Читать книгу The Footsteps That Stopped - A. Fielding - Страница 5

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THE three men walked towards the river in silence for some minutes. A soft, sibilant murmur came from the water which had lost its lights now, and lay hidden in mist. It seemed to Pointer to be chanting "Accident—Suicide—Murder? Accident—Suicide—Murder?" under its breath.

Any of the three might still be the word that would fit the puzzle which the Chief Inspector intended to solve. Haviland turned to the newspaper man.

"Well, whether accident or suicide, we hand it over to you now, Mr. Wilmot. Unless the Chief Inspector thinks otherwise, of course. I suppose the case is closed, as far as the police are concerned? Olive seems to've got hold of the right tip. That letter that she saw Mrs. Tangye reading must have been the last straw. As a matter of fact, I said we should find that something of that kind had happened."

Pointer lit his pipe.

"The footsteps that stopped," he spoke the words as though they pleased his ear. "Sounds like one of your own articles, Wilmot."

Wilmot turned a meditative eye on the Chief Inspector, "Nice head-line. But I make a point of never misleading my public."

This time it was Pointer who looked his question.

"Well, even if they ever existed, which I very much doubt. Tangye may have run down from town hoping to make his peace with his wife. Say that there was a row on Monday which made him skip dinner at home." Both Wilmot's listeners nodded. Each had already said that to himself. "He may have gone into the garden after her. It would cost me my reputation to raise hopes of a dramatic development, and then have it fizzle out into father's list slippers."

"You think it will?"

Wilmot did not reply for a second. Had they found anything which suggested foul play? Honestly, as far as he could see, they had not. But what about Pointer? His were the eyes that counted in this search.

"What does the Counsel for the Prosecution say?" Wilmot asked instead of replying.

"That when you talk of suicide—"

"Or accident. I'm afraid I think that's only too possible," Wilmot said pensively.

"Or accident. You forget the butter under Mrs. Tangye's wedding rings," Pointer spoke very seriously.

"You overwhelm me with confusion, so I had!" Wilmot spoke in mock consternation. "Is this the sort of rock on which a police inquiry is built? I've no idea how that mysterious process begins. Do you inventory the butter on her finger solemnly under the heading of 'Clues of which the Police are in Possession'?"

"No, no!" Haviland laughed in his turn. "The fact is, we haven't found even the ghost of such a thing as a clue which points to a crime, have we, sir?"

"And where there's no clue there's no crime?" Wilmot queried.

"Whose steps stopped in the garden?" Pointer asked. "Tangye would have come on in, if they had been his. At least, so it seems to me. Why was her left hand so buttery that it left such clear prints on her revolver and yet none on her fork?"

Haviland turned to him quickly.

"You spoke before of her prints on the Webley as being odd, sir? In what way, in fact?"

"I can tell better when I have studied the enlargements," was the evasive reply.

There was a short silence. This was different from theorising beforehand. The Chief Inspector was looking over the fields. Was the Hark, Hallo! coming? It all lay with the young man leaning with folded arms on the low parapet of the bridge and staring straight before him with level, quiet eyes.

Haviland fidgetted with a cigar. "Of course," he said dubiously, "it's a question of finding out what's essential and what isn't..."

Wilmot gave a short laugh. "Be able to do that, Haviland, and you'll be a god, not a policeman."

"Still, as a matter of fact," Haviland went on doggedly, "that is what has to be done."

"And pray what is the essential fact or facts here?" Wilmot asked indulgently.

Pointer answered for the Superintendent, "The most essential thing in, this case is to find out exactly what happened on Sunday. When the break occurred."

"Break?"

"Between the old Mrs. Tangye and the new Mrs. Tangye. Between the woman who went on as always, and the woman who apparently changed her habits so much."

"She seems to've quarrelled with Tangye on Monday as usual," Wilmot reminded him.

"True," Pointer had to smile at the other's tone. "Yet she first began then to prepare for her coming departure."

"Safe word that. We can all meet on it," Wilmot murmured approvingly.

