The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

time for the last, fatal step. That at least is how I read the story. Sorry. But it seems to me the only reading—so far. I see no possibility of that bullet having been fired by any other hand but Mrs. Tangye's.

      "I maintain," he said again, after turning Pointer's suggestion carefully over in his mind, "that Mrs. Tangye stuck to that room because it was, or rather had been, her favourite. She had spent many happy hours there. The room tells that. She wanted to say good-bye to life in its friendly atmosphere."

      "And the order for a larger tea than usual?"

      "More bluff. To have the room to herself. Remember you yourself suggested that reason for the minute directions about admitting any one but Miss Eden."

      Pointer shook his head.

      "I can't see that Mrs. Tangye's actions yesterday play any part in the theory of a suicide. In mine they do. In mine each is vital. They're unintelligent in any other light. Mrs. Tangye could have shot herself much better in bed."

      "The' fact is, that's what's been bothering me," Haviland broke in, "but I think she may have meant to be found by Tangye. Or even by her caller."

      "Anything's possible." Was all Pointer would allow that shot, by way of marks. "But so far, no new facts shake my theory. And when a theory's not shaken by closer inspection, it's strengthened."

      "Nice little pile of chance sweepings is all I can see," Wilmot sighed.

      "Naturally."

      Pointer and Haviland both smiled.

      "It's all very well," Wilmot admitted grudgingly, "but your theory doesn't hold the late caller."

      "I don't know yet if it's necessary that it should," Pointer said equably. "Mrs. Tangye's own actions don't seem to have included her either. The order to the maid might have been to exclude her. Time will show where she belongs. Outside or inside. But the idea of suicide makes the whole series of things incomprehensible to me."

      "And you think in your theory they become translucent? Comprehensible? Come, as a favour to me, expound them in that light."

      Wilmot was quite in his element. He always enjoyed a discussion of theories. He obviously meant what he said. Pointer was never keen on holding forth, but Wilmot pressed him again.

      "I really should like to know how the facts look in this new light to your Scotland Yard mind. If you'll excuse me calling it that. I mean it as a compliment. And after your unkind references to my biased point of view—" he laughed and settled his elbows more comfortably on the coping of the bridge.

      "Well, looking on Mrs. Tangye's death as a crime. Always bearing in mind that that's only a hypothesis as yet—"

      "Oh, I do!"

      "The first thing that strikes one is the way she was killed. A bullet rather suggests, other things being equal, that the murderer was not a member of her household. Poison is their usual weapon, in a premeditated crime. Next—there's been no effort to mislead the police, or delay the finding out of the dead woman's identity."

      "Granted," Wilmot said at once "identity evidently plays no part in this sinister affair."

      "It may play a part just the same," Pointer demurred. "Its part may be that the sooner it's known that she's dead, the better."

      "You mean the insurance claim Tangye sent in by the eight o'clock evening post yesterday?" Wilmot raised an eyebrow reflectively. "'Pon my word, Pointer, almost thou persuadest me..."

      "The visitor was apparently not one of whom Mrs. Tangye was frightened. She sends Miss Saunders out on Tuesday. She had sent Florence out on Monday, the day when, I think, the caller came the first time. The crime, if I'm right, and there was one, was too well executed for it to have been planned without a very careful inspection of the premises. But to continue with Tuesday, the husband is away from home. Judging by the preparations, the secret caller is some one Mrs. Tangye is prepared to welcome. The ample tea and so on. Of course they may merely represent so many attempts at propitiation. But Mrs. Tangye doesn't look to me like a woman who would bend easily under pressure."

      "It all sounds to me like her cousin," Haviland mused again.

      "But her smart frock?" the Chief Inspector queried, "her dressed hair? But whether Cousin Oliver or some one else, obviously the relationship, or tie, between them is not one that Mrs. Tangye cares to acknowledge. The visitor is to come and go unseen."

      "Supposing—just for the moment—that such a being exists, wouldn't any murderer have taken care to trump up some specious need for secrecy?" Wilmot pointed out.

      "Possibly. But unless the need were real, and affected both, I should have expected, since she was perfectly mistress of her own time—that she would have arranged to meet him elsewhere. But obviously that might not suit the murderer. One place would be very unlike another place to him.

      "Then the secrecy was more important to her than to him, in your fascinating, but to me, quite impossible melodrama?"

      Pointer thought not.

      "As a rule, when it's only to one person's interest that so much trouble be taken, the other person, the one not so vitally concerned, makes some slip, that gives the whole show away. None has been made here. On either side. Mrs. Tangye seems to've taken as much care beforehand that nothing should be known about a caller coming in by the garden, as he takes afterwards to be sure that he's left no trace."

      "There wasn't a mark of finger-print in that room that didn't belong there," Haviland said earnestly.

      Pointer felt sure of this.

      "The visitor whom I'm imagining," Pointer went on, "came in the day-time. On a Tuesday. Though in winter Mrs. Tangye's generally alone over the week-ends. Choosing the day-time looks to me as though he were either married, or lived in chambers, or at an hotel, or some place where his comings and goings at night might be noticed. As to the day of the week, that looks as if time pressed, and he couldn't wait till the next week-end."

      "What about the past week-end?" Wilmot asked, "and even if it were any one in the house—mind, I don't believe for a moment in your theory—they might well be too shrewd to choose the night. Rather a home-made look about a job done then."

      Wilmot had a wide experience of murder cases. Wider even than Pointer's. For Wilmot was only called in to take or make—causes célèbres.

      "They could have faked a burglary," Haviland suggested. "Good faking is an art not acquired in one night," Wilmot pointed out.

      "Suppose we say that hole is halved," Pointer suggested. "But was it Mrs. Tangye, or this mysterious visitor of hers that made her leave nothing among her papers bearing on her own affairs? Or is their absence unconnected with her death?" He was asking himself the question. "At any rate her visitor belongs, or came into her life, before she went to France. Before she corrected herself of being left-handed. Apparently he has not seen her in the meantime, since she's trained herself out of it. Offhand one would say some old lover cropped up...And that, I think, is as far as mere deduction takes us."

      "It could scarcely carry you much further unless you assisted it with a crystal ball, and a Ouija board," Wilmot murmured.

      "Except," Pointer was impervious to sarcasm when he chose, "that no sounds whatever were heard from the morning-room. Which looks as though there had been no unexpected entrance of still another person, a third party, who was not in the secret."

      "Of course, Tangye being out, Miss Saunders out, and the servants having their own tea shut away in their quarters, that doesn't mean much in fact," Haviland murmured. "But the room, and Mrs. Tangye herself—no, sir! There was no sign of any sort of trouble to be seen."

      "Just so. We may take it that there was only one visitor. Some one whom she thought a friend. But who was not. Some one who profited by her death. For it was a deliberate crime—if a crime."

      "You should write novels," Wilmot scoffed.

      "Ah, I said this was only theory—speculation. Like some of your articles."

      "Quite