Читать книгу Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 48

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WILMOT and Haviland met Pointer at the London Terminus. The Chief Inspector took them on with him to New Scotland Yard, where he told the tale to them and the Assistant Commissioner at the same time. Captain Pelham punctuated the telling with a few shrewd questions. When it was over he glanced at Wilmot.

"You and I will find it difficult to keep our feet, Wilmot, against this."

Wilmot refused to consider that all was lost.

"Though I grant you, Pointer, that your theory's wonderfully improved from the puny shade it was when you showed it last. But, as I see it, it immeasurably strengthens the idea of suicide. Immeasurably. Suppose every fact to be right, except the end. Have Mrs. Tangye hate—as she would, depend on it—the very thought of Hart! Just imagine her situation, her truly terrible situation. She's not married to Tangye. She never was married to Branscombe. She loathes her real husband. If she tells the world the truth, she places herself in a most pitiful position.

"Even if she takes Tangye into her confidence, she knows him well enough to feel sure that he won't be able to keep it to himself. He will be free to marry Mrs. Bligh, or possibly Miss Eden. Poor Mrs. Tangye! A wife and yet not a wife! Rather than face a life in hiding, a life of perpetual humiliation, of never-dying gossip, she picks up that revolver...No wonder she fired it with the left hand! I don't see any need for a Hart in the final scene. I only see a broken heart. An agonised, tormented soul!"

Wilmot's voice had a ring of deep feeling in it for once. "And I see Vardon," murmured Haviland, "though I see what you mean too, Mr. Wilmot. As a matter of fact, for the poor lady, it was just as well it all ended when it did."

"I still see no certain crime here," Wilmot spoke with a touch of reluctance that marked something approaching conversion in his attitude, "not yet. Though I confess, I'm a bit shaken—just a bit, by that legacy.

"Should it be a crime here, then I feel sure it will still turn out to be a Tangye-Saunders affair. You say Tangye wasn't Hart. Granted. But I say that the murderer—if he exists—doesn't need to be Hart either. What about Tangye in a disguise? What about Philpotts even? What about that cousin whose death we assume, but can't prove, therefore, can't be certain of? What about Miss Saunders slipping in through those open windows? What about Miss Eden even...When you've had Vardon quite definitely not identified as Hart, perhaps you'll come over to my way of thinking."

"Perhaps we shall," Pointer said thoughtfully, as he went to an inner office. "But Tangye will still be available, if wanted. And so will the rest of your rather sweeping list." Wilmot elaborated to his theory of some more subtle combinations of the Riverview persons.

Pelham listened, but only half in agreement.

"You may be right, that's what I've maintained myself up till now. But you know—well, Pointer is Pointer!" Mayor Pelham finished with a smile.

"Yes, but he's not God-Almighty! I don't deny that this story needs very careful weighing," Wilmot went on, "I don't pretend that it doesn't alter some things. But, don't forget that it opens the door to blackmail. Suppose some one else had stumbled on it, too?"

"Vardon?" Haviland asked again, almost in spite of himself.

Pointer entered: "I wired to the man who's shadowing Vardon to keep watch night and day, and above all make a note of every one who speaks to his charge."

"He'll find it difficult to give us the slip with Inspector Watts on his heels," Haviland muttered in gratified tones.

"You think Vardon is in danger?" put in the quicker-witted newspaper man.

"If he's not Hart, we do," Pelham answered very seriously, "in that case, if Hart can do away with Vardon in some manner that prevents definite identification of the body—why, he'll think that he's hung up the case indefinitely."

"Then he doesn't know Pointer," Wilmot turned to the Chief Inspector in mock despair. "What's a body more or less to you? You'd merely think out some fresh tale of mystery, and sail on, with or without the corpse.

"No, no!" Wilmot made a gesture with his cigarette suggestive of dispersing smoke, or a crowd of tiny gnats, from in front of his eyes, "you postulate a murderer who not only left no trace of his presence at the scene of his supposed crime, but has given us no sign of life throughout the investigation. No effort has been made to mislead us. There has been no stir in the underwood of the case to mark the passage of a secret criminal, and we've all been listening attentively. I can't think Vardon, or any other man, would have such iron nerve."

"The thing I'm afraid of," Pointer spoke very gravely, a little uneasily, "is that there may be still another murder. However, the only witness I found in Wales, who could identify Hart—possibly—is spending a couple of days in a nursing-home."