"Apparently, only apparently, of course," Pointer went on, "she seems to've been her usual self till Sunday morning."

"Till that letter she read," Haviland breathed.

"Until she went to Tunbridge Wells at any rate. Possibly that decision itself marked the beginning of the change. For when she gets back she goes to bed. She starts next day weeding out her wardrobe; the day after she tears up her private papers. It looks to me as if something had happened down at that flower-show."

"Sunday," Wilmot repeated meditatively. "I don't follow you there, Pointer. The break, as you call it—the breaking-point would be nearer the mark, I think—occurred in my judgment, not between two Mrs. Tangyes, but between her and her husband, and took place Monday afternoon. You say she had changed by Monday. I can't see any change before that talk or quarrel, with her husband about five in the afternoon. On Monday morning she had had her hair waved, says Florence. We know that in the afternoon, she took a vivid interest in her new evening-dress. Those preparations on which we all lay so much store, though we read them differently, only began after she had seen and talked with her husband at tea-time."

"No, not quite," Haviland corrected, "as a matter of fact she went out and left word before five with Carter Patterson to take her trunk to the Salvation Army's old clothes department. Before her husband got home from his weekend."

Wilmot did not know this. It altered his argument as he at once said.

"And you think what happened on Sunday when she was away from home so important, do you sir?" Haviland asked, "More so, in fact, than the letter itself, which sent her down there?"

"We may be able to guess the letter from what took place. But not the other way round. Was the show the sort of thing that would get into the papers, Wilmot? London papers?"

"You mean would any reporters be sent down to Tunbridge who might be able to help us? Not one." Wilmot explained that orchid shows in country towns, even big ones like this affair, would never get beyond a line or two, and those would be telegraphed up by some local amateur enthusiast, who would also, in all certainty, write the articles in the more important country papers. The exhibition firms supplying the smaller ones with data.

"The show on Sunday is one essential then, sir. Are there any others?" Haviland had been meditating on the Chief Inspector's words.

But Pointer did not answer directly. He seemed to be thinking aloud.

"Monday afternoon, when Miss Saunders is absent, Florence is sent off too on an errand, and Olive is told that Mrs. Tangye's not at home to any one before five o'clock, and is given a stiff bit of mending to do. In other words, Mrs. Tangye secures herself from interruption Monday afternoon. Then next day, yesterday, Miss Saunders is sent out. She's the only one in the house who can come and go as she likes, remember. She generally has tea with Mrs. Tangye of course—"

"And Mrs. Tangye gives particular orders for an uninterrupted chat with her special friend." Wilmot spoke impatiently. "My dear fellow, no one could accuse you of swallowing camels, but you certainly do go for any gnat in sight."

"Doesn't Mrs. Tangye's partiality for having tea in an impossible room strike you as peculiar?" Pointer countered.

Haviland stared. Wilmot permitted himself to look puzzled.

"Senseless whim," he murmured, "but not necessarily criminal, I should have thought."

"Not necessarily senseless," Pointer replied with a faint smile.

"You think the smoky fire—but would that weigh much, in fact, with a desperate woman—sick of life—?" groped Haviland.

"It would weigh heavily with a woman expecting a visitor," Pointer reminded him. Haviland stepped away to let a perambulator come up and pass them.

"In the plan which the Superintendent drew of Riverview," Pointer went on in his absence, "Haviland's an excellent officer, very thorough along his own lines. He has a quick eye."

"He has—for a fact," Wilmot laughed, and Haviland, catching the last word, grinned.

"I'm an Essex man," he said in excuse, as he turned to Pointer when the bridge was empty again, "you were saying, sir?"

"That in your plan the morning-room shows as the only one in the house which can be entered directly from the garden, without having to pass any other window. Now, adding this interesting detail to the unusual fondness of Mrs. Tangye for a smoky room yesterday, and you get quite an intriguing little sum."

"You might, if they belonged together," Wilmot agreed cautiously, "but if you add the density of the atmosphere to the distance from the earth to the moon, your result's not likely to be of much practical use."

