Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 37

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POINTER stepped in for a moment with Haviland at the police station. He wanted the photographs of the revolver. They were ready for him. An Inspector hurried in. "Mr. Tangye's been telephoning, sir. He says he's gone over his wife's papers, and finds there's a large sum of money missing from the house. Fifteen hundred pounds. Says it must have been at Riverview yesterday."

"This does alter things for a fact!" Haviland jumped up with the eyes of a good watch dog who hears some one on the step. Was it possible that facts, real facts, facts which you could marshal and exhibit, were going to bear out the Chief Inspector's fantastic idea?

They telephoned the news on to Wilmot, and walked quickly up to Riverview. Tangye was waiting for them. He looked both angry and uneasy. Taking them into his study he closed the door, and rapidly amplified his message.

It seemed that Mrs. Tangye had employed a separate firm of solicitors for the management of her property. Sladen and Sladen of Baker Street. Tangye said that he himself knew nothing of her estate. Had always refused to know. But on going over the papers which the firm had sent him, he had found that half of a sum paid her during the past fortnight was missing.

"Like her keys," Pointer reflected aloud, and Tangye turned a swift, wary, glance on him. But he answered impatiently:

"The keys are of no importance. A sum of money is a different thing. It seems she sold a farm over a week ago for three thousand pounds. The money was paid in at her solicitor's office, and remained there till yesterday. But just after two, Mrs. Tangye drove up in a taxi, without an appointment, and took the whole amount away with her. She was paid in bank-notes. Half of those notes are missing."

"Bank-notes? Why not a cheque, sir?"

Tangye explained that his wife had had an invincible dislike to cheques. A bank had once failed, leaving her with an uncashed, worthless cheque. Since then, all her transactions had been strictly in notes.

"Well, of course," Haviland repeated, taking down the numbers of the notes, "this does alter things, for a fact."

"Not in the essentials. Mrs. Tangye's death was an accident. Couldn't of course have been anything else," Tangye said shortly, "but that missing sum may have been stolen."

"She would keep the money in her safe, I suppose?" Pointer suggested.

"She might have."

"You think the loss was unconnected with her death?"

"Obviously. But how many people would you trust in a house with the mistress dead, and a wad of notes like that?" Pointer and Haviland nodded their agreement with the only possible answer to this question.

"But what makes you think your wife had not invested the money in some way? She might have posted that fifteen hundred off at any time between two and the hour she returned to Riverview—about four."

"I've always seen to her investments. Why should she pay a stockbroker's charges when she could get it done for nothing?"

"Perhaps she wanted a bit of a flutter with it, and did not like to you know. There's a tremendous boom in cotton just starting."

"Don't you suppose Sladen and I have 'phoned to every inside and outside man, every bucket-shop in the kingdom, before turning to you?" Tangye asked impatiently. "No offence, Chief Inspector, but I'm afraid you're only losing time with your questions. The best thing for you to do is—"

"For me to decide, sir," Pointer finished very quietly.

Tangye mumbled what was meant for an apology.

"I don't see how you can be sure that Mrs. Tangye might not have gambled in another name," the Scotland Yard official went on.

"No point in that. She was absolutely her own mistress."

"The exact halving of the money looks as though she had some definite purpose in view," Pointer went on unruffled.

"And how do you know that none was spent yesterday, sir? A lady can get rid of a lot of coin in a couple of hours, for a fact," Haviland said with the gloom of a husband and father, as he went off to the library to telephone the numbers of the missing banknotes to his inspector at the police station, with instructions as to where to try to-night.

"Fifteen hundred pounds!" Tangye repeated the sum under his breath as though the figures loomed large to him. "It's not the money in itself. But I don't like to be done. No man does. I won't be done!"

"It seems quite simple to me," Pointer said mendaciously. "Those lost keys and the lost money will be found to belong together. Find who has taken the one, and you'll find who has taken the other."

He was watching Tangye in the mirrcr, as he seemed engrossed in getting his pipe to draw better.

Tangye stiffened in his chair.

"Damned nonsense. You must excuse me, Chief Inspector. But that cock won't fight. Can't. I know those keys are somewhere in the house, as I told you. On thinking it over, I remember now quite clearly seeing them myself lying about the place after the police left. I can't recollect where—but I know I saw them."

Pointer dropped the subject of the keys.

"Mr. Tangye," he said instead in a low voice. "You know more than you're telling us. About this missing money. Or, at least, you suspect more. You have some reason for feeling so certain it was stolen."

Tangye's face paled a little. He detached a cigar-band with extreme care, and laid it on the exact centre of a log, as though it were a votive offering, and as such had to be presented with strict conformity to rule.

"Not at all. But my knowledge of my wife's habits makes me feel sure that Mrs. Tangye had done none of the things with the money you suggest. I believe it was in the house when she had that fatal accident. I believe that some one, knowing it was there, stole it."

Pointer bent forward.

"Whom do you suspect?"

Tangye got up and walked to the window. Drew up the blind with a snap, and let it down again with a crash. That done, he helped himself to a stiff drink. Then only did he reply.

