The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ we stayed in the show some time. How long would you think?" he went on.

      "About two hours, I fancy."

      "I put it about that too," he nodded. "I thought it better not to see Miss Saunders off in the train, so we said good-bye outside the station."

      There was a pause. Tangye looked around on his hearers almost as though expecting applause. Obviously Pointer and Wilmot were being treated to a benefit performance. But whose benefit? Tangye's, or Miss Saunders', or the absent Vardon's. Miss Saunders rose and slipped quietly from the room.

      "And now perhaps you'll be able to tell us some of the things your wife said to you on this Monday afternoon?" Pointer asked.

      Tangye shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't remember much. She was absolutely unlike herself. We've had quarrels before, of course. But never one like that. I quite misunderstood the position. You see, I thought—I fancied she was bluffing. Mrs. Tangye, I mean. I had an idea—totally wrong as it turned out—that she was not nearly so angry as she chose to seem. I thought she was overdoing it. I see now that it was hysteria, and dangerous hysteria at that. But I give you my word that I only thought then she had decided to give me a bit of a scare so as to teach me not to do that sort of thing again."

      "That's very interesting," Pointer said slowly. "She struck you as really not angry? You thought it acting?"

      "I swear I did. Overdone acting at that. I thought she was forcing the note all the way along. More fool I!" Tangye sighed heavily. His brief air of triumph had entirely left him.

      "Did she ask you to leave the house?" Pointer put in.

      Tangye seemed to feel a sudden check. He hesitated for a second. "Possibly. I think she did say that among the flood of other things."

      "You weren't discussing money affairs then?"

      Tangye stiffened. "I don't understand."

      Pointer gave him no explanation, as rising, he made his way to the drawing-room where Miss Saunders sat reading.

      "I suppose you know about Mr. Vardon," he began chattily. She stared at him.

      "Know what?"

      "Well, strictly in confidence, it looks very much as though we might have to arrest him in connection with Mrs. Tangye's death."

      Miss Saunders' face flamed a brick red. Her lips parted in a curious tense look, drawn away from her rather long teeth.

      "Mr. Vardon? Mrs. Tangye's death? What are you talking about?" There was a spark in the depths of her bright, rat-like eyes.

      Pointer repeated that certain facts had come to their knowledge which unless explained, looked very bad for Mr. Vardon. The presence of her keys in his luggage, for one thing.

      Miss Saunders sat tapping the end of her thumb nail against her clenched teeth. It was the gesture of one uncertain what to do. What to say. "And of course, Mr. Tangye let you think it!" she said under her breath.

      Pointer looked at her meaningly and nodded.

      Miss Saunders gave a little sound as though she were choking.

      "Why do you think Mrs. Tangye's death was a murder?" she asked. There was no hesitation about her use of that terrible word. No look of shrinking in her face. Yet she had lived three years with the woman about whom she was putting that grisly question. She might have been a collector inquiring, why an expert thought his Goya drawing to be a Mengs. There was intense, burning interest in the coming answer, but no personal emotion.

      "Well, we do. The outlook for every one in the house is quite altered by the mere supposition. To come to the point of this interview, your own alibi is unsatisfactory."

      That got home. She bit her lip.

      "It's not genuine. Miss Martins, as I believe the manageress of the tea-room is called, mistook you evidently for another customer. In any case the fact that she is your sister would discount her evidence. There's no use your denying what we know, Miss Saunders," as she opened her lips, "the matter is too serious for that. Where were you really between four and six Tuesday?" His voice came sharp and stern. She licked her thin lips with a tongue that shot out like a snake's, swift and furtive.

      "At the library and then in the tea-room. My alibi is quite good. As to its having been substantiated by my sister—why not? She's in charge at the tea-room. Others may have seen me there if you've frightened her into some mistake. I won't pretend to misunderstand you, you know. But what possible cause should I have had for harming Mrs. Tangye?"

      Pointer bent forward and stared hard at her. She blinked. "Why, you yourself have been trying to force the note of your—understanding—with Mr. Tangye."

      This time she turned a genuine and ghastly gray.

      "It's a lie!" she rose to her feet and her eyes widened. "Blundering idiots I If I had killed her, wouldn't I be the first to snatch at the chance of accusing Mr. Vardon? But I tell you he didn't do it Oh, you fool! You damned fool!" She shivered with fury. Pointer thought for a second that she would actually fly at him. Her small eyes, set close together like those of a bird, seemed to snap fire, so fierce was their glare.

      The door opened. But why had Tangye paused once again outside to listen?

      Miss Saunders passed him with one contemptuous, yet menacing glance.

      "What in the world—" Tangye began. "I stepped in to ask if you would be a witness to my statement, which Wilmot is taking down. My formal renouncement of the Insurance claim on my wife."

      Pointer followed him back into his den.

      "Bit previous," Pointer glanced down at the paper. "It may not be Vardon, but it may not be suicide, either." Wilmot looked put out. The case was as good as over as far as he was concerned. He was mentally drafting a cable to his little Galician village, at the same time as this letter of Tangye's.

      "You mean you will make a murder out of it?"

      Tangye's last whisky had been nearly neat.

      "I assure you," Pointer said gently, as he had to say so often, "that Scotland Yard is not Moloch, to be fed with human sacrifices, innocent or guilty, no matter which, so long as the supply doesn't run short. If Mrs. Tangye's death was a suicide, you may be sure that that will end the inquiry, and we shall turn our attention elsewhere. But we must get the thing clearly worked out. That's part of the routine."

      Pointer left the two alone at that, and took a turn in the garden. The robin, whose preserve this was, eyed him hopefully. Pointer looked energetic. He might be going to use a spade. But the Chief Inspector was oblivious of fluting call or confident bright eyes. He was thinking. So it was to be suicide. According to Tangye. But according to Pointer? That was what really mattered.

      It was a very sudden right-about-turn, this of Tangye's. Neatly executed, but very sudden. Was it the peril in which Tangye learnt for the first time that a man stood whom he considered innocent? Or was it something else, deeper? Was what seemed disinterestedness self-interest? Did Tangye suddenly realise that the question of murder was in the air? Did he want to scotch, not so much a present, unfounded accusation, as a possibly well-founded one in the future? Did he see himself as Vardon's successor in the list of suspects, and decided to block that eventuality? Or was the widower merely a belatedly honest СКАЧАТЬ