Читать книгу Suicide Excepted - Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark - Страница 10

Dinner proved to be a good deal more enjoyable than might have been expected, if only for the absence of the relations. Mrs. Dickinson strove with a surprising degree of success to make the occasion as much like a normal family party as possible. Now that she was no longer coping with the irritability of George, or being exhorted to be cheerful by Edward, her naturally sunny, equable temperament reasserted itself, and she contrived to keep the conversation going throughout the meal without once touching on the subject that hung like a black curtain in the background of the minds of each of them. Stephen and Anne felt that they were seeing a new side to their mother’s character, and to each the same thought came, unbidden: that dinner at home was, regrettably but unmistakably, pleasanter for the absence of the querulous, contradictory figure who, as far back as they could remember anything, had sat at the head of the table.

But in the drawing-room, after dinner, Mrs. Dickinson’s manner changed. Her face from being serious became solemn, and she appeared to be nervously awaiting the moment when the door closed behind the maid who brought in the coffee. Then she drew a deep breath, patted her hair into place—a sure sign, in the family, that she was worried—and said:

“Stephen, I have something important to discuss with you. No, don’t go, Martin. It concerns us all, and I count you as one of the family now. I have had a letter from Jelks, your father’s solicitor, which I don’t at all understand, and which rather disturbs me. I haven’t shown it to Robert, as I didn’t think it concerned him. You must deal with it, Stephen.”

She fetched a letter from her desk, but did not immediately hand it over to Stephen. Instead, she continued to talk, holding it in her hand.

“I must explain, first of all,” she said. “You all know, of course, about the very odd and improper will that your Uncle Arthur made?”

“Yes, of course,” said Stephen and Anne together.

“Do you know what I am talking about, Martin?”

Martin looked at Anne.

“Do I?” he said. To Stephen, he appeared more oafish at that moment than he had ever done before, which was saying a good deal.

“Perhaps you don’t,” said Anne patiently. “I meant to tell you, but I don’t think I did. Uncle Arthur—”

“Perhaps I had better explain,” said her mother. “Arthur Dickinson, who was my husband’s eldest brother, and the only wealthy member of the family, died last year. He was a bachelor, and he left a considerable amount of money, which he divided equally between his brothers, Leonard and George, and the children of Tom and of his sister Mary. Those are the cousins who were here this evening, some of them. We are rather a large family, I’m afraid, but I expect Anne has told you all about us.”

“Oh, yes,” said Martin, squinting rather doubtfully through his thick glasses at Anne once more.

“Very well. As I have said, he left his money equally divided, as to the amount, that is. But in the way in which he left it, he did not deal fairly so far as we were concerned. Although he was always on perfectly friendly terms with my husband, he had or pretended to have some grievance against us, I mean against myself and Anne and Stephen. I need not go into how it all originated—it’s an old story, and rather a painful one, I am afraid—but it seems to have worked upon his mind to such an extent ...” She began to be a little flustered, and lost the thread of the story. “Of course, he was an old man, and not perhaps altogether—at all events, I have never felt it right to blame him, because he cannot really have been himself at the time—”

“The long and the short of it is, he cut us all out of his will,” said Stephen impatiently.

Martin absorbed the information slowly.

“Cut you out? I see,” he said. Then turning to Anne he said reproachfully: “I’m quite sure you didn’t tell me anything about that. That was rather a rotten thing to do,” he added solemnly. “What made him do a thing like that?”

There was a pause, long enough to make even as thick-skinned a man as Martin aware that he had said the wrong thing. Mrs. Dickinson pursed her lips, Anne flushed, and Stephen looked savagely angry.

“That’s neither here nor there,” he said. “The point is what he did, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you. He left Father the interest on fifty thousand pounds—that was his share—for life only. Everybody else had their bit absolutely, to do what they liked with. But on Father’s death the capital of his little lot was to go to some beastly charity or another, I forget what. Do you remember, Mother?”

