The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ hereabouts?" Pointer asked, after a short silence. Harris eyed him askance.

      "Not going to start in by having trouble, with my future landlord, are you?" he asked in half real, half assume trepidation.

      "He's not an easy man to read," Pointer said slowly. "We gave him a nasty jolt just now. He's anything but thankful that the Yard's taking a hand. I wonder why not?"

      "He's plenty of friends," Harris ruminated. "The Scarletts have lived at Stillwater since they dispossessed the abbot up at the ruins, and took the monastery land. He's none so well off. Had to leave the Tenth Hussars because he found it too expensive. Some say he's a bit grasping. I think myself, that rent for the cottage's a bit steep, but take him all in all, he's very popular. Betting man. Good eye for a horse, and yet never lands a winner. Odd, ain't it!"

      Pointer digested this, then he said briskly, "By the way, I'm in possession of a set of casts of Miss Rose shoe-prints on that short cut, and a drawing of them to scale. I'll leave them here, at the police station. If you'll take them on as your own, it'll save bother." He began to unpack his bag in the inner room.

      Superintendent Harris eyed the casts ruminatingly.

      "Found on the doorstep? Or blew in by chance through an open window?"

      Pointer told him of Thornton's message, and his arrival, as Brown. Harris was amused.

      "And the chief telling you kind as father who everybody was. You're deep, Alf! But this sets Mr. Thornton, at least, in a good light, doesn't it?" Harris had a most undetective-like eagerness to see his neighbours in a good, or at least a satisfactory light.

      "Humph, seems so. But possibly he was rushed by those friends of his, 'Bond and Co.,' as he calls them."

      "Ah, there's that, of course They did rather take the lead. And what's that other parcel you're getting out for me?"

      "This is Lady Maxwell's evening dress that she wore on Thursday at dinner at Stillwater House."

      "Anything wrong with it? It looks all right to me."

      Pointer gave a demonstration by artificial light.

      Harris drew a deep breath as the splotches showed. "Isn't this pretty conclusive?" he asked.

      "I don't know yet," Pointer said frankly, "and the rest of what I don't know about this affair I'll tell you and Inspector Rodman this evening. It'd take too long now. This Lady Maxwell is being watched, of course. But I want to speak to the inspector a moment. Ah, here he is."

      Pointer had liked the keen, smart look of that police officer at the inquest He gave him his instructions in a few sentences. The frock was to be returned to its owner, and at the same time as much information as possible was to be obtained.

      Pointer and Harris drove off separately.

      Pointer did not hope for much from the questions at Stillwater House. That part of the work seemed to him what asking a patient to put out his tongue was to the old-fashioned doctor, something expected on both sides; a sort of preliminary canter. Not by sitting asking questions would the real bones of Rose Charteris's murder be laid bare, of that he felt quite sure. Yet a few useful items might be collected. He left that part, for the moment, to Superintendent Harris, for he had to go to town to see the head of Scotland Yard, and be formally invested with the case. But first he stopped at Mr. Gilchrist's and had a short interview with him. Then after an equally brief interview with the assistant commissioner of New Scotland Yard, he made for 17 Upper Brook Street, Professor Charteris's town address, outside of which Watts was already waiting.

      They came, as two solicitor's clerks, armed with letter from Gilchrist to take away some papers of the professor's which were wanted for the adjourned inquest.

      The manservant showed them up to the first floor and opened a door.

      The detectives examined the professor's three room with care. Pointer came to rest before a semicircle of tobacco-shreds behind a tobacco jar.

      "That wasn't done by filling a pipe. Looks as if some one had stirred that Shiraz like a Christmas pudding within the last twenty-four hours. For they're fresh." He passed on. "Letter-book of the Professor's missing unless his secretary took it with her."

      Pointer turned to the book-shelves and pointed.

      "Five books upside down in one batch." Watts stepped over to them. "Been lifted out in lots apparently."

      Pointer clapped the boards together of a couple taken out at random. They seemed to be unusually dust free. Much more so than the furniture, or the carpet, would have suggested. He rang the bell.

      "Look here. Has the professor's secretary been in these rooms lately? A book is missing that we were sent to fetch."

      The man shook his head.

      "She left before the professor. Some ten days ago, that was."

      "But some one was in here lately. Yesterday or the day before?"

      The man raised a mildly surprised eyebrow.

      "Sharp that! You're right A young person did come to do some repairing on one of the professor's rugs They're his own, and quite valuable, I understand."

      "Who sent her?"

      "She came from Liberty's, I think she said. Anyway she brought me a visiting card of the professor's, with instructions to let her mend the carpet in front of the sitting-room hearth, which I did. I didn't stay in the room, of course, but I was in the hall when she went out. She had nothing in her hand but the little sewing-bag she brought."

      "What was she like?"

      "Seemed the usual sort of sewing woman to me. Middle-aged, stout party. Not the kind to notice much. Dark-skinned, very."

      "And the hour? Mr. Gilchrist'll want to know all about this."

      "She came shortly after eight. Most unusual time, but being a foreigner—"

      "And she left—about when?"

      "Close on nine. I was just carrying in breakfast to a very punctual gentleman."

      "Got the card she brought?"

      The man said that she had kept that.

      "Well, we'll have another look. It doesn't sound as though she could have taken anything," Pointer finally. He looked at Watts as the door closed. "That settles the tobacco, I fancy."

      "Was the point of any importance, sir?" Watts asked.

      "I think so. That spilt tobacco looks as though the woman had been hunting for something which she thought might have been deliberately hidden in these rooms. Not merely for something which might have been in professor's possession. And now let's go through correspondence. I want, first of all, anything that will have arrived within the last few weeks that looks important or interesting. Next, I want anything that may give a clue to his whereabouts. Italy is a bit large, and a post-mark isn't much to go by."

      They found nothing definite. Pointer made up a packet of "possibly wanteds," and dropping Watts at the Yard, returned to Medchester.

      He drove back deep in thought. He had already СКАЧАТЬ