"Eh?" asked Pelham.

"I really hadn't the face to ask for any more men, sir. So I suggested a quiet retreat to him. It's only a matter of two or three days, and free of charge. I told him that he might get sandbagged outside. That idea made him skip under shelter like a lamb. The doctor's in the secret, but all the rest, even the Matron, think it's suicidal mania. He's never left alone, allowed no visitors, watched day and night, and the staff are laying themselves out to amuse him. His only complaint will be that the food is all cut up, and that he won't be allowed to shave himself, but that's not much. Once Vardon's ship is back from Sweden, it's due to-morrow, he'll be escorted up to town and taken over by us like royalty. I think we've done our best to safeguard him, as we have Vardon..."

"I hope we shan't slip up on the question of identification," Pelham said, "it's absolutely vital here. If only we had been able to lay our hands on a photograph of this Hart!"

"As far as I could find out, he never had one taken," Pointer was not pleased with that fact.

"I can't see how you can doubt that Vardon's the murderer," Haviland said firmly, "it all seems of a piece. In fact, it's like one of these prehistoric monsters you hear of, where first you find a footprint—heard a pair of them in this case—and then you get a bit of a bone. Then comes along the spine, and finally you wind up with the skull, and there you are."

"Ah," Pointer said good-humouredly, "the great thing is not to link up one beast's snout with another creature's tail. It doesn't matter in a museum case, but it might in one of ours."

And with that small joke the men separated. Wilmot and Haviland going on with Pointer to see Tangye.

Pointer had sent the stockbroker a telegram before starting up to town.

It was a very jaded looking man who glanced up at the two tall figures, one in uniform, one in tweeds, as followed by Wilmot they were shown into his den by a servant who they knew, and Tangye knew, was a butler detective.

"Well?" Tangye said tersely, rather white about his tightening lips.

"Now, sir," Pointer took a chair unasked. "We haven't the man who murdered Mrs. Tangye but information has come to hand which tends to let you out. As you've seemed to feel yourself an object of suspicion—"

"Seemed to feel!" Tangye flashed back, unlocking a tantalus and pouring out some whisky for himself which he merely waved beneath the siphon as a matter of form. He did not ask any of the three to drink with him. He had not forgotten the day when Pointer had refused. Nor a later day when even Wilmot had made some excuse. "We've thought it the right thing to come and tell you that much. Naturally we'd like you to keep it to yourself for the present."

Pointer laid little stress on this last point. He thought it most unlikely that his researches into Hart's past were not known to the murderer.

"But I think you ought to be frank with us. Tell us the truth of the tangle that you've got yourself into."

"Indeed?" Tangye wheeled around. "You expect a full confession of the crime perhaps?"

"No," Pointer said equably, "we merely would like your own account of why you gave Miss Saunders that promise to marry her. Why you went to Vardon's rooms on the Tuesday your wife was found dead. Why you returned to Riverview about five on the same Tuesday afternoon. Of course, we have a tolerably complete idea of what happened, but if you could explain the various points satisfactorily, we would not expect to mention them at the trial. Nor to question Messrs. Merchant of Nottingham about the notes they received Wednesday morning. Notes known to have been in your late wife's possession yet posted by you before the police left the house Tuesday afternoon."

Tangye's teeth met with a click. He was very pale. He eyed the Chief Inspector as though sizing him up. Wilmot bent forward.

"I should like to relieve you of my presence," he said earnestly, "but as I understand that the police maintain the idea of murder, my Company would expect me to be present."

"One more or less—" Tangye said, not over civilly. "Do I understand that, unless wanted, my statement will be kept private?"

Pointer explained that that was what he hoped, though he could not give an absolute promise.

Tangye had another drink.

"You seem to know an amazing lot already," he said grudgingly.

"Oh, like most people, we know a good deal more than we say," Pointer agreed pleasantly.

Tangye looked him over with a most unloving eye.

"Well, here goes! Mrs. Tangye and I had a quarrel on Monday afternoon. It was started by her. It entirely concerned her having caught sight of another lady and me at Tunbridge orchid-show. I told you that much. Only the lady was not Miss Saunders. Her name doesn't matter—"

"One moment. You mean Miss Eden?" Pointer nodded his head as though this much he knew already.

Tangye's cheeks flamed.

