The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ a matter of routine," suggested Carter; "but say, Chief Inspector, I'll never forget what I owe you. You saved me once when you drew Beale's fangs, and you've saved Christine tonight."

      "I don't mind telling you that I never in all my life spent a worse five minutes than when I had to decide what had become of her, and knew that if I made a mistake there would be no time to put it right." Pointer spoke with feeling.

      "What made you guess the river?" Carter asked in a hushed voice.

      "Couldn't see what else they could do with her. It was obvious that the house had been cleared so that no one should know of her second arrival. When she had been at the villa before, she had practically no friends on this side of the Atlantic. I think they counted on that a bit. I know this coast pretty well. As Mr. Deane, I've walked it over for hours, and I couldn't call to mind any ravine or place where a body could be dropped as though from a motor accident except some spots a good way off, and where a very stiff gradient had to be climbed. The tires and the small amount of petrol were against them. There only remained the sea, for the villa itself was out of the question. What they wanted was an accident, not a body that could be found some time or other, and prove it to've been a murder."

      "You jumped to the conclusion at once that her life was in danger, then?"

      Pointer put his head on one side. "Well...in a murder case there generally comes a moment when a second murder seems the only way to keep the first one quiet."

      The two men stopped at the Negresco, and Pointer glanced up at the purple roofs high above them.

      "Don't let yourself feel too grateful, Mr. Carter. You and Miss Leslie, as was, quite tangled me up for a while. There were weeks when I felt none too sure of either of you."

      "See here," Carter stopped him as he would have turned away, "I saw that man of yours—Watts—pull out a knife tonight to sharpen a pencil. My knife! I had lent it to a funny old geezer here, a Colonel Winter, who's pestered me the last fortnight, buzzing around me, and I've been kind of figuring—"

      But the Chief Inspector was gone. Carter gazed after him. "Well, I guess our British police take some beating after all." And he went upstairs to write out a wire offering a reward of five thousand pounds to anyone who should first find the murderer of Robert Erskine. The wire was sent off to the Yard, after a futile effort on his part to get it dated earlier in the day. He thought it would look more natural to Pointer, but he consoled himself afterwards with the knowledge that it would have made no difference in the Chief Inspector's acceptance of the sum solely on behalf of the Police Widows' and Orphans' Fund.

      When Pointer returned to the villa it was close on dawn. He and Watts looked at each other in silence a moment and then glanced away.

      "A letter must have come for Mrs. Erskine late last night. I found it in the letter-box." Watts handed it to his superior.

      "Any sound from in there?" asked Pointer rather tensely.

      Watts shook his head, and, receiving no answer to their knock, they entered.

      She was quite dead. Gone by the same way that she had sent Robert Erskine out of life. They 'phoned for a doctor, though there was no slightest chance of rousing her to life. Then Pointer glanced at the letter he held. It was from Russell and Son. He broke the seal and read:

      Dear Mrs. Erskine,

      I will reply to your last at full length tomorrow. This is simply to ask you to let me have all possible details as to the death of your one-time companion, Janet Fraser. Place of burial, doctor who attended her, etc. A relative of hers has died in Australia, and as next-of-kin she—had she lived—would have inherited his enormous fortune, which will now go to his more distant kin.

       I note in your letter that your press for the sale of your Bell shares, against which we most strongly counsel you—

       Pointer put the letter down for a moment, and looked thoughtfully at the dead woman before him.

THE END

      The Charteris Mystery

       Table of Contents

      Table of Contents

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

       Table of Contents

      THE conversation, judging by what he heard of it as he sauntered up to the east lounge, did not threaten any great demands on his brains.

      "All I know is that cricket's jolly good for the liver," Arthur Bond was saying earnestly.

      "It is really," echoed Cockburn.

      "Isn't it!" agreed Rose absent-mindedly, as, with an apology, she cut open a letter that had just come for her.

      "And it doesn't have to be first-rate cricket, either," Bond ruminated. He was a pretty boy, with a girlish face that amused his friends, and misled his acquaintances.

      "Not a bit," chimed in Cockburn, the elder of the friends by ten years. The Honourable John Cockburn could not by any stretch of affection be called handsome, but he had a pleasant, freckled face, lit by a pair of eyes which were very steady and observant, though their colour might be indeterminate.

      Sibella gave her throaty laugh.

      "Hush—h! If you say such brilliant things, Mr. Thornton'll crib them for his book."

      "I wasn't saying anything brilliant," protested Bond ingenuously. Then, after СКАЧАТЬ