Читать книгу The Charteris Mystery - A. Fielding - Страница 4

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THE day after the concert was one of those wonderful spring mornings, when even the dullest man feels his kinship with the fields, and the birds, and the play of shine and shadow.

Across the grass of Medchester Common, which stretched in a sheet of clearest green, for its leopard skin of daisy and buttercup was still to come, ran Bond, with Cockburn several yards behind him. Both men were in running kit. Once, the man in the rear stopped, and called out something. But as he regularly recorded some injury every hundred yards or so, which necessitated a halt, Bond only laughed and ran on.

This time, however, an exclamation followed which made Bond wheel. The other was staring with bulging eyes and dropped jaw into a sand-pit just off the path. The look on his face made his friend come sprinting back.

"What's wrong? What's up?"

Cockburn only pointed, and Bond, following the direction of his hand, felt his own muscles slacken.

"Good God!" he breathed. Then, with a "Here! There must be a way down!" he ran around the pit, and together they slithered to the bottom, where lay the body of Rose Charteris.

She was quite dead. Her face, serene and beautiful, upturned to the periwinkle deeps above her. And compared with the utter stillness of it, the sky seemed a turmoil, the clouds a fighting army.

It was unmarred by any injury, but it lay appallingly far over one shoulder. Only a broken neck could take that position.

Cockburn picked up one little clenched hand. His reverent manner told again what both men knew.

"She's quite dead."

Bond touched it too. It was as stiff as a piece of ivory.

"I'll fetch a doctor." He bounded off as though time still had a meaning for that which lay behind him.

Cockburn took up the watch beside the shell of Rose. The sound of steps walking slowly along the road reached him. He clambered out of the pit and saw Thornton coming around a bend.

The neighbourhood seemed to keep exemplary hours. As a rule, "Bond and Co." had their morning dips and runs to themselves.

"What's the time?" Cockburn called. Then coming nearer as Thornton replied, "Six," he went on, "Miss Charteris has fallen down the sand-pit here. She's quite dead. Bond and I've just come upon her. Frightful to see her lying there."

"Dead! Miss Charteris dead!"

Glancing at him, Cockburn noticed how gray his face had grown.

Bond came running back.

"Medico's coming along at once."

A raucous horn sounded, and a two-seater stopped beside a clump of trees some yards from the path. "Morning everybody! Surely there's some mistake. Miss Charteris—" The doctor had looked into the pit. He left his sentence unfinished. Turning, he replaced his little black bag with a shake of his head, and made his way down.

"Shocking thing to've happened." He got up from beside the dead girl "She's been dead for hours. It's criminal to leave places like this unfenced. Well, I suppose we shall get our railings—now! She must have stepped off the path right over the edge. I'd better be getting along to Stillwater House to break the news. Poor—"

"Morning, gentlemen!" said a brisk voice, with a hint of breathlessness in it. The Medchester superintendent of police was not as young as he had been. "I met a young gentleman down the road—oh, there you are, sir!" This to Bond. "Ay, that's our Miss Charteris right enough. Not much chance of mistaking her for any one else." His eye took in professionally but sympathetically the still young figure and the oddly bent head "What a terrible thing to've happened. No need to ask if she's dead."

"Neck's broken. She must have gone too near the edge and fallen over."

"When do you think it happened, sir?"

But the doctor was too young a man to set an hour by the old-fashioned clock of rigor mortis, or temperature. He shook his head.

"Some hours ago evidently. Apparently on an early sketching expedition She's got her little outfit with her." He picked up the japanned box as he spoke.

"Has she now?" The superintendent looked more shocked than ever. "Ah, here's Briggs. Blest if he hasn't brought the broken stretcher. I'd best go back with him."

"We'll leave you to come on with the body, superintendent. But how about my car? She only holds two."

"Bond and Co." at once offered to wait for the stretcher.

"Then shall I give you a lift, Mr. Thornton? This has been a great shock even to me, and a doctor's used to death."