"No one. That's what I want you to find out. You're so extraordinarily interested in Mrs. Tangye's death, which is no mystery, and perfectly simple—though God knows it's terrible enough—yet, when I hand over to you a genuine inquiry, you seem to want me to do the work, the investigation."

Tangye's nerves were evidently strained.

"It's the idea of being done, I can't stand," he said himself, as though in excuse.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"By the way, while the Superintendent is putting one of his men on to trying the railway stations and other open-all-night places, I'd like another word with you about Mrs. Tangye's cousin. We want to be sure he wasn't in touch with her just before her death."

"You can be sure. They were on anything but a friendly footing. Naturally. Oliver is a thoroughgoing blackguard. My wife usually refused to even speak of him. He would hardly venture to write to her—"

"But he might have come."

"Here? To Riverview? I should like to see him dare to show his face here. I should have had him kicked out inside of ten seconds, and as for Mrs. Tangye—! I suppose you know something of his record?"

Pointer only confessed to an extreme interest to learn it.

"He was sent down from Oxford. Cheating at cards. He's been auctioneer's clerk, sailor, orchid-hunter, and rumrunner since then."

"You feel quite certain that he had not written to Mrs. Tangye in all these years? She was his only relative." Tangye sat, apparently thinking back.

"'Pon my word! I wonder if he could have had the collossal nerve! She used to say that he could blarney a cannibal. You know that he once got Branscombe to give him some money for a fresh start? Oliver started all right—drug-smuggling to the Bantus. Mrs. Tangye stopped the supplies as soon as she learnt of it."

"Was there anything odd about his appearance? I mean anything that would attract attention? Stick in the memory? Been easily recognised again?"

"Yes to all the list. Unforgettable sort of face. Bird of prey, yet clever! Then he was immensely tall and thin."

"Had he a limp?"

"He hadn't when I saw him, but if the rumour's true I heard some years back that he was gun-running for the Riffs, I should think it probable that he has one by now."

Pointer got as detailed an account of the missing man as Tangye's remembrance could supply. He asked if Miss Saunders might join them for a moment.

She came in with her quick, silent step, which yet conveyed no suggestion of lightness.

Pointer watched her in the mirror, his back to the door, as she entered. She flashed a swift glance first at him and then at Tangye. That glance was unmistakable to the eyes on her. It was a confederate's glance.

"Anything wrong?" was telegraphed as clearly as though ticked out in Morse. So these two were partners, at least for the time being. At any rate in something. Tangye's eyes avoided hers.

Turning, Pointer explained the circumstances of the missing money to her. He noticed that Tangye waited for him to do this. She looked startled and uneasy, and something else that even Pointer could not decipher, it was so quickly repressed. Pointer thought that she seemed inclined to doubt the whole story until she heard of the solicitor from whose offices Mrs. Tangye had taken the money only yesterday.

She then said that Mrs. Tangye must have banked it, or used it in some way. Tangye retorted that that was what they all thought. He looked at the woman with a lowering stare.

"Do you want us to list the money under 'missing or stolen,' or only under 'stolen'?" Haviland asked returning to the room.

Tangye started a little.

"Under 'missing or stolen,'" he said after moment's thought. It was the most natural form where a doubt existed. But it was also the only form which would let Tangye stop the inquiries should he later find, or pretend to find the money. Once entered as Stolen, only an order from the Home Office could check the search being carried through to the bitter end.

Did Tangye know this?

Pointer let Haviland do the talking, while he sat apparently listening. In reality observing. He noticed again how little the stockbroker turned to him. He made Tangye uneasy in some way. What way? And he made him more uneasy now that he was talking of the missing money. Why?

And again why did Tangye try so hard to pull himself together during this talk. Each time that he was on the point of being natural, would come some evident effort.

Evident to Pointer's observant eyes, that he was anxious to make no slip. What sort of a slip? But he seemed genuinely eager that the money should be traced. Eager, and yet cautious. Who was he shielding or prepared to shield? The Chief Inspector speculated on the new turn the case had taken. Was it an honest turn? Fifteen hundred pounds in the house Tuesday afternoon. Was that connected with the death of Mrs. Tangye or was it but a coincidence? Certainly his idea of a crime was not weakened by this new piece of intelligence. There came another thought. This lost money fitted in so well with his theory of an outsider, was it possible that that was Tangye's aim? What if he too knew of the unknown's existence, was in league with him, feared lest the police had learnt of his visit, and with the guilty man's haste to cover even non-existent tracks—had invented the lost money as a pretext for the stranger's visit?

But the longer Pointer studied the man talking to the keenly interested Haviland, the more he decided that Tangye's emotion about the loss was genuine. That Tangye was trying to repress, not to force, the note on this point. He acted to the very keen, trained eye of the detective officer like a man much more concerned in the matter than he cared to show. On this came the reflection that possibly Tangye had wanted the whole £3,000 so badly that he had had a hand in his wife's death. A hand so carefully concealed that now, little by little, he could venture to direct the search towards it. Was it a case of a criminal having been "done" by his accomplice, and trying to get that accomplice caught? Tangye's frequent use of the word suggested this. So did his manner. By what he did not say, as much as by what he did. Pointer believed that for some reason he dared not be more explicit. Yet Tangye was emphatically not a man to be frightened of shadows. A stockbroker must have good nerves.

