Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 38

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THE first name on the list which Pointer had drawn up before coming down to Twickenham was that of Mr. Stewart, the solicitor to the Tangyes, and also the Twickenham Coroner.

The Chief Inspector was shown in without any delay on sending in his card, and at once explained that he was acting for Wilmot, who was unavoidably prevented from coming.

Stewart put the tips of his thin white hands together and waited. He was a very punctilious, elderly man, who did not look over pleased at Wilmot's substitute.

"Did Mrs. Tangye withdraw her will even temporarily from your keeping?" Pointer asked.

"She did not, Chief Inspector."

"Then I take it that she wrote to your firm suggesting altering her will, or at least asking for it back."

"And why do you 'take it' that way?" Stewart asked bleakly.

"Because of the character of the very searching questions you put at the inquest."

Stewart was drumming on the table before him.

"The point—about her having possibly asked for her will back—will have to be cleared up," Pointer spoke as though regretting the necessity. "Since Wilmot inclines to the belief that Mrs. Tangye's death was suicide. And you know his standing. The Company has given him carte blanche. He did think of applying formally for the handing over of any papers, or letters, in your possession, but I think we can arrange it between ourselves. After all, it's only just a matter of routine. She did write you on the point. We feel sure of that."

Stewart pressed a bell, and a moment later handed Pointer a docketed letter.

It was from Mrs. Tangye, and was dated the night before she died.

Dear Mr. Stewart,

Please send me my will at your earliest convenience for some alterations I wish to make. And please treat this request as strictly confidential.

Sincerely yours,

Mable Tangye.

"Did you send her the will?"

"It would have been posted to her Tuesday night, but for hearing of the terrible accident," Stewart stressed the word, "that happened to her."

"I think Mr. Wilmot would like to keep this. I'll give you the usual receipt." Pointer folded the letter away in his pocket book. Stewart said nothing.

"Had she ever asked for her will back before?"

"Never."

"Have you any idea as to the nature of the change she wished to make?"

"None whatever. I doubt if she would have made any—perhaps a small bequest to Miss Saunders. A very faithful, conscientious woman that. Otherwise I feel sure that the principal beneficiary would have remained Mr. Tangye."

"Yet you didn't mention the letter at the inquest."

"Mentioning it, which means producing it, would have served no useful purpose except to arouse painful and most unfounded gossip. And would have been contrary to her own written request." Stewart looked sharply at the man in front of him. "I, too, take it that you are not satisfied with the finding of this morning?"

Had Stewart asked before that verdict was given he would have had a full reply, but now he was a dethroned monarch. Pointer said briefly:

"I am helping the Insurance Company, or rather Mr. Wilmot, to get a few facts together for his final judgment, and unfortunately I was not at the inquest myself. I've only read the reports."

"To some purpose," Stewart said acidly.

"You knew the dead woman for many years?" Pointer asked.

"I drew up her first marriage settlement. Or rather Branscombe's. She had nothing to settle. Her father had a small annuity. Her mother left nothing."

"What about her cousin Oliver?"

Stewart looked an inquiry.

"I understand that he is her only relative."

Stewart smiled faintly.

"I've had the pleasure of being on a case with you before, Mr. Chief Inspector. You understand a good deal more than that about Oliver Headly, I'll go bail. I shouldn't be surprised if you know where that unmitigated scallywag is at the present moment."

Pointer assured him that as yet he only knew of his existence, and the most outstanding features of his murky career.

Stewart added a few more. Among them that as he was a penniless orphan, his uncle, the Hampshire rector, had practically adopted him, had lavished a small income and a great love on the lad, and had died after a very painful interview with his bank manager. The parson, white and haggard, had told the only big lie of his life. He accepted as his a signature on a cheque which the cashier had refused to pay out to the nephew. The old man had collapsed before he reached his home. Dying from a literally broken heart. Greatly to the relief of all who knew Oliver, that young man had left England about twelve years ago, and since then, as far as Stewart knew, had not been heard of.

Pointer asked if there had been anything of a love affair between the cousins.

Stewart did not know. But in the early days the rector had hoped they would marry. Stewart went on to say that he doubted if the wish would have come to anything, even without Oliver's putting himself outside the pale, for he understood that Mrs. Tangye had always disliked her cousin intensely.

Stewart was a man of scrupulous honesty. He would hold back what facts he could which would tell against his client, but nothing, not the wealth of Golconda, would have made him deviate from the truth. He now leant forward and tapped Pointer's knee with his glasses.