Thornton thanked him, and after arranging with the two friends to breakfast at Red Gates, got in.

"Sad case!" The doctor, a fair, chubby young man, started the engine at last. "Going to be married to that Italian staying down at the Medchester Arms, I understand. Though I seem to remember something about her having been as good as engaged to Bellairs, the artist, and that it was only the count's huge fortune that tipped the scale. But if one believed all one hears!"

Thornton gave his usual, non-committal nod.

"Her father's against the marriage with the count. Quite right, too," the doctor went on. "Very clever man, Professor Charteris. He was talking to me about a synthetic-emerald company which he's going to start, on the links the other day. I mean, he was talking on the links, not going to start making 'em there." The doctor checked his laugh. "This will be a terrible blow to him. And to the ladies up at Stillwater. At least—I dunno. She and Miss Sibella weren't supposed to get on over well together lately. But you know how wide of the mark idle chatter of that kind often is. I really hope for once, though, that there may be something in it. It'll break this blow, a bit."

"I had no idea there had been any ill-feeling between the two girls," Thornton murmured truthfully. He felt like a man, rather proud of his sight, who tries on a stranger's eyeglasses, and finds his field of vision trebled.

"Of course, I don't know anything about it—I never pay attention to gossip, but they're said to've been at daggers drawn for some time past. Some say over the legacy, and some over the way Miss Charteris turned down young Bellairs before it was known how his mother was going to leave her money—after she married again, you know. I think it was over the legacy myself. Well, Miss Scarlett'll have it all now. She little thought it would come to her so quickly. But of course, if what people hint is true, and it's to do with the count! Both the girls had that hot Italian blood in them, you know. Old blood. Too old. Give me a nice English girl or woman—like Mrs. Lane, now. There's a woman for you! Nerves of steel."

"Indeed!" Thornton said politely, looking bored.

"Lots more in her than you'd think. Wonderfully taking young woman, too. I had to set a sprained wrist for her once. The rumour runs that she only has to lift her little finger to be Mrs. Scarlett the second, for all she's young enough to be the colonel's daughter. But I make a point of never listening to tittle-tattle."

"Oh?"

"Can't as a medical man, you know. Quite impossible."

There followed a little break in the impossible.

"Do you know when the professor's coming back?" Thornton thought that amid such a flood of information that item might well be washed up.

"I? Not the faintest notion! How should I have? But there's an idea about that he's off for Verona to see if a law-suit can't be avoided by a friendly settlement out of court. If you ask me, I should say that he's much more likely to see if the engagement, or whatever it is, can't be stopped. As for expecting any family, however rich, to hand over land, that's always rather a pill, isn't it? And so's my breaking the news here."

The doctor's car clanked noisily up the drive. Thornton saw one of the curtains on an upper floor twitched a little to one side. Nothing was visible of the face looking out except a pair of eyes. They were so nearly level with the window ledge that their owner must be stooping or kneeling. The strange thing was the expression in them.

Thornton called his companion's attention to something on the other side of the gardens, as they stopped with a grinding clash that would have disturbed the driver of a donkey-engine, but which left the doctor unruffled.

He himself walked on past the house. He took quite a turn in the grounds, before returning to his cottage. Mrs. Bennet, she of last night's narrow escape, was setting the breakfast table. One glance at her and he saw that she knew of the accident.

"Oh, sir, the poor young lady's just arrived! The poor young thing! To think that I warned her only last week about that path. 'Miss Rose,' I said, 'don't you believe Miss Sibella that it's so much shorter, or, if it is, it's dangerouser.' But there!"

A light knock interrupted her. It was "Bond and Co.," and a very quiet breakfast followed. Mrs. Bennet's cooking conduced to silent meals, but it was not the reason this time. When the three men had lit their pipes, they strolled out into the garden. Another silence fell. Each seemed deep in thoughts that he was in no hurry to share. As usual, it was Bond who took the lead.