"I mean nothing of the kind. Do you mean to tell me that you're dragging even Miss Eden's name into this unsavoury mess? A woman who's an angel of goodness and innocence? A girl who—"

"Well, we know that she was there. And that she talked to you. At the orchid-show." Pointer said urbanely.

"The lady I was with was Mrs. Bligh," Tangye snapped out. "Her address is—" he gave it. "And now I trust that information has laid those monstrous suspicions of yours about another person."

"It has," Pointer assured him, "but you see, sir, half an explanation is no good to us, and only tends to drag in innocent people."

Tangye gulped.

"All that I told you about Mrs. Tangye's manner take as repeated," he said after a moment. "Everything was exactly as I told you, except that Miss Saunders' name was never mentioned. I stayed on—" he hesitated, "I stayed on to tea," he repeated. After a pause he began again, "Well, I stayed on because there was something I wanted to speak about. Something I wanted to say." Again he stopped.

"We know about that Irish firm having let you down," Pointer put in. The going was very hard for Tangye just here evidently. "We know that on Monday at noon Mr. O'Malley sent you a wire in code to say that he couldn't meet his liabilities and was off for abroad. We know that no blame whatever attaches to your firm for the position in which it found itself."

"Ah, you know that?" this time Tangye looked relieved, "Well, you've guessed why I stayed on. I had come back home intending to ask my wife to help me out. A damned unpleasant errand. And you can imagine my feelings when the interview started in as it did. But I thought I might talk her into a better temper. She was quick-tempered, but placable—as a rule. I found her adamant. I didn't even mention money. It was impossible. And yet I needed it as I've never needed it before in my life. I went back to town, and on Tuesday morning tried to see if I could raise some. But credit in the city is an odd thing. The whisper of O'Malley's difficulties had got about, and no bank would lend. It would have been suicide to borrow privately. My liabilities, since Dublin had let me in, were too high. Now my insurance papers were in my desk at home. I could raise something on them. My wife's policy was there too. In her own writing-table. I decided to raise money on mine, and if I could manage it, on my wife's as well. I paid the premiums on both.

"I drove home without any thought of slipping away unnoticed, but as it happened the commissionaire was busy with a messenger boy as I came out of the alley and never saw me. I decided to leave the car at a turning near Riverview, and let myself into the house quietly. I had no desire to meet Mrs. Tangye...I got the documents I wanted. Then I remembered my wife's insurance papers. She kept them in the safe. I ran upstairs, made sure that no one was in our bed-room, and tried the knob. But for once the safe was locked. I went downstairs again. There was no sound in the morning-room. Mrs. Tangye might be out. I slipped into the garden through a side door in my study. Going around to the morning-room, I saw that no light was lit, and that one of the windows was ajar. I felt sure from that that Mrs. Tangye was out. So, switching on the lamp by her desk. I opened it. It was unlocked. The keys were lying on top. The desk was empty except that in the pigeon-hole where she usually kept her policy, was a small pile of account books and papers neatly tied together. Just as I caught sight of one end of the paper I was after, I heard a sound outside the door. I thought it was Mrs. Tangye, and snatching up the packet, I slipped out into the garden again. It was, of course, Miss Saunders who opened the door as I left by the window. She watched me go." Tangye's hand shook as he lit a cigar.

"There's no doubt about it that my wife must have been sitting dead in that alcove all the time. Florence says she didn't leave the room after four she thinks. It's a horrible thought, but I think it's a true one."

"I think so, too," Pointer agreed soberly. "What did you do then?"

"I slipped out by the tradesmen's gate, and into my car which I'd left at the first turning. Drove to the city and raised in five minutes a little money, though nothing like what I needed. But I had made up my mind what I was going to do with it. I have an acquaintance—Merchant of Merchant Bros., as you seem to know. He's in cotton. We had talked things over on Saturday in Norfolk. He had urged me for once to come in on a speculation. The biggest thing of the last fifty years he called it, and rightly. A few fivers margined at the beginning of this cotton boom might mean thousands at the end. It has. I got the loan, telephoned to Manchester and posted him the cheque. Then I got my car out, took my wife's books back with me, and drove home intending to make things up with her. When I got to Riverview the Superintendent was here, and I was told that Mrs. Tangye was dead.