"There never was a more respectable, creditable past than Mrs. Tangye's, I should say."

He ran over the points of her uneventful life again, and of her first husband's settlements.

"You never came upon any trace of any one who might have a claim on her? Who might bear a grudge against her?"

Stewart made a gesture of definite negation.

Pointer looked at his boot-tips.

"She didn't also write about withdrawing her money from her husband's firm? She is bound to give him six months notice of any such action."

Stewart looked at the dock.

"Sorry to cut you short, Chief Inspector, but I have a client waiting."

"I should like that letter too, please," Pointer said placidly. Stewart smiled.

"There is none such in existence."

Pointer felt fairly certain that in that case, it was Tangye who had destroyed it. Your family solicitor never destroys a paper, which may yet be wanted.

"Would you be prepared to swear that it had never reached you?"

"My time is up, Chief Inspector," Stewart said firmly, rising, and opening the door politely.

Pointer drove on to see Miss Eden, the next name on his mental list, with plenty to occupy his mind.

So Mrs. Tangye had asked for her will back. After that —presumed—quarrel on Monday afternoon. If it had taken place at all, it must have been a serious one. And she had apparently either given notice, or been about to give notice of withdrawing her money, ten thousand, from Tangye's firm.

Mrs. Tangye seemed to have done some quick work on her return from Tunbridge Wells. Monday must have been a full day. Items:

Trunk packed, and sent off.

Husband quarrelled with, and apparently sent off too. Temporarily at least.

Will sent for.

There was a precipitancy, an urgency, about her actions which had struck him from the first.

He found Mary Eden, the friend with whom Mrs. Tangye seemed to have spent this last Sunday afternoon which the Chief Inspector thought so important, to be a quiet young woman of around thirty. She looked very self-possessed. He also thought that she looked as though she were steeling herself for an ordeal, as she turned towards him when he was shown into the drawing-room of her flat.

As for Miss Eden, the Chief Inspector was a surprise to her. In his quiet manner. In the kind of good looks which nature had given him. He did not resemble in the least the Scotland Yard detectives of fiction, she thought. He reminded her a little of her brother, the finest amateur cricketer in England. Such splendid physical fitness generally meant a brain to match in her opinion, and always meant tireless energy.

Something in her glance made Pointer think—and rightly—that she regretted having given him the interview at all.

"I hope you won't think me troublesome when I ask—in Mr. Wilmot's stead—to see the letter that Mrs. Tangye wrote you after her return from Tunbridge," was Pointer's opening.

The hazel eyes fixed on his did not waver. Rather they steadied.

"Letter?" Pointer had an impression that Miss Eden would have liked to tell a lie, but either dared not, or would not.

"Just so. We know she sent you one," bluffed Pointer. There was a pause. Miss Eden turned her face still more away from him.

"I'm afraid I didn't keep it. But I'll look for it afterwards, if you like, and send it on to Mr. Wilmot. I see his address is here—"

Pointer had used Wilmot's card with a pencilled line introducing himself only by name.

"Why does he wish to see it?"

"I believe the Insurance Company want to be sure of the hour when it was posted." He explained vaguely. "When did you receive it?"

"By the first post Monday morning," she said, after a slight pause.

That was what Pointer would have expected had any such shock taken place at Tunbridge as would adequately explain Mrs. Tangye's action of Monday and Tuesday. Judging by her appearance, she was not a woman to take counsel about her actions, he thought. He would expect her to make up her mind as to what she would do on the way back from Kent, write about it to her friend—for Miss Eden was a very close friend, all the reports showed—and then act on her own initiative.

He looked at Miss Eden with that quiet, pleasant glance of his that seemed to see so little, and saw so much.

She was on the alert now for questions about that letter. He knew as well as though he could read her mind that every defence was up, plenty of rounds ready, and no possibility of getting past her unnoticed. She had been taken by surprise when he had opened with the letter. But she was ready now. So that, throughout the rest of the interview he learnt nothing but the barest of facts. That Mrs. Tangye had arrived for lunch. That the two had gone to the orchid-show about three and left at five.

"Did you meet any one you knew down there?"

"Mrs. Tangye has no friends down there, and I know very few people in Tunbridge," was the evasive reply.

"But Mrs. Tangye was seen with—" Pointer spoke hesitatingly. "Perhaps she wasn't with you all the time," he added as a bright afterthought.

"All the time," Miss Eden said in a low voice. She was an exceedingly poor liar.

There was a short silence.

