Copyright & Information

Stay Of Execution

First published in 1971

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
0755105338	9780755105335	Print
0755132076	9780755132072	Kindle
0755132440	9780755132447	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. "The plot," wrote Keating, "is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings." It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: "I always take a latish train to work," he explained in 1980, "and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.". After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

Preface

The stories in this book cover a period of twenty-one years, which is almost exactly the span of my own legal practice. In re-reading them, and, in a few cases, making the emendations suggested by the passage of time, I have been struck by two things.

The first was a sad reflection that nearly half of the periodicals and newspapers in which these stories originally appeared have now disappeared from the scene. I could not believe that their demise was solely attributable to my contributions, and I was puzzled to account, as many people must have been, for the practical disappearance from the bookstalls of that old favourite, the short story magazine. Where are the Strand and the Grand and the Windsor of yesteryear?

One theory is that people nowadays have got so mentally conditioned that they prefer their entertainment to be entirely predigested. Before they will accept a story, someone has to turn it into a sequence of scenes, have the scenes enacted, and photographed, and then transmitted on to a screen. Instant entertainment, to be absorbed with your instant coffee. I think this is over-facile. I fear that the explanation is not that people read less. In fact, they read more, but they read different things. It is the enormous growth of the paperback which has wiped out the short story magazine. The long-distance train traveller, who used to be the staple purchaser of magazines, can now buy, for much the same price, a complete book by his favourite author. And he buys it.

This development may have been inevitable, but it is particularly sad in the field of the detective or crime short story. As writers have shown, from Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton to Raymond Chandler and Roy Vickers, a short story of anything from five to fifteen thousand words is the ideal vehicle for a work of this genre. The best detective stories are built round a single idea: a novel method of murder, a subtle motive, an ingenious alibi. They are essentially artificial constructions (but so were the ballade and the sonnet). What ruins them most surely is when they are dragged out, artificially extended to eighty thousand words, with plans of the scene of the crime and lists of who did what, where. An example of this was H. C. Bailey, whose short ‘Mr. Fortune’ stories are small masterpieces, but whose full-length novels, about the same character, are sadly hard to read.

The second thought which occurred to me was how little, in essentials, the law had changed in this period of time. ‘Black market offences’ has an old-fashioned ring nowadays, and when Stay of Execution was written, it was still possible, though uncommon, to be hanged for murder. But the essentials of legal theory and practice are curiously stable in an unstable society; the law of contract, which governs the agreements we make and forces everyone (except trade unions) to honour them; the law of tort, which prevents us being an intolerable nuisance to our neighbours; the rules of procedure and evidence, which continue to make a trial in an English court the fairest which any accused can hope to get, and which are only sniped at by people who have not witnessed or experienced the proceedings of foreign tribunals. I am glad that it should be so. The Englishman’s respect for the law (not, I hasten to add, for lawyers, who are regarded with feelings which range from dislike to tolerant amusement) is a life-line in the very stormy seas which are breaking over the seventies. I hope it will never snap.

Having said which, I have only to add, as I hope will be apparent, that none of the lawyers in this collection is real, and that none of them is me.

Back on the Shelf

During the war a lot of matters had to be put on one side. I should explain, perhaps, that I mean legal matters. I am the senior partner in – well, no. On second thoughts I’d better not mention names.

I’d better say that I’m senior partner in a very old and very well-known firm of City solicitors: have been ever since Herbert died, and that was twelve years ago.

During the war, as I said, things had to take their turn. Like everyone else we were understaffed and overworked and what with the disorganisation to start with and the buzz bombs towards the end, it was a standing miracle, to my mind, that anything got done at all.

When our young men came back from the war it took them some time to pick up the threads. You don’t make – or remake – a practising solicitor in a couple of months, nor even in a couple of years.

But lately, gradually, the arrears have been getting worked off and one or two files have been brought into the light that I for one never expected to see again this side of doomsday.