"That's what I thought when I learnt from the evidence at the inquest that Mrs. Tangye had been expecting a visitor. An expected caller drew a straight line through my sum. This cable of Mrs. Cranbourn's, however, reverses that. Or rather, what seems like a stroke through the whole, becomes one of it's most important items."

"Are we at last to be permitted to glimpse your meaning—to fathom the mysterious depths with which you credit that fact?" Wilmot screwed up his eyes. A sign of close attention.

"Remember the situation of the morning-room. Mrs. Tangye's sticking to it in spite of discomfort, and add the new fact that very definite instructions were given by her that she was not at home yesterday, except to a certain, very carefully specified lady, who quite positively couldn't come. I maintain that my sum total's worth thinking over. Especially if you add a few other extras floating around."

Wilmot pondered for some minutes.

"You mean?" he repeated cautiously.

"This: Mr. Tangye never gets back on Tuesdays from his office until half-past six at the earliest. Mrs. Tangye sends her companion off just before four to change a novel for her at the circulating library and tells her to have tea out. The library is about half an hour away. It doesn't close till seven. Tea at Riverview was ordered at four; one would have thought that Miss Saunders could have had it before going for the book. The maid, after bringing in the tea-things, always leaves her mistress undisturbed until she clears away at six. That is a rule of the house, we learnt. Now, if in addition, Mrs. Tangye tells her that on no account will she be at home to anybody except to some one who isn't—can't be—coming, then, in this way she both has an excuse for ordering, as she does, a very ample tea, and also insures in every possible way that she can count on being undisturbed for two hours. Four to six."

"But the caller of later on? The woman who came and said she was frightfully overdue," Haviland protested, "aren't you forgetting her? Her name may have been Cranbourn too, as Tangye suggested."

"Sort of gratuitous little muddle that's quite to be expected," Pointer agreed.

"Yes," Wilmot said slowly, thinking over Pointer's words, "you can't get around the fact that some woman came. And on an appointment, you know."

"I don't know," Pointer put up his pipe with a sigh, "I must leave her on one side for the moment. Her coming doesn't explain anything—nor hang together with anything."

"She made a bee-line for the morning-room," Haviland pointed out.

"True but I can't see why Mrs. Tangye should stick to that particular room in spite of smoke, and bitter cold, for the sake of some one who could come to the front door, and therefore could have been shown into any other room. At least as far as we yet know to the contrary."

"Then for what reason did she stick to it?" Wilmot asked irritably. He never liked asking for solutions.

"There's just a possibility that Mrs. Tangye gave some one an appointment in that room. Some one who was not to come to the front door. It was this bare possibility which brought me down to Twickenham in the first place. Only that expected visit—that bluff—about Mrs. Cranbourn—put my theory all out, for the moment."

"Um-m. Seems to me a very heavy scaffolding to builds around one smoky chimney," Wilmot temporised. Had he been the one to originate it, he would have hailed it with joy.

"Oh, there are other things. Why did Mrs. Tangye walk up and down outside that window, while the maid brought in tea? Unless it were to be on the lookout lest this 'some one' should blunder into the room while the girl was still there? It was hardly an afternoon to select for a turn in the garden. The open window would send its ray of light far out as a beacon, a guide, remember."

"You think Mrs. Tangye had given some one a rendezvous, a secret appointment yesterday afternoon?" Wilmot cocked his head on one side. "Is that where that cousin of hers comes in? The one you questioned Tangye about? Your interest in any one is rarely to their credit. Who is he?"

"He seems a bit of a dark horse. Distinguished himself at Oxford. So much so that the authorities thought one half term quite sufficient. I haven't got all the notes on him yet. Apparently, as Tangye said, he dropped out of sight some dozen years ago."

"But Mrs. Tangye was Mrs. Grundy's twin sister. Nothing romantic. Nothing of the heart could make the lady we looked at just now step one inch off the beaten track. Take that from me."