"You know, I'm not quite easy in my mind," he said at last in a low tone, "not at all easy! No, I'm dashed if I am!"

"Easy about what?" Thornton asked after a pause

Bond jerked his head towards the house. "Frightful end to come to a lovely girl like that, and Heaven knows I don't want to make bad worse. Yet—well, I'm not easy in my mind. There was something about the way she lay in that sand-pit. I can't put a name to it, but there was. Look here, I'm going to have another inspection of that place, and round about. Care to come, either of you?"

Thornton nodded. It was a favourite way with him of carrying on a conversation. Cockburn had already turned.

They started to walk back by the footpath. Suddenly Cockburn stopped.

"By Jove! I believe those are her very footprints before us!"

All three saw the marks of a small shoe with a low heel, just such a shoe as Rose wore, in fact, clearly marked in the damp earth. Walking carefully on the grass, they traced them until they stopped at the spot where the sand-pit ran in close to the path.

"Then here's where we ought to examine a bit more closely." Bond's voice was very low.

All around them the common stretched. Close beside them on the right lay the sand-pit. Some distance to the left a copse straggled untidily. Just the usual brambles, spindly aspens, and twisted nondescripts On one of the branches a willow warbler was pouring out a little song, as perfect and as finished as his own green-and-white feathered coat. A cuckoo called from far away—melancholy, mysterious. Such sounds might have been the last that Rose Charteris's ears had ever heard.

Suddenly Bond pounced on something lying just beneath the singer. Something that glittered like a drop of belated dew. It was an amethyst bead of a beautiful full purple. Cockburn picked up a second. As he turned his find over on his palm it left a red stain.

A little thing, this bead, he thought, to possibly hang a man.

"Blood," Bond nodded to himself. "Yes—well, I felt sure that something was wrong. And here again on this little clover patch, here's blood again."

No one spoke for a tense second, then he went on.

"I don't think we ought to track up the place any more, or paw things over. I think we ought to go at once to the police."

"Surely to Colonel Scarlett first, and let him call in the police," Thornton objected.

"Every moment's of value," Bond pointed out briefly. "I don't think this is a time to stay for mere politeness."

"It's a question of common decency," Thornton spoke with warmth. "We ought to go to him first, and tell him about the beads. Not spring the police on him before the stretcher carrying his niece has more than reached the house."

Cockburn looked as though there were something to be said for this point of view. But Bond thrust out that slight, rather retreating jaw of his.

"Sorry, I don't see it that way. We might waste half the morning in talk. Look here, the superintendent seems a decent chap; let's lay the affair before him, and he can see to it that no one's feelings are unnecessarily shocked. Or why not you go back to Stillwater, and let the colonel know, while Co. and I go on to the police station?"

Thornton did not seem to care for this suggestion.

"No. I'll go on with you, since you insist on doing it this way."

The three walked to the nearby police station. And, a moment later, to the accompaniment of whiffs of kippers, the police officer they had met at the sand pit hurried into the room. He was a stout, florid man, who owed his position to the pluck with which he had stopped three bank robbers after they had killed the manager.

Now he himself was due to retire very shortly. He had done very well. He was an honest, fair-minded, kindly man. Popular, in spite of his strictness, even with the tramps that passed that way.

He listened attentively to what his three visitors had to say, looking, thoughtfully at the two beads and the tuft of clover laid in front of him. Then he turned to the telephone and rang up the doctor. There followed a quick interchange of questions and answers. Then the receiver was laid down, and Superintendent Harris turned with a smile.

"You heard, gentlemen? Doctor's perfectly satisfied that death was due to a fall from the path above into that sand-pit. I must say I share that opinion. Very likely the beads broke as she was walking along. She may have stopped to knot the string together in that copse. As for the blood, just the remains of a bunny-and-stoat tragedy, I fancy, such as you can find a-plenty among the lanes. Were the beads valuable?"

All three looked to Thornton.