Rising, Pointer asked Miss Saunders to come into the drawing-room. He closed the door with ostentatious care. It gave a confidential suggestion.

"Miss Saunders," Pointer spoke very low, "there seems to me, quite frankly to be something rather—well—odd, about this claim of Mr. Tangye to that fifteen hundred pounds. What do you think yourself?"

"Of course it isn't lost," she spoke shortly, and with a note of anger in her thin voice. "Mrs. Tangye's invested it somewhere that they haven't found yet. That's all."

"It's very perplexing," he said a little dismally, "very perplexing, indeed. Did you make any arrangements on Monday as to where you intended to go from here?" he asked in the same breath.

She had not expected that question. She all but jumped.

"I don't understand. Going from here? Monday? It was only Mrs. Tangye's death yesterday that made me decide to go to my sister's."

"You had your trunk brought down in the morning?"

"I thought Mrs. Tangye's idea of sending some clothes to the poor an excellent one," she said sweetly. "I intended to do the same."

"I see. Now, do you mind telling me where you were last Sunday? This lost money puts the case in our hands, and we've a regular routine to work through."

"Where was I last Sunday?" She turned a watchful eye on him. "At church, part of the time."

"It's the remaining part I want to hear about," he said lightly, "you left here, at what hour?"

"In time for the eleven o'clock service. After that I stayed with a friend. And we took the children to one of the museums by way of a treat."

"Could I have the name of the friend?"

"I couldn't think of dragging her into this sad business."

"And in the evening?"

"I spent helping her. She put me up."

"And Monday?"

"We spent shopping."

"For the children too, I suppose?" he said gravely.

A light flickered in her eyes. It looked like amusement.

"You might be a family man yourself," she murmured ironically. The door opened. But why had Tangye stopped outside to listen first? He glanced in airily.

"Oh! Sorry to interrupt. I was afraid you had gone, Chief Inspector."

"No, I was saying to Miss Saunders that with such a sum in the house why of course we have to ask a number of fresh questions."

"But who would steal bank-notes?" Miss Saunders asked pertinently.

"When did you last see Mrs. Tangye at her safe?"

"Many months ago I saw her lay some books in it. She used it as a sort of cupboard at times. It was always unlocked."

"Could it be locked?"

"I don't know." She turned to Tangye, whose jaw shot forward.

"Of course it could be," the master of the house said briefly.

"And the key was on her key-ring, I suppose?" Pointer, continued.

"Possibly."

"Then the missing keys might be important, after all."

Tangye said nothing. Miss Saunders brushed the top of the marble mantelpiece with her hand. She, too, said nothing.

"Florence saw them at four on her mistress's desk," Pointer went on.

"So she says." Miss Saunders' tone was contemptuous. "You seem to attach great weight to a maid-servant's word—almost as great as to a reporter's!"

"As a rule, neither have anything to gain by mis-statements in a case of this kind," he said blandly. "You didn't happen to notice them in the room on your return from the library? I mean, before Florence came in?"

Tangye started. He cast a quick, furtive, look at Pointer and then at the woman.

"No," Miss Saunders said very composedly. "I do not think they were there then."

Pointer was apparently bending over a table near him, but he saw the hard, suspicious stare that Tangye gave the speaker. She returned it with something of defiance. There was a silence which the detective officer did not break. Here was no love affair, he thought. Whatever had been in the past, these two did not like, did not trust, each other now.

He wondered why Tangye seemed so unwilling to link the lost keys with the lost money. The stockbroker did not strike him as a clever man outside of his own walk of life. If there. Though Pointer had a feeling, had had it from the first, that Tangye's path was beset—at least to the man's own thinking—with pitfalls. That he was afraid of saying one unweighed word, one hasty conclusion.

"She invested it, you may be sure," Regina Saunders said, turning towards the door, "but it's most distressing for every one until it's found. Olive's already given notice. Florence wants to leave when she does. Cook's looking out for a new post. I'm afraid, Mr. Tangye, that you won't be able to keep the house running many more days." She left them at that, with a cool nod apiece. Tangye looked after her without saying anything. There was a set to his full mouth which was not easy to read.

"I should like to see the maids, please—alone."

Olive came in first. She had told Pointer already that she had not seen the keys since just before lunch yesterday, and then in Mrs. Tangye's hands. Mrs. Tangye was in her bedroom at the time talking to Miss Saunders.

He had not asked for further details then. Now, he did. Olive was quite sure that she had heard the door of the safe shut and locked as she went on down the stairs, dusting the banisters. No other lock in the house sounded like a safe lock, she maintained, and Pointer privately agreed with her. Miss Saunders and Mrs. Tangye had passed her a moment later, going in to their lunch.

"Had they been quarrelling, do you think?"

"Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Tangye was looking quite calm. She was saying something like 'I can't help that, Miss Saunders. By this evening, if you please.'"

"And Miss Saunders?"

"Oh, she said nothing, sir. But she gave her a look as she stepped behind her for to pass. It was a look that said 'Just you wait; my lady!' if ever one did."