Pointer took it. Took it very seriously. Wilmot's judgments on men and events were not to be lightly passed over. He had a famous knack of winning by a head. His own head, as Fleet Street put it.

"Nevertheless, the fact remains," Pointer continued, "that on the two days following last Sunday, Mrs. Tangye takes very similar measures to safeguard herself from interruption for at least a part of the afternoon."

"There's that vanished cousin of hers," Haviland put in, "he might fit the idea you have about that morning-room. Supposing he's done something and couldn't show his face, in fact."

"Just so. He might. Though I don't necessarily think that it was a man who came. As I said before, I only call the criminal 'him' for the sake of brevity. Also women don't commit murder as often as men do."

"Not enough courage," Wilmot was no lover of the fair sex. "But even if you're right about Mrs. Tangye's reason for speaking as though she expected Mrs. Cranbourn, I hold that it would only be to gain time for the last, fatal step. That at least is how I read the story. Sorry. But it seems to me the only reading—so far. I see no possibility of that bullet having been fired by any other hand but Mrs. Tangye's.

"I maintain," he said again, after turning Pointer's suggestion carefully over in his mind, "that Mrs. Tangye stuck to that room because it was, or rather had been, her favourite. She had spent many happy hours there. The room tells that. She wanted to say good-bye to life in its friendly atmosphere."

"And the order for a larger tea than usual?"

"More bluff. To have the room to herself. Remember you yourself suggested that reason for the minute directions about admitting any one but Miss Eden."

Pointer shook his head.

"I can't see that Mrs. Tangye's actions yesterday play any part in the theory of a suicide. In mine they do. In mine each is vital. They're unintelligent in any other light. Mrs. Tangye could have shot herself much better in bed."

"The' fact is, that's what's been bothering me," Haviland broke in, "but I think she may have meant to be found by Tangye. Or even by her caller."

"Anything's possible." Was all Pointer would allow that shot, by way of marks. "But so far, no new facts shake my theory. And when a theory's not shaken by closer inspection, it's strengthened."

"Nice little pile of chance sweepings is all I can see," Wilmot sighed.

"Naturally."

Pointer and Haviland both smiled.

"It's all very well," Wilmot admitted grudgingly, "but your theory doesn't hold the late caller."

"I don't know yet if it's necessary that it should," Pointer said equably. "Mrs. Tangye's own actions don't seem to have included her either. The order to the maid might have been to exclude her. Time will show where she belongs. Outside or inside. But the idea of suicide makes the whole series of things incomprehensible to me."

"And you think in your theory they become translucent? Comprehensible? Come, as a favour to me, expound them in that light."

Wilmot was quite in his element. He always enjoyed a discussion of theories. He obviously meant what he said. Pointer was never keen on holding forth, but Wilmot pressed him again.

"I really should like to know how the facts look in this new light to your Scotland Yard mind. If you'll excuse me calling it that. I mean it as a compliment. And after your unkind references to my biased point of view—" he laughed and settled his elbows more comfortably on the coping of the bridge.

"Well, looking on Mrs. Tangye's death as a crime. Always bearing in mind that that's only a hypothesis as yet—"

"Oh, I do!"

"The first thing that strikes one is the way she was killed. A bullet rather suggests, other things being equal, that the murderer was not a member of her household. Poison is their usual weapon, in a premeditated crime. Next—there's been no effort to mislead the police, or delay the finding out of the dead woman's identity."

"Granted," Wilmot said at once "identity evidently plays no part in this sinister affair."

"It may play a part just the same," Pointer demurred. "Its part may be that the sooner it's known that she's dead, the better."

"You mean the insurance claim Tangye sent in by the eight o'clock evening post yesterday?" Wilmot raised an eyebrow reflectively. "'Pon my word, Pointer, almost thou persuadest me..."