"Did she enjoy the show?"

"Not very much," Miss Eden spoke slowly, "it gave her a headache. Glasshouses are stuffy things at best, aren't they? Perhaps she got overtired." Her lip quivered as she finished.

"Oh? Wilmot thought you walked to the station afterwards?"

Again there came a little pause, then, "Mrs. Tangye fancied the air would do her headache good. So I told the car to go on to the station and wait for me there."

"Enclosed car?"

Miss Eden nodded.

"Partition between the driver and the other seats?"

Miss Eden's eyes darkened. After a second she said briefly, "No. But really these questions seem to me rather wide of the mark..."

"Just part of the regular routine. Mr. Wilmot wants me to cover as large an amount of obvious ground as possible," Pointer reassured her. Asked about Oliver Headly, she relaxed for the first time. She grew natural. She had never liked Oliver, she said at once. His was one of those rare natures which, even when quite young, showed no trace of softness, of any thing but self-seeking.

She thought that his cousin had not heard from him since he left England years ago. She agreed, however, that, in spite of everything, a certain amount of family feeling for her only relative might have remained in Mrs. Tangye's heart.

Pointer seemed very interested in getting a description of Oliver. He listened closely though apparently casually. "Striking appearance? Easy to recognise again if one met him suddenly?"

"Oh, unmistakable. But we think he must have died abroad—after all these years without a sign of life."

Miss Eden looked at the clock.

"What would you say was the most outstanding characteristic of Mrs. Tangye? Of her attitude to life I mean?" Pointer asked thoughtfully.

Miss Eden pondered.

"She had so many all about equal qualities," she murmured. "There was pride—the right kind of pride which one might call self-respect. And there was directness—she was a very direct woman. There was a way she had of dwelling on the past...Once she had lost a thing, she valued it higher than anything she owned; but, otherwise her's was a strong character."

And on that the interview ended.

Pointer had a most useful, though bulky, stud on one of the gloves which he never wore. Properly handled, it yielded a roll of tiny films the size of a pea, which could be enlarged into very useful portraits. Armed with these one of his detective-inspectors would be able to comb the show early to-morrow, and also the town. On Tuesday afternoon Mrs. Bligh was supposed to have been at her club. A woman detective was sent to try that out, by means of a bribe, and a substituted waitress.

Pointer drove off, feeling that to-morrow should bring some useful facts to light. But facts alone never solved any puzzle.

He ran over the events chronologically as he made for his rooms.

Friday night, Mr. and Mrs. Tangye had been at a dinner and a dance. Both apparently on the best of terms with the world and each other. Saturday morning all went as usual. In the afternoon Mrs. Tangye had attended a matinee with friends and gone on to a cheerful tea. Tangye had left about ten in the morning for his Norfolk week-end. Pointer had called up his host over the telephone, and had been told that the stockbroker had spent all the time shooting wildfowl, until he left after lunch on Monday. Yet Tangye only owned two suitable guns, and neither of them had been taken down from their rack in his den. The dust on them had told Pointer as much, and the answers by the maids to a casually put question of his had proved it.

The Chief Inspector considered the visit to Norfolk as very hypothetical. Yet Tangye's friends were standing behind him solidly. And they were all men of good position. Here was no criminal clique. Pointer thought that if they backed his story up as they had done, it was because they knew quite well that he had spent the week-end, or at least, some of it, in company with a lady. With Mrs. Bligh probably. With the writer of that note—possibly—that Olive had seen Mrs. Tangye reading.

And Mrs. Tangye's interest in orchid-shows at Tunbridge, which had arisen so suddenly, was very likely connected with that letter too, as Haviland had thought.

Last Sunday! What had occurred, presumably down in Kent, that had so altered all Mrs. Tangye's quiet, well-ordered existence? That had—so Pointer expected to find .—led to her death two days later?

He did not think that here was a crime dropped accidentally into events which were already stirring before it happened. The flight of Mrs. Tangye from her home, which he believed had been pending, and the death of Mrs. Tangye, were, he thought, linked. Though whether closely or loosely, time alone could show. Time and routine-work.

That night an undetected burglary was committed in London. The victim of the crime never knew of it. Tangye's offices in the city were entered by a tall, quick-moving figure, wearing rubber soles, and with the arm torch and adjustable keys of his craft. The burglar seemed to be an original. Everything that was not in the safe—a burglar-proof safe—was looked at, but the only things taken were oddments such as blotting paper, and the contents of the waste-paper baskets.

