"Nobody went near the desk," said Sophia. "And grandfather sat at it all the time."
"The desk was in the position it is now?
It was not near a door, or a window, or any drapery?"
"It was where it is now."
"I am trying to see how a substitution of some kind could have been effected," said Taverner. "Some kind of substitution there must have been.
Mr Leonides was under the impression that he was signing the document he had just read aloud."
"Couldn't the signatures have been erased?" Roger demanded.
"No, Mr Leonides.
Not without leaving signs of erasion.
There is one other possibility. That this is not the document sent to Mr Leonides by Gaitskill and which he signed in your presence."
"On the contrary," said Mr Gaitskill. "I could swear to this being the original document.
There is a small flaw in the paper - at the top left hand corner - it resembles, by a stretch of fancy, an aeroplane.
I noticed it at the time."
The family looked blankly at one another.
"A most curious set of circumstances," said Mr Gaitskill. "Quite without precedent in my experience."
"The whole thing's impossible," said Roger. "We were all there.
It simply couldn't have happened."
Miss de Haviland gave a dry cough.
"Never any good wasting breath saying something that has happened couldn't have happened," she remarked.
"What's the position now? That's what I'd like to know?"
Gaitskill immediately became the cautious lawyer.
"The position will have to be examined very carefully," he said.
"The document, of course, revokes all former wills and testaments.
There are a large number of witnesses who saw Mr Leonides sign what he certainly believed to be this will in perfectly good faith.
Hum.
Very interesting.
Quite a little legal problem."
Taverner glanced at his watch.
"I'm afraid," he said, "I've been keeping you from your lunch."
"Won't you stay and lunch with us. Chief Inspector?" asked Philip.
"Thank you, Mr Leonides, but I am meeting Dr Cray in Swinly Dean."
Philip turned to the lawyer.
"You'll lunch with us, Gaitskill?"
"Thank you, Philip."
Everybody stood up.
I edged unobtrusively towards Sophia.
"Do I go or stay?" I murmured.
It sounded ridiculously like the title of a Victorian song.
"Go, I think," said Sophia.
I slipped quietly out of the room in pursuit of Taverner.
Josephine was swinging to and fro on a baize door leading to the back quarters.
She appeared to be highly amused about something.
"The police are stupid," she observed.
Sophia came out of the drawing room.
"What have you been doing, Josephine?"
"Helping Nannie."
"I believe you've been listening outside the door."
Josephine made a face at her and retreated.
"That child," said Sophia, "is a bit of a problem."
Chapter 11