Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 44

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THE Chief Inspector went on to see Vardon again. As he climbed the stairs to the first floor a very sweet tenor reached him. Vardon could sing.

The Chief Inspector opened skilfully, but Vardon either was, or professed to be, in ignorance, as to any callers at his flat last Tuesday evening, or of any object which could have attracted them during his absence.

True, Pointer learned that about a fortnight ago Tangye had been met by chance in the street, and had come on up to see a Patagonian iguana, since presented to the Zoo. But he had stayed a bare fifteen minutes, and had not been alone in the room.

"Did any one telephone to you last Tuesday close on eight?"

"Yes," Vardon said, some one had. So, at least, one of the chambermaids had told him, but, on hearing that he was out, the voice, a man's voice, had said that another time would do as well, and had left no message.

That, at any rate, fitted. Tangye, if not an invited guest, would have wanted to know that Vardon was out, before running up stairs. Even if the artist's rooms had been locked, the key, as Pointer himself had found just now, had doubtless hung below his number on the indicator board, and, in that ill-kept house, any stray passer-by could have taken it.

And if those keys were not taken by Philip Vardon, if they really had been left in his rooms unknown to him, then, since Regina Saunders was below, Pointer believed that the only other person worried by any mention of them, Tangye—was connected with their puzzling re-appearance among the artist's effects.

Pointer, after learning the exact date of Tangye's call at the rooms, which told him nothing, passed on immediately to another important point.

"Why did Mrs. Tangye make a will in your favour?" The question came in exactly the same tones as the preceding ones.

Vardon paled. He said nothing. Pointer repeated the question. Vardon fingered the Spanish book which he had been reading when the Chief Inspector had first come to see him. Pointer was wont to say that as a rule, the less mind a man possessed, the greater difficuty he had in knowing it, but the Chief Inspector did not think that that was the trouble here. Vardon, like Tangye when he had heard of the discovery of the keys, was rather weighing alternatives, neither of which he liked.

"I don't know," he said undecidedly.

"Equally unaware of why you didn't mention the fact to us?"

"Naturally I didn't volunteer information which has no bearing on the case. Things look black enough, in all conscience, without my touching 'em up."

"You know," Pointer said after a second, "if you're innocent, I really think you would do best for yourself to tell us everything. Short of an actual confession on your part, I don't see how the case could look worse—"

Vardon went to his telephone, and tried to reach Dorset Steele, but the solicitor was out of town.

He came back, and again his foot gave a sort of queer little jerk as he crossed the carpet.

"Very well," he said finally, "I'll trust to your being honest. And not trying to trap me into some talk that can be twisted afterwards. You asked me why Mrs. Tangye made that will. I told you I don't know, and you've as good as called me a liar. I don't know, but I can guess. She had evidently, patently, had a definite rupture with Tangye. Hence the gift of the money, and the change in her will. She told me, I've forgotten to mention that, to send the properly drawn-up contract to her bank, not to Riverview."

Pointer nodded.

"She handed you the will fastened up, I suppose?"

"Any one would suppose so. But it wasn't even gummed down. Just as she was rushing out of the room she picked it up from the table, where she had laid it on entering, and said, 'Glance this through and then post it for me, please.' With that she was gone. I took it for granted it was to do with the money lent me, until I read it. And that was really why I nearly went in to see her later in the afternoon.

"That, and to ask her if I mightn't speak, to one particular friend, of her backing our venture. But the will was most in my mind. It didn't seem playing the game. There was no reason for her to swing from one extreme to another." Vardon looked as though he would have taken back that last sentence if he could; "That is—er—it seemed unfair to Tangye. At any rate, I decided not to post the will until I had talked the matter over with her, or written about it to her."

Pointer stared at his boots. Then he looked 'up.

"Was there any question of a silence as to something that had happened in the past—implied or not—on your part, in return for the loan, or for the will?"

Vardon ran his finger along some of the Castilian'words as though spelling them out.

"I consider such a question rather an insult," he said finally, in a low voice.

