Читать книгу The Footsteps That Stopped - Dorothy Fielding - Страница 4

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THE afternoon was very still with the misty stillness of a day in late November. To Wilmot, the Thames, running so softly beside them as they walked up from the police-station, seemed like the river of life. Enigmatic. Uncertain. Never the same for more than a minute. Now an unbroken stretch of shadows leaden and hopeless. Now a fairy stream, all silver and glitter.

Much hung on their errand. One word from the tall young man swinging ahead in front, and some life now at ease would become a hunted thing. Wanted by the police. The life itself wanted. Forfeit to law. It must be a strange feeling. He had sometimes thought that criminals enjoyed their peril with an awful joy. The exultation of wit pitted against wit. But would that word be spoken here? The Special Correspondent had found nothing yesterday to justify it. He was looking forward keenly to seeing the Chief Inspector at work.

Wilmot had never been accused of a lack of belief in his own very considerable powers. It was therefore, perhaps, characteristic that the possibility of a man entering a room with him, or after him, looking it over, and discovering clues where he could see absolutely nothing, should seem to him a marvellous feat. He remembered Pointer's words about the dead woman's finger-prints on her revolver. Uncommon in more ways than one, the Scotland Yard expert called them. Yet they had looked all right to Haviland. And they had looked all right to him. They were Mrs. Tangye's without a doubt. What then was odd about them?

Wilmot had never been of the French school which ranks reasoning higher than observation. To him, the bushman's gift of reading a spoor was one of the most entertaining exercises of intelligence still left to a humdrum world.

Twickenham has some fine old houses. Riverview was one of these. Wilmot, looking up at it, thought, as he had thought yesterday when Newnes had taken him to it, that a less likely setting for a tragedy it were difficult to imagine. Every brick spoke of security. Of comfort. Of calm. The garden that surrounded it was an overcrowded, cluttered-up affair where one acre had been made to carry the trees, and shrubberies, and herbaceous borders of three.

Florence, the parlourmaid, opened the door. A constable who had followed took up an unostentatious seat in the hall. Pointer was never eavesdropped.

"Shall I show you to the room, sir?" Florence evidently thought that the house held but the one. Haviland still had the key in his pocket from the inquest. "Miss Saunders is out for the moment, but she'll be back soon."

The three men stepped into a large room which had a little windowless extension jutting out towards the river, forming a snug, draught-proof retreat, where stood a tall lamp, a square double-tiered tea-table, a couple of comfortable armchairs, and the high, slender, little, occasional affair on which Mrs. Tangye had been found seated.

The room itself opened into the garden by a couple of long windows which fastened with a patent catch impossible to open from the outside.

Wilmot looked about him with interest. He had not had time before, or rather, his mind had been too occupied with other things, to let him sense the atmosphere then. Gazing around him now, he tried to reconstruct the dead woman's personality from what he could see, as might a man fresh come, knowing nothing of the tragedy. He was planning a little article on "Hidden Forces" for one of his impressionist sketches.

It was a pleasant room. Dark brown, with covers and hangings in vivid wall-flower tints ranging from red to clearest amber. It was a comfortable room. Even the castors were well oiled. Symbolic this last, Wilmot thought. Life too, for Mrs. Tangye had evidently been well oiled. It was not in the least a subtle room. Yet the dead woman had obviously cared for music, for, on the two pianos the parts of Stravinsky's own reduction of his latest concerto were still open.

Wilmot flicked the pages shut with a contemptuous finger, murmuring something about "watered Bach." Then he seated himself on a chair by the wall, and folding his arms, stared around him inch by inch. He could see nothing, however small, that looked even odd, let alone suspicious. Evidently neither could Haviland. Though his eyes flew along the walls—the ceilings—the windows—with the speed of a new fighting plane doing stunts at a review. The gaze of both men came to a standstill on Pointer, who was sauntering around the room with his swift, unhurried, step.

He stopped at the tea-table first. On a used plate the handles of a little gilt knife and fork detained him. Then he stooped to the undershelf. Only one cup and plate showed signs of use.

"You found no finger-prints in the room, except those of the people in the house?"

"Just so, sir."

"Those on the bolts of the French windows inside the room were Miss Saunders's?"

Haviland nodded assent.

"Correct, sir. She says she tried them to make sure they were fast. They were."

"She claims to've been away from the house changing a book for Mrs. Tangye at the circulating library from four to nearly six. How about it?"

"I couldn't verify it at the library itself, sir. But she was seen in some tea-room close by about that time. I confess I haven't tested her alibi, for her evidence seemed all right—I mean, the case seemed quite straightforward, in fact. I mean—" Haviland pulled up. What he really meant was that he thought the case was not one that required investigations of that kind.

Pointer had passed on to the fireplace, where Haviland had had the ashes kept. Pointer picked up a newspaper and gently fanned them.

"Only paper ashes. 'Mrs. Tangye seems to've burnt her letters out on the hearth. Piece by piece. No marks of stirring on the tiles. But what about the fire itself?" Pointer asked.