"The visitor was apparently not one of whom Mrs. Tangye was frightened. She sends Miss Saunders out on Tuesday. She had sent Florence out on Monday, the day when, I think, the caller came the first time. The crime, if I'm right, and there was one, was too well executed for it to have been planned without a very careful inspection of the premises. But to continue with Tuesday, the husband is away from home. Judging by the preparations, the secret caller is some one Mrs. Tangye is prepared to welcome. The ample tea and so on. Of course they may merely represent so many attempts at propitiation. But Mrs. Tangye doesn't look to me like a woman who would bend easily under pressure."

"It all sounds to me like her cousin," Haviland mused again.

"But her smart frock?" the Chief Inspector queried, "her dressed hair? But whether Cousin Oliver or some one else, obviously the relationship, or tie, between them is not one that Mrs. Tangye cares to acknowledge. The visitor is to come and go unseen."

"Supposing—just for the moment—that such a being exists, wouldn't any murderer have taken care to trump up some specious need for secrecy?" Wilmot pointed out.

"Possibly. But unless the need were real, and affected both, I should have expected, since she was perfectly mistress of her own time—that she would have arranged to meet him elsewhere. But obviously that might not suit the murderer. One place would be very unlike another place to him.

"Then the secrecy was more important to her than to him, in your fascinating, but to me, quite impossible melodrama?"

Pointer thought not.

"As a rule, when it's only to one person's interest that so much trouble be taken, the other person, the one not so vitally concerned, makes some slip, that gives the whole show away. None has been made here. On either side. Mrs. Tangye seems to've taken as much care beforehand that nothing should be known about a caller coming in by the garden, as he takes afterwards to be sure that he's left no trace."

"There wasn't a mark of finger-print in that room that didn't belong there," Haviland said earnestly.

Pointer felt sure of this.

"The visitor whom I'm imagining," Pointer went on, "came in the day-time. On a Tuesday. Though in winter Mrs. Tangye's generally alone over the week-ends. Choosing the day-time looks to me as though he were either married, or lived in chambers, or at an hotel, or some place where his comings and goings at night might be noticed. As to the day of the week, that looks as if time pressed, and he couldn't wait till the next week-end."

"What about the past week-end?" Wilmot asked, "and even if it were any one in the house—mind, I don't believe for a moment in your theory—they might well be too shrewd to choose the night. Rather a home-made look about a job done then."

Wilmot had a wide experience of murder cases. Wider even than Pointer's. For Wilmot was only called in to take or make—causes célèbres.

"They could have faked a burglary," Haviland suggested. "Good faking is an art not acquired in one night," Wilmot pointed out.

"Suppose we say that hole is halved," Pointer suggested. "But was it Mrs. Tangye, or this mysterious visitor of hers that made her leave nothing among her papers bearing on her own affairs? Or is their absence unconnected with her death?" He was asking himself the question. "At any rate her visitor belongs, or came into her life, before she went to France. Before she corrected herself of being left-handed. Apparently he has not seen her in the meantime, since she's trained herself out of it. Offhand one would say some old lover cropped up...And that, I think, is as far as mere deduction takes us."

"It could scarcely carry you much further unless you assisted it with a crystal ball, and a Ouija board," Wilmot murmured.

"Except," Pointer was impervious to sarcasm when he chose, "that no sounds whatever were heard from the morning-room. Which looks as though there had been no unexpected entrance of still another person, a third party, who was not in the secret."

"Of course, Tangye being out, Miss Saunders out, and the servants having their own tea shut away in their quarters, that doesn't mean much in fact," Haviland murmured. "But the room, and Mrs. Tangye herself—no, sir! There was no sign of any sort of trouble to be seen."

"Just so. We may take it that there was only one visitor. Some one whom she thought a friend. But who was not. Some one who profited by her death. For it was a deliberate crime—if a crime."

"You should write novels," Wilmot scoffed.

"Ah, I said this was only theory—speculation. Like some of your articles."

"Quite so. But I live by my fancies, whereas I thought you at the Yard depended on footing the solid earth for your daily bread. And once again, what about the woman who came at six, and said she was frightfully late? It looks as though in your solution of the problem A and B would have to meet 'Which is absurd.' According to your own premises, I maintain that there was only one caller at Riverview yesterday. The woman whom Florence showed in. Or do you suggest that Mrs. Tangye was playing the part of Providence to a young couple? And the gentleman arriving first, shoots her as a lesson not to meddle?"

