The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ Pointer had to smile at the other's tone. "Yet she first began then to prepare for her coming departure."

      "Safe word that. We can all meet on it," Wilmot murmured approvingly.

      "Apparently, only apparently, of course," Pointer went on, "she seems to've been her usual self till Sunday morning."

      "Till that letter she read," Haviland breathed.

      "Until she went to Tunbridge Wells at any rate. Possibly that decision itself marked the beginning of the change. For when she gets back she goes to bed. She starts next day weeding out her wardrobe; the day after she tears up her private papers. It looks to me as if something had happened down at that flower-show."

      "Sunday," Wilmot repeated meditatively. "I don't follow you there, Pointer. The break, as you call it—the breaking-point would be nearer the mark, I think—occurred in my judgment, not between two Mrs. Tangyes, but between her and her husband, and took place Monday afternoon. You say she had changed by Monday. I can't see any change before that talk or quarrel, with her husband about five in the afternoon. On Monday morning she had had her hair waved, says Florence. We know that in the afternoon, she took a vivid interest in her new evening-dress. Those preparations on which we all lay so much store, though we read them differently, only began after she had seen and talked with her husband at tea-time."

      "No, not quite," Haviland corrected, "as a matter of fact she went out and left word before five with Carter Patterson to take her trunk to the Salvation Army's old clothes department. Before her husband got home from his weekend."

      Wilmot did not know this. It altered his argument as he at once said.

      "And you think what happened on Sunday when she was away from home so important, do you sir?" Haviland asked, "More so, in fact, than the letter itself, which sent her down there?"

      "We may be able to guess the letter from what took place. But not the other way round. Was the show the sort of thing that would get into the papers, Wilmot? London papers?"

      "You mean would any reporters be sent down to Tunbridge who might be able to help us? Not one." Wilmot explained that orchid shows in country towns, even big ones like this affair, would never get beyond a line or two, and those would be telegraphed up by some local amateur enthusiast, who would also, in all certainty, write the articles in the more important country papers. The exhibition firms supplying the smaller ones with data.

      "The show on Sunday is one essential then, sir. Are there any others?" Haviland had been meditating on the Chief Inspector's words.

      But Pointer did not answer directly. He seemed to be thinking aloud.

      "Monday afternoon, when Miss Saunders is absent, Florence is sent off too on an errand, and Olive is told that Mrs. Tangye's not at home to any one before five o'clock, and is given a stiff bit of mending to do. In other words, Mrs. Tangye secures herself from interruption Monday afternoon. Then next day, yesterday, Miss Saunders is sent out. She's the only one in the house who can come and go as she likes, remember. She generally has tea with Mrs. Tangye of course—"

      "And Mrs. Tangye gives particular orders for an uninterrupted chat with her special friend." Wilmot spoke impatiently. "My dear fellow, no one could accuse you of swallowing camels, but you certainly do go for any gnat in sight."

      "Doesn't Mrs. Tangye's partiality for having tea in an impossible room strike you as peculiar?" Pointer countered.

      Haviland stared. Wilmot permitted himself to look puzzled.

      "Senseless whim," he murmured, "but not necessarily criminal, I should have thought."

      "Not necessarily senseless," Pointer replied with a faint smile.

      "You think the smoky fire—but would that weigh much, in fact, with a desperate woman—sick of life—?" groped Haviland.

      "It would weigh heavily with a woman expecting a visitor," Pointer reminded him. Haviland stepped away to let a perambulator come up and pass them.

      "In the plan which the Superintendent drew of Riverview," Pointer went on in his absence, "Haviland's an excellent officer, very thorough along his own lines. He has a quick eye."

      "He has—for a fact," Wilmot laughed, and Haviland, catching the last word, grinned.

      "I'm an Essex man," he said in excuse, as he turned to Pointer when the bridge was empty again, "you were saying, sir?"

      "That in your plan the morning-room shows as the only one in the house which can be entered directly from the garden, without having to pass any other window. Now, adding this interesting detail to the unusual fondness of Mrs. Tangye for a smoky room yesterday, and you get quite an intriguing little sum."

      "You might, if they belonged together," Wilmot agreed cautiously, "but if you add the density of the atmosphere to the distance from the earth to the moon, your result's not likely to be of much practical use."

      "That's what I thought when I learnt from the evidence at the inquest that Mrs. Tangye had been expecting a visitor. An expected caller drew a straight line through my sum. This cable of Mrs. Cranbourn's, however, reverses that. Or rather, what seems like a stroke through the whole, becomes one of it's most important items."

      "Are we at last to be permitted to glimpse your meaning—to fathom the mysterious depths with which you credit that fact?" Wilmot screwed up his eyes. A sign of close attention.

      "Remember the situation of the morning-room. Mrs. Tangye's sticking to it in spite of discomfort, and add the new fact that very definite instructions were given by her that she was not at home yesterday, except to a certain, very carefully specified lady, who quite positively couldn't come. I maintain that my sum total's worth thinking over. Especially if you add a few other extras floating around."

      Wilmot pondered for some minutes.

      "You mean?" he repeated cautiously.

      "This: Mr. Tangye never gets back on Tuesdays from his office until half-past six at the earliest. Mrs. Tangye sends her companion off just before four to change a novel for her at the circulating library and tells her to have tea out. The library is about half an hour away. It doesn't close till seven. Tea at Riverview was ordered at four; one would have thought that Miss Saunders could have had it before going for the book. The maid, after bringing in the tea-things, always leaves her mistress undisturbed until she clears away at six. That is a rule of the house, we learnt. Now, if in addition, Mrs. Tangye tells her that on no account will she be at home to anybody except to some one who isn't—can't be—coming, then, in this way she both has an excuse for ordering, as she does, a very ample tea, and also insures in every possible way that she can count on being undisturbed for two hours. Four to six."

      "But the caller of later on? The woman who came and said she was frightfully overdue," Haviland protested, "aren't you forgetting her? Her name may have been Cranbourn too, as Tangye suggested."

      "Sort of gratuitous little muddle that's quite to be expected," Pointer agreed.

      "Yes," Wilmot said slowly, thinking over Pointer's words, "you can't get around the fact that some woman came. And on an appointment, you know."

      "I don't know," Pointer put up his pipe with a sigh, "I must leave her on one side for the moment. Her coming doesn't explain anything—nor hang together with anything."

      "She СКАЧАТЬ