The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ Mrs. Tangye dropped them in his rooms when she sat talking over the business deal."

      "But they were seen here at Riverview after she returned. At four."

      "Who saw them? I told you I wasn't sure of which bunch I saw."

      "But Florence is sure."

      "Florence! Florence has muddled them with other times. Florence!" Tangye repeated irritably. "I tell you Mrs. Tangye shot herself. And that sad fact makes your suspicions absurd."

      Tangye turned to the soda water. He had replenished his glass.

      Pointer had been standing playing with the lever, apparently idly. It seemed to be jammed. Tangye took out his penknife and with a few neat touches set it going again. He was talking as he worked.

      "Thrown up my hand, haven't I? But damn it all, there is a limit to what one can do for filthy lucre. Mrs. Tangye," he pulled himself up. "But no matter. Where was I?"

      "You were telling us about what she said on Monday."

      "I got back from Norfolk about five. She—well—" He paused as though at a loss how to tell the facts, and yet not be lacking in decency to the dead. "We quarrelled. Badly. Finally she said that she was going to end it. To kill herself. I said something like 'don't do anything foolish,' and she turned on me saying that 'what she was going to do was wise—not foolish, whatever I might think.' I went up to town hoping that things would calm down of themselves. You know what happened next day before I saw her again. I think she delayed that shot till just about time for me to get to Riverview." He was very pale. "Life's a mad thing." He said after a pause, "Damned mad."

      "I knew it was suicide all along," Wilmot said quietly. "I can send in the report of your statement to my Company, of course?"

      "Of course."

      "And exactly why did you say her death was due to an accident?" Pointer asked eyeing the repairs done to the lever with an apparently absent-minded gaze. They were quite up to the standard of the work necessary to arrange that camera.

      "Why brand myself as a suicide's husband? Why broadcast our domestic unhappiness? No one guessed it. There was nothing overt. We got on each other's nerves from the first, that was all."

      "The firm of Deakin and O'Malley was hammered on the Dublin Stock Exchange this morning. I am to understand then that your firm is not involved in its difficulties?" Pointer asked.

      "You've been listening to idle rumours," Tangye said suavely. "My firm is in no difficulties. I can't say that the hammer may not be heard to-day over there—" he glanced from his windows toward where the city lay, "but not for me."

      He spoke with conviction. His only mistake was to let a note of triumph creep into his voice. There was a village blacksmith's ring of "something accomplished, something done," about that, and his gaze, that told of strenuous effort and hard-won success.

      "And you think that after a quarrel with her husband, of the kind you suggest on Monday, a wife would kill herself Tuesday, leaving everything to that husband?" Pointer asked again.

      "It's what happened here. Mrs. Tangye was a very fair-minded woman, when there was no question of her temper leading her wrong. She was a splendid character at bottom. Possibly on the other hand, she may not have remembered her will, any more than I did at first." He spoke the last words very clearly.

      "Naturally," Wilmot assured him pleasantly. Pointer shot him an amused look. He was sure that Wilmot would find anything "natural" which backed up Tangye's confession that his wife had killed herself.

      "And now to get down to facts," Pointer might have been Haviland, "would you be more explicit as to the trouble between yourself and your wife? What exactly did Mrs. Tangye say on Monday?"

      Tangye gave a short laugh. Not of mirth.

      "I can't tell you half nor a quarter of what she said. I don't think she could herself, if she were alive, poor girl. You know what a woman is when she's beside herself with some fancied grievance."

      "Try and remember as much as you can," Pointer suggested prosaically. "For the fact that Mrs. Tangye wrote to Mr. Stewart, yours and her solicitor, asking him to notify your firm that she wished to withdraw the ten thousand pounds invested by her in it, makes the quarrel very important."

      Tangye's lids drooped over his rather bold eyes. He stood silent for a moment. Then he wheeled smartly about. The very sound of his heels told that he had made up his mind. He walked to the door.

      "Excuse me a moment." He was gone.

      Wilmot looked at Pointer. His eyes waved the flag of victory. "I knew I couldn't be wrong!" he said softly. "I knew it must be suicide!" Pointer slipped out of the door like a shadow. Wilmot thought that there was something unpleasant in seeing such a big man move so silently. There was more here than mere absence of sound. Pointer's very body seemed to blur with the shadows of the dark day.

      The Chief Inspector stood a second in the hall beside Rogers the constable, listening intently. Then he stole swiftly up the stairs to the first landing. He made for a little sitting-room taken over by Miss Saunders. There he heard a low murmur. In a second a police "stethescope" was pressed against the crack. The ends in his ears. "Very well," he heard Miss Saunders say. "I'm quite ready. I felt sure it would come."

      There was a stir.

      Pointer was sitting in the same chair as before and in the same attitude when Tangye opened the door again, this time for Miss Saunders to precede him. She was self-possessed as always. Very sure of herself, in her prim way.

      "I think Miss Saunders should hear what I am obliged to say," Tangye said briskly. Shutting the door resolutely behind him. His manner was positively business-like.

      "You asked me now, Chief Inspector, what my late wife and I quarrelled over on Monday when I returned from my week-end. I'm sorry to say it was over her having unexpectedly found out that Miss Saunders and I had gone for a spin in my car Sunday afternoon. We met at Tunbridge Wells. Lunched together at an hotel there, and drove around to the orchid-show. By bad luck my wife happened to be there, too, and caught sight of us. After all, there was nothing wrong in what we did. Injudicious, of course. We both see that now?" he finished.

      "Quite so. Injudicious, but not wrong," Miss Saunders echoed letting her eyes for a second dart from face to face.

      "If you would like to question Miss Saunders, I think she would be kind enough to answer you," Tangye went on.

      "I don't think there's any need of anything so painful," Pointer said stolidly but with his eyes on the other man.

      They were large eyes. Very quiet eyes. Very clear eyes.

      "Well, then," Tangye went on, almost as though dictating a letter, "as I said, Mrs. Tangye saw us."

      "And you didn't see her?"

      "I didn't. Did you, Miss Saunders?" Tangye turned to her. She shook her head.

      "Please say whether you did or not?" Tangye ordered, still with that indefinable tone of brisk command of the situation in his voice. He might have been sailing a yacht, with a breeze blowing that just suited him and his boat.

      "No, I didn't see her," Miss Saunders spoke up briskly too.

      "Yet СКАЧАТЬ