"Mustn't make too much out of a glance, Olive," Pointer said lightly.

"But you see, sir, Miss Saunders—she has a way of getting even with you. You can't tell yourself how she does it. If the mistress had lived—but there!" Olive stopped herself or tried to, then she burst out, "If Mrs. Tangye had lived, Miss Saunders wouldn't be acting as if she was mistress here. But there!" Again she pulled herself up. "We're leaving. It won't matter to Flo and me."

"Why are you leaving?"

Her voice faltered.

"I can't stand it, sir. I'm not so sure as I was that it was an accident. The more I thinks it over the more I feel as though there was something—something—not quite right about the mistress's end, sir. It's thinking about those footsteps does it."

"You've no other reason for leaving?"

"I've nothing to complain of, sir. But how can I stay on in a house where there's a room I can't abear to enter, and a garden I can't pass through without it gives me a turn."

"The garden too?"

"Oh yes, sir! I never go through it without hearing those footsteps coming up behind me same as they come up behind the poor mistress. Seems as though they was after me too."

Looking at her pale face, Pointer thought it high time that she left.

"Have you any place in your mind?"

"Well, sir, Florence thinks—"

Pointer laughed.

"I'm quite sure she does. And so does Cook. But I want to know what you are going to do."

"I'm to go to Lady Ash, sir, and Flo is to come too, later on. It was Miss Barbara as settled it. I'm glad to be going there. There won't be nothing to be frightened of in a house where Miss Barbara is."

"Ash? Wasn't that the name of the partner of Mr. Branscombe, Mrs. Tangye's first husband?"

"That's the lady, sir. They live just over the bridge in Kew. She's a friend of Mrs. Tangye's. But Miss Barbara, she never comes here. She's on the committee of the G.F.S. That's how I know her. She's a dear, Miss Barbara is I I'm going at the end of the week."

"Miss Saunders is leaving Riverview too, I understand?" Olive looked surprised.

"Florence thinks—" she caught herself up and laughed for the first time since Pointer had heard her.

"To think of not being allowed to speak of me own sister, sir! But that's Flo on the stairs now."

She really had quick ears. And accurate ones. Florence stepped in a moment later, and took her place.

"It's a dreadful idea about some money being missing, sir," she began earnestly, "I don't like to stay in a place where there's been a loss like that. None of us do. But what had we ought to do, sir?"

Pointer advised her to stay on until she could go to her next place.

"No one suspects you, or any of the servants," he reassured her, keeping the qualifying "so far" to himself. "But Florence, there's something that may have a bearing on this money, which you haven't told us."

"I, sir? Oh, I'm sure I've told you everything I could think of!"

Pointer hoped she had not been quite so thorough as that. "It's about this quarrel between Mrs. and Mr. Tangye on Monday when he didn't stay to dinner."

"But there wasn't any quarrel, sir."

"Oh, yes, there was! Over—well, to be quite frank with you, I wouldn't say this to every one, mind, we heard it was over some one—a gentleman—whom Mrs. Tangye had known before, who used to write to her, and meet her now and then on the quiet."

Pointer looked inquiringly at Florence. She was shocked. "Oh, sir what a thing to say! And Mrs. Tangye not even buried yet!" Apparently there was a close time for scandal.

"We know she wasn't very fond of her husband," Pointer spoke as though half sorry for what he had said.

"Then you know more'n me, begging your pardon. Anyway, that's no reason for thinking that of her. She wasn't that sort. Not at all!"

"Yet there was a quarrel," Pointer spoke as though he knew what he was only guessing. "Was it connected with Miss Saunders, do you think? We've been told that Mrs. Tangye was sometimes a little jealous of her."

"My goodness! Whatever for?" Florence opened amazed eyes. "Why, Mrs. Tangye was twenty times handsomer! And whatever her faults, the mistress had a heart. Miss Saunders hasn't any heart. Cruel unkind she can be, if she thinks she dare."

"Oh, we were told that Mr. Tangye—"

"Don't you believe all you're told, sir," she said earnestly. Pointer kept his grave face. "There was nothing of that kind. At least I think so. I mean, I think not." Florence's tone showed that the idea was new to her.

"Then what did Mr. and Mrs. Tangye quarrel about on Monday afternoon? It was a very violent one. He struck her!—" Pointer went on in a low voice. Florence jumped.

"Oh, no, sir! Never! The master wouldn't do such a thing. Besides, it was she who was so angry. He kept trying to pacify her." Florence put her hand to her mouth. Too late. Then she began to cry.

"Oh, I wouldn't do anything to make things worse for any one," she sobbed. "And it hadn't anything to do with her accident the next day, nor to do with this missing money, sir. It hadn't really!"

"Well, of course, if we knew that for certain—" Pointer said in an undecided tone, "of course if we could be sure it had nothing to do with the case why, that might be different. But you're certain it wasn't he who was in a rage?"

"Oh no, sir. That he wasn't! He never is!"

"But you told me that there was no quarrel at all between them? How can I believe you now?"

Pointer did not speak angrily. Florence was a gentle soul. She choked.

"I didn't want to make bad trouble worse, sir. But the mistress did go for the poor master last Monday. She seemed quite beside herself. Yet just before she spoke to me very quiet, as she'd been all day long."

