Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman by Ellis Peters Page A

excitement in which he could see no trace of fear or even wariness. The unmistakable tint of pleasure was there. Nothing against the boss, you understand, but after all, he’d hardly clapped eyes on him a couple of times, and it isn’t every day you get up this close to a murder.
    “Go on!” he said, gleaming. “Well, I’ll be damned!” And so he might, but not, thought George, for anything to do with Armiger’s death. “You reckon it was this fellow I saw who done it?”
    “It’s merely one line of inquiry,” said George dryly. “What I’m trying to do is to fill in all the details of the evening, that’s all. What time did you leave the job last night?”
    “About twenty to eleven.” The thought that he might have to account for himself had not shaken his confidence in the slightest. “I got back here before eleven, the old girl’ll tell you the same. What’s more, one of the other blokes walked back with me, name of Stokes, you’ll find him just up the street here, Mrs. Lewis’s.” He pushed the paper aside, not even the runners could win back his attention now. “Can you beat it!” he said, and whistled long and softly. “And they think they’ve got all the life down home!”
    George went down the dingy stairs turning over in his mind the irony of this last comment, and betting himself, though without relish because he was on a virtual certainty, that Turner would be in for work before his time that day, if never again.
    The news hadn’t got out yet, or at least it was not yet public property, for there was no crowd dawdling hopefully about The Jolly Barmaid when George returned to its bright new doors. He put in a call to Duckett, outlined his moves up to date, and the little information he had gleaned from them, and settled down to compile, with Bennie Blocksidge’s help, a list of people who had been present at the gala opening on the previous evening. There would be no opening hours to-day, that was out of the question with the emperor dead; and once half past ten arrived and the first customer was brought up short against a closed door and a laconic notice, the secret wouldn’t be a secret long.
    By the time their list was as complete as their combined memories could make it, Grocott and Price were on the premises and waiting for orders. George unloaded the more promising of the routine calls on to them, and went to telephone Duckett again. By this time even solicitors should be working, and “
Cui bono
?” was still one of the leading questions. Had Armiger really cut off his son completely, or had he only threatened him and left him to stew a while in his own juice? Not in the hope of bringing him to heel, since marriage can’t be sloughed off as easily as all that even to satisfy an Armiger; but perhaps merely out of spleen, to punish him for his rebellion with a taste of poverty, before taking him back chastened and amenable.
    And plus an ex-clerk wife who would be a constant reminder of a defeat to her unloving father-in-law? No, it wasn’t easy to imagine it, after all. George turned a thumb down as he dialled Duckett’s number. About a hundred to one Leslie didn’t figure in the will, unless in some peculiarly hurtful and humiliating way. And Armiger’s wife was some years dead, and he had no other child. So somebody was due for a windfall. He wouldn’t disseminate his empire, living or dead. Nor was it really conceivable that he would have neglected to make a revised will, or even postponed it for a period of reflection. He had never reflected, but always charged, and this time would be no exception.
    “I talked to old Hartley,” said Duckett. “The terms of the will won’t be much help to us at first glance, but they’re interesting, very interesting. Seems he had his old will destroyed and dictated the terms of a new one the very day he threw his son out. The boy isn’t so much as mentioned. Might as well be dead, apparently, to his father.”
    “I’ve been