The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ close, perhaps, but enough to have some very awkward questions asked, should her body be discovered at once, as it may be. When we saw the smudges left by the two hand-grips on that painted rail," Pointer identified himself with Harris and Rodman by a glance, "we realised that the murderer must have had some way of getting the marks off. Water wouldn't touch them, nor would mere wiping do. He could neither take the time to thoroughly clean his hands then, nor chance its not being noticed. He had to return immediately and go on with the game, or risk comment. Yes," in answer to the distended eyes fixed on him, "the murder was committed by 'dummy' in the few minutes during which a hand was being played at bridge that Thursday evening. That was why that shot was trumped up, and a false alarm given—"

      And then the Assistant Commissioner jumped. He stumbled over some one's legs, the table was between him and his object, but he grappled fiercely for a second. But with a laugh which was like a neigh, Cockburn got the hand with the ring he wore to his mouth, and bit off the small black pearl. It cracked like a glass phial between his teeth.

      "Too late, Pelham, and there's no power on earth can stop or alter the stuff I've taken. Surely you never thought you could hang me!"

      The Assistant Commissioner took it hard. His face worked silently. As for Pointer, he had sprung to his feet, too, with Harris and Rodman. The Chief Inspector rapped out an oath as the apparent pearl crunched, and that was something no one there had ever heard him do before. Now he sat down with the bitter look of a man who sees the best part of what he has worked for torn from him.

      He made a visible effort to be calm, however, and turned to Cockburn.

      "I must caution you that anything—"

      Cockburn rocked in ghastly merriment. "My good fellow, you don't understand. What do you suppose I had in this little pearl of mine? This mourning ring I've taken to wearing lately? Something for a headache? In an hour from now, to the minute, I shall fall asleep, and nothing you can do or try to do, will prevent me from drifting painlessly into oblivion. That being so, I'm quite ready to oblige with any information—"

      "I caution you that it may be used against you."

      "You do, oh most excellent policeman!" mocked Cockburn.

      Suddenly Bond came to life. With a slack jaw and a whitening face he had been staring as if numbed by what had happened.

      "Those Polish papers," he suddenly turned on the man beside him, "I ought to've guessed when I caught you with them! Give me his keys somebody; I wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole, and his confederates may have them already in their hands."

      Snatching the keys from Watts, Bond fairly raced from the room. Watts relocked the door behind him.

      "Dear me," Cockburn yawned, "Bond always is impetuous. And now, Pointer, would you like me to help you out? I'm afraid the cipher—"

      "It was read at the Yard an hour after I got it safely home. But we knew it was you very early in the case. Who but you raised that cry of a rifle shot and spoke of poachers. Then changed it to a revolver shot when Miss Charteris's death was no longer looked on as an accideneny. Then once more, to twist the case still again to serve ends, as you thought, you changed it to the sound of burst tyre from Count di Monti's car. That sally-out all together gave you the chance you needed that night. This chance of cleaning your hands with petrol at the garage after rubbing them well into the earth, and on all the grass of the hedge banks. Even if a smear remained, it would be set down to the hunt in the dark. The leaves in Miss Charteris's hand showed that she was killed before it came on to rain. That fitted the time all right when you were in the garden. You egged Mr. Bond on to break into Stillwater House with you on the plea of looking for more of that cord which you had seen given to the count. What you wanted were Professor Charteris's letters. All of them. You had let yourself into Miss Rose's empty rooms that same Thursday night after you murdered her, and taken all the papers you could find which were in the Professor's writing. But the paper you thought he had sent her, the enclosure you had seen pulled out at the tea table, wasn't among them. So you had that tool of the Bolsheviks, Rebecca Apfelbaum, hunt for it in the Professor's rooms next morning on the chance that Miss Charteris had run up to town with it on Thursday evening after dinner. You got all her papers next evening, to make trebly sure, when you stepped in for a chat with the chief constable after dinner—to ask how he was getting on."

      Cockburn turned on him. "So you set me on to ferreting out about di Monti's alibi being rotten, while you knew the truth all the time? I wish I'd guessed that—then." There was a sudden glint in the shallow, shifting colour of Cockburn's eyes like a mad dog's.

      "It kept you from suspecting that we did know the truth," Pointer answered coldly.

      "I spoofed you that night at Stillwater, anyway," Cockburn jeered, "whatever you may have found out later."

      "Not a bit. I should have suspected you by that alone, if I hadn't done so already, from what Mr. Thornton told me of the alarm that no one else heard. Within an hour I had that little oil can of yours from the tools in your car. It held just the same oil as that with which Miss Charteris's door had been treated. Some Russian blend, I suppose. Anyway, we can't match it in England. Your bedroom door at Red Gates and her doors alone show it. A bad break that. You meant to kill her in her room that night—strangle her, I think—if no earlier chance came.

      "And as for that matchbox, which would let you seem to prove where you hadn't been standing, when you strolled around the grounds as dummy—you dropped that Friday morning while walking about after breakfast with Mr. Thornton and Mr. Bond. It fell bottom side up. I found it quite dry, though the pattern on it would have held the slightest drop of rain. It was obviously dropped after that downpour, and when you knew about the sandpit. By bad luck, too, it had fallen on a starling's tracks made that morning earlier when he had been hunting for breakfast. Oh, we've been watching you for some time, but it was the lack of motive that we wanted to get hold of, and any possible accomplices. You had none. And as to the motive—that was supplied by finding your name on the cipher list as the British agent for distribution of Bolshevik funds. We've been hunting that agent for years. There's nothing this man can tell us, sir."

      Pointer turned to the Assistant Commissioner. Cockburn broke in sharply.

      "Not so fast, please. How am I supposed to have moved the body of Miss Charteris from the summer house? Forgive my curiosity, but as I shall not be able to learn the truth of that interesting, and I confess baffling, fact at the trial—"

      Pointer looked bored.

      "You had your arrangements made, I take it."

      "I?" Cockburn stiffened. "I've just told you that knew nothing about it, and would like to hear the explanation. It was the count's doing, I'll swear, though why—"

      "That's not the question," Pointer went on carelessly. "It's the motive for the crime that concerns us, not why she was moved when dead."

      He turned again to the Commissioner for a moment, then back again to Cockburn.

      "As I say, sir, we have the motive now. It was just sheer greed. Wanting more money. The love of secret power. Mr. Bond was getting into your debt. In time you intended to wring a very full payment out of him. I think he may be thankful indeed we caught you before that. As to your hostility to Count di Monti—that, course, is due to the count's anti-Communist activities. You sent him, however, a warning letter that I was coming to Italy to arrest him, in the hope that something would happen to me. You thought it might be as well to choke off the C.I.D. for a time."

      "I was right. You have blundered on the truth," Cockburn said arrogantly. His gentle, СКАЧАТЬ