"Must have been lit late. Just a couple of smouldering logs were all I found, sir. I had them taken away, but the ashes haven't been touched."

"Wasn't the room cold?" was the next question.

"Not to notice. At least...I had my great coat on..."

Haviland flushed. Had he overlooked something? But Pointer turned away immediately.

"Now, Superintendent, you saw, when you first came in here yesterday?"

Haviland was secretly impatient.

A lot of work was waiting for him back at his station. He had been here on the day before, and had gone over the room very thoroughly. A detective from the Yard had been here. The Coroner had been here. It seemed hardly likely that any late corner could find anything worth while, even if that late comer was the youngest Chief Inspector at the Yard. Mrs. Tangye's death was either suicide or accident, a quite ordinary affair. Merely imperfectly docketed at the inquest. But he obediently explained to his superior how the room had looked when he had entered it.

"That clothing over there is what she was wearing when found, I suppose?" he asked when Haviland had done.

"Correct, sir. I had them brought in here for the jury to look at this morning." Top of all was the velvet frock with the powder blackened breast, and the scorched hole.

"You can see, pressed into the pile, the very ring the autoisnatic made." Haviland pointed to a little circle. "At least, a part of it. Along this burnt bit here."

You could see a mark. But was it made by her revolver? It looked a very thin line to Pointer.

He turned away, and seated himself at Mrs. Tangye's writing bureau. Haviland watched him with the air of a man about to be completely and entirely justified. He felt certain that he would yet leave the room without a stain upon his official character. He had found nothing amiss because there was nothing amiss to be found.

"You say in your report, that, not finding her keys, you opened the desk with a pass-key. How about it?" Pointer asked on rising.

"They're mislaid somewhere. I only looked through this one room for them of course."

Pointer made no comment, but asked to see the body. They found Newnes in the upstairs room, putting the last touches to a sketch. Pointer signed to him to finish.

"If she did it intentionally, I wonder if she's glad now or sorry." Newnes hoped to start a little debate which would enable him to slide into the official circle. No one answered.

"Has she changed her lot for the better?" he mused, with one eye on Pointer.

"She certainly has for good," Wilmot said dryly, pulling up the blind to its fullest extent.

Death is not the brother of sleep. Nor does it look it. Sleep is active. As active as waking. The subconscious is in full control. The work of repairing, rebuilding, is going on full speed ahead. But death—for what lies before us, is the actual end. Nothing now but a return to its component parts await the wonderful machine which has been definitely scrapped by its owner. To Wilmot indeed, all that there ever could be, or ever had been, to Mable Tangye lay before them.

As for the two police officers, the point of greatest interest for the moment was not why, but how.

Newnes took another reluctant departure. Then only did Pointer go up to the coffin. He gazed very searchingly at the face inside.

Suicide demands an unusual temperament. Pointer saw no signs of it here. To him these were the last features to associate with the voluntary pushing open of that door which we call death. Mrs. Tangye looked a handsome, upstanding, hot-tempered, rather selfish woman of around thirty. One who would put up a good fight for all her possessions, including life. There was pluck in her face, as well as resolution. He would expect this woman to have found a way to cut her losses, supposing she had them, not allow them to swamp her. Yet equally certainly she was a woman who would not have gone against the accepted order of things. Respectability was stamped on her. Conventionality engraved on every line. Even around the corners of the mouth where, an impulsive temper lurked as well.

Pointer studied her hands carefully.

"Come on anything, sir?" Haviland asked, after a pause.

"They have been washed, of course. But on her left hand under her two wedding rings are traces, of what will prove to be butter, I fancy—" He pushed a tiny wad of sterilised cotton beneath them and then put it away in a corked bottle which he swiftly labelled, "—as you'd expect from the greasiness of her finger-prints on that revolver. That's why I asked about a cat or a dog. I thought she might have been feeding one. Yet apparently only a quarter of a crumpet was eaten, and that with a knife and fork, on whose very smooth and polished handles she left no finger-prints whatever. Odd!"

"Shall I tell you what I think is odd?" Wilmot, giving up all idea of spectacular developments, lit a cigarette, and, as usual prepared to take the centre of the stage. It was his favourite stance.

"The oddest thing about this affair that I can see, is the reason that made Miss Saunders have Miss Tangye's body put in this shabby room at the end of the Corridor. Why not in her own bedroom?"

"Because of Mr. Tangye, I suppose," Haviland suggested. He liked commonplace explanations. He found them generally the right ones.

"Why not shift him? There's a well-furnished spare-room nearer the stairs. Why stick her away in this boxroom? It's little more," the newspaper man insisted.

"Well, that's a fact," muttered Haviland, "that's a fact."

Pointer led the way downstairs. In the hall they met Tangye. When he heard that Wilmot was acting for the Insurance Company, his jaw tightened. After a second's pause, he asked all three into his study which was opposite the room where the tragedy had occurred.