"Not compared with the crown jewels, but the amethysts were of a rare colour. And the pendant, besides being an unusually fine piece of Persian lapis lazuli, well veined with gold and silver, had belonged to Cosimo de Medici. That, of course, might enormously increase its value to a collector."

"I see"—the superintendent, at any rate, tried to—"but it's not like—say, a fine diamond brooch, I mean the whole lot?"

Thornton agreed that that was so.

"Well, gentlemen," Superintendent Harris said after another pause, "I really don't see any need to distress the family. Though I'm sure I'm much obliged to you for coming to me so promptly." And he bowed them out.

Each of the three was very distrait as they parted at the garage of Stillwater House, where "Bond and Co." got out their car. As for Thornton, he went on up the drive and rang the bell.

It was Paul, the general man-servant, who opened the door. Paul was a gentle, garrulous soul. He looked very subdued and mournful.

"Come in, Mr. Thornton, sir. I see you've heard the news. Oh, sir, what a tragedy. What a blow for the family, and especially for the professor, he being away on his holiday so to speak." Paul shut the door as though it were a coffin lid. "The colonel's not in, sir. He's just gone up to town with Mrs. Lane to see about getting into touch with the poor gentleman I'm sure I don't realise our loss yet, sir. None of us do. But having been born on the estate"—Paul always referred to Stillwater's few acres as though it were Balmoral—"finds it doubly hard."

He could not say when the colonel would be back, nor where he could be reached, and Thornton was let out again with the same solemnity. He walked slowly to his cottage, looking like a man weighing something very important, and by no means certain on which side the scales will ultimately dip. Yet evidently extremely unwilling to do—whatever he thought of doing—until he had reasoned out where the most weight should ultimately lie.

Finally he picked up a telephone book and hunted up a number. It was the number of New Scotland Yard. He asked for Detective Chief Inspector Carman. Now, as it happened, that police officer was out on a case. But scribbling a note for him in his room was a tall man in worn tweeds, with a spare, athletic figure, and a certain look of quiet competency on his sunburnt, good-looking face. A very resolute face it was, only saved from being a hard face by the kindly, wide-apart, well-opened, gray eyes. It was he who took down the receiver.

"Detective Chief-Inspector Carman? I'm afraid he's out. Friend of his, may I ask? Oh, just read of him in the morning paper; I see."

"Hullo, Pointer!" a brisk voice hailed him from another room, "I thought your leave wasn't up till day after tomorrow!"

"Busman's holiday. I had to come up for a visit to the dentist." The man at the telephone turned to the tube again.

"Are you there? Can I give Chief-Inspector Carman a message? I can't say... he may he out all day... it's Detective Chief-Inspector Pointer speaking."

There was a pause at the other end, then he heard Thornton say very slowly:

"A young lady has been found dead. I was one of those who found her. The doctor says it's an accident; the superintendent at the police station says the same; but—" Here followed an account of the beads and the tuft of grass. Then he continued, "And since thinking it over, I have an impression that there may be something wrong, and that's not a pleasant impression to have in such a case."

"Certainly not. Who is speaking? The name will be quite confidential. Thornton? Mr. Thornton of the 'Athenaum' and the 'Saville'? Quite so. And the young lady? I see. Well..." There followed a pause. "Of course, as you're no doubt aware, sir, New Scotland Yard can't take a hand in any investigation unless asked by the chief constable of the county. But there are ways, of course..." Followed another pause. "Are you there, sir? I'll tell you what I'll do. Have you a car? Good! Drive it yourself? Excellent! If you'll meet me half-an-hour from now, that's nine-thirty exactly, at—" Pointer had opened an ordnance map of Hertfordshire. He indicated a spot very close to Stillwater House. "I'll come down myself unofficially. I'm on leave and, of course, where I choose to spend it is my own affair. You write, I believe, Sir?"

The clubs mentioned made this a likely shot. Thornton said that he did, on Eastern art chiefly.