Pointer still looked undecided.

"Well, of course, if we knew for certain what the quarrel was about, and it might not have to be entered at all," he repeated vaguely, "what exactly did Mrs. Tangye say? But be very careful, Florence, to only tell what you really heard. Not what you thought was said."

"I didn't hear anything worth repeating sir. Just half bits and ends. I wasn't listening, only putting something right on the tea-tray that had toppled over. I had to wait a moment before I could come in. The mistress—it's dreadful to say of her now she can't ever speak again—but she was raging wild. 'The house is mine and I insist on your leaving it,' was the only sentence I heard. Complete that is. But she never meant it. Fond of the master she was, and he of her too, in his own way. But she kept on that he was to leave the house. A thing I shouldn't have thought she'd have said. He said he was going all right. But he stayed on for tea after all. So they must have made it up."

"But Mrs. Tangye must have said more than one sentence."

"Lots more, sir, but I couldn't give you her exact words. She said she had come to the limit. That she wasn't going to put up with things any more. That sort of talk, sir. Not meaning half, nor a quarter, of what she said."

"And he?"

"He kept his temper wonderful, sir. Kept hushing her. I heard him say once that she was making mountains out of molehills."

"Didn't he say anything more? I can't believe that there was no reference to money?"

"I didn't hear none, sir. Nothing but his trying to quiet her."

"You didn't hear any names? Such as Bligh, for instance?"

Florence shot him a shrewd look.

"No, sir. But I shouldn't have been surprised if I had."

"You don't think it could have been Mrs. Bligh who came to the house at six yesterday?"

"Oh, no, sir. I know Mrs. Bligh. She comes now and then to our best dinner parties. And I didn't make any mistake in the name, sir. The master read me that telegram, sir. But Cranbourn was the name the mistress gave. And, besides, she talked about her. Said as how she didn't want to be interrupted in her talk, as they hadn't met for so long, Mrs. Cranbourn living in Spain. I can't make out about that cable, sir. Seems to me most mysterious. It does indeed."

Pointer went off on another tack.

"And Mr. Tangye, now, did he ever have any friends in to tea for a chat in his smoking-room?"

"Many a time. Gentlemen only, of course."

"Ah, he'd find that way around to the back gate convenient, I dare say."

Florence looked puzzled for a moment.

"The master never uses that! The room was the housekeeper's when old Mrs. and Mr. Branscombe lived here, so I've heard."

"Didn't Mrs. Tangye sometimes use it? Or any friends of hers?"

Florence thought.

"I don't think so, sir. Though once she showed Miss Eden out that way the last time she stayed here. It is shorter if you're in a hurry to get to the telegraph office."

"When was this?"

"About a month ago."

There was another pause. Pointer seemed to have finished. "By the way, who was it chose the room into which Mrs. Tangye's body was carried?" he asked conversationally.

"She did." This startling reply was explained by Florences' face of indignation.

"That's no way to treat a corpse, is it, sir? Disgraceful, I call it. Cook and Olive and me, we've put all the greenery around we can, but it's not a room fit for a corpse, is it, sir?" Pointer thanked Florence and pausing for a second outside the den to hear the two voices within, slipped upstairs into Tangye's dressing-room. He gave it a quick, but sufficiently thorough search. In the clothes-basket he found a crumpled silk handkerchief, which still smelt of ether, and showed marks of dust. It was Tangye's own handkerchief. It had been used to wipe the safe. But was it he who had used it? Like everything else, it was inconclusive.

Pointer slipped downstairs once more, and let himself into the morning-room. He had "forgotten" to return the key.

He put all thought of the missing notes entirely on one side for the moment. The death was a fact. They were but a tale told him, and a tale with many perplexing features. Even granted moreover, that all was exactly as Tangye said, and even supposing them to be connected with Mrs. Tangye's death, they did not help to solve the immediate problem of how the woman had been killed, supposing the Chief Inspector to be right, and that she had been killed.

It certainly was going to be a stiff proposition to prove a crime there; let alone solve it. Hitherto, even when they had first led the search astray, there had always been some clue, a match, a print of hand or foot, withered leaves, a smear of paint, to serve as a kick-off. To start the ball rolling. But if, as he believed, a murder had been committed here at Riverview, the criminal had done his work very neatly. No tags had been left lying about.

In an obvious murder a detective gets a certain amount of help from the general rule that an inmate of the house stages, or tries to stage, the effect of an outsider, an outsider that is a member of the household.

Clues in such cases read in the reverse direction as it were. But outsider and insider meet and merge in a well-set suicide scene.

The windows had been found latched by the Superintendent. That suggested some one in the house. Pointer and he had questioned Miss Saunders as well as Florence very closely, and both had no reason to think that the companion was holding anything back when she said that she had found them closed. If Pointer put a question mark beside her statement, it was merely because the woman had been in the room before the alarm was given. Was she an accomplice? The suicide effect made that doubtful. This was not a death by force, but by cunning. Mrs. Tangye had not been overpowered. That was certain. But out-witted in some way. So Pointer believed. Nor did the manner of death chosen suggest an accomplice.

