Yes,” Eva said. “You’ve got some money I’ll bet you didn’t know anything about.”
“What?”
“It’s a fact,” Paul assured her. “Remember that time when the boss had us witness a will?”
“Oh, you mean the time when you were washing the car and I tapped on the window and called you in?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right, it was a will, wasn’t it? I think that’s what he said it was.”
“I’ll tell the world it was a will. You got ten thousand dollars in it.”
“I got what?” Josephine exclaimed incredulously.
“Ten thousand dollars,” Paul said.
Bertha Cool pushed the attestation clause of the will under her nose. “Is that your signature?” she asked.
“Why, yes, of course.”
“And that’s the will that you witnessed?”
“Yes.”
Milbers said, “We’ll discuss that in greater detail later on, but, in the meantime, I’m looking for the ten thousand dollars which my cousin had at the time of his death. I want to know what’s become of it.”
“Say, wait a minute,” Paul said with a cunning gleam in his eyes. “You want to know what’s become of it. Where do you get that noise? You’re talking as though you had some interest in that ten thousand dollars.”
“Well I certainly have,” Christopher Milbers said. “I’m his cousin.”
“Cousin, hell! You get ten thousand bucks under the will, and that’s all. We’re the ones that are entitled to that ten thousand dollars. We’re the ones that should get all worked up about it. It’s no put-in of yours what happens to it, and don’t forget the fact that Mrs. Cranning is the executor of the estate. I guess we’re going to quit tearing the house upside down looking for ten thousand smackers that you insinuate we’ve stolen right now. We’ll make an inventory of things in an orderly way. If we find the ten grand, we’ve found it. If we don’t it’s our loss, not yours.”
Christopher Milbers stood looking at them, swivelling his eyes from one to the other, an expression of growing dismay on his face.
“I guess you and your detective Mrs. Cool, are all done here,” Paul went on, “all washed up.”
“Paul,” Mrs. Cranning said, “you don’t need to be crude about it. However, as far as that’s Concerned, Mr. Milbers has heard the will read and it was very clear. I’m in charge.”
“That will,” Christopher Milbers declared, “is illegal. It was made under undue influence.”
Paul Hanberry laughed, a mocking, taunting laugh. “Try proving that.”
“Then it’s a forgery.”
Mrs. Cranning said, “Be careful what you say, Mr. Milbers.”
Josephine Dell said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Milbers. I don’t know what’s in the will, but, as far as the will itself is concerned, it’s absolutely genuine. I remember Mr. Milbers calling us in that day in January. Paul was washing the car outside the library, Remember, Paul? You’d backed it out in the driveway. It was right under the library window, and we could hear the hose running. Mr. Milbers went over to the safe and took out this paper. He told me that he wanted to sign a will and wanted me to be one witness, and said I’d better get one of the others as an additional witness. I asked him which one, and he said it didn’t make any difference. Then he said, ‘Isn’t that Paul washing the car out there?’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘Well, tap on the window and motion for him to come in.’ ”
“That’s right,” Paul said. “And when I came in the boss said he wanted to make a will, and wanted me to sign as a witness. I didn’t pay very much attention to it, because I thought — well, you know, I didn’t think there was a dime in it for me.”
Josephine said, “I remember you were working on the car, because there was a little grease on your right hand. You got it on the paper, and Mr. Milbers—”
Christopher Milbers grabbed at the will. “Well, there’s no grease mark here,” he said.
Mrs. Cranning looked over his shoulders. For a moment she was silent with dismay.
Eva Hanberry said, “Well, a grease spot doesn’t make a will; and, besides, your recollection might be at fault, Josephine.”
“No,” Josephine Dell said firmly. “I don’t care what difference it makes or who gets hurt, I‘m going to tell the truth. There was a grease spot. If that grease spot isn’t on the paper, it isn’t genuine. Let me see my signature again.”
“Wait a minute,” Nettie Cranning said. “The grease would have been wiped off.”
“No,” Josephine said. “ I wiped it off right away with a Kleenex I took from my purse, but it left a spot and—”
“Hold it up to the light,” Nettie Cranning said. “That’s the way to tell. The grease would have soaked into the paper by this time.”
Bertha Cool, turned back the heavy blue backing on the will, held the second page up to the light. The oil had soaked through in a spot about the size of a dime.
It immediately became apparent that oil had soaked through in a spot about the size of a dime on the paper.
Josephine Dell said, “Well, I feel better about it now, because I distinctly remembered that grease spot.”
Bertha Cool said, “Now, I’m going to say something. I’m going to have a photographer come out here and make a photograph of this will while everybody’s here. I think we’re entitled to that much.”
“Personally,” Mrs. Cranning said with the suddenly assumed dignity of a woman who has inherited wealth and is making a painfully conscious effort to be a lady. “I think that is a very admirable suggestion, most compatible.”
“You mean commendable, Mother,” Eva said.
Mrs. Cranning drew herself up to her full dignity as a woman of wealth. “I said compatible, Eva, dear.”
Bertha Cool went over to the telephone and started dialing a number.
While she was waiting she said, “Subscribing witnesses can’t take under a will, Mrs. Cranning.”
Nettie Cranning drew herself up. “We’re not going to be narrow minded about this. Eva, Paul and I get everything that’s left, and we’ll divide it up just the way Harlow Milbers wanted it in his will. We’re not going to split hairs over a lot of legal technicalities. We loved Harlow Milbers and we’re going to see that his wishes are carried out to the letter — aren’t we, Eva?”
“Yes, Mother.”