"Just so. Illustrated? Good. Then I'll come down as a draughtsman sent by your publishers to take your instructions about some new plates in your coming work."

"A most unlikely story to any one who knows publishers," objected Thornton, "but the point is to get the case cleared up. The girl's father is abroad. Her uncle's un-get-at-able in town. And one always understands that to be early on the spot is half the battle for an investigator."

Pointer agreed heartily and hung up the receiver. He proceeded to have a car sent around. He was very particular about its appearance. Just as particular as he was about his own, though Thornton did not suspect the care in either case when a battered, dirty, noisy little two-seater coughed its way around the bend at the hour set by his Scotland Yard ally. Its looks certainly suited the man who lumbered out into the road. A big depressed-looking figure, round-shouldered and shabbily dressed, with spectacles on his drooping, slightly-reddened nose.

"Mr. Thornton?" His voice suggested ill-health "I'm Brown, the man you were talking to on the 'phone just now." He coughed wheezily. "From the printers', sir. May I get in?"

"Tumble in," said Thornton, and Brown obeyed him literally, giving him a meek glance as he did so. The detective officer saw a man of about thirty-six, medium-build, dark, good looking but for an air of weariness, spiritual rather than physical. Life bored Mr. Thornton, and life is apt to resent that attitude. He had a satirical smile, and a veiled, non-committal eye.

"Keep the car away from the hedges, please," suggested the man beside him, undercover of a none too clean handkerchief, "and as you take me to the lane behind your cottage perhaps you would give me an idea of how the rooms lie in Stillwater House, especially Miss Charteris's room."

Thornton did so.

"One thing more," his companion continued, "when we get there, will you kindly make your way to outside her room and wait there on guard till I come out. If any one passes her door, just strike a match. I see you smoke. If they make as though to enter, strike a second. When I'm done with the room, I shall join you at the place where you stop your car. Of course, should I be noticed in the house, I should be simply sent by the undertakers."

Once arrived at Red Gates, the man slipped out and disappeared up a side path as though he knew the grounds by heart.

Thornton met no one as he climbed the broad staircase in the dim light of drawn blinds, and sat down on the landing: He heard no sound from within the room where they had carried Rose.

Yet the man from Scotland Yard was inside it. He was just lifting the sheet which lay over the dead girl. Her head had been straightened on the pillow, and her wrists loosely crossed, otherwise she lay very much as she had been found.

Pointer parted the beautiful hair gently. The cut on top was not deep. From his bag he took a tiny phial. Fastened to the inside of its screw top was a wire with a pad of sterilised wool at the end. He carefully swabbed the cut, going only a little way along it, so as to leave a possible trail for others. He looked, at the swab closely.

It showed what seemed like earth, and a few tiny specks of what his magnifying glass told him were bits of flower-pot ware, or possibly red tiling. He re-screwed the phial, labelled it, and dropped it into his bag. Then he rapidly examined the girl's face and dress The shoes detained him some minutes The soles at the heels showed traces of having walked in damp, sandy earth Some country lane, he guessed The bows had both been tied very carelessly, and both very much off to one side The same side. He took a small dot of the mud from one heel and labelled its envelope. Then he cut two patterns of the soles out of paper, and put them away in his pocket. There was a small bruise on one arm. It told nothing as to its origin, except that he did not think that it had been caused by any encircling pressure such as a grip Under both her hands, which had opened since she had been laid on the bed, for rigor mortis was passing off, he found some withered twigs, and what looked like tea leaves, so shrivelled were they by the icy touch of death.

Out of the bag came an outfit that formed a small microscope when put together. The leaves showed now as crushed withered flower petals, almost like tiny white roses. Pointer was a Bideford man. He knew his plants and trees. This was from a sloe tree. This was blackthorn. He examined the dead girl's hands carefully with one of the glasses that he detached. They were lightly scratched on outside and inside, but they showed no trace of sand. Neither did the nails.

