The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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       "B0LZANO HOTEL LAURIN

       "My DEAR DAUGHTER, I am sending you an enclosure with this, addressed to myself, which please keep by you pending future directions. I may want it destroyed. I may not. The weather here is very cold. I wish I had taken your advice and brought my warmer underwear. As you thought, it was quite chilly at Genoa.

       "Your affectionate father,

       "HENRY CHARTERIS."

      "Bit of a sell, eh?" said the disappointed Harris. "And why Italian? His writing would have been enough of a safeguard, I should have thought."

      The date was the Monday before Rose was murdered

      "Lady Maxwell told me that the professor often talked and wrote both to his daughter and to his niece in Italian so as to keep it up. I found this letter tucked between the pages of a new Italian dictionary in Mrs. Lane's bedroom."

      "Hidden?"

      "Or laid away in safe keeping. There's nothing much in the letter itself, except that it seems to point to the importance of the accompanying enclosure, which was, as we were told, addressed to the professor himself. The odd thing is, why was this half-sheet taken? Why did Mrs. Lane buy that Italian dictionary late on Thursday at Jephson's in the High Road? Why was she, or they, so anxious to learn what was in the letter? And Genoa," Pointer paused a moment to fill his pipe, "Genoa! That's not the way the colonel told us three separate times that the professor was going into Italy. If you look at your report, you'll see he says that his brother-in-law was going through Italy by way of Modena-Turin-Milan-Venice. His very insistence struck me as odd. Now, here the professor refers to having been in Genoa, and that not as though it had been an afterthought."

      Pointer stared at the note a little longer.

      "I shouldn't be surprised if Mrs. Lane came so late to the concert because she was in some quiet nook, railway station or bun shop, translating this. It would take her some time The professor's handwriting ought to be forbidden by law. I thought the letter was in cuneiform at first."

      "Instead of being in Medchester. I see." Harris nodded solemnly. "Of course, Mrs. Lane's a newcomer down here." His tone indicated resignation to any blows from that quarter. "You think she's in it, then?"

      "'It' was always the case to all the men engaged on 'It.'"

      "'Fraid so. I think she's the woman who walked in Miss Charteris's shoes on that path to the sand-pit late that same night." Pointer spoke very gravely. "She has a short-stepping gait. Not like Miss Scarlett's stride. And her weight and size of foot would fit the marks."

      "Lady Maxwell wears sixes or sevens," Harris said ungallantly. "I measured her footsteps."

      The door opened, and Rodman saluted.

      "Mrs. Lane's just left for town, sir. The servants say that she told them that the colonel had asked her to look after a furnished house of his some time ago, and that she only waited till the funeral was over before taking up her new duties. Miss Scarlett's going shortly, to stay with Lady Carew at their Devon place. The colonel's remaining on."

      Rodman went back to his observation post at Stillwater House.

      "With Lady Carew! There you are Alf!" Harris said triumphantly. "You wondered, why Sir Henry wasn't at the funeral. I told you he'd gone to Sledmere. The colonel himself dropped that to me. Now you see that there's no ill-feeling."

      "Sir Henry left on Friday afternoon very suddenly for Yorkshire after having backed out nearly a week before at the last moment," Pointer observed.

      "Well, what, of it?"

      Pointer eyed Harris's indignant face with a twinkle.

      "Search me! as the Americans say, and if at the same time you could find the answer to why Sir Henry Carew does not seem to've been notified of Miss Charteris's death, I should be obliged."

      "How do you make that out—about his not having been told?"

      "I can't be sure, but I came across a list of names to which notices were to be sent that had been given Mrs. Lane. It was a long one. His wasn't on it. One of my men is in the Army and Navy Club, where the two generally hang out, and he says that, according to one of the waiters, Carew learnt it by chance late in the afternoon from a mutual acquaintance. The waiter says Sir Henry had a cab called within the hour and just caught his train."

      Pointer glanced at the last note on Harris's pad of the afternoon. Mr. Cockburn had telephoned the result of his efforts to crack the count's alibi. The Chief Inspector looked pleased.

      "Good! We'll get him to find out more about the count for us."

      Next morning, the morning after the funeral, Pointer received a very austere reply from Mr. Bellairs at Windsor Castle.

      The artist stated that he was at a loss to understand the communication which he had just received. He had been indisposed on Thursday evening, and had kept to his rooms, even cancelling a dance engagement. He had not been in Medchester for some time, a fortnight or more, he thought.

      Pointer raised a reflective eyebrow, and filed the letter. Then he went to Stillwater House to take a few soundings.

      In the lounge sat Sibella, a note open on her knee. Pointer put on a pair of very special glasses. Their action was that of short-range field-glasses. Stepping noiselessly nearer, he read over her shoulder, in di Monti's sharp, black characters:—

      "Egregia Signorina."

      The letter was in Italian. Translated it ran:

       "I shall be on the grass tennis-courts at twelve to-day. Would you be so kind as to meet me there?

       "With the most perfect esteem and the most exquisite respect.

       "CANGRANDE GIULIO di MONTI."

      Sibella shivered, as though chilly.

      Pointer would have liked to witness the interview, but he was due in town to give some evidence in an International forgery case which was being tried.

      Harris telephoned him an account of the meeting during the lunch interval, and Pointer decided from its brevity that it had been used to settle the time of another appointment. Harris had not been able to hear anything. But he said that only the briefest of sentences on the count's part, and even less on Miss Scarlett's side, had passed.

      Pointer was detained. The Bank of England was involved, and he saw that he must confide to Harris and Rodman the watching of events, and trust for the best.

      Sibella kept to her rooms all the afternoon. Her father was up in town for the night, closely watched.

      One of Pointer's best men from New Scotland Yard was shadowing the count. Rodman, who was proving himself quite good, was ready to take up the chase if Sibella stirred. Her car, Rose's car it had been, was left turned in the garage. The inspector had noted the full tank.

      At eight a door creaked. Down the stairs stole Sibella, wrapped in a motoring cloak, with a dark veil wound closely around cap and face, leaving only a mica slit for her eyes. She looked like a rather bulky mummy, but the СКАЧАТЬ