I must confess to a certain sinking of the heart when young Bob, who is the most confoundedly energetic of the lot, came into my room one morning with a dog-eared folder, pale from the sunless depths of the second basement, and said, “I’ve been looking at Mrs. Oliphant deceased.”

“If you’ve time to do that,” I said, “I shall have to look you out some more work. Why, she’s been dead for thirteen years.”

“It wasn’t her, exactly, sir. I was tidying up Charlie Fanshawe’s reversionary interests – you remember, he was killed in North Africa, but some of his mother’s estate only fell in last year – and I thought I’d have a look at that money he got from his uncle—”

“Yes, sir. Old Robert Fanshawe. I took a copy of his will home last night with me. Really, sir – I don’t know if you remember it – it practically seemed to me to add up to nothing more nor less than an open invitation to murder.”

“Good heavens,” I said, considerably startled. “Look here. I can see you’re bursting to explain all this. Jump into my taxi with me and come round to the club, and you shall talk about it over lunch.”

“Robert Fanshawe,” I said, when we had settled what we were going to eat – a most important thing to a man of my age. “Let me see, yes – rather an odd character. But his wife, if I remember, was odd as well. A pioneer of the cold water and raw carrot school of health faddists.”

“A most extraordinary document, sir. Home-made, I’m sure. Here – I’ve written down the bit that matters. His trustees are to accumulate all income for twenty-one years. At the end of that time, but not before, the whole lot, capital and accumulated income, was to be paid to the United Chlorophyllists – that’s that health society his wife belonged to – provided that during those twenty-one years his wife had remained a member of the society, adhered strictly to its rules, and managed to stay alive.

“If either she, or the society, failed to survive the twenty-one-year period, then everything went to his nephew, Charlie Fanshawe.”

“Yes,” I said, “I remember him explaining that clause to me. You wouldn’t appreciate it without understanding Robert Fanshawe. He was a late Victorian survival. ‘Let her earn the money for her demmed society,’ he said to me. ‘If she can survive twenty-one years of their nonsense, I’m willing to believe there may be something in it. Otherwise the money’s to go to young Charlie. He’s only two now, but I can see he’s going to enjoy a beef steak and a pint of beer when he grows up.’”

“No doubt, sir,” said Bob. “It would have been quite all right if the trustees had accumulated the income.

“But so far as I can see they seem to have assumed that Mrs. Fanshawe was going to die before the twenty-one years were out – she was already sixty-five when her husband died – and they treated Charles as a sort of heir presumptive.

“Most of the income was spent on his upbringing, and they even advanced him lump sums from time to time—”

“He was an infernally fetching young man,” I said. “His great-uncle was quite right about him. Let me see now – the trustees were my late partner, Herbert Overstrand, and the boy’s mother.”

“It’s the trustees I was thinking about,” said Robert ominously. “Charles’s mother died in 1933 and for two years your late partner seems to have acted alone.

“By 1935 he must have realised his position. Why, old Mrs. Fanshawe had only to live for a further two years and the United Chlorophyllists – or their solicitors – would have been clamouring for their money.

“Not only the capital wrongly advanced to young Charles, but all the income ever spent on him. I’ve made a rough computation – at compound interest it came to nearly ten thousand pounds.”

“As much as that?” I said. “That wouldn’t have been a laughing matter for Herbert, would it? I seem to remember that he appointed another trustee about then to act with him.”

“Yes, sir. And here I suggest is where we meet the villain of the piece. Mr. A. B. Smith.”

“Villain!” I said. “Good heavens, do you think—? Here, have a little more of this smoked salmon. Don’t forget to squeeze plenty of lemon over it; it brings out the flavour.”

“Perhaps villain is a strong word, sir. But I do feel that his influence over your partner – however, let me go on.

“This Mr. Smith seems to have been rather an elusive person. I cannot find that anyone ever actually met him. Documents were sent to him at a poste restante address, and came back in due course, duly signed.”

