Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 47

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NEXT morning Pointer awoke from a dream in which he had been playing a weird game of golf. He had not been able to hit a ball, let alone drive one! Worn out, he had just clambered over a hazard to find Wilmot on the eighteenth green holing a magnificent putt, and saying affably, "Try my pet club Intuition; it's more flexible than that old-fashioned iron Proof which I see you still use."

The dream haunted Pointer, but half an hour later saw him at the chief police office in Newport, turning over the records of thirteen years ago. He found the tragedy reported in full. The brief description of the couple fitted Mrs. Tangye for the woman, and for the husband might have fitted Vardon, or many another man.

Irving Hart, described as a grocery shop manager, was the same age as his wife: twenty-two.

The boat used by the husband for salt-water fishing was a small yacht of three tons, partially covered, yawl-rigged, which he had himself skilfully fitted up. The kind of little craft a man could be out in all night if need be. A shore loafer came forward to testify that he helped Hart himself launch it rather late in the afternoon. Mrs. Hart came down at the last moment and got in. He, the witness, had warned them that a change of weather was coming, but Hart had only laughed at him.

Within two hours there were wild sea manes tossing as far as the eye could see. By nightfall no boat could have hoped to put in. Many a one went to pieces in that storm. Many a fisherman failed to return.

The loafer in question had long disappeared. His evidence at the time had been believed, partly because it was considered unbiased, partly because none of the Harts' effects were missing from their rooms. A couple of very respectable women, too, bore out that they had seen Mrs. Hart about the time mentioned walking fast to the cove where the boat lay. Creel and rod in hand, oilskin on arm.

As to the shop—the only address entered in the newspaper accounts or on the warrant—the great new docks had engulfed the street where it had stood. A police-sergeant, who remembered the inquest well, had a hazy notion that the Harts had lodged somewhere else, but he was not certain on the matter, far less could he remember any address. The Chief Inspector was unable to find any one who could settle this point. Water rates—gas companies—all had only the shop address.

One thing was curious, Hart seemed to have no background. Pointer could not learn of any parents, any home, from which he had come.

True, this was not unusual, supposing him to be ashamed of all three. He might even have none, in any but the literal sense of the word. He might have been an orphan—a foundling—an unwanted child.

On the other hand, if Hart were Vardon, then the lack was easily, obviously, explained. There was no mystery about Vardon's parentage and home. Vardon's whereabouts could not be traced during that summer nor for the year succeeding, nor for that matter, without the expenditure of a great deal of time and money, for still another couple of years, which he purported to have spent journeying round the world.

Certainly here in Wales, death, or other natural causes seemed to have removed every one with whom he claimed to have come in contact.

A reply telegram came from the Yard in cipher. The Somerset House register showed no sign of yielding any earlier marriage on Mable Headley's part than that to Branscombe.

Pointer looked hard at his boot-tips. Apart from his belief that the woman he had heard called Mrs. Tangye would not have stooped to such a position, the tale he had learnt sounded preposterous unless Mable Headly had been tied to Hart. Why should she, young, with many friends, and certificates that would enable her to teach in any school in the British Isles, have stayed to face such drudgery? Yet if she had been married, how to find the record of it?

In a moment he was on his feet, and at work on what he called routine.

He worked backwards, and forwards, and sideways, and all ways around his new idea of a marriage at sea, and as the result of three days and nights of incessant work, he learnt an interesting little tale which unravelled at least a part of the mystery that so perplexed him, the mystery of Mrs. Tangye's actions just before she was murdered.

The story, duly vouched for step by step, was as follows:

Lady Susan Dawlish had come to Bettws-y-coed one summer fifteen years ago with her great-niece, Mable Headly, then about twenty. They had stayed at the best hotel in that lovely spot. Mable played an uncommonly good game of tennis. So did a Mr. Hart, a visitor at the same hotel. Also he sang in a well-trained tenor, while Mable played charming accompaniments. He gave out that he belonged to a good family in Ireland. Talked of his hunters, and polo ponies, and passed for the younger son of a hard-up landowner. Lady Susan disliked him intensely at first sight, and took the pretext of "doctor's advice" to go to Colwyn Bay. She had complained of the young man's unwanted attentions, mentioning that any such match would be preposterous, as her great-niece would be extremely well off, since she, Lady Susan, intended leaving her all her money. The old lady was wealthy, even by post-war standards.