The stockbroker was an unusually handsome man. So well dressed, that he was only saved from being over-dressed by a certain ease of carriage. He had rather full, dark eyes. A pleasant manner when he chose. And a very pleasant voice at all times.

As he was one of those people who cannot imagine a talk without a drink, he unlocked a tantalus at once.

Pointer declined a cocktail, and so, after a moment, did Haviland. He could not see what the Chief Inspector had to go on, or even whether he were going on, but should this prove a "case" then Tangye obviously might be in it, and the rules of the Force forbade a drink with a possible arrest, unless for the purpose of getting at the truth.

"You sent me a note, I think," Tangye returned to the Chief Inspector, "asking me some question or other about my wife's friend, Mrs. Cranbourn. I've just had a cable from her from Marseilles. Would you care to see it?"

The stockbroker handed him a slip of paper on which Pointer read: "S.S. Reina Hermosa.

"Read of your dear wife's tragic death in paper. Terribly grieved. Maid mistaken in my name as visitor. Mable knew I am away Mediterranean cruise. Started week ago. Could not possibly have been England yesterday. Only reached Marseilles this morning. Leaving to-day. Next stop Piraeus. Letter follows."

"Must have been another lady of the same name who was coming," Tangye explained. "There seems to be some sort of a muddle. Not that it's of any consequence except in so far as that the mere fact of a caller coming, renders the idea of suicide absolutely preposterous. Some imprudent gesture on my wife's part—she handled that revolver very recklessly—I don't pretend to explain it. But there was no cause, none whatever, for her to take her own life. The very supposition was monstrous." And he glared at the Superintendent.

"Nothing is missing, I understand?" Pointer asked.

"Nothing whatever."

"How about her keys?"

Just for a second Tangye hesitated. Then he said casually, "I don't call them lost; mislaid, possibly. Nor are they of any importance."

"Had she no latch-key?"

"I suppose she had. But they're sure to be somewhere in the house."

"There's a safe in your bedroom, I think?"

"Always open. We never used it. It was in the house originally. My wife had no valuables. She didn't care for jewellery."

"Mrs. Tangye had a cousin," Pointer began, after a leisurely glance around the room, "who was brought up with her from childhood. About the same age too, I believe."

"Oliver Headly?" Tangye nodded. "Quite so."

"Was she in communication with him at all?"

"Not as far as I know. He's not been heard of for years."

"I suppose he's been notified of her death?"

"No one knows his address."

"He's her only living relative, I understand?"

Tangye nodded once more. "Supposing him to be alive. He hasn't given a sign of life for ten years or more."

Pointer was looking out of the window.

"There's no way down to the river from the house, is there?"

"Oh, Lord, no! None needed. River at the bottom of the garden, always means garden at the bottom of the river," Tangye spoke with feeling.

"But you fish?"

"Dace or roach, which?" scoffed their host.

"Oh, come now, sir," Pointer eyed the expensive double outfit on a side wall. Split cane, and spliced salmon rods hung to one side of trout rods, and a couple of serviceable hickories such as he himself used. Tangye's gaze followed his.

"Oh, those! I do a bit now and then, when away. But my wife could land a salmon with the best of them on the Tay."

Pointer continued to stroll around the room in a negligent way. Then he glanced at Haviland, who rose thankfully. "Can we look over your bedroom, sir?"

Tangye said by all means, and chatted on to Wilmot.

Pointer found that, unlike Tangye with the river, Haviland had not overstated the case in his notes. Mrs. Tangye had cleared out practically everything in the way of clothes but those in which she had been found dead.

"She hadn't packed anything for herself," Haviland pointed out, "didn't even have her dressing-case taken down off the wardrobe. The fact was, she'd finished with clothes. That's what I think."

He watched Pointer draw aside a strip of tapestry which hung between the beds. Behind it was a safe. Haviland talked on.

"Tangye's a cool chap! His wife's not buried yet, but here he is chatting away about Mayflies as lightly as though he were one himself. In fact, to listen to him, you'd think, now the inquest is over, that he hadn't a care in the world!"

"No." Pointer said reflectively, looking along the door of the safe. "No. I wouldn't make that mistake. Tangye has at least one care left. And that is to direct as much as possible of his conversation to Wilmot, less to you, and as little as possible to me. But he's not a cold-blooded man. I take it he's been very highly keyed-up, and the let-down is coming along a bit fast for his nerves. Just send a puff of finger-print powder over this door, will you. You have your bag with you."

The yellow powder discovered no marks, not even on the handle-knob. Pointer and Haviland tried the other metal objects in the room. All showed the usual signs of handling. "That's funny, for a fact." Haviland peered through a glass at the immaculate surface of the safe door. Pointer sniffed at the hinges.

"Been recently cleaned with ether. Unlike the handles of the little knife and fork in the morning-room, which were clean, but not cleaned."

Pointer led the way downstairs, and asked for a room in which the claims investigator could put a few questions to the household—or have them asked—ostensibly for his benefit.