"It isn't meant in that way." Pointer spoke very earnestly. "You surely don't wish Mrs. Tangye's murderer to escape justice?"

"But she wasn't murdered!" Vardon said shortly.

"She was," Pointer was quite frank now. "To the best of my belief, she was. And a peculiarly cruel, dastardly, murder, too. Surely you're not against me in my hunt for the criminal?"

Vardon seemed stirred by the ring in the other's voice.

"You're one of the brass-hats at Scotland Yard, they tell me," he spoke uneasily, "you chaps take crimes rather for granted. Crimes and criminals."

"Not in this case. Unless I miss my guess, we've here as clever a criminal as I've yet encountered. I need every particle of help that can be given me. If I waste my time over innocent people the real culprit may get away. Now I read—well—many things into that will. And I ask you again, was there nothing known to you in her past which Mrs. Tangye wished kept a secret?"

Vardon hesitated.

Pointer went on, "I never met her alive, but if I know anything of faces, the last thing Mrs. Tangye would have wanted would be for her murderer to get off."

"And the last thing I or any one would want. But you must be mistaken for once, Chief Inspector. You must be! Who would murder Mrs. Tangye? Tangye has been here—as you, of course, know. He tells me there's nothing missing. With the fifteen hundred pounds loaned me, every farthing's accounted for. Then why on earth should any one kill her?"

"We have our own ideas on that." At least Pointer was beginning to have the glimmering of one since reading that will. "Then at most, Mrs. Tangye only referred to that draft of a will made by her former husband,—by Branscombe,—in his last night? The draft which she burnt?"

Vardon's look of bewilderment was almost comic.

"How the dickens—how the dickens did you learn of that?"

"Routine work. But, frankly, was that the screw you intended to turn—on Mrs. Tangye?"

Vardon's face flamed.

"Ghastly expression to've used. But—well, it was. You see, my grandmother—Clive Branscombe's grandmother, too—was a Vardon. She used to always say that the land she had brought the Branscombes was to come back to us Vardons ultimately. Sir Richard Ash, Branscombe's partner, nearly got my cousin to make a will to that effect once. But Clive put it off—until he tried to draft it again, too late. As you've learnt in some miraculous way. I thought there was no one alive now who knew of that incident."

"And didn't she ask you on Tuesday not to speak of it?"

"Yes. She asked me to forgive and forget what had happened after Clive's death, and she said something which is rather terrible. In the light of what happened. 'You'll find it'll all come right—and very speedily.'"

That last was one to Wilmot, Pointer thought as he hurried off. His next interview was with Tangye. He wondered how the stockbroker would take the news of a later, altered will.

Tangye almost leaped to his feet when Pointer told him briefly that in the course of some routine work, a will of Mrs. Tangye's had been found, dated last Tuesday, leaving everything of which she should die possessed to Vardon.

"Vardon! Impossible!" he said again, as he had said before, but with a very different intonation. "Preposterous! I shall fight it! I deny its genuiness. Mrs. Tangye repeatedly told me that the money invested in the firm was to be mine on her death."

But the surprise he tried to put into his voice did not carry conviction to Pointer.

Pointer had only handed him a photographic copy. The photograph itself had been carefully locked up at Scotland Yard.

Tangye flung it on the table.

"I don't take back a word of what I said. Truth is truth. My wife told me she intended to commit suicide. You find her shot, with the revolver beneath her hand that fired the bullet. No struggle. No hint of foul play..."

"There are hints of it," Pointer put in quietly, "only hints, it's true."

"Because I don't think he killed my wife, doesn't mean that I intend to sit still and see Vardon sweep the board clean. Right's right. But one man's wrong is no man's right." Tangye was getting incoherent. "The land yes. If my wife sold a farm, and chose to let him have the money, that's nothing to me, once I know where the money was, but it was agreed, when we married, that her ten thousand—" he was off again.

Pointer had to interrupt the tenth rendering of the same motive to take his leave.

He slipped into the morning-room where Miss Saunders was generally to be found. Just now she was standing looking up at a large portrait of Mrs. Tangye on the wall. A very recent addition to the room.