Supposing she had 'been killed. How could it have been done? Swiftly he went over the room piece by piece. Still he found nothing suspicious. Finally he took out a couple of photographs which Rogers, the constable, had handed him at the police station. They were the enlargements of the marks on the revolver, and of Mrs. Tangye's finger-prints. He studied the latter first of all. They were certainly wonderfully clear. They had been made by Mrs. Tangye's left hand. There was no doubt of that. Her hand had been so greasy that it had left a perfect impression even of the palm. Yet there was a fitted basin with hot and cold water beside the morning-room. Was it likely that a woman—a lady—would sit still with fingers as buttery as a new cat's paws, and not wash them? Wilmot's suggestion of a slip and a hasty grab, did not explain this—supposing she intended to live. Of course if Wilmot and Haviland were right, Mrs. Tangye might have been so lost in brooding thoughts as to be inaccessible to material things. But the plate on the tea-table with its neat little lake of congealed butter did not bear out the idea of an accident.

The enlargements showed that his keen eyes had been right. The grip was a most singular one. The tips had clutched the revolver no harder than the palm of the hand. If as hard. But Pointer could not believe that such a shock as a bullet through the heart sends to every atom of the body, would not have contracted the hand sharply. Here, all had been even—flaccid. The only really strong pressure shown had been made by the palm and the bases of the fingers.

Pointer could think of but one explanation to that. An explanation so terrible that he must make sure that it really was the only one. Or at least, as sure as possible.

He looked long at his boot-tips. Then he studied the photographs again. But this time of the scratches on the revolver. They looked freshly made. Though in a weapon kept in a closed box that might not mean much. Apparently at some time or other the weapon had been bounced up and down among a lot of metal oddments. But that is not usually a Webley's fate, even unloaded. Nor did they look erratic enough for that. The enlargements showed him that two small marks were exactly duplicated on both sides. And the trigger had a central rake which did not extend to the bevelled edge. But for the finger-prints, it looked as though the trigger had been fired by some mechanical means. He thought of the missing key-ring. The mark on the trigger could well have been made by a ring snapped back.

But apart from probability, was there even the possibility of such a plan as that would mean, having been carried out here? The marks on the Webley puzzled Pointer, but not so much as the fact that it had been fired actually touching the woman's dress, pressed against her breast. This was the real kernel of the problem. How could a revolver have been got as near as that by any hand but her own, without alarming Mrs. Tangye? Haviland and Wilmot were one in saying that here lay the proof of accident, or suicide. And to crown all, as Haviland pointed out, the Webley must have been held very level. No hasty swing, or chance pointing of a weapon, this, if it were a crime. Full front, level with her heart, touching her dress.

And the bell beneath her nimble fingers had not even rung! It was a riddle. Granted that the firer was an intimate friend, companion, husband even, how could they have got that weapon so close against her? There had been no struggle. Pointer agreed with the upholders of the suicide, or accident theories on that.

He slipped out across the hall and stood a moment by the smoking-room door. Haviland had interpreted his glance correctly and was leading Tangye on to discuss past and present men to whom he had given odd jobs about the house and who might therefore, be labelled possible suspects.

Pointer heard the gush of the soda water, and Haviland's "I don't mind if I do, sir," and returned to his own problem.

He locked the door behind him and took a turn up and down the room. He felt as though he were faced by a stone wall, on the other side of which lay his goal. Somehow, or other he would get over or break through.

The fine poise of his head, the set of his jaw became more pronounced. Danger signals both with him.

It was the photograph of the dead woman herself, which he stood in front of him this time. Square and at her ease she sat in her light chair, feet together, one hand, fingers up, on her knee, the other extended limply down with the revolver on the floor below it. Why did she sit beside, not turned towards her tea-table?

Pointer did not believe that she had been moved after death. Yet there was something artificial about her pose which had struck him from the first. Something arranged...Something set...Set!

Pointer had an idea. She looked as though posed for her portrait. Suppose she had been!

Suppose the revolver had been hidden in a box-camera, and that Mrs. Tangye had been asked to sit for her picture.

That would explain her position. Straight on her chair, facing into the room where the murderer would be pretending to focus her. The composed and yet stiff attitude of her body, especially of her feet. It would also explain the scratches on the revolver.

Pointer imagined an emptied box-camera, fitted with a few wires to hold the revolver. Its muzzle pressed against the hole in front where the lens would have been taken away.

The click of the shutter at the side could be made to pull the trigger by the simplest of mechanical arrangements, such as a ring passed through a stout elastic band.

Pointer imagined the murderer asking for a portrait of the seated womn. Coming close and apparently focussing her in the "finder." Then suddenly advancing the box with a rush, and sending the bullet straight through her heart, almost noiselessly.

As he saw it, the murderer at once picked up Mrs. Tangye's left hand, rubbed it lightly with butter from the muffin dish, he had used his handkerchief probably, and then, pressed it around the weapon as much as possible as a living woman would have done, had she fired it. Then he had dropped the hand. It was a most artistic performance, but, as almost inevitable, just a shade over-acted. He had been a little too prodigal with the butter. He had pressed the palm a little too closely on the revolver.