Regina Saunders, who had just returned, was the first called. She came in so quietly that Wilmot did not hear her. He looked at her attentively as she seated herself. Yesterday he had barely known that she existed.

Walking up to the house just now, he had wondered whether the explanation of the discrepancies in her statements which had puzzled Pointer was going to turn out one of those sordid, triangular affairs called usual, because they are the exception. She did not look like a charmer. But you never could tell. Never. At a first glance she seemed to consist chiefly of negatives. She was not old. Neither did she suggest youth. Without being pretty, she was not bad-looking. Apparently she had no marked characteristics of any kind, unless it were those of the perfect background. She seemed a type of "Ye Discrete Companioun." Silent. Dark. Attentive.

Gazing at her intently, Wilmot put her age, correctly, as close on forty. For the first time focussing his mind on her as she sat composedly facing Haviland,—Pointer was casually glancing through the morning paper,—noting her down-dropped lids, her pale, tight lips, Wilmot felt as though he were standing in front of a house with drawn blinds and closed doors, behind which were wild doings.

It was one of his intuitive, telepathic impressions which, so far, had never let him down.

"I should like to run through the facts of yesterday again, with you," Haviland explained, "for the benefit of Mr. Wilmot who is looking into Mrs. Tangye's death. He has asked the Chief Inspector and me to put a few more questions." She said nothing.

"How long have you been with Mrs. Tangye?"

"Three years." The little dark eyes looked up for a second. Something in the glance told Wilmot that the time had seemed long to this woman; very long.

"And before that?"

"I was mother's help to a Mrs. Wren. She will be quite willing to answer any questions. I was with her five years, and left of my own choice."

"May I ask why Mrs. Tangye wanted a companion originally?" Pointer asked.

"Chiefly for music. She had a good voice also, she was extremely fond of duets."

"Were you ever a nurse?" the Chief Inspector continued. She looked surprised. "Never."

"Was Mrs. Wren's husband a doctor? Was your father anything connected with medicine?"

She was obviously puzzled. "Mr. Wren was a vicar. My father was an organist. I've never had anything whatever to do with nursing, or medicine, or illness, or anything of that sort. Why do you ask?"

"Only part of our regular routine," Pointer said reassuringly. He rose and, followed by Haviland, stepped out through the French windows to look over the garden. They had agreed that Wilmot should be left alone with her to do some of the questioning.

"Now, between ourselves, Miss Saunders, what sort of a woman was Mrs. Tangye?" Wilmot spoke confidentially. It was a tone that had helped him more than once. It was wasted on Miss Saunders.

"Do you think there's much difference in women?" she asked indifferently. "Much real difference?"

"The Colonel's lady, and Judy O'Grady," he quoted with a smile.

"Quite so. Though there's no case of Judy here," she spoke sharply. "Mrs. Tangye is dead, poor soul. Dead." She repeated the word, lingering on it. To Wilmot's acute ear there was something approaching unction in her voice. "I, for one, would rather say nothing against her."

And with that she gave a most illuminating character sketch of her late employer. Envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness were in every sentence. According to her, Mrs. Tangye had been a selfish virago.

"Yet you stuck it here for three years," Wilmot said thought fully.

"The pay was good."

Pointer and the Superintendent returned from their inspection of the garden.

"All seems in order. Now, Miss Saunders, about Mrs. Tangye's last days—"

But when it came to Monday, Regina Saunders was of no help. Once a month she had that day off in addition to her free Sundays. As she had explained at the inquest, this last Moriday had been her own, and been spent away from Riverview.

"And when did you decide to leave here?" Pointer asked. "You could hardly expect me to stop on after Mrs. Tangye's death," she said coldly.

"It's a censorious world," Pointer agreed, "still—you left—when?"

"About seven, I think."

"I see. Now, as we explained to you, this gentleman," Pointer turned to Wilmot, "is investigating the death on behalf of the Insurance Society, and we want to give him all the aid we can. Would you object to occupying your old room again for a few days? It would be a help to be able to turn to you at any time."

"I am here all day. I am staying on to superintend the household for a little while—at Mr. Tangye's request. But I prefer to go home to my sister's at night."

"But to oblige us? Just for a night or two?" Pointer wheedled. "Something might turn up after you had left here?"

Miss Saunders looked impatient.

"I never go back on a decision. Once I have made up my mind, I stick to it."

"Admirable trait," Wilmot murmured in mock admiration.

"We should, of course, expect the Insurance Society to pay for the convenience," Pointer went on, "a pound a night is the usual thing, I believe, in a case of this kind, where it's done merely to help the investigation, and is only a question of two, or at most three nights." He turned to Wilmot. "Quite so; a pound a night," Wilmot agreed.

Miss Saunders pondered the proposal for the first time. Evidently Pointer's improvised tariff appealed to her. But after a minute she shook her head. "I prefer to go to my sister's, as I have arranged."

There was a pause.