"I don't think Mrs. Tangye would have put herself out to such an extent for any mere friend. For anything but sheer necessity."

"Then your theory exonerates Tangye—I mean, if it's a fact that there's a criminal here?" Haviland asked. "Though, as a matter of fact, there can't be, sir! You must excuse me, but I can't see it your way."

"So much the better! If I'm right you'll come round, both of you. If I'm wrong, there's only one misled. As to Tangye—it could have been an accomplice of his. Though I see no reason for that thought, and many objections. Still, it could have been."

"And where's Miss Saunders in this most bewildering dream of your's?" Pointer laughed; he knew Wilmot would ask that.

"She's outside. Not inside."

"Really? Like the late caller, eh? Forgive the question, but are all the facts of the case going to be outside your theory?"

Pointer only made a good-humoured gesture of not being able to tell yet.

"You'll have to keep her outside," Wilmot warned him in mock anxiety, "because otherwise she blows it sky-high."

"She does," Pointer agreed. "My theory presupposes no inside helper except Mrs. Tangye herself."

"Well, a suicide verdict doesn't fall to pieces because of the companion," Wilmot murmured in high good humour, "personally, I welcome her as a human note. So you call a 'theory' something that begins in smoke and ends in mythical steps heard by a couple of hysterical maids?"

"They struck me as very truthful young women. Don't run down the only corroboration I've got so far as to the existence of that unknown visitor! As I see it," Pointer watched the river as though he did see 'it,' and only 'it' in the running water, "some one came into that morning-room by the long windows yesterday just after four. Came in, after having been to the house the day before, and laid his plans. Came in after having possibly followed her about in the garden until the flash of light from Florence's pantry warned him that he might be seen. Very likely he had overlooked that little slit high up in the ivy. But afterwards—after he came in—" Pointer fell silent.

"It sounds most alluring. Most dramatic! But no, no! I can't see," Wilmot prodded the air with his cigarette to accentuate each word, "no, I cannot see how there's the possibility of foul play here. Mrs. Tangye in her own home—a good shot—the bell to her hand—her maids within call—her finger-prints on her revolver—"

There was a pause.

"And Miss Saunders..." Pointer said again, "is she shielding some one? If the latter, what is the motive? Love?"

"Of lying," Wilmot finished cynically.

Pointer laughed, but refused to believe that here they had an example of art for art's sake.

"I had thought when I read about that visitor in the reports on the inquest that Miss Saunders might be shielding her, but assuming her ignorance about the lady's departure to be honest, and I do, it looks as though she might be shielding Tangye. And that fits in with another impression left by her evidence. An impression as though she had been more guarded when Haviland first tackled her yesterday than she was this morning, or at the inquest."

"And that's a fact," Haviland agreed, "though it's generally the other way around. People generally come out in black and white first of all, and then begin to tone 'em down, and mix one in with the other, as they think things over and get qualms. But not Miss Saunders. It was yesterday she was careful. Didn't want to come down hard on any statement as it were. But this morning everything was sharp and clear. No more 'I thinks' nor 'to the best of my beliefs,' about her to-day. And I wonder why she won't stop at Riverview at night..."

"Fear," Pointer said briefly. "She's afraid. She wanted to accept that preposterous offer I made on your behalf, but wouldn't."

"You think she's afraid of Tangye?" Wilmot asked. "Queer!"

"Her being afraid of Tangye," Pointer went on thoughtfully, "shows that he either is, or she thinks he is, at least connected with his wife's death."

"As a matter of fact," Haviland said slowly, "that's what I thought as I watched her. That she was afraid, I mean. And I should think that's another essential in the case?"

Haviland eyed Pointer.