"I had the enlargement done in Bond Street. Rather good, don't you think?" she asked Pointer. Without waiting for a reply she went on, "I think her picture should be about the house. I like to see it."

Anything smugger than her tone could not be imagined. Finally she took her eyes away with an almost visible effort.

"Has anything fresh turned up, Mr. Chief Inspector?"

"Yes. We've found another will of Mrs. Tangye's. Later than the one read at the inquest. Leaving everything to Mr. Vardon."

She stared at him a moment in silence. Then, compressing her lips, she swept the mantelpiece with the edge of her cupped hand.

"Leaving everything?" she finally asked.

He nodded.

"Genuine?"

"Mr. Tangye thinks not."

"But you?" she gave him a piercing look.

"We see no reason to doubt it, so far."

She made no comment. Turning, she left the room, apparently lost in thought.

Pointer went for a walk in the old Deer Park. It was a sunny afternoon; the elms and larches showing gold under a cloudless sky. There was a buoyant pulse in the wind and sun. The air on his face brought with it smells of frost, of oak leaves, of wet soil under some southern wall, of a belt of spruce to windward.

Blue was the sky overhead, blue the wet ruts underfoot, against the yellow litter of leaves on the ground. Pointer smoked and meditated. His thoughts on Tangye and Vardon first of all.

Miss Saunders, judging from her question to the stranger entering the chambers, had seemed to think that the stockbroker was having a talk with Vardon, but Tangye and Miss Saunders were by no means in each other's complete confidence.

But supposing that Mrs. Tangye's husband had been in the artist's rooms last Tuesday, what would have taken him there? Within an hour or two of his wife's terrible death.

Did Tangye know of that gift of the money—or of the will? Had he come to search the artist's rooms for them? A few discreet questions had told Pointer that Vardon was quite unaware of any search among his effects, and nothing is harder, to an amateur, than to hunt through another person's belongings and leave them as they were.

Still it was possible that the motive which had brought Tangye to the rooms, supposing him to have come, was connected with his wife's visit only a few hours before. But he had apparently taken Miss Saunders there. It might be therefore, that what he had wanted was a necessity, was a step, in somethng which he and she were to proceed to do together.

It was, of course, quite easy to disbelieve Vardon's story, and see in him the man who had joined the waiting woman and driven off. But though Pointer did not distrust simple explanations, he generally tried to make sure that no other ones were possible, before accepting them.

One thing was certain. If Tangye had left the keys on Vardon's table, he had done so unintentionally. His quick confession, or at any rate, his effort to exculpate Vardon as soon as he heard that one of the notes had been traced to the artist, showed that he was not trying to fasten any guilt on the other man. That, too, was evidently the last thing desired by Miss Saunders, but in her case, if she had made a bargain with Tangye, naturally she would not want her purchased help to seem unneeded.

Vardon's room—Mrs. Tangye's keys—Tangye—Pointer's thoughts passed on to the will. And to the new and startling idea it had given him.

Suddenly he came upon Barbara, a couple of irons under her arm, on her way home from the links. She looked careworn, he thought.

"Suppose we exchange news." He fell into step beside her in obedience to a gesture.

"Do you give a fair exchange-rate?" She spoke a little wistfully.

He acknowledged the hit with a laugh. A laugh of sympathy; he was very sorry for Barbara.

"I'll give you full value. Speaking plainly, Miss Ash, I want to find out something definite from Mrs. Tangye's past. Nothing in the least to her discredit, but I want to reconstruct her life. Before she married Branscombe." Barbara's eyes widened. But she was one of the very few people who, when they have nothing to say, say nothing.

"You see," he was not looking at her, but at a fine old stag who paced towards them with ideas of apples, "some people might think there was a good, sound, probable motive for a murder already to hand. But I want to make sure that there isn't a better, sounder, more probable one still, to be got. It's tremendously true that the strongest motive wins, you know."