"Did any one see you leave the house yesterday when you went to the circulating library?" Haviland asked.

"I don't know. But at any rate the person who served me with tea in the Japanese tea-room next door might remember me. She knows me by sight quite well." Miss Saunders spoke indifferently.

"Did Mrs. Tangye want any particular book brought back, or leave it to you?" Pointer asked.

"She left it to me. I found nothing that she would care for, so I brought home the book she had given me. She had not quite finished it I knew."

"Did you ask the librarian for any book?"

"No."

"You didn't change any book whatever there?"

"No."

Pointer glanced at Wilmot.

"Now going back to the cause of Mrs. Tangye's death," the newspaper man began, "which is what I want to establish, you feel sure that she didn't shoot herself intentionally?"

"Quite sure. Why should she shoot herself? She had everything in the world that she wanted, hadn't she?" the last words came with a rush.

"Do you mean Mr. Tangye?" Wilmot asked so blankly that Haviland bit his lip.

"I mean everything." But Miss Saunders spoke more guardedly. "Mrs. Tangye wasn't used to the kind of life he gave her. A motor, and maids, and that. She told me herself once that she had known what it was to be bitterly poor."

The stipend of the Reverend Charles Headly having been under three hundred a year, out of which he had to pay a curate, the men thought that that was quite likely.

"Then you think she was happy?" persisted Wilmot.

"As much as her temperament would let her, I do. She was one of those women who always want what they haven't got.. She was always contrasting Mr. Tangye with Mr. Branscombe's perfections."

"That doesn't sound to me a happy life," Haviland murmured.

Miss Saunders flashed him an ironic glance.

"You mean in fact that they quarrelled?" he persisted.

"They led the usual married life," she said dryly. Wilmot laughed, while Haviland, who was a very happy man in his home, looked at her with marked distaste.

"Mr. Tangye says you were the last person to see Mrs. Tangye's keys. Could you tell us when that was?" Pointer asked suddenly.

Her eyes were on his as he spoke. Far back in them a spark glowed suddenly. The question had obviously come as a complete surprise. And all three men thought that the surprise was not the only emotion stirred. There was anger.

And there was something that for a second suggested dismay. But she looked down her nose immediately, and said with perfect composure, "I can't think that he would say such a thing!" This was true enough.

"My mistake doubtless," Pointer said easily, and changed the subject to the visitor, the supposed Mrs. Cranbourn, Miss Saunders said that she saw no one as she ran down the stairs. She thought that the caller must have stepped into the drawing-room and let herself out later on.

"But the reporter who came back with the maid said that you remained in the hall till the police came."

"That's quite true." Miss Saunders looked puzzled. "But perhaps she left after the police arrived. We were all in the morning-room together for a time then."

"Impossible. I had a man posted at both doors. Front and back." Haviland was very certain of this.

"I hadn't thought of it before. What did become of her?" Miss Saunders looked uneasy.

"Leaving her on one side for the moment, how did you first learn that Mrs. Tangye was dead?"

Miss Saunders repeated what she had told Haviland, and the Coroner.

"You came immediately Florence screamed?" Pointer's tone suggested a delay. A suspicious delay.

"Certainly."

"At her first scream?" Pointer persisted. As though he intended to prove that in some way the companion had been dilatory.

"I ran down immediately. She only screamed the once. I glanced in at the open morning-room door, and hurried after her to try and stop her making a scene in the street." Miss Saunders spoke contemptuously.

"But Mrs. Tangye was not sitting where you could see her from the door."

Miss Saunders made a movement with the edge of her cupped hand, as though brushing off some imaginary crumbs from the table top beside her.

The room was very still.

"I may have gone in far enough to see her sitting in her chair," she said finally.

"And by merely glancing at her from a distance, you—without any medical knowledge—were able to tell the reporter who met the maid that no help was wanted? That he need not go into the room where Mrs. Tangye was?" Pointer spoke gravely. "You took that formidable responsibility on yourself after one look?"

"Didn't you try to do something for her?" Wilmot burst out. Both he and Haviland were watching the woman intently, at whom Pointer seemed barely to glance. She looked quite unruffled. But again her hand swept the table top, with a slow, considering movement.

"I suppose I must have run up to her," she said meditatively. "As to helping her—" there was something repressed in Miss Saunders level tones, "of course, I didn't want to touch her till the police came."

Haviland nodded official approval of that eminently correct attitude. But Pointer looked very wooden.

"Why? Did you think a crime had been committed?" She passed a furtive tongue over her thin lips.

"Such an absurd idea never entered my mind."

"Any more than the equally absurd one of trying to see if you could do something for the poor lady," Wilmot retorted.

She did not shift her eyes from Pointer, though she answered the comment.

"One does not need to be the king's physician, nor yet a gifted detective," her gaze was mocking, "to know what a bullet wound over a heart means, with a dropped revolver on the floor by the body's side."