“As long as he sent ‘em back promptly,” I said. “Most trustees who live in the country are so infernally slow.”

“Yes, sir. He seems to have been quite businesslike. It was at that time that they started having a quarterly doctor’s report on old Mrs. Fanshawe. I’m afraid they weren’t very encouraging reports – from the trustees’ point of view, I mean. Apart from an occasional head cold, she seems to have been in robust health.”

“Fresh water and carrots,” I suggested. “There might be something in it after all. As a matter of fact, however, I seem to remember that it came out all right in the end. She passed away a week or two short of the end of the twenty-one-year period. So the money went to Charlie—”

“I don’t suppose he complained about having had some of it before he was strictly entitled to it. Anyway, he’s dead himself now – he did very well in the war, you know. Stopped a shell splinter the day before Tobruk was relieved—”

“It wasn’t Charlie I was thinking about exactly, sir,” he said. “After all, he hardly stood to lose. It was the trustees.”

“Did you know that they visited old Mrs. Fanshawe on the afternoon of the day she died? They were with her for about half an hour. Her maid found her that evening.”

“Yes,” said Robert. “At eighty-six I don’t suppose there’s much difference between heart failure and a bolster over the face – particularly if nobody is looking for it.”

“You’ll have to be careful, you know,” I said, “saying things like that. People might take you seriously. Anyway, how do you know they were down there that afternoon. I don’t remember anything being mentioned—”

“I found it in your partner’s expense book for that day,” said Robert. “‘Fares to Dorking and return: self and co-trustee.’”

“Good heavens,” I said. “How – how methodical. Do try some of this Stilton. Is there anything else in support of your theory? Anything—er—concrete?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Robert looked distinctly unhappy. “I was going through some of Mr. Overstrand’s own papers and I found this. It was with his other private papers.” He produced a white envelope. Typed on the outside were the words: “To be opened only on the death of the last to die of myself and A. B. Smith.”

“It looked, sir—I thought—do you think it might be something in the nature of a confession? He might have wanted to get the thing off his chest, and yet not to hurt anyone by doing so.”

“You won’t mind my saying,” I said, “that it all seems a little far-fetched. You’ve been reading too many detective stories.

“Anyway, we can’t open this until we have proof of Smith’s death – and as you say, he seems to be rather an elusive person. In all my years at the office I honestly can’t remember meeting him. Good heavens. Look at the time. We must be getting back.”

In the cab I said, “It wasn’t only to talk about the Fanshawes that I asked you out to lunch, Bob. You almost put it out of my head. Old Horniman wrote to me last week that he’s looking for a junior partner and he was kind enough to offer me first nomination from my firm. I must say, I had no hesitation in putting forward your name, and I heard this morning—”

The remainder of the drive back to the office was occupied with Robert’s thanks and my disclaimers of them.

“It’s a good opportunity,” I said, “but I think you’re the man for it. You’ve shown that you possess an enquiring mind and plenty of persistence, and that’s what a solicitor needs.”

Back at the office I said, “By the way. I don’t think we ought to leave that file lying about. Put it back where it came from. I’ll get your successor busy on it some time. And you might put that envelope safely back in the Overstrand box.”

I didn’t tell him, of course, that it was empty or that I had long ago destroyed Herbert’s maudlin ‘confession’.

The Blackmailing of Mr. Justice Ball

“So Popsy is dead at last,” said Mr. Rumbold. “Extreme senility, coupled with fits. Excellent!”

It was the habit of the senior partner in the firm of Wragg and Rumbold (Solicitors of Coleman Street), to open his post every morning with the assistance of his senior managing clerk, Mr. Silverlight. The two old gentlemen had joined the firm on the same day in the early Thirties, Mr. Rumbold as an articled clerk, Mr. Silverlight as a post room boy.

And so it was, thought Mr. Rumbold. The end of a long chapter, a chapter which had started nearly twenty years before, when Miss Manciple had come in to make her will. He could see her now, sitting in the very chair occupied by Mr. Silverlight, her hands clasped over the silver knob of a black ebony walking-stick, her light grey, very slightly mad, eyes fixed disconcertingly on him.

