The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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      "Got your car below? Good. I'll speak to Wilmot over the 'phone," he did so, telling him briefly of what had happened, and asking him to wait for Haviland who would bring him back to the Yard in his police "non-stoppable."

      When Wilmot arrived, Pointer suggested a line of action on the part of the newspaper man, to which Wilmot consented after a little pressing.

      Then Pointer turned to Haviland, and sketched to that slowly-reviving officer, how and where the next step should be taken.

      Pointer himself was just back not only from the "breakfast" but from Mrs. Tangye's funeral. It had been a more than usually melancholy affair. The knowledge that Scotland Yard was in some way concerning itself with her death made the wildest rumours run.

      While there, however he had met a lady who had travelled up with Mrs. Tangye on her return from Tunbridge Wells. By chance getting into the same compartment at Ashford. She had found Mrs. Tangye suffering from a bad headache. Mrs. Tangye had referred to the orchids, and said that the heat had been too much for her. She had sat with closed eyes apparently suffering very much, till they reached town, where she had refused her companion's offer of a lift in her car, and had taken a taxi.

      So Pointer's doubts were solved as to whether whatever it was that had caused what he called the cleavage in Mrs. Tangye's life, had taken place at or after Tunbridge.

      If it had taken place on Sunday at all, it had apparently been while with Miss Eden.

      Pointer's eyes were on that young woman a good deal during the funeral. She avoided Tangye. He avoided her.

      At the funeral too, Pointer had met Philpotts the Rugby farmer. He looked an honest, elderly man. Philpotts scoffed at the idea of Mrs. Tangye having had any intention of going where pounds, shillings, or even pence, mean nothing.

      "She gave way on the fences, but she stuck to her point about the timber," he repeated several times, half admiringly, half grudgingly. Pointer had brought the talk around again to Mrs. Tangye. The farmer's knowledge of her early days added nothing new, any more than did his few recollections of her cousin. Philpotts's own alibi of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, which Pointer obtained by many indirect turns of the talk, was unverifiable.

      Sunday afternoon he claimed to have spent with his wife in Westminster Abbey. The same time on Monday had been earmarked for the National Gallery, and Tuesday, after four, had seen them either gazing at the shops, or in one of the large tea-rooms where identification is impossible.

      "It's queer," Pointer said now, when talking him over with Haviland and Wilmot, after he had finished detailing his plan about Vardon, "how few of the people connected with Mrs. Tangye can be located last Tuesday between four and six. Mrs. Bligh, is so far, the sole person who is definitely vouched for by several, unbiased, witnesses. She really did play bridge at her club from before four until after six."

      "What would you have?" Wilmot asked raising an eyebrow. "How many more points do you want to prove that there's no crime here? By the way, how about the man you sent down to Tunbridge with the family portrait-album?"

      "Which unfortunately did not contain a picture of Oliver Headly. There seems to be none extant of him. But Watts has just reported. No one in the show itself can identify any of the faces. There was a huge crowd on Sunday. Some minor royalty present. But outside, just by the gates, he found a tobacconist who recognised Tangye as having bought a box of vestas from him in the early afternoon last Sunday. That's our only haul."

      "Vardon fits everything," Haviland repeated sombrely. He refused to be either comforted, or diverted. "When he said he had an agreement in writing, I ought to've suspected something. After what you said! But he seemed so straightforward. Yet, I shouldn't wonder—"

      And Haviland proceeded gaily to sketch a long-ago flirtation, a meeting after many years, a planned elopement, the sale of the farm, and a murder when he found that the woman insisted on accompanying her funds.

      Wilmot listened. Now blowing hot, now cold, as was his way. He called it the impartial poise.

      "You may be right all along the line, Haviland," Pointer said finally when appealed to as umpire, "but—so far—there's no reason known to us why Vardon shouldn't have come to the front door. In other words, he fits the preparations, but Oliver fits the French window."

      "Front door! Back door!" Wilmot suppressed a yawn; "wouldn't any murderer have come to the French window?"

      "My point is that Mrs. Tangye wouldn't have expected him to come that way," Pointer said rather dryly. "It's not a case of a house-breaker's murder, but of a carefully prepared plan, and of some one whom Mrs. Tangye invites—expects—that way."

      "There's a door into and out of the smoking-room, we've just learnt. Wouldn't that be a more usual way of unnoticed entry than by a window? Your whole theory hangs on those windows, which were found closed remember."

      "That Miss Saunders said she found closed. The smoking-room cupboard door has a Yale lock. Tangye has the only known key. Any one using it would have have had to cross the central hall to get at Mrs. Tangye. And Florence was on the alert."

      There was a pause.

      "The fact is, I've had another thought," Haviland said so impressively that his two hearers smiled, "of the man who bought the farm. Philpotts. He's an old acquaintance. He would know about the money. What about Philpotts as the gent of the footsteps the two girls heard? The farmer's sure to walk stiff with rheumatism."

      "Why should he go to the French window rather than to the front door?"

      "My dear chap, don't let a little thing like that stump you."

      Wilmot begged. "I repeat that obviously a man, or woman, with a criminal intent, would prefer to come, and above all to go, as unobtrusively as possible."

      "Yes, but I repeat my question. The answer to which is the answer, I believe, to our whole riddle. Why should Mrs. Tangye aid him by lending herself to that entrance? It's not the coming of in the murderer by the window, but Mrs. Tangye's apparent preference for that way, that strikes such an odd note. On the other hand, if it could have been her cousin...If Filon was mistaken..."

      Late that same afternoon a young man was in the act of following his luggage on to the Harwich boat, when a hand touched his shoulder.

      "Mr. Vardon? Don't go on. There's an officer from Scotland Yard waiting to arrest you by the gangway. Come with me. I'm a friend."

      The man to whom these words were hurriedly whispered, jumped, and swung round on his heel.

      "Let your gear go, and follow me. I've a taxi. Been waiting for you before they should nab you," Wilmot urged. Vardon followed the other to a cab. Once they were in, he loosened his muffler which hid the lower part of his face. "Who on earth are you?"

      Wilmot gave his name. To his surprise, it apparently conveyed nothing to Vardon.

      "Newspaper man, you say? But how are you mixed up in this?"

      "I travelled down in the same compartment with a C.I.D. man, and he talked a bit," Wilmot said. Truthfully enough. Pointer had talked—to him. "I learnt that you had been shadowed when you bought your ticket. Your passport gave you away. You had to have it renewed, didn't you? Hard luck! Well, I determined to get in first and whisk you off."

      "But—why?"

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