“No. It doesn’t matter what charity it was, does it? But as a matter of fact, only half of it was for the charity. The rest goes to somebody else—a woman,” Mrs. Dickinson explained, lowering her voice. “I’m afraid rather a disreputable person, altogether.”

Martin, to Stephen’s disgust, showed a tendency to snigger at this point. That is to say, while keeping a perfectly straight face, he gave the impression that he was only doing so with difficulty.

“My husband was of course very much upset at the injustice of the will,” Mrs. Dickinson went on, “and he decided to do what he could to provide for his family.”

“He insured his life, I suppose,” said Martin at once.

Stephen looked up in some surprise. The man was not altogether such a fool as he had thought. It was difficult to tell what went on behind those thick glasses. Had he been underrating him?

“Exactly. For twenty-five thousand pounds. The premium was very high, I understand, in view of his age. In fact, I do not think it left very much out of the income Arthur had left him. But as most of his other means consisted of his pension from the Civil Service, which would of course die with him, he thought it well worth while.”

“I see.”

“And now that we’ve had all this ancient history over again for Martin’s benefit,” said Stephen, “can we get to the point?”

His voice was impatient, and more than impatient. It seemed to contain a hint of anxiety, almost of nervousness.

Martin took off his glasses, polished them and blinked upwards at the light.

“I think that what Mrs. Dickinson is going to tell us is this,” he said. “Since your Uncle Arthur died only a year ago, I presume that the insurance policy is less than a year old. Most insurance companies have a thing they call a suicide clause in their policies. What company is this one, Mrs. Dickinson?”

“The British Imperial.”

“H’m, yes, just so,” said Martin, replacing his spectacles. “They would be quite certain to have a suicide clause, and a very strictly drawn one too. It’s a most unfortunate position altogether.”

Looking extremely pleased with himself, he pulled from his pocket a foul-looking pipe, blew through it, and began to fill it. Stephen looked at him with feelings of disgust. He was disgusted with Martin for presuming to smoke a pipe in the drawing-room without asking permission, and still more disgusted with himself for having allowed this interloper to take possession of the discussion. Before he could say anything, however, Anne intervened.

“Martin!” she said sharply. “Put that beastly pipe of yours away, and explain things properly. What is a suicide clause, and how does it work?”

Martin blushed and put his pipe in his pocket with a mumbled “Sorry!” Then he said: “It simply means that if you insure your life and commit suicide within a certain time—usually a year—you don’t recover anything on the policy. That’s all.”

“You mean,” cried Anne, “that there won’t be any money for us? Although Father insured himself?”

Martin nodded, took out his pipe again with an automatic gesture, looked at it, and put it back.

There was a shocked silence in the room for a moment or two. Then Stephen, trying to keep his voice steady, said:

“And now, Mother, may I see Jelks’s letter?”

The letter was quite short, and only too explicit.

It ran:

Dear Mrs. Dickinson,

I have been in communication with the Claims Manager of the British Imperial Insurance Company in connexion with your late husband’s policy. He writes to me as follows:

“In reply to your letter of yesterday’s date with regard to Life Policy No. 582/31647. In view of the finding of the coroner’s jury, and of the fact that this policy has only been in force for eight months, it seems clear that Clause 4 (i) (a) of the policy applies. I am therefore instructed formally to repudiate liability on behalf of the Company. At the same time, I am to inform you that the Company would be prepared to consider the possibility of making some ex gratia payment to the widow and dependents of the assured, provided, of course, that all claims under the policy were explicitly withdrawn. Perhaps you will let me know when it would be convenient for a representative of the Company to call on Mrs. Dickinson in order to discuss this matter.”

I should be glad of your instructions as to what attitude I should take in the matter. It would be advisable, in my opinion, for you to agree to see the Company’s representative, without, of course committing yourself in any way. But bearing in mind that your husband by his will left half his estate between your son and daughter and the other half to you during widowhood with remainder to them, it would, I think, be only proper for you to discuss the position with them before coming to a decision. I should, of course, myself desire to be present at the interview, to safeguard the interests of the estate.

