The Empty House Read Online Free

that he was being talked to, thumped his tail against the arm of the sofa.
    “About that policy,” said Peter.
    “I got a letter about it,” said Miss Wolfe. “From the insurance company – I forget their name – and I’ve lost the letter. Or Sambo may have eaten it. Checks, letters, and banknotes. If you leave them lying about, he gobbles them up at once.”
    “It wasn’t a company. The policy was underwritten by a syndicate at Lloyds:”
    “Goodness. That makes me feel like a ship. And are you a—what is the right word? An undertaker?”
    “I’m from Phelps, King and Troyte.” He gave Miss Wolfe his card.
    She looked at it carefully and handed it back. “What does ‘Adjusters’ mean?”
    “Well,” said Peter cautiously, “it’s our job to investigate insurance claims.”
    “And adjust them?”
    “If necessary.”
    “Downward, I’m sure.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “If you adjusted them upward, no one would bother to employ you.”
    Peter had to acknowledge that there was some truth in this.
    “However,” said Miss Wolfe, “there can’t be much scope for adjusting this one. It’s for a definite amount of money, payable in defined circumstances.”
    “It’s the circumstances that I was asked to look into. One of the clauses in the policy was most unusual. I don’t think, in all my experience, I’ve ever seen one like it.”
    “Twenty years? Thirty years?”
    “What—?”
    “You said, in all your experience. The way you said it, it sounded a very long time.”
    “That was pompous,” said Peter. “I’m sorry.” When embarrassed, he blushed very easily. “I didn’t mean it to be. I’ve been exactly two years in this job. All the same, it is an unusual clause.”
    “It was drafted for my brother by his solicitor, Roland Highsmith. He’d every confidence in him, I do know that. They were at Oxford together and have been friends ever since.”
    Peter looked at his file. “That would be Messrs. Highsmith and Westall, Solicitors, of Forebury Street, Exeter.”
    “Right. But I believe that Westall’s an invalid. He’s always away sick, or something. Roland does all the work.”
    “I shall have to have a word with him.”
    “Why? Is there something wrong with the clause?”
    Miss Wolfe put a pair of horn-rimmed glasses onto her strong nose and studied the policy. Peter had realised for some time that her speech and manner were a cloak for a shrewd mind; the sort of mind to be expected of a woman who had made her way to the top in one of the most competitive musical outfits in the world.
    “It’s the way it’s worded,” said Peter. “’If there is an assumption that the cause of death, or one of the causes, was drowning.’” It seems to have been carefully designed for what actually happened. Does it worry you if we talk about this?”
    “I was very fond of Alex,” said Miss Wolfe, “and he of me, I think. But we weren’t close. We wrote to each other on birthdays and at Christmas, but I hadn’t seen him for – let me think – more than three years. Nearly four. You were saying—?”
    “If the policy had said, simply, drowning, there would have been an argument that the impact of the car onto the water must have killed him before he went under.”
    “Then you might have wriggled out of it.”
    “I don’t say we would have. It’s the sort of argument our lawyers might have put up.”
    “Clever old Roland. He thought of that one.”
    “Don’t you see, that’s what makes it all so odd. It almost looks as if he had this particular sort of accident in mind when he drafted the policy.”
    “Not true. The sort of accident they both had in mind was a plane going down over the sea and being lost without trace. The same arguments would apply.”
    “Did he do a lot of flying?”
    “He used to. A great deal. In the last few years he’s usually taken his car across to the Continent and driven about in it. It was easier to shake free of the little men who