Читать книгу The Craig Poisoning Mystery - A. Fielding - Страница 6

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AT a word from Godolphin, Houghton remained with the former in the doorway while Pointer took several photographs of the room and then quickly measured the distances between the various most important pieces of furniture and marked them on a plan.

That done, the room was free to move about in, though Godolphin asked Houghton not to touch anything. He himself stepped first of all to the bed and looked long at the face which had been hidden by the sheet. "He's altered," Godolphin said pityingly; "must have suffered agonies, by the change in him."

"He relied on me—and I wasn't there!" came in a choked whisper from Houghton, who strode to the window a Moment and stood there, back to the room, biting his lips.

Pointer eyed the dead man closely. He saw a good-looking man with sharply cut features—features that suggested considerable driving power. He looked a very unyielding man, the detective thought, a man whom he would expect to insist on his own way even in trifles. He looked, to Pointer, like one who would live to schedule, and insist on others living to it too. There was nothing easy-going about the face. But it was emphatically the face of a law-abiding man.

"I'll see to it that whoever did it pays for it!" Houghton now said tensely, moving away from the window and stepping to the writing-cabinet. He picked up the keys, which lay where he had left them, unlocked the case and flung back the top.

"You see, the paper's not in here!" He fluttered through the contents a second time, more carefully.

Godolphin good-naturedly forbore to remind him about not touching things, and went through the little cabinet too.

"There's no gum here," he remarked as he did so, "otherwise it seems to be stocked with everything that the mind of a stationer could think of. What's the word the house-agents always use? 'Replete.' That's it."

"Yes, a sort of portable office. But as you say, there's no gum, though there's a pot of Stickwell. And what's much worse, there's no 'part of a letter.'" Houghton shook his head.

Pointer, after looking the case over very carefully too, took out the letter sent Houghton by the dead man.

"It evidently came from that block there. Want to make sure?" asked Godolphin, without much interest.

"I think we'll find it's an inch shorter than the rest of the sheets on this pad." The man from the Yard was measuring the two with his long but very strong-looking fingers, the fingers of an engineer.

4.

Godolphin, who was turning away, turned back keenly interested. As he had thought, the letter sent Houghton was identical in make of paper and color, but, as Pointer thought, it was an inch shorter. The envelope, on the other hand, tallied absolutely with the others in the same division, envelopes made to go with that particular block.

Pointer eyed the lower edge closely.

"I rather thought that something had been torn off here and that the edge had then been roughened to look like the other edges," he murmured half to himself.

"That would explain why the envelope was opened!" came in great excitement from Houghton.

"Y-yes, only I don't think it was Mr. Craig who went to the trouble of trying to hide the fact that the paper had been shortened," Pointer said, deep in thought.

"Someone with plenty of time did that. Neatly done."

"It looks as if a postscript had been added and cut off by someone," Godolphin thought. "I can't imagine Craig working to make the sheet look as if it hadn't been touched, can you, Houghton?"

Houghton ridiculed the idea. "The last man in the world to've cared how the paper looked," he added.

"No," his voice was husky, "what was taken away was the name! I feel sure Ronnie opened it to scrawl with his weary fingers the poisoner's name. Perhaps a sort of feeling that he had better tell me...Well, this, at any rate, proves that the letter is no forgery, had proof been needed."

"Whoever tore it off must have known—positively—that you and the writer were not going to meet. At least, that's how it looks to me—so far," Pointer said slowly.

"By Jove!" came from Houghton, "what a thought! That the actual fingers that tore off—touched—that letter, that opened that envelope, were the fingers of the murderer!"

"I don't know about opening the envelope. Mr. Craig might have done that himself to write the very postscript in question," Pointer reminded him, "but as to who tore it off...yes, that's how it looks, so far."

"I rather agree with you, Pointer," Godolphin now said. "Yes, I rather agree with you. I wonder if we can find any finger- prints on it—?"

"You won't!" Houghton said hopelessly. "Whoever tore it and worked away at the edge to make it look like the rest of the paper would have worn gloves."

He picked up a big book from a table by the wall. "This is what I wanted him to send the precious find in." He fluttered its leaves carefully but fruitlessly. "Match said he wrapped up a book...Here's the wrapper!" He pounced on the paper-basket and fished out a brown sheet that had been folded around something flat and sharp-edged. Houghton laid it on the volume. The marks fitted.

