The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ a stiff brush over it, presumably to do away with any finger marks or streaks?"

      "I did, sir. And wasn't his—I mean Mr. Beale's—clothes-brush in a fearful state. He did look put out when you picked it up first thing."

      The Chief Inspector nodded with a grim smile. "Aye, he did. He might have thought it less of a give-away if he'd known that all along he had a fine smear of dust on the under part of his sleeve. A smear that could only have been got up there. The manager's coat was clean, though that proves little. I hope you noticed the washstand before the doctor washed his hands?"

      Watts was an honest young fellow, and he flushed by way of answer.

      "The towel was damp, so was the soap. So was the inside of the basin. The jug was half empty, but there wasn't a drop of water in the pail. Whatever water had been used had been flung out of the window. It's been pouring so hard all day that a bit more or less would never be noticed. But the fact is odd. Why should anyone mind pouring the basin into the pail?"

      "The water was too black after that wardrobe top," laughed Watts. The Chief Inspector was popular with his men, and Watts was, moreover, a distant connection.

      "Then that chest of drawers. You know the feeling of using a key after a pass-key?"

      "As though the lock were stuck, sir?"

      "Just so. I turned the key very slowly, and each drawer had been last opened with a pass-key, or rather locked with one. And that smell of tobacco when we opened them—same smell as Mr. Beale's cigars. And that dusting of cigar ash on one of the ties. I shouldn't wonder if this is going to turn into a very funny case, Watts. I shouldn't wonder at all."

      Watts' eyes brightened. A "funny case" from the point of view of the police often leads to promotion, and though Pointer was the youngest Chief Inspector at the Yard, Watts believed he could unravel any tangle. Pointer lived in Bayswater. He liked its open squares and clearer air. He shared three rooms there with a friend, James O'Connor, now a bookbinder, but during the War a very successful member of the Secret Service. Talkative, gossipy, and secretive was the Celt. Only a few had any idea of the hard core of blue steel that lay beneath his apparent easy-going cheeriness. Pointer was one of these few. He and O'Connor had worked once together, the one openly representing the law, the other secretly endangering his life every moment of the day while tracking down a German-American-Irish plot. O'Connor never referred to those days, though, had his means permitted, he would have liked to continue his hazardous work; but with peace he had to turn his attention to making a livelihood, and being single-minded in all his doings, he refused absolutely to be drawn into any of his friend's problems except as the merest onlooker.

      It always gave the Chief Inspector genuine pleasure to step from the little lobby into the huge living-room which the two men used in common. He saw richer rooms often, but never one which suited him so well, with its ivory walls and paint, kept up to the mark by his own neat brush, the thick, short, draw-curtains of apple-green silk to the four windows, the chair covers of a Persian pattern—green leaves rioting over a cream ground, with here and there a pomegranate or a blue bird—book cases in quiet walnut stood against the walls.

      Pointer's large writing desk, and O'Connor's equally huge table, filled the corners by the windows. In one open fireplace logs were heaped, the other was kept free for burning papers. The soft brightness of his home was like a friendly hand clasp to the weary police officer after the rain outside.

      O'Connor smiled up at him and pointed to the table.

      "Mrs. Able is thirsting for your blood. I told her to leave the things the last time she brought them in. I couldn't face her again." He turned out an electric hot-plate as he spoke.

      A vegetable soup, a dish of Tatar bitokes—savory balls of beefsteak and marrow and seasonings pounded to perfection and browned to a turn, a well-made potato salad, some crisp rolls, and a glass of light wine made Pointer ready for another stretch of work if need be.

      When the meal was cleared away by his landlady, who ruled the two men with her cooking, he filled his pipe from a beautiful covered jar of modern Japanese enamel where gold fish glittered among green waves. Jim's tobacco lived in a dull blue pot at the other end, and in the middle stood the room's one useless ornament, a carved Chinese ball-puzzle, fine as a birch leaf and showing ball within ball in tantalizing glimpses of color. It typified his calling to the policeman. He picked it up again and turned it gently to and fro.

      "Yes," he said ruminatingly, "get hold of your key and you'll open up all right. But how to get hold of your key—"

      "I thought the Meredith case was practically over," murmured O'Connor through clouds of smoke.

      "Finished at eight. I've another case on now, and rather a stiff one, or all signs belie it. It's a hotel case, and you know how I feel about them."

      "Still, old chap, you did very well with that robbery down at Ramsgate. It gave you your leg-up."

      There was nothing Pointer enjoyed more than talking his cases over with his friend, whose discretion was as much to be trusted as his own. Not that he often got an opinion out of the Irishman, but the mere reciting aloud of the various phases of a problem in itself helped to clear his mind.

      "They are the very devil all the same. You never know where you are. Take a private house—and the servants, the furniture, the rooms, the very walls can give you points, but a hotel! How can you follow up a hundred or so possible criminals? Personally, if I ever go in for a murder I should never dream of choosing any other place."

      "A murder case, eh?"

      "Did I say so? Well, see what you think. This is how things stand at present."

      He told of his call to the Enterprise and the results of the inquiry so far.

      "Why don't you think it's a suicide, what's wrong with that letter?" Jim handed it back. "You say the writing is the same as on the register."

      "By the same hand you'd think, but this letter's been written with an ordinary pen, same nib and ink as is supplied in the hotel bedroom, yet Eames had a filled fountain-pen in his pocket. He signed the register with it, why didn't he use It to write this letter with? It wasn't as if he had been trying to disguise his handwriting. Then the way he was huddled into the wardrobe looked as if his feet had been shoved in first and the rest of his body afterwards. You'll see what I mean when I show you Lester's photos on Monday. His coat and tie were half over his head at the back. And where is his trunk key? You might say that he got rid of his bag beforehand to save tracing his home, but he left the trunk. Then why not leave the key? And the things he had put into the wardrobe from his bed and wash-stand—pajamas, shaving-tackle, and that sort of thing—well, of course a man might lock himself into a pitch-dark wardrobe and then proceed to tidy all the articles neatly against the front, but it's difficult to see why."

      "Especially if he was drugged. Sure it wasn't an overdose of whisky? That would explain so many puzzles." O'Connor loved to impersonate guileless curiosity at these talks. It moved the Chief Inspector to a fury at times which the Irishman took as a tribute to his histrionic powers.

      "Any finger prints?" he asked after a moment.

      It was Pointer's turn to get even. He gazed on his friend as on a man past praying for. "Any fingerprints? How many things were there, do you suppose, that that American and the Manager between them hadn't pawed over? There was a regular finger-mark jam over everything. Now I'll tell you another thing. His socks and small things were in the two top-drawers. Nothing could have been tidier. Even his spare shoelaces had rubber bands to keep them trim. His СКАЧАТЬ