"To go back to what happened after Florence screamed," Pointer continued; "you still maintain that you were able to run down the stairs, get across the whole of the morning-room to the recess, make certain that Mrs. Tangye was dead, get out of the room again, and be seen standing in the front door before Florence had more than left the house? The reporter said that as the door opened, and she rushed out, you stepped into the open doorway behind her."

"It all happened so swiftly," Regina Saunders muttered. "Still, human beings take some time to move from one spot to another, you know."

"This cross-examination is ridiculous," she snapped defiantly. "It tells nothing."

"On the contrary! It tells much," Pointer's voice was very hard. "It tells us that you didn't run into the morning-room at all when Florence called out. You went straight down the stairs to the front door, reaching it just as the maid flung it wide. In other words you knew, without going in, what was in the morning-room. You knew because you had already been in there. Don't try to mislead us!"

Pointer turned on the woman with something very forbidding in his stern face. He towered over her. He stood six feet three. She paled. But her eyes remained watchful and ready. Again she swept the table beside her, her gaze now following the motion of her hand.

"You're right," she said suddenly, speaking in a pleasant, conversational voice. "You're quite right. When I got back from the library, or rather from the tea-room a little before six, I went in to the morning-room to tell Mrs. Tangye about not bringing her any book. I found her—dead! Just as Florence did a little later. I was so horrified...It was such a shock. I managed to get to my rooms. But once there—I think I fainted. I had just pulled myself together when I heard Florence scream, and ran down to the front door. As you guessed. Frankly, I cannot see what is wrong in my not saying that I saw poor Mrs. Tangye a moment before the maid did. And lost my nerve in consequence for a few seconds."

Pointer made no comment on this amended account.

A question put by him as to whether she had ever met Mrs. Tangye's cousin Oliver was answered in the negative. She did not even know, she said, that Mrs. Tangye had a relative alive.

Florence came in next. She was very nervous, but Haviland soon put her at her ease.

Pointer, apparently for Wilmot's sake—seemed much interested in Mrs. Tangye's directions about her expected visitor. Especially in her order that she was definitely, and distinctly "not at home," to any other caller. No matter whom.

"She told me that I wasn't to worry if Mrs. Cranbourn was late. Very late. As the boat train was often hours behind time."

"Worry?" Pointer echoed, "what did she mean by that?"

"I suppose that I wasn't to worry her," Florence suggested shrewdly, "the mistress couldn't abide fuss. Never liked me to go in and out much. Oh, I had to make my head save my heels with Mrs. Tangye, I assure you, sir. I think she spoke as she did to stop my bothering her with more hot water, or freshly-toasted cakes."

"That was quite usual, was it?"

It was. Florence repeated that there had been nothing in the least unusual, or out of the way, in her mistress's manner or directions yesterday, and also that nothing however trifling had happened then, or before, which she had not already told.

"How was it that the police only found a couple of logs alight in the morning-room fireplace when they were here yesterday evening? Was the fire only lit very late?" Pointer asked casually.

"Oh, that fire!" Florence clasped tragic hands.

She told them that the chimney was always uncertain, but that yesterday it had distinguished itself. Nothing the maids could do would make it burn, let alone blaze. From before breakfast until the hour set for tea it had smoked sullenly. "I wonder that Mrs. Tangye didn't use another room," Pointer mused.

"You'd have wondered more, sir, if you'd seen how thick it was in there. Fit to kipper a haddock, it was really." Florence went on to tell how she had urged her mistress to let her bring the tea-things into the drawing-room, as on other occasions when the morning-room chimney had been tiresome; but Mrs. Tangye would not hear of it.

"The wind changed after four, I noticed when I opened the door at six that the fire was behaving itself—all things considered—better than I'd hoped."

The fireplace was in the main part of the room.

"Wasn't the room cold?"

"Not so bad when the windows were shut, for the kitchen chimney warms it then, but it was bitter when I brought in the tea-things. Mrs. Tangye had to keep the windows open because of the smoke. She must have shut them later on when the fire began to blaze up."

Florence was as certain as she had been at the inquest that the windows were tightly fastened when she caught sight of her dead mistress.

"Tell us once more about the visitor, what did she look like?" Wilmot asked, on Pointer glancing at him.

"Mrs. Cranbourn, sir? Sort of stout and all muffled up in a fur coat with a large collar up to her eyes. Very wheezy voice. I couldn't notice much, for she stepped past me at once, saying, 'I'm most frightfully late, I'm afraid.' She was talking and moving all in one breath. I opened the morning-door and went forward saying, 'Mrs. Cranbourn to see you'm. But when I got to the alcove—" The rest they knew.

She had no idea what had become of the caller. "I suppose she caught sight over my shoulder of Mrs. Tangye. At any rate I didn't see her no more. But when I think of the poor mistress sitting there—"

"Did the visitor step towards the morning-room as though she knew the house?" Pointer asked.

"She did. Mrs. Tangye always has tea in there in winter."

"Then the lady must have been to Riverview before?"