Those footsteps in the garden, the "footsteps that stopped"...Pointer did not think the murderer would be late for his appointment. Rather the other way. Suppose he had been waiting in the garden till the exact time set. When Mrs. Tangye walked out into the darkness he might well have thought that a still better variant of the original idea was possible. The camera packed probably with asbestos shavings, would deaden the sound of any bullet—even if fired when all was still. There is always a certain risk in an indoors murder that some one may enter, and the crime be prevented, or suspicions aroused, or the murderer be caught red-handed. Pointer thought that those steps outside on the gravel path which the maids had heard coming closer, closer yet to Mrs. Tangye, might well have belonged to the murderer stalking his prey, until Florence's unexpected turning on of the light had stopped him, and told him that, after all, it would be best to proceed according to plan.

But whose steps were they? Whose? Man's or woman's? It was a devilishly ingenious idea. Who had thought it out, and carried it out? It could be any one, provided he, or she, had some excuse for taking Mrs. Tangye's photograph. There was Oliver Headly? He fitted many of the spaces very well indeed. Was he back in England? He had been an orchid-hunter at one time. It was to an orchid show that Mrs. Tangye had gone on Sunday. Had the cousins met at Tunbridge Wells? Had a reconciliation of sorts taken place?

There was Miss Saunders...There was Tangye—Pointer thought of the glance which they had exchanged just now. Some understanding was between them. Her belief that Tangye had something to do with his wife's death must rest on some foundation, or Tangye would not be so reluctant to take a high hand about the money which he claimed was missing. For that Tangye suspected the woman of having stolen the money, Pointer was certain. His alibi was not what Pointer considered a good one. Like a middling hand at Bridge, it was neither bad enough to pass, nor good enough to bid on. All depended on what other cards might fit in with it.

And that quarrel with his wife. Her ordering of him out of the house which legally was hers. Tangye's face showed a temper that could, if let loose, be violent enough. He had used a Webley in the war. He reaped an immediate reward in the cessation of the double premiums, in the payment of the Insurance money, as well as in the control of his wife's invested funds.

Yes, Tangye stood to gain tremendously by his wife's death. In more ways than one, if gossip were true. One thing was certain. Whoever had killed Mrs. Tangye knew that the heralded visit of Mrs. Cranbourn was a bluff. The Chief Inspector did not believe that they would have chanced it otherwise.

Pointer heard the two men in the den go upstairs, Tangye saying something about showing Haviland a loose shutter.

Pointer stepped into Florence's pantry.

"Look here, I want to take a good photograph of the morning-room by flash-light. Just as part of the usual routine. Is there a camera in the house that I can borrow?"

"The master has one. He was talking of taking Mrs. Tangye's portrait only a few days ago."

"Mr. Tangye's just gone out, I think. But, anyway, his would hardly be large enough for a picture such as I want. I suppose it's one of the usual fold-up kodaks? Goes into a flat case like this?" He motioned a size.

He learnt that Tangye had just bought a new one, a large one, the kind of one that the Chief Inspector wanted, Florence thought.

"He took it don into the country on Saturday. I don't know if he brought it back or not."

Florence opened a press in the smoke-room. It was not there. Did any one else at Riverview photograph?

Miss Saunders did. The master had shown her how to use a camera that had been given her. It might do. It, too, was a box, though Florence thought not so large as Pointer wanted.

Perhaps there was an old one of Mrs. Tangye's that he could have for the time being?

But Mrs. Tangye only had a very small vest pocket kodak, At that, to Pointer's apparent surprise, Tangye was heard descending the stairs. Thanking the maid, Pointer said he would be able to ask him about it, after all. But he took very good care to do no such thing, as leaving Haviland to follow, he walked on to the police station alone.

So Tangye photographed. Tangye had bought a new, large camera about a fortnight ago. Tangye had spoken of taking his wife's portrait. Humph...And Miss Saunders photographed too...

The lapping of the river no longer sounded to him like a whispered, threefold question. Rather it was like slipping footsteps with a catch in them. Slithering footsteps with a kink. They softly kept pace beside him till he reached the station, as if some Unseen were close at hand.

Here, as he had taken the longer way round, he found Haviland and Wilmot, who had cut his engagements and come down in a hurry.

"Of course, this is just some chance, some coincidence that has happened at the same time as Mrs. Tangye's death," Wilmot began at once. Wilmot's determination to be biased amused Pointer.

"Tangye may be quite right in saying that the loss of the money is unconnected with her death," Pointer reminded him, "I think there was a murder. He says there was a theft. If that's true, it's quite possible that we have two distinct crimes here, with two distinct criminals, or sets of criminals."

"Kind Heaven above, bring me safe to shore!" prayed Wilmot. "Fortunately, I have suicide to cling to or I should be drowned. Still, it's all vastly interesting. All this seeing an investigation in the raw, as it were. I confess I never realised how difficult it is to strike the right trail. How easy to get lost along the wrong one."