Pointer, for it was he, paused longingly on his way home, outside the flat over a shop where Miss Saunders lived with her sister, but the yapping of a small Pom sent him reluctantly off. Back in his own rooms he examined his haul, which did not include the keys as he had hoped. An hour's work piecing, reading, deciphering, made him certain that he had drawn a blank. And on that he turned in, and slept the sleep of the hard worker.

Next morning Pointer sent in his card to the particular Sladen who had acted for Mrs. Tangye in all estate matters. The solicitor was a cheery young man who looked on life as a great joke. He substantiated Tangye's story of the purchase of Clerkhill farm for three thousand pounds by a Mr. Philpotts, a farmer living near Rugby.

The money when paid over had been left in his safe by Mrs. Tangye who had discussed the merits of various Funding loans without deciding which appealed to her most.

Sladen, too, had heard from his late client herself about the bank that had failed, and knew of her unconquerable aversion to cheques.

"Pleasant lady, I understand?" Pointer asked.

"Very. Terrible shock to hear of such a death having come to her." Sladen actually looked grave for a moment.

"Of course, we're only concerned with tracing this money, but the Insurance Company is trying to decide whether accident or suicide was the more likely explanation." Pointer seemed in doubt himself.

"Not suicide," Sladen said positively. "Oh, dear ino! Not suicide! Very shrewd eye for a bargain. Very keen on having a quid for her quo>."

"That's a help," Pointer looked grateful for any assistance. It was his most useful mask when he had to go in his own person to make inquiries.

"Now, this Mr. Philpotts—lie might be able to confirm that too?"

"Rather!" Sladen laughed again. "Not much doubt but that he'll agree with me. Would you like his address in town? He's staying for over the funeral. He used to know Mrs. Tangye years ago in her father's parish, when she was quite a little girl, so he told me."

"Keen amateur photographer, isn't he? I seem to recollect his name as exhibiting now and then. I go in for a bit of that sort of thing myself."

"Ah? Dare say. I know nothing of him personally."

"Then how did you come to suggest him as a purchaser?"

Pointer seemed bewildered. Sladen decided that the low amount of serious crime in London compared with that in other capitals is due to the natural goodness of the Londoner, rather than to any fear of detection.

"I didn't suggest him," he explained, "we advertised the farm in the usual way. Mr. Philpotts answered, and as his money was there in the bank, and Mrs. Tangye very much favoured him as a purchaser after she'd learnt that he used to be one of her father's church-wardens, why the deal went through."

"Had they met since those early days?"

"Not as far as I know. Mr. Philpotts liked everything in writing. So did Mrs. Tangye. We forwarded the papers to her and put the thing through for her."

Pointer had asked last night at Riverview whether Philpotts had ever been to the house. As far as was known he had not.

Next, the Chief Inspector wanted a detailed list of the papers sent by Sladen to Tangye. He read it through—once, and then asked about a green cash book, and a brown account book of Mrs. Tangye's. Sladen had never had either in his care. Yet Pointer had found them in a locked drawer in Tangye's desk at his office, together with various other papers of Mrs. Tangye's which the Chief Inspector had duly listed, and which also, he now saw, were not on Sladen's list. How had they got into Tangye's possession? When Haviland had seized on the absence of all personal papers from his wife's desk as a proof of suicide, Tangye, though indignant, had had to fall back on the explanation that his wife had destroyed them as a preliminary to her tour abroad with him. All the papers which he had seen in Tangye's drawer had been folded into trim slips, neatly and very fully docketed in the dead woman's writing. They looked as though they had been compressed into the smallest possible space. They looked, in fact, to Pointer, as though Mrs. Tangye had selected them as essential and sufficient for her purposes before destroying the others. Pointer had spent some time last night with them spread around him, and had noticed that every necessary item and note and receipt was included. But no more.

Yet he had found them in Tangye's drawer. Though the presence of them in his wife's desk would have taken away one of the two main props of the suicide theory which he fought so persistently, and which it was so much to his interest to disprove.

There had been nothing in the papers kept which gave any reason for his objecting to their being found and read.

Pointer questioned Sladen about the withdrawal of the money yesterday.

He was told that the whole transaction occupied a bare five minutes. A cab had driven up just after two; Sladen was busy with a client. His head clerk had taken the sum in question, three thousand pounds, from the safe, and obtained the usual receipt. He had ventured to expostulate on the danger of carrying large sums in handbags. Mrs. Tangye had assured him that it was to be immediately invested. She declined his offer of sending an escort; that was all Sladen knew.