There was a long silence. The stag walked huffily off. Pointer felt that something was stirring in Barbara, was welling up within her. But after a moment she said quietly, "Surely you know everything there is to know about Mrs. Tangye's past. I've just been talking to my grandfather. He says that the worst thing against Mr. Vardon is that he was seen near Riverview late on Tuesday afternoon. Is that the case? I mean, is that a very important thing against him?"

"Very," Pointer admitted, still not looking at her.

"Of course, if any one else had been seen on Tuesday near Riverview between four and six, it would make a great deal of difference. But as it is Mr. Vardon seems the only one. That—taken into consideration with other things—does look very serious."

They were across Richmond Bridge by now. Barbara said good-bye abruptly. The short winter day was almost over when Pointer turned back. Stray leaves touched his cheek with cold little fingers as they fell. The lights of a barge drawn up to be mended shone red like the eyes of the Great Sea Serpent, who had found a refuge at last. Pale winter moths floated past. The moths that some old folk say are the spirits of the dead. They vanished, or were palely seen, as they drifted now through darkness, now through the rays of a lamp. They were too much like the underlying facts of Mrs. Tangye's death, he thought, to be pleasant company for a detective officer.

Pointer had purposely given himself plenty of time before turning in at Twickenham police court. He was not surprised to find Barbara Ash being politely entertained by Haviland. The Superintendent was showing her his stamp collection, knowing that her grandfather owned a notable one.

"There's something very fascinating about stamps," Haviland was saying as Pointer hung up his hat. "Nothing uncertain about them. I always liked geography at school. History no. There's no proving half of what they tell you in history. But in geography, if they say a town or river is in a certain place, you can go and find out for yourself. You can prove it, as a matter of fact. Even if you don't do it, you know you could go and look. Or dig..."

Pointer seemed just sufficiently surprised to see Barbara again so soon. She flinched a little, as she looked up at him. Then she took a seat further from the light.

"I've something very important to say," Barbara was pale beneath her tan, "I suppose I should have told you before, but I didn't realise—things—until our talk just now. My grandfather doesn't know I'm here," she added, with a quaintly reassuring voice.

"And that's a good thing, too," Haviland thought. Barbara paused for a moment.

"I—I was afraid he might think it unwise—what I am going to say."

Pointer thought this highly likely. Only tell the police what they already know, was Dorset Steele's motto. Barbara drew a deep breath. She went paler yet.

"Mr. Tangye is supposed to've been in town until after six. At least so my grandfather tells me—"

The two officials nodded.

"Yet I saw him coming out of Riverview's side gate, the tradesman's gate, just a few minutes after the churches around struck half past five."

"Where exactly were you?"

"I was at the corner before you get to the house, coming up from the river. It's a place where some hollies hang far over the road."

"What did Mr. Tangye do?"

"He opened the gate very carefully, and very slowly, and closed it, after standing as though listening for a second, very quickly behind him. Then he jumped into his car, and was off. I don't think he saw me."

"Was the engine running?"

"I think so."

"Had he anything in his hand?"

"Yes; a package of some sort."

Pointer nodded towards some shelves.

"Could you pick out a book of about the size of the package you saw in his hand?"

Barbara picked up an A.B.C. and a Continental Bradshaw. She thought that the box in Tangye's hand was about the thickness of the latter and the general size of the former. Could it have been a camera? Pointer asked. Barbara thought that it looked not unlike a large box-camera.

"He came out so oddly. So noiselessly," she repeated, "He opened the gate without making a sound. And he looked up and down the garden path before closing it."

"He looked towards the house?"

Barbara nodded. There was a short silence.

"And you yourself, Miss Ash, how did you come to be so close to Riverview?"

"Oh, I merely happened to be passing," she said awkwardly. "You can go to our house from the Richmond links either around by Riverview or through the Deer Park."

Pointer sat quite still. His eyes on his pen point for once. He had not expected this. He really had thought this girl a fine, honest, creature. Was she too to come within the circle of those tainted suspects of his? Oh, the pity of it!

Barbara spoke again. Impulsively, in a rush. This time in her natural voice. A voice that suggested all things young, and frank, and fair. "I—I take that back. I mean, that wasn't truthful," she broke off in great distress.

