The Craig Poisoning Mystery (Musaicum Murder Mysteries). Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ fingers that tore off—touched—that letter, that opened that envelope, were the fingers of the murderer!"

      "I don't know about opening the envelope. Mr. Craig might have done that himself to write the very postscript in question," Pointer reminded him, "but as to who tore it off...yes, that's how it looks, so far."

      "I rather agree with you, Pointer," Godolphin now said. "Yes, I rather agree with you. I wonder if we can find any finger- prints on it—?"

      "You won't!" Houghton said hopelessly. "Whoever tore it and worked away at the edge to make it look like the rest of the paper would have worn gloves."

      He picked up a big book from a table by the wall. "This is what I wanted him to send the precious find in." He fluttered its leaves carefully but fruitlessly. "Match said he wrapped up a book...Here's the wrapper!" He pounced on the paper-basket and fished out a brown sheet that had been folded around something flat and sharp-edged. Houghton laid it on the volume. The marks fitted.

      "So he did mean to send it...I would have asked Match about it just now, only I didn't want to interrupt the story of how the end actually came. Hello—look at this!" Houghton had turned the wrapper over.

      He pointed to a hole torn in it. Looking closely, they could all see the end of a pen-stroke and a fragment of a stamp on the part that remained. But the address had been evidently torn bodily out.

      "But who—who—" Houghton spoke thickly. His hands shook as he let Pointer take the wrapping-paper from him and fold it up carefully for finger-prints. Houghton let them have his to subtract from any possible others. Craig's were taken too. Pointer enclosed the wrapper in a waxed paper envelope for careful attention at the Yard, after Godolphin and Houghton initialed it and put the hour and date beside their initials. Houghton looked like a man in a nightmare.

      "This is amazing!" he said finally. "In a way infinitely more amazing than not being able to find that part of a letter of which Ronnie wrote me; than discovering that his postscript had been torn off his letter to me. That they should disappear is comprehensible—part of the criminal's efforts to escape detection. But why should anyone want to tear my name and address off that wrapper?"

      There was a short silence. It was, as he said, oddly incomprehensible.

      "Whoever tore it off couldn't have known that Craig had written to you," Godolphin hazarded finally. "I think it was done to keep you out of the affair lest you should do just what you have done, and bring down a medical expert."

      "Poor Ronnie! Poor chap! The best pal a man could have. To go under surrounded by this sort of work—"

      Houghton spoke passionately, under his breath. "It's like turning over a stone and finding it alive with crawling vermin. I quite counted on finding that paper—finding it in this room. But I'm afraid there isn't an earthly chance of its being here, as you say." As neither of the other two answered him, he went on, "Or even in existence, you think?"

      "I'm afraid not," both said frankly.

      "I won't allow that it's been burnt or destroyed," he said obstinately. "It would be too rotten bad luck!"

      "There's always accident, or a blunder, or the possibility of blackmail to keep it safe," Godolphin comforted him. "I've known very incriminating documents saved for the last reason. Not by the criminal, needless to say, though."

      The search passed on into the bathroom. Here, again, no paper was found. What had been the sitting-room intended to go with the bedroom was now the nurse's room. There was nowhere else to look, except in the remainder of the house, and evidently Craig himself could not have hidden it, except in his sick-room.

      "Mr. Craig used to live here himself, I understand, before the house was made into a dower house?" Pointer asked Houghton, as the latter stood looking rather helplessly down at the toilet- table of his cousin.

      The drive up from the police station had been too swift to allow of more than a few words between himself and the chief constable. Houghton nodded.

      "Yes. This is the outline of my cousin's life. He ran away to sea as a lad. Refused to come home, and stayed on in the merchant service. When his cousin, Sir George Craig—Lady Craig's husband—who had bought this house, found it a bit small and inconvenient, he let it to Ronald Craig and his wife. Then when Sir George died—intestate—a little later, it came to him as next-of-kin. When George died, Ronald left the sea and went into the City. Bought a seat on the stock exchange and did surprisingly well. Lately he's been doing really big things. Playing the South American market. He got out a year ago. Cleared a huge fortune. His two little kids, both girls, unfortunately, live here with Lady Craig. The house is hers for her life use, of course. Ronald turned it into the Dower House when he began negotiations for buying Clere Towers."

      "You didn't speak of that missing paper to Lady Craig?" Godolphin eyed him thoughtfully.

      Houghton returned the look.

      "I did not. I didn't speak of it to anyone until I heard that a policeman was on duty outside the bedroom to prevent anyone entering. I had to leave the key with Dr. Gilchrist and Lindrum. You see, I thought then that it was somewhere in this room."

      "And you think Lady Craig might have destroyed it?" Godolphin asked.

      "I didn't, and don't, think one way or another about her, or anyone else," Houghton said doggedly, "but someone in this house has been wearing a most damnably well-made mask. Someone has been posing as an ordinary inmate, perhaps as something closer, and yet has murdered Ronnie. Apart from what the doctors say, his letter to me shows that. It's a horrible fact, but it is a fact. As for me, I'm all in the dark. I find that I can't tell his friends from his foes."

      There was a short silence.

      "I'll see if by any chance the letter got tucked away into some magazine or book and is downstairs," Houghton said finally, without much hope of success, and so saying he left them.

      Colonel Godolphin and Pointer stayed a little longer in the bathroom.

      "Mr. Craig was evidently not very particular about his personal belongings, in spite of all that stationery outfit in there." Pointer stood glancing over the tube of shaving cream, squeezed into a sort of dying-worm effect, the dented tin of toothpaste, a cardboard box of cotton wool bursting at every fold, and a very much used pair of brushes that stood on the glass shelf.

      "Certainly there's nothing of the millionaire about these things," Godolphin agreed. "I told you, coming here, that he had no valet. He was a chap of simple taste all through, I fancy. Though in the merchant service he wouldn't have had much cash to spare, and while his financial plans were ripening he once told me that he had to look twice at every shilling. He dressed shockingly. But Countess Jura would have altered all that fast enough. She has the reputation of being extravagant enough for a dozen ordinary women. It was for her that he bought Clere Towers from Lord Wattle, who couldn't afford even to heat it. And because he made such elaborate improvements in it, the wedding had to be delayed. Come to think of it, that plumbers' strike may have done the Russian girl out of well over a million."

      "Was there no idea when the marriage was coming off?"

      "Not for a couple of months, was the latest opinion of Sir Oliphant Newton, the architect to whom Craig handed Clere Towers over. In spite of Craig's efforts to get it earlier. Craig was desperately afraid of rivals with the lady. Personally, I can't think why."

      "Was there any special man with whom her name had been coupled?" Pointer wanted to know.

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