"Not if she's wrong. And she may be. Only time—and Tangye—will show. As Miss Saunders' evidence is so strongly on his side, it looks as though they might have made a bargain with each other. If so, in some way, the lost keys are mixed up in it. He and she both jib at those keys. Neither has made any effort to have them found. The maids were unaware of their loss."

"They both claim the keys are unimportant," Haviland reminded him.

"They do. And they both look uneasy when they're mentioned. At least Tangye does, always. And Miss Saunders was more than uneasy that time when I made her think Tangye had connected her with their loss."

"Well! Well! Well!" murmured Wilmot with gusto. "I still don't see any sign of a crime materialising, but you do give a glimpse into a very intriguing little family circle. But speaking about that visitor, how did she get out? That still remains as great a puzzle as ever."

Haviland promptly solved it for him.

"There's a cupboard in Mr. Tangye's room where overcoats and golf-clubs and such things hang. The back of it is really a door we found just now, leading out by the tradesman's gate. I didn't notice it yesterday, for I didn't search the house. I'm afraid I took her leaving a bit for granted in fact."

"You think she got out that way?" Wilmot asked. "If so, that would show?"

Pointer answered for Haviland, who was not quite certain what it ought to reveal by Scotland Yard standards of divination.

"For one thing that the caller who was mistaken for Mrs. Cranbourn, knew the house."

"Whew-w-w!" whistled Wilmot, "bloweth the wind that way?"

"Which way, Mr. Wilmot?" Haviland asked with a furrowed brow.

"Secret passages—vanishing ladies—gent's smoke-room—Sultan's favourite—that way. The way of the film vamp. Are you going in for the mysteries of Udolpho, Pointer? If so, I get off here and now. Architectural details always bore me to tears. There's no scope for the brain in that sort of thing."

"There's plenty of scope for any brains in this," Pointer reassured him. "For all of ours. Even for yours, Wilmot." But the newspaper man shook his head.

"I ought to've refused the job. It's quite out of my line. This hunting for clues...The Insurance Company ought to've sent down a retriever dog, not me!"

Pointer burst out laughing, so did Haviland, and so, after a moment's gloom, did Wilmot himself.

"Think so? Could Fido tell me why Miss Saunders gave no thought as to how that visitor got out? I think her bewilderment was genuine. What has been occupying her mind so intently that there was neither time nor room in it to spare? What's she been so busy over? I really think that's more in your line than Fido's, Wilmot. So, don't let them exchange you for him yet awhile."

"But I'm no good at this game," Wilmot protested. "You, as becomes a C.I.D. man, can't be happy without a crime to unearth. While I, for the life of me, am unable to even see the possibility of one here." He, too, spoke very seriously now. Seriously and thoughtfully. "I see odd trifles such as must generally accompany accidents or sudden deaths one would imagine. When the roof's torn off a man's house. But no more. For one thing, to me that revolver having been fired by Mrs. Tangye's left hand seems conclusive."

"It's the Insurance Company's best trump, I agree," Pointer said handsomely. "Yes, it's odd. Very."

"I don't call it odd. I call it an impossibility unless her death was either self-inflicted or due to an accident. For it clearly marks emotion. And as such is of great weight in proving a suicide, and not out of place in asserting an accident. But it couldn't exist—couldn't—in a murder. For I should like to remind you, Pointer, that there are such things as genuine suicides, and genuine accidents. Though they don't seem to've come your way. That Charteris tangle coming on top of the Eames Erskine Case has put your eye out."

"Very possibly. But your clever criminal always stages the effect of either accident or suicide. Preferably the former. Don't forget that either. You know as well as we do that not every case is docketed at the Yard under the label which the coroner's verdict hangs on it."

Wilmot did know.

"And that's a fact," murmured Haviland fervently. "Speaking of doors, Mr. Wilmot, that door found leading out of Tangye's smoking-room...Well, what leads out of a thing, leads into it too!"

"And that's a fact," Wilmot quoted gravely.

"Of course it may mean nothing. In fact, I still don't see how there's a crime here, for Mrs. Tangye would have rung that bell quick as light if any unauthorised person had come into the morning-room."