Pointer came to her aid.

"You're trying to tell us, aren't you," he said very kindly, "that you were the visitor whom the maid mistook for Mrs. Cranburn? At least that's what we've thought for some time."

Pointer had at least suspected as much since his visit to her father. Barbara fitted in with so many points of the case. Florence might easily have mistaken a bundled-up figure for that of a stout woman. And the voice of a girl with a cold for a wheezy voice. Barbara looked both relieved, and a little appalled.

"I'm glad you know," she said quietly, "I would have spoken at once only I was afraid—after you detained Mr. Vardon, that you might think there was some connection—on his part I mean, because it was me. Florence didn't recognise me. She had only seen me once."

So Barbara, too, thought that Vardon might be guilty. Or else she would have come forward at once. Her explanation held good for the time since Vardon was under police observation, but from the first she must have suspected him.

"You were calling on Mrs. Tangye?" Pointer asked pleasantly. "I think you can depend on us, Miss Ash, not to misunderstand."

Wilmot, who had dropped in to ask a question of Haviland, took a seat after a glance of permission from Barbara.

"Just a friendly call, I suppose?" Wilmot asked.

"No," she sat with her eyes on her gloved hands, obviously suffering. "No; not quite that. Not unfriendly, of course. I wanted to see if I couldn't get Mrs. Tangye to do something for Mr. Vardon. After that talk on the links," she glanced at Pointer, "I, too, was rather stirred up, and wondered whether she, a comparatively wealthy woman, might not be induced to give Mr. Vardon at least a hearing. He has a perfectly sound proposition to lay before any one. But she wouldn't let him even tell her of it."

"Had you ever broached the subject with Mrs. Tangye before?" Pointer asked.

"Never. But I telephoned Sunday afternoon and asked if I might come in early about three on Monday afternoon as there was something I wanted to talk over with her. She said that she would be at her dressmaker's at that hour. I suggested the next day, Tuesday, about five. She said that would suit her excellently, especially if I would come to tea. On Monday evening she rang me up to put off my coming indefinitely, saying she would write and make another appointment, but I was out, and the maid forgot to give me her message; so I went on Tuesday, expecting to see her."

"Do you remember just what she told the maid Monday evening over the 'phone?"

"Norton says that Mrs. Tangye said, 'Ask Miss Barbara not to come to-morrow as we arranged. I have a most urgent engagement that I can't put off. Tell her I'm so sorry. I'll write and explain.' But, as I say, the message wasn't given me until Tuesday night when Norton read of Mrs. Tangye's death in the evening papers. Meantime I started rather late for Riverview from Hampton Court Palace, where a relative lives." She gave the name. "I was driving our car myself; something went wrong. It's always leaving you in the lurch when you want to bustle along. There's a good garage not far from Riverview, you have to pass the house coming from Hampton Court." She gave its address. "That's when I saw Mr. Tangye leaving by the side gate. I went on to the garage and had a long wait there until some one came to whom I cared to hand over the car. Then I hurried on to Riverview, though it was nearly six. As I came to the tradesmen's gate I found Mr. Tangye had left it open. It cuts off a corner of the little drive, so I took it too. I walked around the clump of laurels this side of the morning-room to look in. I wondered if Mrs. Tangye had given me up. But through the curtains I saw that the light was on, and hurried back around to the front door. As I stepped away the curtain was pulled aside for a second, and some one—a woman—peered out between them. Perhaps she heard me on the path."

Barbara paused for half a second.

"It was Miss Saunders—I suppose," she added slowly. "Why suppose?" Wilmot asked.

"It was the most dreadful face I've ever seen," the girl said in a low voice. "The face of a ghoul. Malignant. Horrible. Gloating." She shuddered as it seemed to rise again before her.

"Did she see you?"

Barbara shook her head.

"She was looking in the opposite direction, after one glance around. As though after Mr. Tangye. I only saw her for a second. I hurried to the front door and rang the bell. You know what happened then."