"So he did mean to send it...I would have asked Match about it just now, only I didn't want to interrupt the story of how the end actually came. Hello—look at this!" Houghton had turned the wrapper over.

He pointed to a hole torn in it. Looking closely, they could all see the end of a pen-stroke and a fragment of a stamp on the part that remained. But the address had been evidently torn bodily out.

"But who—who—" Houghton spoke thickly. His hands shook as he let Pointer take the wrapping-paper from him and fold it up carefully for finger-prints. Houghton let them have his to subtract from any possible others. Craig's were taken too. Pointer enclosed the wrapper in a waxed paper envelope for careful attention at the Yard, after Godolphin and Houghton initialed it and put the hour and date beside their initials. Houghton looked like a man in a nightmare.

"This is amazing!" he said finally. "In a way infinitely more amazing than not being able to find that part of a letter of which Ronnie wrote me; than discovering that his postscript had been torn off his letter to me. That they should disappear is comprehensible—part of the criminal's efforts to escape detection. But why should anyone want to tear my name and address off that wrapper?"

There was a short silence. It was, as he said, oddly incomprehensible.

"Whoever tore it off couldn't have known that Craig had written to you," Godolphin hazarded finally. "I think it was done to keep you out of the affair lest you should do just what you have done, and bring down a medical expert."

"Poor Ronnie! Poor chap! The best pal a man could have. To go under surrounded by this sort of work—"

Houghton spoke passionately, under his breath. "It's like turning over a stone and finding it alive with crawling vermin. I quite counted on finding that paper—finding it in this room. But I'm afraid there isn't an earthly chance of its being here, as you say." As neither of the other two answered him, he went on, "Or even in existence, you think?"

"I'm afraid not," both said frankly.

"I won't allow that it's been burnt or destroyed," he said obstinately. "It would be too rotten bad luck!"

"There's always accident, or a blunder, or the possibility of blackmail to keep it safe," Godolphin comforted him. "I've known very incriminating documents saved for the last reason. Not by the criminal, needless to say, though."

The search passed on into the bathroom. Here, again, no paper was found. What had been the sitting-room intended to go with the bedroom was now the nurse's room. There was nowhere else to look, except in the remainder of the house, and evidently Craig himself could not have hidden it, except in his sick-room.

"Mr. Craig used to live here himself, I understand, before the house was made into a dower house?" Pointer asked Houghton, as the latter stood looking rather helplessly down at the toilet- table of his cousin.

The drive up from the police station had been too swift to allow of more than a few words between himself and the chief constable. Houghton nodded.

"Yes. This is the outline of my cousin's life. He ran away to sea as a lad. Refused to come home, and stayed on in the merchant service. When his cousin, Sir George Craig—Lady Craig's husband—who had bought this house, found it a bit small and inconvenient, he let it to Ronald Craig and his wife. Then when Sir George died—intestate—a little later, it came to him as next-of-kin. When George died, Ronald left the sea and went into the City. Bought a seat on the stock exchange and did surprisingly well. Lately he's been doing really big things. Playing the South American market. He got out a year ago. Cleared a huge fortune. His two little kids, both girls, unfortunately, live here with Lady Craig. The house is hers for her life use, of course. Ronald turned it into the Dower House when he began negotiations for buying Clere Towers."

"You didn't speak of that missing paper to Lady Craig?" Godolphin eyed him thoughtfully.

Houghton returned the look.

"I did not. I didn't speak of it to anyone until I heard that a policeman was on duty outside the bedroom to prevent anyone entering. I had to leave the key with Dr. Gilchrist and Lindrum. You see, I thought then that it was somewhere in this room."

"And you think Lady Craig might have destroyed it?" Godolphin asked.

"I didn't, and don't, think one way or another about her, or anyone else," Houghton said doggedly, "but someone in this house has been wearing a most damnably well-made mask. Someone has been posing as an ordinary inmate, perhaps as something closer, and yet has murdered Ronnie. Apart from what the doctors say, his letter to me shows that. It's a horrible fact, but it is a fact. As for me, I'm all in the dark. I find that I can't tell his friends from his foes."

There was a short silence.

"I'll see if by any chance the letter got tucked away into some magazine or book and is downstairs," Houghton said finally, without much hope of success, and so saying he left them.

Colonel Godolphin and Pointer stayed a little longer in the bathroom.

