Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

I was, I had to confess, somewhat taken aback. When Matron answered, she sounded a little touchy. “He wasn’t late at all. He came through bang on time! It was just nine o’clock when we started chatting. He says the weather over there’s absolutely beautiful! It’s just not fair, I told him, when we’re going through this dreary cold spell.”

“Miss Beasley,” I asked for clarification, “did Colonel Ollard come over from the dead, simply to chatter to you about the weather?”

“Oh no, Mr. Rumpole. I shouldn’t be telephoning you if that were all. He said something far more important.”

“Oh did he? And can you let me into the secret?” My temperature was clearly rising during this conversation. I longed for bed with both my feet on a hot water bottle.

“The colonel said that Mr. Pontefract had never looked in the tin box where he kept his dress uniform, in the loft at The Pines.”

“Well. Suppose Mr. Pontefract never has...”

“If he looked there, the colonel told me, Mr. Pontefract would find, wrapped in tissue paper, between the sword and the... trousers, a later will, signed by himself in the proper manner.”

I could see the way things were drifting and quite honestly I didn’t like it at all. The day might not be far distant when Miss Beasley might in fact find herself tucked safely up in the nick.

“Is that what the colonel said?” I asked, warily.

“His very words.”

“You’re quite sure that’s what he said...”

“How could I possibly be mistaken?”

“Well, I suppose you’d better ring Pontefract and get him to take a look. I just hope—”

“You hope what, Mr. Rumpole?”

“I hope you’re not considering anything dangerous, Miss Beasley.”

After all, what could all this planchette nonsense be but a rather obvious prelude to forgery?

“Of course not! I’m perfectly safe, Mr. Rumpole. I’ve just been sitting here chatting.” Matron sounded her usual brisk self. I tried to remember if there’d ever been a woman forger, with a nursing qualification.

“Yes. Well, if you ring Mr. Pontefract,” I suggested, but apparently all that had been taken care of.

“I’ve done that, Mr. Rumpole. I just thought I’d ring you too, to tell you the joyful tidings. Oh, and Mr. Rumpole. The colonel sent you his best wishes, and he hopes he’s been a help to you, giving you a leg to stand on. Cheerio for now! Oh, and he hopes your cold’s better.”

As I put down the receiver, I felt, as I have said, a good deal worse.

“Who on earth’s Miss Rosemary Beasley?” Hilda asked when I had finished sneezing.

“Oh her. She’s just someone who seems to be on particularly good terms with the dead.”

The next day, still feeling in much the same condition as the late Colonel Ollard, but without the blue skies to cheer me up, I staggered off to the Old Bailey and heard my warehouse-breaker get three years. When the formalities and the official goodbyes were over I walked back to Chambers and there, awaiting me in my room, was the lugubrious Pontefract. He came straight out with the news.

“It was just as she told us, Mr. Rumpole. There was a tin box under a pile of old blankets in the loft at The Pines, which we had overlooked. In it was the full dress uniform of a colonel of the Royal Dorsets.”

“And between the sword and trousers?”

“I found a will, apparently dated the first of March, 1974. Over four years after the other will in favour of the Percival Ollards. It revokes all previous wills and leaves his entire estate to—”

“Miss Rosemary Beasley?” I hazarded a guess.

“You’ve hit it, Mr. Rumpole!”

“It didn’t need great powers of divination.”

I couldn’t help looking round nervously to see that we weren’t in the presence of the mysterious matron.

“Mr. Pontefract, as our client isn’t with us today—”

“I’m quite thankful for it, Mr. Rumpole.”

“You are? So am I. You know that the late colonel apparently spoke from the other side of the grave, to tip our client off about this will?”

“So I understand, Mr. Rumpole.”

“Mr. Pontefract. I know you are accustomed to polite civil law and my mind turns as naturally to crime as a vicar’s daughter’s does to sex, but...”

I didn’t know how to make the suggestion which might wound the old gentleman; but he was out with the word before me.

“You suspect this will may be a forgery?”

“That thought had crossed your mind?”

“Of course, Mr. Rumpole. There is no field of endeavour in which human nature sinks to a lower depth than in the matter of wills. Your average Old Bailey case, Mr. Rumpole, must seem like a day out with the Church Brigade compared to the skulduggery which surrounds the simplest last will and testament.”

As he spoke I began to warm to this man, Pontefract. He was expressing my own opinions fairly eloquently, and I listened with an increased respect as he went on.

“Naturally my first thought was that our client, Miss Beasley, had invented this supernatural conversation in order to direct our attention to a will which she had, shall we say, manufactured?”

“A neutral term, Mr. Pontefract.” But well put, I thought. “That was my first thought, also.”