At Colwyn Bay, Pointer found that Hart had followed the two women, taking up his quarters in another hotel, but one which used the same tennis courts. But after a fortnight Lady Susan received a telegram. Her maid had told the manageress that it was from some relatives who were starting for the Colonies, relatives of the older woman, whom Miss Headly did not even know. Lady Susan went on to Holyhead to see them off, taking her maid with her. They were only to be gone two days.

Miss Headly promptly utilised the first to go out with Hart on a little craft which plied up and down the coast.

They went out beyond the three-mile limit, upon which the skipper, and owner, married them. A perfectly valid marriage.

The two young people returned next morning, very pleased with themselves. Old Lady Susan would have to make the best of it now. But she never returned. That afternoon a telegram arrived to say that she had been knocked down by a motor, and killed instantly. That was all the manageress knew. She, and others in the hotel, still remembered the sea-marriage of the young couple. The woman identified the portrait of Mrs. Tangye as that of the gay, brisk, young woman of fifteen years ago.

As for Hart, like the hotel keeper at the inland resort, she had liked him immensely. "So gentlemanly," "such a sweet temper," "so romantic."

The description was still the same as Pointer had heard on the Usk. Apparently Hart had no distinguishing marks of any kind except his good tennis, and even better singing.

A solicitor's story came next. A solicitor in Chester where Lady Susan lived. She had made a will years before, leaving everything to the relatives whom she had gone to Holyhead to see that Saturday. Mable Headly was not even mentioned in it. The solicitor remembered a young whelp quite clearly who had come to splutter and bluster about the will.

He had also a vague recollection of a pale, silent, haughty-looking wife, the great-niece of his late client, who seemed only anxious for her husband to come away with her. The solicitor had wondered how on earth she had come to marry him. Again Pointer could not obtain any definite description. The solicitor proved quite unable, as well as unwilling to identify Vardon from his portrait, but neither could he say that the photograph might not be that of the man he had only seen once.

Pointer devoted himself to Hart's surroundings. With great difficulty he unearthed some one who remembered Hart in Newport. Hart at that time was an auctioneer's assistant.

This was just before his holiday in Bettws-y-coed. Pointer's informant told him with a chuckle that Hart always saved up, and took a holiday "regardless," hoping to meet some wealthy girl, or widow, preferably the latter. "Not so long to wait," added his one-time friend, "at least, that's what he used to say."

Here, too, the portrait of Vardon, a good one, was not of much use. One moment, like the hotel manageress, the man did not think it possible for Hart to have changed his appearance so completely, but the next he weakened, and murmured that fifteen years would make a difference.

Apart from identification, the sordid tale so far was clear enough. Hart, at that time the young auctioneer's clerk, just then out of a job, had cajoled what he doubtless mistook for a wealthy girl of the upper classes into a hurried marriage with him. It was easy to picture his disgust when he found himself instead of better off, saddled with a girl without a penny. Pointer too imagined her desperate efforts to right things. He thought that the woman whom he had only seen lying, as he believed, murdered, would have put up a good fight to make and keep a home.

This acquaintance of Hart's had no idea where Mr. and Mrs. Hart lived. The shop of which Hart claimed to be, and probably was, the manager, was the kind known as a lockup. The man had never met Mrs. Hart except in the shop, where, according to him, she was a live wire wasted. Hart had a way of shutting himself up for hours—drinking, the man said, and the shop, already at the bottom of the hill when the Harts had taken it over, slid completely out of sight. Then came, after nearly two years of married life, the finding of the boat, the tragedy, as it was assumed to be.

This was something learnt, but it left the kernel of the riddle—to Pointer—still unexplained. From many small things in the report of the inquest, he believed that the wife had really gone out in that boat, but not so Hart. Yet his wife would know that he was not in the boat. His wife would surely have made some inquiries again later on. Especially would that be the case, if she were of such a character as "the murdered woman," so Pointer called her in his mind.

Finally Pointer got the real explanation. He got it from the Chaplain of a Sailors' Home at Cardiff, whither his search for Captain Todhunter, had led him. Todhunter was the master mariner who had married Irving Hart and Mable Headly in that swift fashion, nearly fifteen years ago.

Drunk when in charge of his old tub some four years later, he had lost her. And with his boat, lost his own means of livelihood. He had died in the Home about two years ago.

