The Footsteps That Stopped (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ meant was that he thought the case was not one that required investigations of that kind.

      Pointer had passed on to the fireplace, where Haviland had had the ashes kept. Pointer picked up a newspaper and gently fanned them.

      "Only paper ashes. 'Mrs. Tangye seems to've burnt her letters out on the hearth. Piece by piece. No marks of stirring on the tiles. But what about the fire itself?" Pointer asked.

      "Must have been lit late. Just a couple of smouldering logs were all I found, sir. I had them taken away, but the ashes haven't been touched."

      "Wasn't the room cold?" was the next question.

      "Not to notice. At least...I had my great coat on..."

      Haviland flushed. Had he overlooked something? But Pointer turned away immediately.

      "Now, Superintendent, you saw, when you first came in here yesterday?"

      Haviland was secretly impatient.

      A lot of work was waiting for him back at his station. He had been here on the day before, and had gone over the room very thoroughly. A detective from the Yard had been here. The Coroner had been here. It seemed hardly likely that any late corner could find anything worth while, even if that late comer was the youngest Chief Inspector at the Yard. Mrs. Tangye's death was either suicide or accident, a quite ordinary affair. Merely imperfectly docketed at the inquest. But he obediently explained to his superior how the room had looked when he had entered it.

      "That clothing over there is what she was wearing when found, I suppose?" he asked when Haviland had done.

      "Correct, sir. I had them brought in here for the jury to look at this morning." Top of all was the velvet frock with the powder blackened breast, and the scorched hole.

      "You can see, pressed into the pile, the very ring the autoisnatic made." Haviland pointed to a little circle. "At least, a part of it. Along this burnt bit here."

      You could see a mark. But was it made by her revolver? It looked a very thin line to Pointer.

      He turned away, and seated himself at Mrs. Tangye's writing bureau. Haviland watched him with the air of a man about to be completely and entirely justified. He felt certain that he would yet leave the room without a stain upon his official character. He had found nothing amiss because there was nothing amiss to be found.

      "You say in your report, that, not finding her keys, you opened the desk with a pass-key. How about it?" Pointer asked on rising.

      "They're mislaid somewhere. I only looked through this one room for them of course."

      Pointer made no comment, but asked to see the body. They found Newnes in the upstairs room, putting the last touches to a sketch. Pointer signed to him to finish.

      "If she did it intentionally, I wonder if she's glad now or sorry." Newnes hoped to start a little debate which would enable him to slide into the official circle. No one answered.

      "Has she changed her lot for the better?" he mused, with one eye on Pointer.

      "She certainly has for good," Wilmot said dryly, pulling up the blind to its fullest extent.

      Death is not the brother of sleep. Nor does it look it. Sleep is active. As active as waking. The subconscious is in full control. The work of repairing, rebuilding, is going on full speed ahead. But death—for what lies before us, is the actual end. Nothing now but a return to its component parts await the wonderful machine which has been definitely scrapped by its owner. To Wilmot indeed, all that there ever could be, or ever had been, to Mable Tangye lay before them.

      As for the two police officers, the point of greatest interest for the moment was not why, but how.

      Newnes took another reluctant departure. Then only did Pointer go up to the coffin. He gazed very searchingly at the face inside.

      Suicide demands an unusual temperament. Pointer saw no signs of it here. To him these were the last features to associate with the voluntary pushing open of that door which we call death. Mrs. Tangye looked a handsome, upstanding, hot-tempered, rather selfish woman of around thirty. One who would put up a good fight for all her possessions, including life. There was pluck in her face, as well as resolution. He would expect this woman to have found a way to cut her losses, supposing she had them, not allow them to swamp her. Yet equally certainly she was a woman who would not have gone against the accepted order of things. Respectability was stamped on her. Conventionality engraved on every line. Even around the corners of the mouth where, an impulsive temper lurked as well.

      Pointer studied her hands carefully.

      "Come on anything, sir?" Haviland asked, after a pause.

      "They have been washed, of course. But on her left hand under her two wedding rings are traces, of what will prove to be butter, I fancy—" He pushed a tiny wad of sterilised cotton beneath them and then put it away in a corked bottle which he swiftly labelled, "—as you'd expect from the greasiness of her finger-prints on that revolver. That's why I asked about a cat or a dog. I thought she might have been feeding one. Yet apparently only a quarter of a crumpet was eaten, and that with a knife and fork, on whose very smooth and polished handles she left no finger-prints whatever. Odd!"

      "Shall I tell you what I think is odd?" Wilmot, giving up all idea of spectacular developments, lit a cigarette, and, as usual prepared to take the centre of the stage. It was his favourite stance.

      "The oddest thing about this affair that I can see, is the reason that made Miss Saunders have Miss Tangye's body put in this shabby room at the end of the Corridor. Why not in her own bedroom?"

      "Because of Mr. Tangye, I suppose," Haviland suggested. He liked commonplace explanations. He found them generally the right ones.

      "Why not shift him? There's a well-furnished spare-room nearer the stairs. Why stick her away in this boxroom? It's little more," the newspaper man insisted.

      "Well, that's a fact," muttered Haviland, "that's a fact."

      Pointer led the way downstairs. In the hall they met Tangye. When he heard that Wilmot was acting for the Insurance Company, his jaw tightened. After a second's pause, he asked all three into his study which was opposite the room where the tragedy had occurred.

      The stockbroker was an unusually handsome man. So well dressed, that he was only saved from being over-dressed by a certain ease of carriage. He had rather full, dark eyes. A pleasant manner when he chose. And a very pleasant voice at all times.

      As he was one of those people who cannot imagine a talk without a drink, he unlocked a tantalus at once.

      Pointer declined a cocktail, and so, after a moment, did Haviland. He could not see what the Chief Inspector had to go on, or even whether he were going on, but should this prove a "case" then Tangye obviously might be in it, and the rules of the Force forbade a drink with a possible arrest, unless for the purpose of getting at the truth.

      "You sent me a note, I think," Tangye returned to the Chief Inspector, "asking me some question or other about my wife's friend, Mrs. Cranbourn. I've just had a cable from her from Marseilles. Would you care to see it?"

      The stockbroker handed him a slip of paper on which Pointer read: "S.S. Reina Hermosa.

      "Read of your dear wife's tragic death in paper. СКАЧАТЬ