"Mr. Craig was evidently not very particular about his personal belongings, in spite of all that stationery outfit in there." Pointer stood glancing over the tube of shaving cream, squeezed into a sort of dying-worm effect, the dented tin of toothpaste, a cardboard box of cotton wool bursting at every fold, and a very much used pair of brushes that stood on the glass shelf.

"Certainly there's nothing of the millionaire about these things," Godolphin agreed. "I told you, coming here, that he had no valet. He was a chap of simple taste all through, I fancy. Though in the merchant service he wouldn't have had much cash to spare, and while his financial plans were ripening he once told me that he had to look twice at every shilling. He dressed shockingly. But Countess Jura would have altered all that fast enough. She has the reputation of being extravagant enough for a dozen ordinary women. It was for her that he bought Clere Towers from Lord Wattle, who couldn't afford even to heat it. And because he made such elaborate improvements in it, the wedding had to be delayed. Come to think of it, that plumbers' strike may have done the Russian girl out of well over a million."

"Was there no idea when the marriage was coming off?"

"Not for a couple of months, was the latest opinion of Sir Oliphant Newton, the architect to whom Craig handed Clere Towers over. In spite of Craig's efforts to get it earlier. Craig was desperately afraid of rivals with the lady. Personally, I can't think why."

"Was there any special man with whom her name had been coupled?" Pointer wanted to know.

"Nothing so easy for you! No, preventive measures only, I believe. But as he himself fell head over heels in love with her at her first dance, I suppose he thought she might have the same effect on other men. It's club gossip that the marriage settlements were drafted the same week and O.K.'ed by her relatives, but that with them went the proviso that the countess was to stay with Lady Craig, at Woodthorp, until the wedding."

Pointer had finished in the bathroom. The two returned to the bedroom. "Anything you've taken a fancy to in here?" Godolphin asked.

"Mr. Craig's cigarette holder on the mantelpiece. Apparently he has only the one. It's seen, much service." Pointer dropped it into an envelope after Godolphin had had a look at it. "The box of cigarettes over there," the detective officer went on; "they're Russian cigarettes, I see. Then his tooth-brush and tin of tooth-paste from the dressing-room. His tumbler and water- bottle"—Pointer was writing a list—"will have to be left for later. There's the medicine bottle from the butler, and his medicine glass here on the mantel end. I think that's all for the present."

"Anything more in here that interests you?" Godolphin asked.

"Yes, something else, sir." Pointer picked up once more a coverlet lying folded on the foot of the chaise longue. He spread it out over the silent sheeted figure in the bed.

"That ink splash?" Godolphin said promptly. "Looks new, eh? Rather near the foot, unless the coverlet has been turned so that what is now the foot was at the head."

"Fortunately you can't turn it." Pointer showed that a flounce ran around the three sides, leaving the top plain. The coverlet in question was of deep crimson, which struck a very happy note of color in the peacock-green room, with its walnut furniture.

"Looks to me as though Craig, pen in hand, had leaned far forward and drawn up a spare blanket," Godolphin thought, "and a splash like that looks as though he had dropped his pen in doing so. But no The splash is too big for that. You think someone leaning on the bed-end here, and holding out a filled pen to Craig, like this, dropped it? But why make such a splurge?"

Pointer, his eyes on the stain, did not answer.

"What's your reading of the trail, scoutmaster?" Godolphin persisted.

"Do it again, sir," Pointer asked. "Hold out your pencil as you did just now, not at the full stretch of your arm, but as a five foot four to six person might have held it."

"You mean a woman? But the splash is too near this end," Godolphin objected.

"Not if I do this, sir." Pointer promptly leaned over the bed until his arm was approximately where the sick man's might have been had he been sitting up, and struck the pencil from Godolphin's hand. It fell very fairly near the spot in question.

"That's it!" Godolphin ejaculated. "And that accounts for the ink splashing toward the bed-end, a curious point which had rather bothered me. By love!" Godolphin hung over the coverlet a second, his lips tight, "I don't wonder Houghton feels as he does I Something very nasty was going on here in this charming little house, among these dear simple souls. How old do you think the ink stain is? It looks very fresh to me."

So it did to Pointer. "The H.Q. analyst will tell us. Also what ink it is. Though we may hear something about it from someone in the house. It may, of course, be only an ordinary accident, but I think it must have happened yesterday, or else why was the coverlet left unchanged. It was apparently folded up here at night. And I rather think"—Pointer hung over the bed—"I rather think that something fell at the same time as the pen. Or why is there only the one splash and none of the little fry that usually go with such a mark as that?"