“I have no direct descendants,” she said. “The closest members of my family are my nephew, Norman, and my niece, Venetia. And when I say they are my closest relatives, I must add, Mr. Rumbold, that neither of them has been all that close. A small gift at Christmas, a card on my birthday. Is that how your family treat you?”

“I’m lucky if they remember my birthday,” said Mr. Rumbold. “But pray proceed.”

“My most constant and faithful companion for the last ten years has been my darling Siamese cat, Sunny. Mai Tsun is her official name, but she is always called Sunny. People will tell you that Siamese cats are aloof and unfriendly. It’s a fallacy. They are extremely intelligent, far more so than most human beings. They have extra-sensory perception, and can communicate with each other over wide distances. But they are not proud about it. If you treat them as equals they are perfectly willing to reciprocate. After I go, our sole care must be for her.”

“Well, no,” said Mr. Rumbold, wishing that his clients would not constantly spring problems like this on him. “But what you could do is to direct that the income from your estate should be devoted to the upkeep of your present house as a home for Sunny, and to pay the wages of some suitable person to look after her. You have a companion?”

Mr. Rumbold remembered Miss Tape, a mouse-like creature who sometimes accompanied Miss Manciple on her jaunts up to London.

“Splendid,” he said. “We will direct that she shall be allowed to live in the house, be paid a salary, and look after things. I take it that when Sunny finally dies—”

“Siamese cats do not die, Mr. Rumbold. Their souls travel onward, and upward, to a plane altogether higher than anything we can comprehend.”

“When Sunny passes on,” amended Mr. Rumbold adroitly, “I take it you would wish Miss Tape to have an annuity—”

“And subject to that, the estate then to go equally to Norman and Venetia—”

“What happens then,” said Miss Manciple, “is a matter of indifference to me. Let me have the document to sign as soon as you can.”

“I suppose we’re not worried by the rule against perpetuities,” said Mr. Silverlight. “Even if the first part isn’t charitable, there’s a gift over.”

Mr. Silverlight looked doubtful. “I’d always understood that to mean a human life,” he said. “Wasn’t there a case where someone tried to settle a fund during the life span of a giant tortoise? It was overruled in the Court of Appeal.”

“What we’ll do,” said Mr. Rumbold, “is to say that the income of the estate shall be devoted to paying the outgoings of the house and a salary of five hundred pounds a year to Miss Tape for a period of twenty-one years or the life span of the cat, Sunny, whichever is the shorter. That must be safe. A cat couldn’t possibly live to be thirty-one, could it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Silverlight. “Who’s going to be executor?”

“That nephew, Norman. He’s not a very agreeable character. An insurance investigator, I believe.”

“I’ve never met him. But I do remember the niece. She seemed a pleasant enough character.”

“Don’t let’s cross our bridges before we come to them,” said Mr. Rumbold. “This blasted cat may die before Miss Manciple.”

The trouble which Mr. Silverlight had anticipated took concrete form some three years later. The death of Miss Manciple was not unexpected. Shortly after executing her will and lodging it at her bank she had suffered the first of a number of slight strokes. For the last nine months, with her mind gradually failing, she had been confined to her bed, and her affairs had been looked after by Mr. Rumbold with the aid of a Power of Attorney.

What did cause surprise was the will itself. For Miss Manciple had altered it. Over the clause which contained the words, “During the lifetime of my Siamese cat, Sunny,” she had inserted, in her crabbed but legible handwriting, the words, “And her legitimate offspring.”

“We shall be in the Probate Court for certain,” said Mr. Rumbold. He said it without pleasure. Like most solicitors, he regarded litigation as a nuisance, something which disrupted the routine of the office, which might come out well, but was equally likely to come out badly, and for which in either contingency a solicitor was inadequately remunerated.