Before he died, he had made a statement on oath which was duly taken down and witnessed. It was still in the Chaplain's care. By it, Captain Todhunter revoked a statement which he and his mate had made to Mrs. Hart two years after her marriage to Hart. It seemed that the husband had tired of the tie and had arranged "for a consideration" with the needy captain to come and make a so-called confession to his wife. The confession being that the ship was within the statutory three-mile limit, not outside it when the marriage was solemnised, and that, therefore, Mable Headly and Irving Hart were not, and never had been, married. The captain said that the young woman had taken it quietly enough.

She had made inquiries, but as his mate stood in with the captain, these had only confirmed Todhunter's story. Miss Headly had not noticed the name of a ship off for Pernambuco, which had sighted them, and signalled them a message to take back to the owners in Cardiff just before the ceremony, which she was now told was worthless. Had she done so, she could have proved, as Pointer now did, that over four nautical miles, not three, separated them from the nearest shore. She had finally, after her interview with the mate, accepted the "confession" as genuine. And on the next day, had come the news of the fatal accident to both plotter, and plotted against.

All the parties were dead, said the Chaplain. There were no children. There seemed to be no living relatives. So, after communicating the paper to the Chief Constable the Chaplain had kept the matter to himself.

As to the accident to Mrs. Tangye, the only other name given in the papers had been that of her previous marriage. Headly had not been mentioned.

Captain Todhunter had always kept his log books, and Pointer verified the place of the marriage by them, and by the log of the signalling ship whose first mate, through his glasses, had seen the marriage actually performed, and would have signalled his good wishes to the young couple but for lack of time, and trouble with the crew.

Pointer further learned that his owners had received a letter only a little over a week ago on the matter. A letter signed M. H., and dated that last Sunday of Mrs. Tangye's life. It was in her writing, without any attempt at alteration, and was to the effect that the writer enclosed a five-pound note to pay for immediate inquiries to be made as to a ship which was off Colwyn Bay on a date fifteen years ago and at a given hour. The date and the hour of the marriage of Hart and Mable Headly. Had any such ship signalled to a little steamer called the Sea-foam? The writer wanted to know whether the latter, the ship sighted, was within three miles from land or not. A great deal hung on the fact the letter added, and requested that the reply be sent with all possible speed to the initials at the foot, Paddington Post office. To be called for. Something in the note, more than the money, had hurried up the inquiry which was only a matter of a couple of hours.

On Monday night a reply had been posted as directed, giving the exact description of the Sea-foam, stating that the present captain, the then first officer of the passing steamer, had seen a marriage ceremony performed aboard her, beside a little garlanded rail. That the Captain's testimony, and the log book from which the information was taken, were open to inspection and verification at all times. The readers of the note had guessed M. H.'s reason for writing.

"Run to earth at last," Pointer said to himself. He meant the interpretation—the making clear, of Mrs. Tangye's last days, and at least some, if not all, of the motive for the murder. Mable Hart had either staged that boat accident, or had had a genuine one.

In either case, she had decided to cut the complicated hateful string that her life had become. Hart had probably believed that she had killed herself intentionally; but the thought had aroused no pity in him. Only suggested the idea of escaping himself by bribing the beach loafer to say that he had seen both husband and wife set sail in the ill-fated boat.

At any rate, Hart had doubtless believed her drowned, and continued in that belief. Until when?

If he were Vardon, until his cousin married Mable Headly. If he were not Vardon, then until they met at the orchid-show. If he were not Vardon, that meeting might well have been fortuitous. In either case, what followed would, Pointer thought, have run on similar lines. Hart had played a bold game. He had probably told the woman who considered herself Mrs. Tangye that, though he had snatched at the fact that by some strange mistake he was believed to have been drowned, and though he fully believed in her own death in that storm, yet he had never rested till he had sifted the matter of their marriage, and proved it to be genuine. Todhunter, Hart would claim, had been actuated by hopes of blackmail. Hart had then given Mrs. Tangye the name and address of the owners of the ship that had passed them during these fateful hours fifteen years ago.

He had evidently used every art to soften a woman's heart. And Mrs. Tangye? Remembering that tendency of hers to gild the past at the expense of the present, Pointer could see how she could have been beguiled by this apparently repentant man, who after all, would hold a place in her heart that no other man could ever fill. And who is not touched by the thought of fidelity? If Hart had told her of unhappy years of regret and remorse, of vain longings to have the past over again...