On one sleeve was a tiny smear of green paint, very faint. He knew that the dead girl had had her painting box with her, but it held water-colours. This felt like oil paint of some kind. A few drops of turpentine from his bag settled it. It was oil paint. He turned the still figure gently over.

Across the back of her frock, a few inches above her waist, ran a broad tear. It looked at a glance, remembering where she had been found, as though the frock had caught, on an overhanging bough or pointed stone. But the glass showed that two threads of the knitting had been cut, quite definitely cut with scissors. Nor was the remainder of the dress pulled in any way, as it would have been had she hung from some projecting catch. He decided that a strip as long as his span, and as broad as his hand, had been taken from the back, and the silk 'teased' to look as though torn.

He turned to the things which had been found with her. They were lying on the table. There was the tin box with a sketch of some ruins in the lid. Pointer felt the picture. It was dry. So were the brushes. So were the little china pans of paint. They had not been dampened for a week past, he felt sure. Next he picked up her hat of silver gray felt, soft as a kid glove. At the mere feel of it he gave an inward jump. It was quite dry. All the rest of Rose, even to the hair which had clung in cold tendrils around his fingers, was wringing wet. As he examined the hat his features stiffened. The inside was badly stained with blood from the cut, but the outside was unmarked in any way. There was no trace of blow or fall. The hat had been put on after the injury was inflicted. Must have been. After all her clothes were soaked through. After she was dead, or unconscious, in other words.

The case had some unusual features already. It was speedily to acquire more. Pointer, in his guise of Brown, slipped out of the room, locking the door again on the outside as he had found it. Without a glance at the waiting Thornton, he drifted down some back stairs.

Thornton went out to his car. A minute later Brown joined him.

"Sand-pit. As near as possible without our being seen, please."

Then, when they were well under way, he asked whether Miss Charteris had been wearing a hat when her body was found.

"Yes. A gray felt. The doctor took it off to see the extent of the head injury. He brought it home with him in the car along with her painting outfit."

Close to the pit, Brown stumbled out again, and Thornton waited. Disguise there might be, but he felt certain that many halts, and much missing of the path, would mark the progress of this hound of the law.

The man from Scotland Yard walked back a little way along the short-cut, examining the shoe-prints carefully. Then he clambered down into the pit. There was no water there. Then he scrutinised the nearby copse. He saw no blackthorn tree amongst them As for the pit, neither in it, not at its edge, was there green of any kind but grass. He returned to the car.

"Well," Thornton asked tensely, "have I got you down here on a wild-goose chase?"

The voice that answered him was the one that up till now he had only heard over the telephone. A quiet voice, but resonant, and full of character.

"I think not, sir."

Thornton was surprised at the change in the eyes looking into his. The make-up was still there. The reddened lids, the watery effect, but there was in them now the look of the captain on the bridge taking over command when dirty weather is expected.

And Thornton's face, too, though he was unaware of the fact, had altered. There was a hint of pallor in it of stress around the mobile mouth that was carefully noted. It was not more than might have been expected under the circumstances, but it was not less.

"I suppose you couldn't tell me if you have found anything that looks like foul play?" Thornton's eyes were more veiled than usual as he put the question.

Apparently the man beside him could not.

"What did kill her?" Thornton asked after a futile wait.

"A fall."

"You think she was flung into that sand pit, then?"

"Well, she was found there, wasn't she?" Thornton thought that it would be hard to imagine a more inane reply.

"Now, sir, I shall walk back along this short cut," Brown went on in a whisper. "May I ask you a few more questions at your cottage presently?"

"Certainly. I am quite at your service. Of course you must let me put you up."

Brown thanked him, and then shambled slowly back beside the marks of Rose's shoes. His eyes were now on them, now searching the trees in sight. Here and there he saw patches of snowy blackthorn, but the trees were never where they could have played a part in the mysterious death that he was studying. Yet Rose Charteris's hands had grasped their leaves as she fell. Fell whence? Fell where?

