MURDER MYSTERY Boxed Set – Dorothy Fielding Edition (12 Detective Cases in One Edition). Dorothy Fielding

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      CHAPTER 4

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      POINTER stepped in for a moment with Haviland at the police station. He wanted the photographs of the revolver. They were ready for him. An Inspector hurried in. "Mr. Tangye's been telephoning, sir. He says he's gone over his wife's papers, and finds there's a large sum of money missing from the house. Fifteen hundred pounds. Says it must have been at Riverview yesterday."

      "This does alter things for a fact!" Haviland jumped up with the eyes of a good watch dog who hears some one on the step. Was it possible that facts, real facts, facts which you could marshal and exhibit, were going to bear out the Chief Inspector's fantastic idea?

      They telephoned the news on to Wilmot, and walked quickly up to Riverview. Tangye was waiting for them. He looked both angry and uneasy. Taking them into his study he closed the door, and rapidly amplified his message.

      It seemed that Mrs. Tangye had employed a separate firm of solicitors for the management of her property. Sladen and Sladen of Baker Street. Tangye said that he himself knew nothing of her estate. Had always refused to know. But on going over the papers which the firm had sent him, he had found that half of a sum paid her during the past fortnight was missing.

      "Like her keys," Pointer reflected aloud, and Tangye turned a swift, wary, glance on him. But he answered impatiently:

      "The keys are of no importance. A sum of money is a different thing. It seems she sold a farm over a week ago for three thousand pounds. The money was paid in at her solicitor's office, and remained there till yesterday. But just after two, Mrs. Tangye drove up in a taxi, without an appointment, and took the whole amount away with her. She was paid in bank-notes. Half of those notes are missing."

      "Bank-notes? Why not a cheque, sir?"

      Tangye explained that his wife had had an invincible dislike to cheques. A bank had once failed, leaving her with an uncashed, worthless cheque. Since then, all her transactions had been strictly in notes.

      "Well, of course," Haviland repeated, taking down the numbers of the notes, "this does alter things, for a fact."

      "Not in the essentials. Mrs. Tangye's death was an accident. Couldn't of course have been anything else," Tangye said shortly, "but that missing sum may have been stolen."

      "She would keep the money in her safe, I suppose?" Pointer suggested.

      "She might have."

      "You think the loss was unconnected with her death?"

      "Obviously. But how many people would you trust in a house with the mistress dead, and a wad of notes like that?" Pointer and Haviland nodded their agreement with the only possible answer to this question.

      "But what makes you think your wife had not invested the money in some way? She might have posted that fifteen hundred off at any time between two and the hour she returned to Riverview—about four."

      "I've always seen to her investments. Why should she pay a stockbroker's charges when she could get it done for nothing?"

      "Perhaps she wanted a bit of a flutter with it, and did not like to you know. There's a tremendous boom in cotton just starting."

      "Don't you suppose Sladen and I have 'phoned to every inside and outside man, every bucket-shop in the kingdom, before turning to you?" Tangye asked impatiently. "No offence, Chief Inspector, but I'm afraid you're only losing time with your questions. The best thing for you to do is—"

      "For me to decide, sir," Pointer finished very quietly.

      Tangye mumbled what was meant for an apology.

      "I don't see how you can be sure that Mrs. Tangye might not have gambled in another name," the Scotland Yard official went on.

      "No point in that. She was absolutely her own mistress."

      "The exact halving of the money looks as though she had some definite purpose in view," Pointer went on unruffled.

      "And how do you know that none was spent yesterday, sir? A lady can get rid of a lot of coin in a couple of hours, for a fact," Haviland said with the gloom of a husband and father, as he went off to the library to telephone the numbers of the missing banknotes to his inspector at the police station, with instructions as to where to try to-night.

      "Fifteen hundred pounds!" Tangye repeated the sum under his breath as though the figures loomed large to him. "It's not the money in СКАЧАТЬ