Pointer walked his hotel room back and forwards. Every one of Mrs. Tangye's actions was explained by this completed story. Her agitation when she saw Hart. Her slipping away from Miss Eden to talk to him, her silence on the way to the station and the train up to town. Her prostration on her arrival at the house which she had considered hitherto her home. Her letter to Miss Eden showing that she had decided on at least the outlines of her flight even then. Though still, Pointer was by no means sure that Mrs. Tangye had decided to go with Hart.

On Monday came her preparations for the secret meeting in the early afternoon before Tangye should return, a meeting arranged at Tunbridge. During that talk, the man who was certainly planning her murder even as he sat looking about him, thinking of this, rejecting that, had won her trust completely.

He and she had mapped out exactly what each was to do, so at least Mrs. Tangye would imagine, little dreaming of just what terrible decision was being worked out in the heart of the man who seemed so touchingly anxious to start life afresh with her.

Then came the return of Tangye, the forced quarrel to ensure his going up to town, and to give her a pretext for leaving him, ostensibly an outraged wife. Apart from any quarrel, it was easy to understand that Mrs. Tangye would refuse the loan of money to Tangye from funds in which she believed that she, and therefore far less he, had no real rights. As to what would have come afterwards, Pointer could only guess, nor did it matter. On the whole he believed that Mrs. Tangye would have gone abroad. At any rate this Monday, she had written for her old will restoring Branscombe's money to Cecil Branscombe's heir.

That will! If Hart were Vardon, it, and the gift of the fifteen hundred pounds took on another light. In that case, it was a bad blunder.

Inevitable, perhaps, under the pressure of lack of funds. Pointer followed that thought all through its ramifications. If Hart were Vardon, then all his story of the gift of the money in his rooms, of the talk there was false. Nothing bore out his statement. But neither did any known facts contradict it.

But how about the will if Hart were not Vardon?

In that case it would be enormously to his interest not to have Mrs. Tangye die intestate, with always the possibility of her first marriage, her only legal marriage, cropping out.

Pointer imagined that Hart would have very much pressed the point about the will. It would create an atmosphere of disinterestedness on his side—supposing he were not Vardon. In the latter case it would have taken careful handling. But then the whole affair had been handled carefully.

At any rate, because of Hart's pressure, Mrs. Tangye had hurried out at once after his visit on Monday, bought the will form, and made her will. Pointer thought that looked as though she expected to be very busy, perhaps to be away on a journey, and was afraid of it slipping her memory. As to the notice of withdrawal of funds from Tangye's firm; Mrs. Tanyge might have been going to use it, or some of it, for herself. She could have justified the keeping back, at least temporarily, for her own use of a part of Clive Branscombe's money, by the certainty that if the dead man had known the facts, he would not have wished her to stand penniless in the world.

The rest of her actions on Monday, the Chief Inspector thought, was Mrs. Tangye's own doing.

On Tuesday she had dealt with her private papers, and requested Miss Saunders to be ready to leave Riverview that evening. Not in anger, nor from jealousy had this last been done, but merely as part of her plan.

But who was Hart? Hart, the murderer. Hart, who had been in such a hurry to wipe out the existence of the woman whose one crime was that she had listened to him that summer morning in Wales?

Pointer could find no portrait of the man; though he brought all his ingenuity to bear on the task of unearthing one. But he got the promise of the choirmaster who had trained Hart's voice that he would come to town immediately he should be summoned, to "take a look at some faces," among which Pointer intended to take care that Vardon's should be present. That young man was expected to return from Sweden to-morrow, and to be held up for two days in town before his boat sailed for South America. One thing was certain, Hart was not Tangye. Apart from crass improbability, Hart was fairish, Tangye was very dark. Fifteen years ago, Tangye was at Oxford and had just won his Blue. But was there some collusion? In detective work things are so rarely what they seem. True, by the discovery of a still living first husband, Tangye lost all claim to any money left by Branscombe, but, according to Hyam's latest confidential note, Tangye was to-day a very wealthy man. His gamble in cotton had turned out a magnificent success. He could well afford—now—to lose his late wife's capital.

There was always that key-ring, linking Tangye, and Miss Saunders, and Vardon.

And there was the belief expressed by Wilmot that supposing there were a crime here, then Tangye would be found in some way implicated. Pointer thought of the great crime-specialist's words more than once as he took the train back to town, every nerve tingling, as it would with him, when the end of a hard case was in sight.