"Very likely. But not in my time. I've only been here a year. Mrs. Cranbourn must have known the house from before then."

"Are you sure it was Mrs. Cranbourn?" Pointer asked quietly.

"Why, who else could it be, sir? At that hour, and all bundled up from a journey?" Florence stared at the Chief Inspector as though he must be strangely dense not to see this for himself.

"That's true. She was very agitated, you said, I think?"

"She was in a frightful rush, sir. She almost shoved past me. But there! We little know! The next moment I must have pushed past her to get out of the room!"

Florence could not amplify her account of the caller. The shock of finding Mrs. Tangye dead had wiped away all clear remembrance of the woman whose arrival had led to the discovery.

Pointer turned the subject.

"Mrs. Tangye's dress looks to me rather handsome. All that fur and silver embroidery. Isn't it more elaborate than she usually wore of an afternoon?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Mrs. Tangye dressed very quiet. That frock was going to be worn at a wedding next week."

"Had she had it on before?"

"Once. This last Monday."

"Ah yes, the day she sent you to Jay's."

Pointer went over the Monday too, very carefully with Florence. He learnt nothing fresh.

Coming again to Tuesday, and to the missing keys, Florence said she was sure that she had seen them lying on the top of her mistress's writing bureau when she was in the room at four.

Pointer glanced at Wilmot.

"You look a clever girl," Wilmot said flatteringly, "what's your opinion of this sad affair? Your honest opinion as between friends. The inquest is over now."

"Oh, sir, of course it was an accident! She didn't kill herself I Not she! Why, there's that evening-dress. She'd only just ordered it. You don't throw away sixty pounds for nothing, do you? At least Mrs. Tangye didn't. And those shoes that were being made to match. Oh no, sir. It was an accident. Mrs. Tangye did something careless-like with that Webley of hers, and that was that!"

"As a matter of fact, have you ever see her handling the revolver when you were in the room?" Haviland asked.

"I shouldn't have been in the room long, if I had, you bet," Florence spoke with a vigour that made the men smile.

"And when did you last see it in its box?" asked Pointer. "Monday morning it was there all right. I know by the weight. But it wasn't in it yesterday morning."

The inquest had elicited the fact—from Tangye—that his wife had spoken of putting it in a drawer in her bureau to help her to remember about the initials.

"Can you suggest any reason why Mrs. Tangye went through her papers so thoroughly yesterday morning?" Pointer was now questioning her. She could not.

"And about Miss Saunders—did she start her packing on Monday or only yesterday morning?"

"Yesterday morning, sir."

Haviland inwardly opened his eyes.

"Ah yes! After that quarrel she and Mrs Tangye had." Pointer was bluffing.

"You mean their talk after breakfast, sir? Oh, they weren't quarrelling. The mistress's voice was quite low and soft. And she always raised it when she was angry. Always. It sounded to me more like it was Miss Saunders who was huffed. I heard her say, 'It's not the money. It's how it looks. I insist on staying till at least the end of the week.' That was the first thing after breakfast, that was."

"Ah yes," mused Pointer again, "the quarrel came after lunch, I think."

"It couldn't have, sir. The mistress went out directly lunch was over, and there was no trouble when they were at table. There hadn't been no quarrel or the mistress would never have talked to her as she did. Talked quite a lot for Mrs. Tangye."

"Where were they when you heard Miss Saunders speak of leaving?"

"In the morning-room, sir. Miss Saunders said that and walked out."

"Did she look vexed?"

"Well no, sir. But that goes for nothing. Miss Saunders never shows when she's angry. But she pays you back for it just the same."

"You don't like Miss Saunders?"

Florence did not. But servants rarely like companions. Pointer harked back to yesterday afternoon, and tried his last cast:

"You said at the inquest that your mistress came in from the garden as you brought in the tea-tray?"

"Yes. Five minutes to the hour that was."

"Did she often go out in the garden after dark? On such a day as we had yesterday?" Pointer was doing all the questioning now.

"Well no, sir. Now I come to think of it she doesn't—didn't."

"Did you see her in the garden at all?"

"I couldn't have. You see, sir, in this house the back garden is all at the side. Except just a little bit that's in front." Wilmot laughed outright.

"She was alone in the garden, I suppose?" Pointer went on. "Oh yes, sir. Quite alone."

"How do you know, if you couldn't see her?" Pointer persisted, half-smiling.

"Well, sir, I should have heard voices, shouldn't I? The window of my pantry—it's too high up to see out of, but it gives on to that side." She stopped suddenly, as though remembering something. A rather startled look spread over her face.

"Yes?" cooed Pointer persuasively.

"Well, sir, that's funny! Talking of her being alone, my sister Olive, she said to me as we were giving the silver a rub-up before bringing in the tray, she said that she thought she heard a crunch-crunch on the gravel behind the mistress. But then Olive—" she hesitated, "my sister hears things. She's not normal, the doctor tells us." She announced the fact with some pride. "She's taken on something cruel at Mrs. Tangye's death. Says she felt it coming, and ought to've warned her. But there, Olive is that way! It's not being normal does it."

