The Footsteps That Stopped. Dorothy Fielding

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      CHAPTER 2

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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. СКАЧАТЬ