The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ said that he did, on Eastern art chiefly.

      "Just so. Illustrated? Good. Then I'll come down as a draughtsman sent by your publishers to take your instructions about some new plates in your coming work."

      "A most unlikely story to any one who knows publishers," objected Thornton, "but the point is to get the case cleared up. The girl's father is abroad. Her uncle's un-get-at-able in town. And one always understands that to be early on the spot is half the battle for an investigator."

      Pointer agreed heartily and hung up the receiver. He proceeded to have a car sent around. He was very particular about its appearance. Just as particular as he was about his own, though Thornton did not suspect the care in either case when a battered, dirty, noisy little two-seater coughed its way around the bend at the hour set by his Scotland Yard ally. Its looks certainly suited the man who lumbered out into the road. A big depressed-looking figure, round-shouldered and shabbily dressed, with spectacles on his drooping, slightly-reddened nose.

      "Mr. Thornton?" His voice suggested ill-health "I'm Brown, the man you were talking to on the 'phone just now." He coughed wheezily. "From the printers', sir. May I get in?"

      "Tumble in," said Thornton, and Brown obeyed him literally, giving him a meek glance as he did so. The detective officer saw a man of about thirty-six, medium-build, dark, good looking but for an air of weariness, spiritual rather than physical. Life bored Mr. Thornton, and life is apt to resent that attitude. He had a satirical smile, and a veiled, non-committal eye.

      "Keep the car away from the hedges, please," suggested the man beside him, undercover of a none too clean handkerchief, "and as you take me to the lane behind your cottage perhaps you would give me an idea of how the rooms lie in Stillwater House, especially Miss Charteris's room."

      Thornton did so.

      "One thing more," his companion continued, "when we get there, will you kindly make your way to outside her room and wait there on guard till I come out. If any one passes her door, just strike a match. I see you smoke. If they make as though to enter, strike a second. When I'm done with the room, I shall join you at the place where you stop your car. Of course, should I be noticed in the house, I should be simply sent by the undertakers."

      Once arrived at Red Gates, the man slipped out and disappeared up a side path as though he knew the grounds by heart.

      Thornton met no one as he climbed the broad staircase in the dim light of drawn blinds, and sat down on the landing: He heard no sound from within the room where they had carried Rose.

      Yet the man from Scotland Yard was inside it. He was just lifting the sheet which lay over the dead girl. Her head had been straightened on the pillow, and her wrists loosely crossed, otherwise she lay very much as she had been found.

      Pointer parted the beautiful hair gently. The cut on top was not deep. From his bag he took a tiny phial. Fastened to the inside of its screw top was a wire with a pad of sterilised wool at the end. He carefully swabbed the cut, going only a little way along it, so as to leave a possible trail for others. He looked, at the swab closely.

      It showed what seemed like earth, and a few tiny specks of what his magnifying glass told him were bits of flower-pot ware, or possibly red tiling. He re-screwed the phial, labelled it, and dropped it into his bag. Then he rapidly examined the girl's face and dress The shoes detained him some minutes The soles at the heels showed traces of having walked in damp, sandy earth Some country lane, he guessed The bows had both been tied very carelessly, and both very much off to one side The same side. He took a small dot of the mud from one heel and labelled its envelope. Then he cut two patterns of the soles out of paper, and put them away in his pocket. There was a small bruise on one arm. It told nothing as to its origin, except that he did not think that it had been caused by any encircling pressure such as a grip Under both her hands, which had opened since she had been laid on the bed, for rigor mortis was passing off, he found some withered twigs, and what looked like tea leaves, so shrivelled were they by the icy touch of death.

      Out of the bag came an outfit that formed a small microscope when put together. The leaves showed now as crushed withered flower petals, almost like tiny white roses. Pointer was a Bideford man. He knew his plants and trees. This was from a sloe tree. This was blackthorn. He examined the dead girl's hands carefully with one of the glasses that he detached. They were lightly scratched on outside and inside, but they showed no trace of sand. Neither did the nails.

      On one sleeve was a tiny smear of green paint, very faint. He knew that the dead girl had had her painting box with her, but it held water-colours. This felt like oil paint of some kind. A few drops of turpentine from his bag settled it. It was oil paint. He turned the still figure gently over.

      Across the back of her frock, a few inches above her waist, ran a broad tear. It looked at a glance, remembering where she had been found, as though the frock had caught, on an overhanging bough or pointed stone. But the glass showed that two threads of the knitting had been cut, quite definitely cut with scissors. Nor was the remainder of the dress pulled in any way, as it would have been had she hung from some projecting catch. He decided that a strip as long as his span, and as broad as his hand, had been taken from the back, and the silk 'teased' to look as though torn.

      He turned to the things which had been found with her. They were lying on the table. There was the tin box with a sketch of some ruins in the lid. Pointer felt the picture. It was dry. So were the brushes. So were the little china pans of paint. They had not been dampened for a week past, he felt sure. Next he picked up her hat of silver gray felt, soft as a kid glove. At the mere feel of it he gave an inward jump. It was quite dry. All the rest of Rose, even to the hair which had clung in cold tendrils around his fingers, was wringing wet. As he examined the hat his features stiffened. The inside was badly stained with blood from the cut, but the outside was unmarked in any way. There was no trace of blow or fall. The hat had been put on after the injury was inflicted. Must have been. After all her clothes were soaked through. After she was dead, or unconscious, in other words.

      The case had some unusual features already. It was speedily to acquire more. Pointer, in his guise of Brown, slipped out of the room, locking the door again on the outside as he had found it. Without a glance at the waiting Thornton, he drifted down some back stairs.

      Thornton went out to his car. A minute later Brown joined him.

      "Sand-pit. As near as possible without our being seen, please."

      Then, when they were well under way, he asked whether Miss Charteris had been wearing a hat when her body was found.

      "Yes. A gray felt. The doctor took it off to see the extent of the head injury. He brought it home with him in the car along with her painting outfit."

      Close to the pit, Brown stumbled out again, and Thornton waited. Disguise there might be, but he felt certain that many halts, and much missing of the path, would mark the progress of this hound of the law.

      The man from Scotland Yard walked back a little way along the short-cut, examining the shoe-prints carefully. Then he clambered down into the pit. There was no water there. Then he scrutinised the nearby copse. He saw no blackthorn tree amongst them As for the pit, neither in it, not at its edge, was there green of any kind but grass. He returned to the car.

      "Well," Thornton asked tensely, "have I got you down here on a wild-goose chase?"

      The voice that answered him was the one that up till now he had only heard over the telephone. A quiet voice, but resonant, and full of character.

      "I think not, sir."

      Thornton was surprised at the СКАЧАТЬ