Back at Stillwater he turned into the grounds and walked slowly through them. He came to a halt not far from Thornton's cottage, facing the lake that gave the house its name, and which now marked one boundary of Colonel Scarlett's grounds. An Italian summer house stood at one end, so surrounded by evergreens that it was hidden alike from house and cottages. Its two stories ended in a waist-high railing which marked out half the flat roof into a square, with high corner posts crowned with flowers. The railing was green. So was an outside stair that ran from the ground to the little Lookout, as Pointer learnt later that the roof was called.

Around the summer house ran a row of flower-pots set on a broad band of red tiles. There were four doors, each marked by a tree. On the side farthest from the house lay a pile of cut boughs beside one of these little sentinels.

The tree, a blackthorn, had been lopped back almost to a pole.

Pointer hurriedly lifted the snowy branches one by one. Those underneath had been badly broken, as though by some heavy object falling through them. He ran up the outside stairs. The railing was being repainted, and repainted green. The same coloured green as the faint smear that he had just seen on Rose Charteris's sleeve. It was still tacky. On one side, the side above the cut boughs, were three dull smudges. A broad smudge the length of his span, and two smaller ones, well to one side. All three showed a sort of turning movement.

He looked very closely at them. The two smaller ones he took to be hand grips, though they showed no definite fingerprints. The turning movements of whoever had gripped the rail to look down on the flagging below had been too strong for that.

All three marks had been made before last night's rain, and judging by their looks at about the same time. The balustrade was still bordered with a fringe of tiny drops.

The broad one corresponded in length and height from the flat roof top, with the missing strip on the back of the dead girl's frock. The balustrade was not a broad one, but Pointer thought that the greater width of the cut-out oblong had been caused by a rotary movement on the paint.

That would mean that she had been flung over backwards. And those hand-grips—they might well be those of the murderer peering down at the lifeless body of his victim. They were not made by Rose, and he thought not made by any woman, Rose had exceptionally slender hands.

He knew now where Rose Charteris had met her death. He believed that he was standing on the very spot.

The line of clues had been so straight that he hoped for a short, clear case which would be over in a couple of days. It had begun like that, but a few minutes later he saw that it was not going on like that. Not at all. Pointer always considered the Rose Charteris murder as puzzling a problem as any that he had ever tackled.

He made his way through a gate close by to the short cut again, and traced those shoe-prints, that corresponded exactly to the two outlines which he had in his pocket, back to the sand-pit.

The marks were deep and clear. They must have been made when the sandy path before him was soft and yielding, but not sloppy after the rain. Their edges were far too sharp and definite for them to have been washed by such a flood as that of last night.

But Rose Charteris's dress, her hair, her shoes—but not her hat—were wringing wet. There was no water in the sand-pit; its sides had been too deep to let the very slanting downpour strike in hard. Nor would any pool there have explained the fact that though her clothes and hair were soaked through on top, they were merely damp beneath her. No. Rose must have lain out in that hard rain from start to finish. Lain in all likelihood where she struck the flagging. That meant that these shoe-prints were made some hours after Rose herself had taken her last steps.

Pointer remembered the hasty bows on the shoes. Both tied to the same side. The rain, as he had ascertained from the meteorological expert at the Yard, had come down in this part of England at half-past ten, almost to the second, and lasted just twenty minutes.

That being so, he decided that the prints before him had been made somewhere around one o'clock in the morning.

He took some casts with stearine powder and some careful photographs with his tiny camera, that photographed vertically downwards.

The steps were those of a woman light in weight walking slowly, and balancing herself very strangely. At one moment her weight was on her right foot. At the next it would be on her left. Sometimes a step backwards had been taken, sometimes the forward step checked halfway. She was a young woman with a springy gait. He judged, though, that the shoes were too big for her. Now Rose had small feet for her height, so whoever had taken her place would be shorter than she, or much smaller-boned, slighter built. But the gait! The strange, halting, pressing gait! Lurching at times... the word was the key he needed. On the instant he guessed the reason, for this was no drunken woman's purposeless perambulation. The woman who wore the shoes of the dead girl was not carrying a load, but she was steadying one.