Pointer learnt nothing more from his head clerk except his opinion of such unorthodox proceedings, and his belief that in some dim way they were connected with the entry of women into the law courts. When it came to facts, Johnston could not even say whether Mrs. Tangye had walked away from the offices, or taken a taxi, or whether she had a friend with her waiting outside. Pointer gathered that the old head clerk had been thrown into a state bordering on coma by the speed, and irregularity of Mrs. Tangye's actions. Neither the clerk, nor Sladen had ever heard her mention her will, or will-making. Nor had she ever referred to the money invested in her husband's firm.

Pointer asked for a specimen of Philpotts's writing and the number of every note paid for Clerkhill farm. He knew already that Tangye had not drawn out nor paid in, any large sums to his, or his wife's banking accounts during the past month.

The stockbroker had only given him the numbers of the missing notes, but since the dead woman had removed them all from the solcitor's care only a few hours before her end, the Chief Inspector felt a keen interest in each.

Accordingly he next had a brief interview with a young Jew of his acquaintance. Hyam was a rising financier, and his moments were precious. But, for the sake of a time when Pointer had saved him from a very nasty position, he could always spare a few for the Chief Inspector. Pointer only needed one. He wished to trace any possible activities of Tangye on the cotton market and learn what had become of the notes which the stockbroker had taken over on his wife's death. Would Hyam use any private means of finding out both points? The investigation would be greatly hampered, and incidentally a quite possibly blameless man harmed by inquiries, however discreet, undertaken officially. Hyam said "Trust him!" And Pointer hurried off to the largest orchid importer in the world, Jaffinsky, near the China Docks.

Jaffinsky was asked whether any well-known orchid-hunters were in England, just now. Pointer thought that these intrepid men, few in number, who face deaths tragic and solitary, as part of their daily work, would be sure to know one another, and might keep touch in that loose, yet sufficient way common to men whose task needs very special training and special gifts.

"There's Smith; he's looking after our plants at the Tunbridge show. His beat's Burma and the Himalayas. Then there's van Dam—we could get hold of him for you, I dare say. Sumatra's the same to him as his back garden. Or what about Filon, the Frenchman? What he can't tell you of Madagascar, or North Africa—but I forgot, he went back last week. And if you're interested in the Congo, Bielefeld's a marvel. He—

"I'll try Smith," Pointer said. "It's only a toss-up. I want to inquire about a man, a one-time orchid-hunter too, so I was told."

Smith and the Chief Inspector were soon seated in a quiet little back room littered with moss and bamboo. Smith was a strange-looking fellow. The colour of mahogany, with a face apparently carved out of red stone, wide-apart eyes, gray in colour, very still and rarely blinking, a mouth like a slit, a chin like a grocer's scoop, and a body like a whip-thong.

Pointer explained in a few words what he wanted. Had Smith ever chanced to come across a man called in England, Oliver Headly? An Oxford undergraduate?

He was about to give a description, but Smith did not need more than the name.

"Headly? Oh yes, I knew him. About ten years ago. Afghan border. But he was no good."

"Why not?"

"Oh-h, many reasons. A good hunter of any kind of game—your kind, Chief Inspector, or my kind—is born, not made. Well, Headly wasn't born. Also he had too many irons in the fire. That border is rather tempting to a certain kind of man. Gun-running, opium smuggling, doped whisky, are all lucrative by-paths."

"And the kind of by-paths to appeal to Headly?"

"Anything with money in it would appeal to Headly. Especially if it was off the true. And if it had a spice of cruelty in it, so much the better. But why this interest in a chap who's dead?"

"Sure he's dead?"

"Filon told me a year ago that he saw him shot in Fez. Been gun-running for the Riffs. Shot under another name. Called himself Olivier, and refused to state his nationality. I'll give him that credit."

Pointer expressed a doubt as to Filon's information.

"I think you can depend on it. Our eyes are our breadwinners, you know. You learn to see accurately, if you're hunting orchids. Don't want to risk your neck to bring home something that grows on Wandsworth common. Besides, Headly wasn't a man to forget in a hurry. Filon told me he recognised him, waved to him, and that Headly waved back. They were going to blindfold him but he refused, and faced them smoking a cigarette."

Pointer obtained a few more details which would enable him to tap the French authorities at Fez, and get into touch with Mr. Filon, then he asked casually, "Was Oliver Headly a good shot?"

"Rotten. Luckily he knew it."

And with that the Chief Inspector took his leave.