"What made you choose the morning-room?" Pointer asked. He wanted to give her time, and began with the least important question.

"Mrs. Tangye had said over the 'phone, 'five will suit me perfectly. You won't mind having tea with me in the morning-room, I know."

"You knew the house?"

"Oh, yes. In dear old Mrs. Branscombe's days I used to be there a lot."

"And now, tell us what happened after you rang the bell. Just as though we knew nothing."

Barbara recounted the story with which they were all so familiar by now. She had nothing new to add to the scene in the morning-room.

"Did you see the revolver?"

She nodded. "Underneath her left hand. The next thing I remember was hearing a man's voice saying, outside the room, 'I don't think I can do much harm if you and the maid have both been in.' And I thought I should only be in the doctor's way. I took it for granted it was a doctor. I thought a caller was certainly not wanted in the house at such a moment. There were plenty of women to help. I crossed the hall into what used to be the housekeeper's room in the old days. It's evidently a smoking-room now. A moment later I heard people in the hall, and the same voice, it was the reporter's I learnt at the inquest, asking if that was the room. I let myself out by the tradesmen's door."

"And why did you say nothing at your home of having been to Riverview?" Pointer asked.

"I'm not by way of visiting Mrs. Tangye. Every one knows that. I should have had to explain why I suddenly called at Riverview after having refused to go with mother times out of number."

"The coroner remarked on your absence at the inquest."

"Yes. But he said my evidence could not have made any difference as I had not seen Mrs. Tangye alive. I should have come forward in spite of everything, if he hadn't added that. But you see, I hoped to keep it from my own people—and from strangers—that I was going to ask Mrs. Tangye to help Philip Vardon. It's only now—"

"Now that dear Philip is involved," Pointer finished to himself, rather grimly.

"Now that I am bringing a sort of accusation against Mr. Tangye, that I see I must tell everything against myself as well. I owe the truth, all of it, to Mr. Tangye and to you." Barbara's eyes would have softened a Chinese executioner.

"Did you notice her keys lying on her desk?" Pointer asked.

"Yes. I instinctively looked around for a glass of water, and they were lying beside a glass. I almost touched them before I noticed that hole just over poor Mrs. Tangye's heart."

"And can you swear that you had not been to Riverview before your arrival at six last Tuesday?"

She looked surprised.

"Certainly, I can. We discussed the time when I left the Palace at five, after having been there from before four. And at the garage both the girl who was there to take telephone orders, and I kept our eyes on the clock till a mechanic finally arrived just before six."

When she had left they looked at one another.

"To think I dropped in to tell you two that Tangye has sent in a formal renunciation of his wife's insurance money. Alas! I know full well what wild hopes this last little bit of tittle-tattle will rouse in any policeman's bosom." Wilmot groaned. "I don't say that my own is quite unperturbed."

"Well, I dunno..." Haviland lit a cigar. "Her story may seem to let Vardon out, but the fact of her having been at Riverview at all last Tuesday, just at that hour too, lets him in deeper than ever to my thinking. And even if she's telling us the truth—we can easily verify it—it goes to show how much he needed that leg-up. The fact is that both he and Tangye were evidently desperate for funds just at that time." Haviland glanced questioningly, however, at the Chief Inspector.

"Her story sounded truthful," was the brief reply.

"So it did. But the fact is, all tales told us police sound that," Haviland commented shrewdly, "when, like Miss Ash, they take time to think them over. A gal and her young man! I dunno!"

"We always knew Miss Saunders was putting the screw on Tangye. The only screw that would make him knuckle under, something connected with Mrs. Tangye's death." Wilmot had been thinking over Barbara's story. He, too, thought it had a truthful ring.

"That part of it's just what the Chief Inspector and me have maintained from the first," the unblushing Haviland said with quite a patronising smile.

"What you, or any one else, maintains from the first, doesn't count," Wilmot retorted, "it's only what you maintain at the end, that does. I confess—I confess—" He sat obviously considering the new light thrown by the girl on the case.

"It certainly is very disturbing for my Company," he finally decided aloud. But further than that he would not go.