“I hope we get a reasonable judge,” said Mr. Silverlight. “I can think of one or two who are going to be pretty scathing about this will. Why on earth did we let her monkey about with it?”

“We had no say in the matter,” said Mr. Rumbold. “She simply took it away, said she knew how to have it executed properly – which I must admit, she has done – and popped it into her bank. I haven’t seen it from that day to this.”

“I hope to God we don’t,” said Mr. Rumbold, and being a superstitious man, reached out to touch wood. His hand actually lighted on the base of his table lamp, which was made of plastic, and this may have accounted for the fact that when the case, In re the Estate of Alice Manciple, came in front of the Probate Division, it was set down in Mr. Justice Ball’s list.

It is an undoubted fact that Mr. Rumbold’s reactions to this news would, at that period in the late forties, have been shared by most practising solicitors. It is less easy to explain why. Mr. Justice Ball was an excellent lawyer and a man of iron integrity. In the days when such things were liable to happen to judges he would cheerfully have gone to the Tower, or even to the block, to uphold the independence of the Judiciary against the Crown. A bachelor, and a man of austere habits, his private life was a model to a laxer generation. If he had any weaknesses, they were professional rather than human. He was reputed to dislike solicitors. This was thought to arise from the fact that, as a young barrister, he had depended to a certain extent on their patronage, and, now that he was on the Bench, was not averse to getting a bit of his own back. He was also rather over-inclined, if he felt that Counsel were not doing the job properly, to conduct cases for himself, cross-examining the witnesses on both sides at greater length than the barrister who had been hired to do so.

Hargest Macrea Q.C. gazed round the crowded court, and reflected, not for the first time, that it was cases of no real legal significance, but of what the papers like to describe as ‘human interest’, which got all the real publicity. He was a tough and experienced advocate and had been selected by Mr. Rumbold as someone unlikely to be intimidated by the Judge.

“The facts in this case, my lord,” he said, “are somewhat unusual. The deceased was a lady of strong character, and decided views. She was the possessor of a substantial fortune, and a freehold house at Much Hadham, where she lived, in comfortable circumstances, looked after by her companion, Miss Tape, and enjoying the company of a highly-bred female Siamese cat.

“These animals, as your Lordship may be aware, are exceptionally gifted creatures, and excellent companions for people of intelligence, being themselves endowed with almost supernatural powers of understanding and sympathy.”

“You are preaching to the converted, Mr. Macrea,” said the Judge. “I happen to be the owner of such an animal.”

Macrea, who had, of course, been well aware of this, smiled politely. He said, “This particular cat was officially named Mai Tsun, but was familiarly known in the house as Sunny.”

“When you say ‘officially’, you mean that this was the name under which she was registered in the records of the Siamese Cat Club?”

“That is so, my lord. These records showed that she was the offspring of a male cat, The Emperor Mu, and a female cat, Lady Lotus Flower. The records also identify the grandparents and the great-grandparents on the male and female side.”

“Your object in this excursus into the genealogy of the animal, Mr. Macrea, is, I assume, designed to cover the expression ‘legitimate issue’?”

“Exactly, my lord. Miss Manciple’s will has the effect, if I may use a lay expression, of tying up her estate for a period defined as ‘the lifetime of my Siamese cat, Sunny, and of her legitimate offspring’. This has been interpreted by her executor to mean kittens born as the result of a regular union which would be recognised by the Siamese Cat Club. I should add that, shortly after the will was made, Sunny did give birth to a litter of six kittens, but since it was apparent, from their colour and other characteristics, that they were the result of a casual amour with a neighbouring marmalade-coloured tom-cat they were disregarded, and were in fact disposed of. However, at the end of last year, although by then of a very advanced age for child-bearing, Sunny was successfully mated with a pedigree Siamese cat, named Rampant Orchid, and produced four kittens, one male and three female. The deceased christened the eldest two Venetia and Norman, after her niece and nephew – the plaintiffs in this case – and the two younger ones Popsy and Topsy. It was thought right to have these kittens separately represented. My learned friend Mr. Kaye appears for them.”