Yours faithfully,

H. H. Jelks

Stephen read the letter through twice, once to himself and then aloud.

“Well!” said Martin, when he had finished. “That sounds pretty definite.”

“How many halfpennies are there in twenty-five thousand pounds?” asked Anne.

“I don’t altogether follow you,” said her fiancé stiffly.

“I do,” said Stephen. “Uncle George said: ‘Is it going to make a ha’porth of difference to anyone, whether it’s suicide or not?’ Well, we can tell him now.”

“Father didn’t kill himself,” said Anne obstinately.

“How do you know?” said Stephen in a tone of despair. “How does anybody know?”

“I know because I know,” Anne persisted. “He just wasn’t that sort of person. Nobody’s going to persuade me that Father did a thing like that, not if he came and told me that he saw him do it. Nobody,” she repeated. “Mother, you feel like that, don’t you?”

Mrs. Dickinson shook her head slowly.

“I never understood your father,” she said simply. “So far as I’m concerned, I’m afraid I feel like George about it. I have lost him, and it doesn’t seem to matter very much to me how people say it happened. To you children, obviously, it makes a great deal of difference. That’s why I asked your advice.”

“But Mother, it makes just as much difference to you as to any of us!” Anne protested.

“My dear, I was badly off before I married your father, and I suppose I can bear to be badly off again afterwards. Don’t let’s say any more about that. But tell me, please, Stephen, what are we going to do? How am I going to reply to Mr. Jelks?”

“I’ll deal with that,” said Stephen, rousing himself abruptly from the stupor into which he had fallen since reading the letter. “You needn’t bother your head about it any more, Mother. We’ll see this insurance animal and tell him just where he gets off. As for abandoning the claim to the money, of course that’s all nonsense.”

“Then you do agree with me?” said Anne eagerly. “You think I’m right, that Father wouldn’t have killed himself?”

“Obviously you’ve got to be right, if we don’t all mean to be paupers.”

“But that’s not the same thing at all!” she protested.

Stephen assumed his most superior and infuriating attitude.

“My dear Anne,” he said, “your sentiments do you credit, but they are not going to cut much ice with an insurance company. Our job—my job, perhaps I should say—is to prove to their satisfaction that they are legally bound to pay up. When we’ve done that we can afford to be highfalutin about it.”

“That’s absolutely the wrong way to look at it. It makes the whole business so sordid, so money-grubbing—”

“Money,” Martin intervened in his flat, platitudinous voice, “can come in very handy sometimes. You shouldn’t turn your nose up at it, Annie.”

“Annie!” Stephen shuddered. This codfish called his sister “Annie,” and she liked it!

“But what I don’t quite see at present,” Martin droned on, “is how you are going to set about proving all this. Insurance companies,” he wagged his head sagely, “take a bit of satisfying, y’know.”

Stephen was ready with his answer.

“All that the company has done is to take what the coroner’s jury said as gospel,” he said. “Well, we don’t. We start from scratch. And to begin with, we can go over the same ground that they did, only a good deal more carefully.”

“D’you mean, interview all the witnesses all over again, and get ’em to say something different?”

“We may have to do something like that before we’re through. But to start with, there’s the evidence that was actually given at the inquest. I don’t know the first thing about that yet. My little cousin is lending me the reports of everything that was said. I mean to go through that with—with—”

“With a small-tooth comb,” Martin prompted.

“With the greatest care,” said Stephen, glaring at him. “Then I shall see what we’re up against, at any rate. After that, we can set to work to build up our own case.”

“Well,” said Martin, “I wish you luck, I’m sure.”

“You’re in with us on this, Martin,” said Anne. “It makes a bit of difference to us, you know.”

Martin turned on Anne a look that might have been a tender one, if his spectacles had not deprived it of all expression.

“All right, Annie,” he said rather thickly, “I’m with you.”

And as if ashamed at this display of emotion, he shortly afterwards took his departure, lingering in the hall only long enough to kiss her perfunctorily and light his pipe.