"You think the rest of the marks were on whatever was dropped at the same time?"

Pointer fancied that they might find that the case. "A pen suggests a paper," Godolphin went on, as Pointer began to collect his notes.

"Suggestive!" Godolphin said slowly, "and Craig poisoned Craig poisoned! You know, if you had searched the countryside over, I don't think you could have found a house where one would expect to be safer from that sort of thing than here. There are only women in the house for one thing—"

"And poison is supposed to be peculiarly a woman's weapon, and peculiarly the method of death chosen by fellow inmates," Pointer finished to himself. But aloud he only said, "Barring the doctor."

"True. Barring Bob Lindrum."

"What's his reputation, sir?"

"Good. Meant for the Church, but preferred doctoring. Father was the late rector here. Gave Bob the best education he could stretch to, on the understanding that his mother and sister should always have a home with him. Bob took a splendid degree, and is well liked. Of course this poisoning of Craig's, unless it's cleared up, will be a disaster to him. But provided he's not implicated—and Craig felt sure he wasn't—he will live it down in time. After all, how could he suspect? He's not a policeman. And between ourselves, I doubt if I should have suspected in his place."

"And Mr. Houghton's reputation, sir?"

"First-class cricketer, which means that he always plays the game. He's wealthy. On the stock exchange, and engaged to a charming girl, one of the Somerset Hawthornes." Godolphin caught sight of the clock. "Suppose we have breakfast? I had only started mine. By the time it's over, the doctors may be able to give us a word to go on—something official. Or are there any clues that will melt away?" Pointer thought not.

"As to helping Houghton hunt on for that enclosure that never reached him, he might as well search for the torn-off postscript, to my mind," Godolphin went on.

Pointer agreed.

"I'll break it to him gently"—and Godolphin left the room. The chief inspector beckoned to the constable on the landing and had him lock himself into Craig's room. Outside, Pointer stood a moment looking about him. A passage ran to a door at its end, others opened off it. Beside the end door he found a staircase. As he was about to descend it he heard voices in the room, tense to the point of anger and yet low. They were women's voices. One was Lady Craig's:

"There's quite a good train at eleven. I shall explain to the colonel that you want to get another post at once, so as not to be associated in people's minds with this tragedy—at least not more than can be helped. The explanation is reasonable. That is all I wanted to see you about." A chair was pushed back.

Pointer came up from the staircase as though from below just as the door opened and Lady Craig came out.

"I'm getting the geography of the wing in my head," he said. "May I look in here?"

"Certainly!" She turned the handle. Inside, a plain, thin, tall young woman was standing by the table with her head bent, so deep in thought that she did not look up. Pointer had never seen so much hesitancy, such deep uneasiness, so clearly on any face before. This young woman was trying to think, trying to come to a decision which, whatever it was, she evidently considered very important.

"I refuse—" she began. When Lady Craig cut in:

"This is the chief inspector, he just wants to see the room for a minute"—and without giving Pointer another second, Lady Craig closed the door and turned to him.

"Have you found out anything? One hears of such marvels nowadays."

"The case is in Colonel Godolphin's hands," Pointer reminded her.

"And he is—?"

"Downstairs with Mr. Houghton, I think."

She hurried down the passage, and he could hear her descending the smooth polished stairs to the ground floor. The manor abounded in uncarpeted wastes of slipperiness. Pointer went down the little stairs deep in thought, found a door at their foot unbolted, with the key standing unturned in the lock, that led directly into the garden. He examined first one and then the other for some minutes. That done, he found the chief constable in the library with Lady Craig and Houghton. "Do you mind if we show Lady Craig your letter, Houghton?" Godolphin was saying as Pointer entered. Houghton repeated that he left everything to the police.

She read it through and stared accusingly at Houghton. "Why didn't you tell me of this at once?"

"I preferred to let the police manage this show, Emily," was the cold reply.

She bit her lip. She was angry, but was also something else. Pointer thought there was dismay mingled with the anger, or even causing it. "Well, of course that takes it quite out of our circle," she said after a second's silence. "Some business affair. There was no reason in the world, but one, why Ronald should have been deliberately poisoned, and that was—his money. Or something to do with it. I'm glad to know as much."

Godolphin coughed behind his hand.

"Now about this portion of a letter Craig refers to," he went on, "have you seen anything that might be it? In his possession, or in his room?"