"What did she hear out of the pantry window?"

"Something like steps coming after the mistress over the gravel, sir. Very soft-like and cautious. I switched on the electric to have a look—we was working by the fire—and at that the steps stopped dead. Not Mrs. Tangye's. The other ones I mean."

"You heard them, too?"

"Quite clear for just a moment before they stopped."

"Footsteps that stopped when you switched on the light," Pointer looked at his boot tips. "I'll look at your pantry in a minute. Did you or Olive hear the steps again?"

They had not.

"Some butcher's boy coming for orders," Wilmot's tone was dryly amused.

"At that hour of an afternoon, sir!" It was Florence's turn to be diverted.

"Oh, well—missed the tradesman's entrance in the dark, and hoped to be directed to it."

"Then why did the steps stop, sir?"

"Were they peculiar footsteps?"

"In a way. They seemed to have a sort of kink to them every now and then. Sort of a catch, if you know what I mean." She tried to illustrate her meaning, and did a Highland fling which failed to convince.

Olive was next summoned. She was a slender, pale, young woman with over-large eyes, and a timid smile.

"We're still uncertain about this affair," Wilmot began on a sign from Pointer, "now what do you think about it? You ought to have formed your own opinion, living in the same house. Do you think that Mrs. Tangye meant to shoot herself, or was it a genuine accident? Come now, as between ourselves."

"Well, sir, I don't know what to think. Florence, she thinks—"

"We know what your sister thinks," Pointer assured her pleasantly, "but you now?"

"Well, sir, cook thinks—"

"We shall learn in good time what Cook thinks, but what about you? Mr. Wilmot wants to hear your opinion."

Olive grew desperate.

"Well, sir, I can't help thinking the mistress did do it. But was drove to it like. She was all of a twitter that last day. Yesterday. I think she did it in a fit of passion, half wild about something. I felt it coming along, sir. Oh, I felt it creeping on her."

"Just what do you mean by that?" Wilmot spoke gently, but with obvious curiosity.

"I feel things beforehand, sir. I knew when father was going to die weeks and weeks before the crane broke. I felt the same feeling come on me again a couple of days ago. Sunday morning it was I got up with it. And it's never left me since."

"Surely it's left you by now," Haviland suggested in his hearty, healthy, beefy voice.

"Not to notice, sir." A cryptic reply that made his lips twitch.

But she, too, had heard no sound yesterday afternoon that could possibly have been a shot.

"Now, about Mrs. Tangye, did you see her by chance in the garden before tea?" Pointer asked, as though nothing had been said on the subject.

"I heard her walking up and down on the path that runs past the morning-room windows. It's been freshly gravelled."

"Was Mrs. Tangye alone?"

"I—don't—know." Olive spoke slowly. "I have wonderful hearing, sir. That's what makes it seem so funny I heard no shot. No blind man can hear better than me. I heard footsteps creep up behind the mistress. Getting nearer and nearer. They weren't more than a yard behind her when Flo turned up the light, and they stopped. Flo heard them too, just then."

"But I thought you said you weren't sure if Mrs. Tangye was alone in the garden." Wilmot spoke in some perplexity.

"But you can hear things sometimes that you couldn't see." Olive spoke under her breath with a quick dilation of her pupils. "I know you won't believe me, sir. Flo doesn't in her heart. She thinks its because of what happened after. But I knew then those steps meant harm to the mistress."

"Were they peculiar footsteps?" probed Wilmot again. "Not in the way you mean, sir, though they had a sort of stumble to them. But I pray God never to hear 'em no more." Haviland thought the atmosphere was getting a bit tense. "You spoke of Mrs. Tangye having killed herself," he began, "why should she do that? Come now, Olive, just you hold on to facts. Don't think of spooky things any more." Olive looked rather hesitatingly at the police-officer.

"Well, Mr. Superintendent, now it can't harm nobody, now that the inquest's over, I don't mind saying that I saw her myself going through the master's over-coat pockets. This last Saturday, just before dinner. He had left his top-coat behind that he usually wears down to his office. And Mrs. Tangye pulled out a letter and stood reading it. Short note it was. She folded it up, and stood tapping the floor with her foot before she put it into her handbag and went on into the dining-room with a toss of her head that as good as said she had made up her mind to something—" Olive stopped, as though she had said too much.

No pressing could get her to supply the name of any woman from whom the letter might have come. Obviously she did not know it. And to the rest of the questions put her, she could only bear out what her sister had already told them. She too had never heard Mrs Tangye refer to any living member of her family.

Miss Saunders stepped in to say that the undertakers' men were coming, and that Mr. Tangye would be obliged if they need not know that the police were in the house. They would be some time. Half an hour probably. Pointer turned ostentatiously to Wilmot.

"Let's go for a stroll," that figure-head suggested. "We can come back and finish afterwards."