Gaitskill stalked out unmollified.
He had been wounded to the depths of his professional nature.
"It's hit him hard," said Taverner. "Very respectable firm, Gaitskill, Callum & Gaitskill. No hanky panky with them.
When old Leonides put through a doubtful deal, he never put it through with Gaitskill, Callum & Gaitskill. He had half a dozen different firms of solicitors who acted for him.
Oh, he was a twister!"
"And never more so than when making his will," said my father.
"We were fools," said Taverner. "When you come to think of it, the only person who could have played tricks with that will was the old boy himself.
It just never occurred to us that he could want to!"
I remembered Josephine's superior smile as she had said:
"Aren't the police stupid?"
But Josephine had not been present on the occasion of the will.
And even if she had been listening outside the door (which I was fully prepared to believe!) she could hardly have guessed what her grandfather was doing.
Why, then, the superior air?
What did she know that made her say the police were stupid?
Or was it, again, just showing off?
Struck by the silence in the room I looked up sharply - both my father and Taverner were watching me.
I don't know what there was in their manner that compelled me to blurt out defiantly:
"Sophia knew nothing about this!
Nothing at all."
"No?" said my father.
I didn't quite know whether it was an agreement or a question.
"She'll be absolutely astounded!"
"Yes?"
"Astounded!"
There was a pause.
Then, with what seemed sudden harshness the telephone on my father's desk rang.
"Yes?" He lifted the receiver - listened, and then said, "Put her through."
He looked at me.
"It's your young woman," he said. "She wants to speak to us.
It's urgent."
I took the receiver from him.
"Sophia?"
"Charles?
Is that you?
It's - Josephine!" Her voice broke slightly.
"What about Josephine?"
"She's been hit on the head.
Concussion. She's - she's pretty bad... They say she may not recover..."
I turned to the other two.
"Josephine's been knocked out," I said.
My father took the receiver from me.
He said sharply as he did so: "I told you to keep an eye on that child..."
Chapter 18
In next to no time Taverner and I were racing in a fast police car in the direction of Swinly Dean.
I remembered Josephine emerging, from among the cisterns, and her airy remark that it was "about time for the second murder."
The poor child had had no idea that she herself was likely to be the victim of the "second murder."
I accepted fully the blame that my father had tacitly ascribed to me.
Of course I ought to have kept an eye on Josephine. Though neither Taverner nor I had any real clue to the poisoner of old Leonides, it was highly possible that Josephine had.
What I had taken for childish nonsense and "showing off" might very well have been something quite different.
Josephine, in her favourite sports of snooping and prying, might have become aware of some piece of information that she herself could not assess at its proper value.