She said that she had not.

The same answer was returned to a question as to her having seen a book intended for the post, or its wrapper in the basket, when the idea of posting it had apparently been abandoned.

"I don't believe that Ronald did know the truth," she said almost defiantly. "No; why should he? He found something that misled him as half-truths so often do. I don't think he knew who was poisoning him at all."

"My dear Emily," Houghton raised an eyebrow, "that won't wash. There never was a better judgment than Ronnie's. I'd trust it in every circumstance," and so saying he left the room.

"Rubbish!" she said tartly. "There's no one whose judgment is always right. Besides, there's only one person who benefits by poor Ronald's death." She had turned to Godolphin. "That is Guy Houghton. This is in strict confidence of course."

"Oh, absolutely!" both assured her.

"But I don't see how—" began Godolphin.

"Oh, how could anyone have done it?" she interrupted shortly. "Mind you," she broke off, "I'm not saying for a moment that Guy did, or could do such a thing. But I do maintain between ourselves that he is the only person who benefits by poor Ronald's death. The only person in the house that is to say—"

"Outside the house?" Pointer queried.

"The only person outside or inside the house," she amended.

"But the motive? I thought he was a very wealthy man already?"

"He's on the stock exchange," she said swiftly. "Who knows how anyone really stands there? But all this is beside my one point which is, the fact that he profits, profits enormously, and the rest of us lose!"

She fastened a pair of hard, watchful eyes on the chief inspector as she spoke. Pointer thought that he would never look to Lady Craig to help the cause of justice—supposing this mood were characteristic of her—and supposing the hunt for the truth lay too near her own concern for her liking.

Lady Craig had not noticed any difference, however slight, in Mr. Craig's manner, toward anyone in the house from noon on yesterday? "From the time that letter you just read was written, in other words?"

There was no doubt about it: she paled.

"As far as I noticed he was just the same," she said promptly. "He certainly was to me, and so I assume he was to everyone."

The two men went into the hall; there they found Houghton just coming out of the library.

"I've been trying to get Osbourn, Ronnie's solicitor, on the phone," he explained. "The firm is Osbourn—Osbourn of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Unfortunately, this being Saturday, he is out of town. However, the message will be sent on to him down to Hove, letting him know that Ronnie's dead, and he won't be long in getting into touch with us. As I told you, the Empire Insurance Company looked after my cousin's financial matters entirely since he left the stock exchange last year. There, too, we must wait till Monday."

"By the way," Godolphin asked suddenly, "who inherits if anything happens to you?"

Houghton stared. This was a new idea.

"To me? Oh, well, if anything happened to me at once, I suppose both our fortunes would be divided between the children and Lady Craig as the only remaining kith and kin." He thought over the idea for a moment.

"Well, be careful of yourself!" Godolphin said gravely. "As a sensible man you won't eat or drink except at the inn while down here. We're off for the police station now. The doctor's first information should reach us soon, and we'll be back at once supposing it is what we all know it will be. Sorry not to help you in your search, Houghton, but believe me, or rather us, it's sheer waste of time. That paper is either destroyed or in very safekeeping somewhere." So saying, Godolphin, followed by Pointer, made for his car.

"So Lady Craig is very insistent, isn't she?" Godolphin said dryly, "that no one benefits by Craig's death except Houghton. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. But why?"

"Ah, why didn't she want to say to whom Mr. Craig's manner had altered yesterday afternoon or night. Or at least toward whom she thought it had altered?"

"You think she kept that back?"

"I do, sir, after due—though naturally hurried—reflection."

"Humph!" Godolphin murmured, "I always did say that Emily Craig was deep. Damned deep. Or could be. What are you looking at?"

Pointer was examining some black specks in an envelope. "Tea leaves, sir, which I picked up by that handsome Dutch silver tea- caddy in Mr. Craig's room. The one beside an electric kettle."

"It was empty, wasn't it? I thought it looked merely ornamental."

The caddy in question, a handsome affair with a tea-schooner in full sail on the lid, conveyed that impression owing to the dust-free condition of its gilt interior.

"This tea is very unusual..." Pointer replaced the envelope in his letter-case. Tea was one of the things on which he was qualified to speak. Had he had his way, a statue to the great Chinaman who first in vented it would tower aloft in every country. "A genuine Chinese blend, I fancy. It's unfermented, or I'm much mistaken. I don't think you can buy this, except as a special order, anywhere in Europe."