Shelley shook his head dolefully. “Not an atom of luck, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “I’m sure your father must have made a will. And yet I can’t find it anywhere. And there isn’t a trace of any sort of personal correspondence here, either. It’s all things connected with his work.”

“That is to be expected,” she said. “Father never did make friends easily. He always said that his work was his circle of friends. And he had no desire to become friendly with anyone who couldn’t argue learnedly about Marlowe and Peele and Greene and all the others.”

“But what is it that you want to tell me?” asked Shelley suddenly. He could see that she was simply bursting with information, and it might well be that this information was of some value.

“How did you know…?” she began, and then broke off. “It’s only that I have found father’s will,” she said.

“You’ve found his will?” Shelley was frankly incredulous. “Where on earth did you find it?”

“In a letter.”

“What letter?” Shelley could be laconic enough when the occasion demanded it.

“A letter that has just come by post. Look.” She held it out to him—a registered letter, posted in London (Holborn Sub-office). He found himself noting this automatically as he drew the document from its envelope.

“Who sent it?” he asked.

She shook her head helplessly. “I haven’t the least idea,” she said.

“Was there any covering letter with it?” he asked.

She shook her head again. “No. It was quite by itself in the envelope. I can’t think who can have sent it to me, or why.”

“Do you recognise the writing?” asked Shelley.

“No.” The envelope was addressed in a crude, uneducated scrawl, which might, as Shelley at once realised, be merely a disguised hand.

“Have you read it?”

She nodded.

“Don’t mind if I do so?”

“Of course not,” she said. “After all, you said it was important, and now that we have found it I want you to read it without delay.”

Shelley read the document aloud. “This is the last will and testament of me, Julius Arnell, Professor Emeritus in the University of Portavon. I hereby give and bequeath all my property to my daughter, Violet Arnell, for her sole use during her lifetime. At her death it is to go, whether she has issue or not, to my nephew, Moses Moss, to belong to him and his heirs and assigns, absolutely.”

She smiled a tremulous smile. “Just like him, I think,” she said. “Although he was so untidy and impractical in some things, in all the things that really mattered, he would have everything just correct.”

“H’m.” Shelley was not altogether satisfied. “You think it’s like the sort of will that you would have expected your father to make?”

“Yes.” She was quite emphatic on that point.