Wilmot sighed.

"Entrances—exits—butter on fingers—Fido's job!" he murmured disconsolately. "But supposing this were a crime—which I'm perfectly satisfied it's not—on the evidence so far, that is to say—"

"Perfectly satisfied? Is that the Insurance Company speaking?" Pointer imitated a telephone call.

Wilmot grinned.

"Fairly satisfied then. A nice look-out for us it would be! Not the ghost of a hope of catching the criminal."

"I wouldn't bank on that," Pointer said tranquilly.

"Do you really mean that you believe we could catch a criminal with nothing more to start on than the little we've got hold of so far?" Wilmot's tone showed his incredulity. Yet he was a firm believer in New Scotland Yard. In the will to win of the quiet men trained there. And among these men Pointer had risen high and swiftly. Wilmot wondered if more had reached the ears of the C.I.D. than of the police.

"Routine does a lot," Pointer murmured placidly.

Wilmot laughed outright.

"I feel like Watson's youngest bady in the arms of the mighty Sherlock. Do you mean to tell me, seriously, that without the person who killed Mrs. Tangye—you quite understand that my acceptance of his, or her, existence is purely academic, and solely for the purposes of discussion—without his making one false step, you could hope to bring home this crime? I'd be willing to bet a thousand pounds it couldn't be done."

"You'd lose, Mr. Wilmot," Haviland said loyally. But he, too, had his doubts. He knew Pointer's record. But every man makes mistakes sometimes. The Chief Inspector was a favourite with those who worked under him. He was probity itself, unassuming, open-minded, quick, accurate, and absolutely untirable once he had set out on a trail. But he was no wizard. Haviland wondered uneasily if this case might not be going to be one of the Yard's few blunders. Somehow, Haviland could not say how, he felt that Wilmot might have less science, less determination, but more luck. It was not the way by which Wilmot considered that his past triumphs had been won. But allowance must be made for esprit de corps.

"If I'm right, then it's the one false step he's already taken which ought to do the trick," Pointer said grimly. "He's killed. And unless it's an entirely motiveless crime, a homicidal impulse—killed for a reason. In the case of a lunatic, I grant you, the best detective outside of a book, might not be able to do his duty. But if a motive once existed, it can be found again. It exists as much as a lump of concrete exists. It's better evidence. For it's indestructible.

"Of course," Wilmot mused. "I agree that once a man commits a crime, he sets machinery in motion which he can't stop without showing himself in the effort. For he's part of it. But what if he's too clever to make any move?"

He shook his head at the prospect of the law in such a case. So did Haviland.

Pointer's face hardened. "Murderers always think that if they can plan their crimes cleverly enough, they can get away with it. My whole life is based on the conviction that you can't have a premeditated crime with a motive so clever that it can't be found out, and traced home. Unless there's a slip in the handling of the investigations. The murderer gambles on that slip, that's all."

"I wonder!" Wilmot weighed the thought in his mental balance, then shook his head.

"Speaking of facts," Haviland suggested, "if we could find a few more. That cleaned-off safe door was odd. That smoking-room exit very handy. Still, they don't prove anything. Mr. Tangye's alibi seems very sound."

Pointer shook out the dottle from his pipe.

"Time's up. We had better return to the house. After that, I, or rather you, Wilmot, have an appointment with Stewart, he's the Tangyes' family solicitor as well as the Coroner, you know. And then you got Miss Eden to give you an appointment over the telephone for later in the afternoon."

"Miss Eden?"

"The friend with whom Mrs. Tangye spent the greater part of Sunday at Tunbridge Wells. She's up for the inquest and the funeral. I doubt though, if it will be easy to learn anything fresh from her—judging by her deposition."

"Sorry," Wilmot said apologetically, "but you'll have to deputise for me. I seem to've made double engagements for this afternoon. So, unless you would like to write my next article, and send in half a column of your opinion on the new Opera—"

Pointer declined with a laugh.