"The moment you, Superintendent, went upstairs to look over the bedroom, Miss Saunders came into my den." Tangye paused and shot out his lower lip. "She had an envelope in her hands with fifteen hundred pounds in it in bank notes. In a whisper she told me that she had found this envelope lying in Mrs. Tangye's safe. I knew my wife had just sold a farm. I had no idea for how much. There was still time to post the money to Manchester. I thanked her, and decided to pass over her having unlocked the safe without authority. Slipped out of the house and round to the post office. There I telephoned to Merchant's son in the City. He passed my message on to his father, and I posted the notes. On that I returned to the house, to find Miss Saunders sitting here waiting for me. The police had gone. She sat in the chair you're in now, Superintendent." Tangye fixed a meditative eye on the piece of furniture in question.

"It certainly was an unexpected interview. Miss Saunders accused me of shooting my wife. In a way it makes it infinitely more ghastly that I believe she really and truly believes I did fire that shot. Though how she thinks Mrs. Tangye would let herself be picked off like a half-frozen bee! All that stuff she told you was, of course, invention on her part, but I think she believes I murdered Mrs. Tangye, and then lost my head, and left the notes behind me. Well, I saw pretty quickly what a position I was in. I'm bound to say she helped me to see it. There were the insurance policies on which I had raised money. There was the fifteen hundred which I had just posted; by the six-thirty post, too! There was my presence at Riverview—I had no idea then that I hadn't been seen leaving my office. That was pure luck. There was the visit on Sunday to the orchid-show with a lady. There was the quarrel on Monday! It made an ugly story. Miss Saunders didn't slur anything over. She told me that she had cleaned up all marks of my coming in to the morning-room, and closed the windows which I had left, as I found them open. Miss Saunders made me an offer. To back up any story I should tell. To substitute her name for that of the lady who really was with me on Sunday, if I would marry her—Miss Saunders and give her the promise in writing; at once.

"Otherwise she intended to denounce me. She told me that she would say that she had seen me actually with the pistol in my hand. I'm bound to say she put the wind up me all right. The more I thought it over, the worse it looked. I couldn't make up my mind what to do. Marry that octopus! Penal servitude didn't seem much better, barring of course the disgrace. Then there flashed into my mind a bottle of vanishing ink I'd seen in Vardon's rooms only a fortnight before. It looked just like the regular stuff, only it wouldn't last a fortnight. He had won it on shipboard as a booby prize, he told me. It's common stuff in every South American stationer's."

Pointer thought of his wasted efforts.

"I 'phoned up to find if he was in. He wasn't. But I decided to try for that ink all the same. It meant salvation to me.

"I told Miss Saunders I would pick her up just over Richmond Bridge, and take her along to my office where my head clerk was still busy, I told her he could be depended on not to talk, and that I would write her a marriage promise there. I took my wife's papers off with me again—I couldn't put them back in her desk after the police had been over it—and drove around to Vardon's, then I made an excuse that I must run up and tell him of the accident. But the ink was gone. He'd given it to a friend only a couple of days before, I've since learnt. There was no help for it. We went on to my office. There I wrote out an agreement which she read through and tightened up. She put it inside her dress and went back alone to Riverview. She told me, by the way, with that engaging frankness which is one of her most amiable characteristics, that the paper would be kept in its sealed envelope by her legal advisor, whoever that exalted personage may be. This was evidently a warning that it would be no use for me to murder her to get it back. I noticed, as possibly you did, that she refused to spend any night at Riverview?"

"We noticed it," Pointer said with a faint smile. There was a pause.

"Thank you, sir, for being so frank. If all goes well, you'll be able to snap your fingers at that paper. It was practically blackmail. Now at the orchid-show did you see Mrs. Tangye?"

"Not I! I hadn't the shadow of an idea that she was there until I ran into Miss Eden by chance. She told me of Mrs. Tangye's having seen me and my companion. And of her having looked terribly upset. I pooh-poohed the idea that she should mind. Naturally it wasn't what I should have chosen. But a flower-show! After all a flower-show I Second to being seen at a picture gallery I should have thought. Miss Eden, however, warned me that my wife was terribly upset. I didn't believe her. But I decided it might be as well not to linger. A meeting might have been most awkward. So the lady and I left. Next day came the quarrel. I think that's the circle complete!"

Pointer thought a moment.

"And how did you get hold of Mrs. Tangye's keys?"