“Being without any means of support, they were able to obtain assistance from the Legal Aid Fund.”

Mr. Justice Ball said something under his breath, which, perhaps fortunately, the official reporter failed to catch. It was known that he did not approve of the recently promulgated Legal Aid and Advice Act.

“I will now call my instructing solicitor, Mr. Rumbold, who will prove the will.”

Mr. Rumbold gave his evidence shortly, and was not cross-examined by Mr. Leopold, the barrister appearing for Norman and Venetia. The Judge, however, seemed unwilling to let him go. He said, “Am I to understand that you had no knowledge of this curious handwritten addition to the will you drew up?”

“And do your clients usually attempt to improve on your draughtsmanship?’’

“I asked Miss Manciple to return it to me, but she preferred to send it straight to her bank.”

“Possibly, my lord, she considered that I might be critical of her amendment.”

“That would seem to argue a lack of confidence in her solicitor,” said Mr. Justice Ball. Since this did not appear to be a question, Mr. Rumbold thought it wiser to say nothing, and the Judge, after peering at him over his spectacles with a look of loathing, dismissed him. Mr. Rumbold returned, fuming, to his seat.

The next witness was Miss Tape. After being told, several times, by the Judge to speak up she produced a reasonably clear account of life at Much Hadham.

The income of the estate had been sufficient to run the house, to keep Sunny, her four offspring, and Miss Tape in modest comfort. It was thought very unlikely that Sunny, now in her thirteenth year, could produce any further offspring, but the four kittens she had produced were all healthy, and might well live for twelve or even fifteen years more.

He said, “You would agree, would you not, Miss Tape, that twelve would have been an exceptional age for a cat to produce kittens.”

Miss Tape looked startled. Macrea, rising swiftly to his feet, said, “I should point out, my lord, that this witness was not present when the kittens were born. This happy event took place in the presence of the local veterinary surgeon, who will be giving evidence later.”

“My question has been misunderstood,” said Mr. Leopold. “I am not suggesting that the four Siamese kittens, who are the third to the sixth defendants in this case, are not the legitimate offspring of a female Siamese cat. What I am suggesting is that they are not, and could not be, the offspring of the deceased’s cat, Sunny.”

“Because, my lord, Sunny had died some months before the birth of these particular kittens.”

Norman, whose investigations had unearthed this piece of information a week earlier, grinned unpleasantly. Macrea turned a startled gaze on Mr. Rumbold and all the reporters raised their heads at once, and then, like a line of violinists obedient to the baton of the conductor, started to scribble in unison, ‘Sensation in Court’.

“I take it, Mr. Leopold,” said the Judge, “that you propose to produce some evidence in support of this startling assertion.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Leopold. “If it should be necessary.” He turned to Miss Tape, who seemed to be trying to conceal herself in the witness box, and said, “Is it not a fact, Miss Tape, that some four or five months before Miss Manciple died, Sunny herself succumbed to the onset of old age? And is it not also a fact that you approached a breeder of Siamese cats in the Midlands – a Mr. Carnworth – whom I shall call if I have to – and purchased from him an eight-year-old female cat, as closely resembling Sunny as possible, and substituted her for the deceased animal?”

It was not possible to hear whether Miss Tape said ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. It is probable that she merely gulped.

“Are you suggesting,” said Mr. Justice Ball, “that Miss Manciple, who was devotedly attached to her cat, would not have noticed the substitution at once?”

“Normally, my lord, I have no doubt she would have done. But you will recollect that she had suffered from a cumulative series of strokes, and her faculties were, by that time, seriously impaired. Also she was confined to her bed, and the animal was only permitted into her room for brief periods.”

Mr. Justice Ball turned the full force of his very considerable personality upon the witness and said, “Is what Counsel suggests correct or is it not, Miss Tape?”