"There's one thing fairly certain," Pointer spoke with decision. "If the man who planned and carried out the murder also took the notes, then he will either have some paper exonerating him, purporting to be written by Mrs. Tangye, or really written by her, or it is Tangye himself. Tangye or a tool of Tangye's. He alone could have disposed of the notes without any questions being asked; without the numbers being traced. They are his property on the death of his wife. He may possibly have expected the whole sum to have been in the house. Certainly he had been let down over them in some job or deal. Nothing else explains his temper at their loss."

"Luckily, I'm not asked to do more than investigate any claim Tangye may make in proper form by a fortnight from yesterday. It's a fascinating cross-word puzzle. Though, mind you, suicide's the right word, and all these others are only duds that Dame Fortune insists on slipping into the spaces." The newspaper man spoke, as usual, with certainty.

"It's a funny show for a fact." Haviland's voice marked but little enthusiasm for the humour of it, but a great deal of determination to find the right word. "I thought at first that this money alters the whole case. So it would, in fact, but for the way she died." Haviland ran over the whole array of beloved facts.

Pointer unfolded his idea of a portrait—of a camera.

Haviland gasped. Wilmot actually let his eye-glass drop from a distended eye. He stared at Pointer with something like awe.

"By Jove! You really...? By Jove! I wonder! But, of course, it was suicide. Yet—If by some miracle it weren't!" He paused for a moment. "That criminal you're supposing has brains, Pointer!"

"So have we!" Pointer retorted briskly. "Better brains. Just because we're not criminals. They may commit clever crimes, but those gentry are never really clever, or they wouldn't commit them at all."

"That's not been my experience," Wilmot said sadly. "No. On the whole I'm afraid I think a criminal brain can be a very clever one. Too clever to be caught sometimes."

"You can't compare a crooked thing with a straight thing. Their minds must be warped." Pointer, apart from being one of the heads of the finest detective force in the world, was by nature of that "deep goodness given to men of real intelligence." He would never permit a crime to be invested with any aureole of genius, if he could help it. Wilmot shook his head, after another long "think."

"And how far does this new idea waft you? Mind, I don't for a moment think you're right, Pointer. But I like to have the novel read to me chapter by chapter."

Pointer clasped his hands behind his head, and looked up at the ceiling, his pipe between his teeth.

"Keeping my belief in a secret visitor—whether cousin or not—out of it, for safer reasoning, speaking offhand, going merely by the camera, not trying to fit it in with any other idea, I should say that it looks as if the murderer, if a man, was not a big man. Not a crack shot. Or hadn't good sight. He's very careful not to be able to miss. He's quick and deft with his hands. Those scratches on the revolver aren't fumbling ones. I should say his little machinery worked well. Quick and deft with his brains too, I should say. Neat and careful in all his ways. He makes no real blunder. Not one. I think, to be fair, we can't count the trifling overdoing of the butter a fault. Except for the machinery part, the whole has an almost feminine touch."

"I'm bound to say you're half persuading me there's something in your theory," Wilmot spoke grudgingly. "But no, no! That's the primrose path of fancy. I stick to the humdrum—the proven. The more I think it over, the more I doubt that camera idea of yours. It's too brilliant. It does too much credit to your imagination. Yet it's most alluring! Of course there is that cousin—but no! no!" He seemed to pull himself up on the brink of a swerve.

"Then you think her finger-prints were made for her? That she was dead at the time?" Haviland could add two and two together as quickly as any man, provided they dealt with facts.

Pointer nodded.

"Haviland, farewell!" Wilmot declaimed dramatically. "I see that thou art lost to me. From now on, 'I am even as it were the sparrow that sitteth alone upon the house-tops.' I grant that it's a seductive theory—" Wilmot looked as though greatly tempted to come over to the official camp too, "but there's too much of a revelation from Sinai about it for me. I'm a slow-going chap. I plod. I stumble. I grope."

Pointer and Haviland burst out laughing. For Wilmot's lightning deductions were famous. Though, as he truly said, they had hitherto always been made after the facts had been clarified and sifted, and the possibly relevant set aside from the provenly irrelevant.

"The strange thing is that use of the left hand," Pointer ruminated. "For—unless a blunder, of course—it dates the murderer. And as, so far, we've found no other blunder, it's possible that it was unavoidable. That he didn't couldn't—know that she had educated herself out of it. That would mean that he belongs to an early part of her life. Before she went to France. Before her first marriage.'"

"In fact, it looks as if that left hand pointed directly to her cousin; first met again after long years, on Sunday," Haviland suggested. "Do you think he took Mrs. Tangye's keys off with him?"

"Possibly."

"If so, then it looks as though Mrs. Tangye had something he wanted to get hold of. Something more than the money, supposing he took that. I've tried banks and safe deposit vaults, and so on. I can't think of any other lockable place..." Haviland sat turning over in his mind possible misses.

"You know," Wilmot thoughtfully swung his glass of light beer to and fro, "if I thought this a crime. If I were you in fact, Pointer, or you either now, Haviland, I should remember that it's quite possible that neither the cousin nor Miss Saunders, are connected with the murder, and yet that Tangye is. He seems to've been hard up for ready cash on Tuesday. Cheale's going to wire me in code if he learns of anything definite over in Dublin about that Irish failure that's expected to be announced next Saturday." And on that the party broke up.