The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ light. I didn't hear anything more, for which I'm thankful; I mean to say, I don't think I could stand it to've heard him shut himself into that wardrobe—it's quite bad enough to've heard what I did. When I went in to get the room ready for Mr. Beale the window-catch was open, though the window had blown shut. To think that when I was getting the room ready I actually tugged at the door of that wardrobe. My goodness, if it had opened!"

      "You heard nothing more?"

      "Nothing, sir. Not a sound."

      "You didn't hear Mr. Eames walk up and down on the balcony or pass your window?"

      "The rain was pouring so just then, sir, that he might have shouted and I shouldn't have heard anything outside. What I mean to say, it really was a clatter which came on just then, so as you couldn't hardly hear yourself think."

      "You didn't look out at all after the blind was down?"

      "Oh, no, sir, I had a rush to get the dress done in time as it was."

      "Humph." Pointer seemed in no hurry to speak. The Eames case was to remain a "suicide" as long as possible.

      "How were you sure it was Mr. Eames? I mean when you heard the glass clink? It might have been some friend of his in there at first?"

      "I heard him sneeze when I had scarcely sat down. He had such a bad cold. I think myself that it was the influenza that made him go off his head and drink poison and all. I mean to say I've read of such cases."

      "It looks very like it," he agreed, "and now, Maggie, I think I heard Miss Leslie go out a little while ago?"

      "Yes, sir. She's due at a rehearsal at the Columbine."

      "Then seat yourself in her room and listen. I shall drop something on the table, then I shall drop something else on it. I want you to come back and tell me which of the two sounds the heaviest. Listen carefully."

      Maggie disappeared. Pointer could hear the wicker easy-chair creak slightly. He dropped one of the dental works which Eames had always had out on his table. Then after a pause he dropped it again. He and Watts had already tested just how much could be heard through the partition wall, but this time he was testing Maggie's accuracy.

      She came back a second later, looking rather awkward.

      "Well, sir, they both sounded alike. I mean to say I reely couldn't tell any difference, not to speak of."

      "That proves they were both about the same weight, which is quite likely. Now, Maggie, go back again; sit where you sat on Saturday afternoon. I shall drop into this easy chair. I want to find out if the chair makes as much noise with me as it did with Mr. Eames. I mean to say"—the Superintendent bit his lip for a second—"that time you heard Mr. Eames fall into it, after he had taken his medicine. Knock once on the wall if it's not so loud, and twice if it's louder."

      He listened till he heard Maggie draw up her chair, then he dropped heavily into his. Maggie knocked once. He let himself fall with all his weight, and Maggie came in.

      "That's as near as no matter, sir, to the sound poor Mr. Eames made."

      Pointer weighed fourteen stone and Eames he had guessed as under ten. The drug must have acted very quickly.

      "And now I want to move about the room and see if I can make as little noise as Eames did later on—when you heard him come back and lock his door."

      Maggie changed rooms again. Pointer took off both boots. He prided himself on his light footwork, and walking like Agag he crept around the room. Maggie knocked twice. He tried again. Again she knocked twice and then came in.

      "Oh, you made ever so much more noise, sir, but then you'd make four of poor Mr. Eames. With him I didn't hear steps at all."

      "You didn't hear my steps either surely," Pointer insisted, as he re-laced his boots.

      "Perhaps not as steps, sir, but, dear me, with Mr. Eames on Saturday I could only hear a drawer being pulled out ever so gently and then shut, after a minute almost without a sound, as you might say. If it hadn't been for the boards creaking and papers rustling, I couldn't have believed there was anyone in there, part of the time."

      "Papers rustling. As though they were being scrunched up, or turned over like this?" He illustrated both sounds with a newspaper.

      Maggie nodded as he refolded a sheet and drew it out of a make-believe envelope.

      "That's the sound, sir, but there's the housekeeper's bell. And for goodness' sake don't let her know that it was I who said anything to you about that man who looked like the other gentleman. She told us someone had been chattering and that the management wouldn't have it. Of course, I said like the others that it wasn't me."

      "You mean about Mr. Sikes, whom you thought was Mr. Beale?"

      She nodded. "Shall I come back here when she's finished giving out the towels?"

      But Pointer shook his head. "Hardly worth while. By the way, what time did Miss Leslie get back the day before yesterday? Pretty late, wasn't it?"

      "I don't know when she got back, sir. I found her in bed when I came to do her room, which I always leaves till last so that the water will be fresher. She did have a time on the river in all that wet. Rotten it must have been. I don't wonder she didn't want to stick it out."

      "What time did you go into her room on Saturday evening, did you say?"

      "After I had finished doing this one up for Mr. Beale. About eight o'clock."

      "Had you been in there after you left it at six?"

      "No, sir." The maid's eyes showed her wonder at the course of the questioning.

      "We're still hoping to find out Mr. Eames' friends, and it's possible that someone may have been in here on Saturday to see him. That's why I asked about Miss Leslie. She might have heard a knock." He handed the maid half-a-crown. "If you remember anything else let me know. However insignificant."

      "I will, thank you, sir," and Maggie closed the door behind her.

      After lunch the results of the autopsy reached the Chief Inspector. Morphia had been drunk in a quantity which made the police-officer open his eyes. It would be difficult for anyone but a chemist to lay his hand on such a solution. "There is one thing," the doctor's scribble finished, "that dose could never have had its taste disguised. Or at least it would have been uncommonly difficult."

      All this was what Pointer had expected, but Maggie's account of what she had heard in No. 14 gave, for the first time, a clearer pattern to the kaleidoscope. Whoever had shut and locked Eames' door—about four-thirty—had entered from the corridor and not by the window which she had heard opened much later.

      So, in general terms, from four to six was the time an alibi would have to cover.

      CHAPTER IV

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      MILLER had nothing suspicious to report in the actions of those inmates of the balcony rooms who had already visited the hotel on the other occasions. He was told off to test СКАЧАТЬ