The Judge said, “I will adjourn the court until this witness feels able to resume.”

When the court reassembled half an hour later, it was observed that Miss Tape was no longer in the box. Macrea, who had, in the interval, been doing some hard thinking and a certain amount of fast talking, rose to his feet.

He said, “I have discussed this development with learned Counsel on the other side, my lord, and he has agreed to my suggestion that we proceed on a basis that we agree that Miss Manciple’s original pet, Sunny, did die at a date some months before her owner’s death, and that the present incumbent – if I may so express it – is another cat called Sunny, who is the mother of the third to the sixth defendants.”

“With respect, I must direct your Lordship’s attention to the wording of the will. This says, ‘During the lifetime of my Siamese cat, Sunny, and of her legitimate offspring’. In my submission this wording precisely covers the facts of the case as we now know them. The animal in question was a Siamese cat. It was known about the house by the name of Sunny, and it did belong to the deceased, having been very generously given to her by Miss Tape, to replace the previous animal. Her motive for concealing the substitution was the very understandable one that she did not wish to upset Miss Manciple during the closing months of her life.”

“Even if this ingenious argument were accepted – and I feel sure that Mr. Leopold will have something to say about it—”

“—Even if it were accepted, is it not quite plain that the animal to which Miss Manciple intended to refer in her will was not the substitute – I should almost say, the impostor – which had taken her place—”

“I shall argue, my lord,” said Macrea, “that it has long been accepted that this court will pay very little attention to what a testator imagines they mean in their will, and will confine themselves strictly to what the words say—”

“Well, it was worth trying. But it’s pretty clear that the Judge is hostile. I was surprised that he bothered to reserve judgment until tomorrow.”

“I know exactly why he reserved judgment,” said Mr. Rumbold. “He has gone home to his bachelor apartment to spend a long and pleasant evening drafting a judgment that will be full of criticisms of the slovenly habits of solicitors, and may even go so far as to suggest that the whole thing was a plot, and that I was a party to it from the beginning. I wouldn’t put it past him to award costs against me personally.”

On the following morning Mr. Justice Ball kept his court waiting. This was unusual. He was normally punctual to the minute. When he did appear, it was evident that he was not himself. His eyes were bloodshot, and the dark shadows underneath them suggested that he had not slept well, if at all, on the previous night. He had also apparently cut himself whilst shaving, for there was a broad strip of sticking-plaster down the side of his jaw.

His judgment was short and to the point. He upheld the view that the reference in the will to ‘my Siamese cat, Sunny’ was equally apt as a description of the second cat, and that the relatives, therefore, would have to wait until the death of the last of the four kittens before claiming any share in the estate.

Even now, fifteen years later, Mr. Rumbold had no idea how this happy and entirely unexpected result had been achieved.

In wilder countries, in earlier and less civilised times, he might have supposed that severe pressures had been brought to bear upon Mr. Justice Ball; that he had been subjected to some form of intimidation or blackmail which, in the course of a single night, had forced him to change his mind. But in England, in that day and age, such an explanation was inconceivable. And even if it had been conceivable, the very last person who would have yielded to such pressure would certainly have been Mr. Justice Ball. The only other explanation which occurred to Mr. Rumbold was that he had had some form of stroke or brainstorm. But this had been conclusively disproved in the Judge’s very next case, an exceedingly complicated affair dealing with Bills of Exchange which he had handled with all his accustomed mastery; managing, in the course of it, to be rude to the solicitors on both sides.

Mr. Silverlight, who appeared to divine what he was thinking about, coughed discreetly. He said, “Previously I have never ventured to disclose something which was said to me, on that occasion, by Mr. Justice Ball’s clerk, Mr. Henry. He and I were very old friends and he told me something, under the seal of strict secrecy. It may have had some bearing on the matter.”

“Now that the last of the protagonists in the case is dead, I feel absolved from my undertaking. I cannot, of course, vouch for the truth of this. It is only what Mr. Henry told me.”