"Miss Saunders handed them to me. While we were in the car driving to Vardon's. I must have been ass enough to drop them in his rooms when I tried to open a book-case. I don't remember what became of them, so I suppose I left them lying on his table. You see, at the time I thought them of no importance. Then came the discovery of that missing, or rather unentered-money. I confess I thought that Miss Saunders had taken it, and only handed me the half. 'Pon my word, I hoped as much. I wish to Heaven she could be jailed, but I suppose there's no chance of that?"

Pointer did not enter into that pious hope. There was a little silence.

"I want to say one thing more." Tangye spoke very earnestly. "I want to say it solemnly you're making a mistake, Chief Inspector. There's no crime here. Mrs. Tangye fired that shot herself. That I swear."

"And that I believe," Wilmot said simply.

"Firmly?" asked Haviland.

"I have intervals of doubt," Wilmot confessed, "but I find myself always swinging back to my original, and your original, belief."

"You found the French windows open?" Pointer asked their host.

"Ajar. Since learning of your suspicions of foul play I've searched my mind most anxiously, and there wasn't a footprint or any sign of disturbance as of any one else having been in the room," Tangye said, very thoughtfully. "My wife's chair was out of sight, back in the alcove hidden by that screen, but the other chair was in full view. Even the cushion on it was all plump and smooth. No sign of any one having sat in it."

There was a pause.

"Miss Saunders cleaned the door of the safe after opening it, I suppose?"

"Trust her!"

"And, since we are clearing up these various details, what became of the Lux camera you took with you to Tunbridge on Sunday?"

Tangye seemed bewildered.

"Lux camera? Oh—h—? I left it at the orchid show. Lost it. It was a present to the lady who was with me. I was carrying it for her and showing her how to use it, when she caught sight of some friends and went off to speak to them; I stayed behind trying it on some plants. That was when Miss Eden ran into me. I put it down beside us on the rustic bench we sat on to talk, and forgot the damned thing. It was never wanted again. Mrs. Bligh seemed to have lost all her interest in photography when I saw her next, and told her that I had just discovered what I must have done. I was thankful to be spared making any inquiries down at the show. Naturally, after Mrs. Tangye's death, the very name sickened me."

Pointer had had his own inquiries made since learning from Mrs. Bligh's maid of the camera's disappearance. It had not been seen. If Tangye's story was true, some one had "annexed" it.

"There's one other thing I wish to say," Tangye said as his guests rose to go. "I have withdrawn all opposition to the probating of that will that Mrs. Tangye signed the Monday before she died."

"You think it's genuine?" Haviland frowned. He did not.

"I always held that Vardon had a right to the land. As to the money—I have no wish to hand over the sum in question to the lawyers. Vardon agrees to leave it in my firm. They would not," was the laconic reply.

"And your wife's notice of withdrawal of her funds?" Tangye's face darkened. "A cursed unfair and vindictive thing of her to want to do. I can't understand it. Except that the poor girl really was off her head."

"You knew of the notice?"

"Stewart gave me the note when you telephoned him for an interview. Lest you should ask...I destroyed it."

Tangye still looked black. Evidently he had not forgiven his wife for that letter. Pointer thought that its existence had gone far to make Tangye take her death as he had done. There was a short silence in the police car that Pointer was driving.

"Vardon's luck seems too good to last," Haviland spoke crossly. "And that's a fact! First he gets the fifteen hundred pounds handed him and no questions asked. Then a will is found on him giving him ten thousand in cash and close on that in land—and still no questions to be asked."

"It does make one wonder!"

"Whether he is Tangye's friend and accomplice?" mused Wilmot. "I've never had so fascinating a problem to ponder. No murder, I still think. Yes, in spite of the great Hart discovery. At least I think I think so. But there certainly is an intricate shadow-dance here, which is vastly interesting."

"Quite apart from the rest of his story, I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Tangye might not have told Tangye the truth about meeting Hart on Sunday, if it hadn't been for seeing Mrs. Bligh with him down at Tunbridge." The Chief Inspector had been pursuing his own thoughts.

"You speak as though an assumption were the same as a fact," Wilmot's tone had something of bewilderment in it, "you assume Hart's still alive. Without a shred of evidence to back that assumption you go on to imagine him as having been at Tunbridge on Sunday, and at Riverview, Monday and Tuesday. My dear chap, you can't expect a logical mind to assume so much. You might equally well argue that Headly père was not really dead, and that it was him she saw, and so on..."

"But if Hart's Vardon, Mr. Wilmot, then he becomes a fact," Haviland pointed out, as he got down at his police station. He wondered why the other two laughed.