Pointer studied the ground like a bushman. He found a mark such as he was looking for, first on one side of the path, and then—in one other place—on the other side. Such a mark as a hard-tyred bicycle would make But it did not cross the path He made quite sure of that He deduced something like two hard-tyred bicycles with a space between. Possibly a plank had been lashed to them, the body of the dead girl placed on this, and wheeled to the pit.

But this did not explain the fact that though some of the prints showed the woman as steadying she was never pushing a weight. She was keeping something true, but she was not using force. Evidently some one else had done the pushing or drawing, her task merely being to see that no wheel ran on the sandy path where Rose Charteris's were to be the only marks left behind. All other footprints had come much later, when the path was far dryer, or else had been pounded flat by the rain previously.

Under the trees in the copse, Pointer read some more of the cryptogram which every crime leaves behind it.

He saw now that it was not two bicycles lashed together which had been used, but a sort of trolley mounted on two hard-tyred wheels about three feet apart. He had never seen such a carrier, but, like some savant, reconstructing a prehistoric monster from a jaw-bone and an inch of fossil spine, he could by now have drawn it to scale.

Under the trees he found prints of Rose Charteris's shoes, of a man's boots, and of a woman's high heels, all in inextricable confusion, but the marks of Rose were nowhere on top.

Here, then, he thought, the woman had changed into her own footwear.

He did not think that the body of the dead girl had been flung into the pit. It might in that case have shown cuts which a doctor would know had been made after death. The Scotland Yard officer examined the pit minutely. There were no marks detectable as those of the sinister couple who had walked from one of the farther gates of Stillwater House to the pit last night with a corpse between them. He decided that Bond, Cockburn, and Thornton, the doctor, and the men with the stretcher had obliterated them. There was only one easy way down, to the bottom.

Pointer walked rapidly to the police station, but Superintendent Harris was up in town, the chief constable was down with influenza, and Briggs, the constable in charge, looked to Pointer a better judge of beer than crime.

He returned to Red Gates, where he found Thornton doing a good five miles an hour in front of his fireplace.

"I want to ask you a question or two about the doctor who was fetched when Miss Charteris was found dead. Is he the sensible, family doctor type?" Pointer asked.

"More of the leaky-sieve type, though doubtless the soul of good nature. Why?" Thornton wheeled sharply about.

"I'm thinking about that death certificate that he's going to fill out. You see, it's not so easy opening people's eyes when you're not supposed to exist—officially. You don't happen to know at what hospital he studied? Though we can easily find that out."

"My dear Mr. Brown, I've met the man at least three times! I doubt very much if there's one fact of his past, or present life therefore with which I'm not on nodding terms. Give me a moment for reflection, and I can doubtless supply you with the name of the patent food on which he was reared. As for your question—he's a St. Thomas's man."

Pointer laughed outright. He had the laugh of a boy.

"Good. Yes, I think I can work that." But what it was that he proposed to manipulate he did not say. He turned away, but Thornton stopped him.

"A moment. Of course it's natural that I should be interested in this case." He paused, as though really waiting for an answer.

"Quite so, sir."

"Do you think it's going to be a simple affair, or a—well—complicated case?"

Pointer looked at him with an apparently absent-minded eye.

"Simple cases," he said thoughtfully, '"there aren't many—presuppose a simple life, simple surroundings, simple conditions. Say it's murder. Well, life nowadays is often so complicated that when you take it—obviously, you take something exceedingly complex. At least, that's been my experience."

There followed a long pause.

"Then you think—here—that will prove to be the case? I mean, you think that it's murder, and that there's more than one person implicated, and so on?" Thornton spoke without turning round.

"It's hard to say," Pointer answered. And so exceedingly difficult did he appear to find it that he was evidently disinclined to attempt the feat as he slouched off to the summerhouse again.