The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

on down the stairs, dusting the banisters. No other lock in the house sounded like a safe lock, she maintained, and Pointer privately agreed with her. Miss Saunders and Mrs. Tangye had passed her a moment later, going in to their lunch.

      "Had they been quarrelling, do you think?"

      "Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Tangye was looking quite calm. She was saying something like 'I can't help that, Miss Saunders. By this evening, if you please.'"

      "And Miss Saunders?"

      "Oh, she said nothing, sir. But she gave her a look as she stepped behind her for to pass. It was a look that said 'Just you wait; my lady!' if ever one did."

      "Mustn't make too much out of a glance, Olive," Pointer said lightly.

      "But you see, sir, Miss Saunders—she has a way of getting even with you. You can't tell yourself how she does it. If the mistress had lived—but there!" Olive stopped herself or tried to, then she burst out, "If Mrs. Tangye had lived, Miss Saunders wouldn't be acting as if she was mistress here. But there!" Again she pulled herself up. "We're leaving. It won't matter to Flo and me."

      "Why are you leaving?"

      Her voice faltered.

      "I can't stand it, sir. I'm not so sure as I was that it was an accident. The more I thinks it over the more I feel as though there was something—something—not quite right about the mistress's end, sir. It's thinking about those footsteps does it."

      "You've no other reason for leaving?"

      "I've nothing to complain of, sir. But how can I stay on in a house where there's a room I can't abear to enter, and a garden I can't pass through without it gives me a turn."

      "The garden too?"

      "Oh yes, sir! I never go through it without hearing those footsteps coming up behind me same as they come up behind the poor mistress. Seems as though they was after me too."

      Looking at her pale face, Pointer thought it high time that she left.

      "Have you any place in your mind?"

      "Well, sir, Florence thinks—"

      Pointer laughed.

      "I'm quite sure she does. And so does Cook. But I want to know what you are going to do."

      "I'm to go to Lady Ash, sir, and Flo is to come too, later on. It was Miss Barbara as settled it. I'm glad to be going there. There won't be nothing to be frightened of in a house where Miss Barbara is."

      "Ash? Wasn't that the name of the partner of Mr. Branscombe, Mrs. Tangye's first husband?"

      "That's the lady, sir. They live just over the bridge in Kew. She's a friend of Mrs. Tangye's. But Miss Barbara, she never comes here. She's on the committee of the G.F.S. That's how I know her. She's a dear, Miss Barbara is I I'm going at the end of the week."

      "Miss Saunders is leaving Riverview too, I understand?" Olive looked surprised.

      "Florence thinks—" she caught herself up and laughed for the first time since Pointer had heard her.

      "To think of not being allowed to speak of me own sister, sir! But that's Flo on the stairs now."

      She really had quick ears. And accurate ones. Florence stepped in a moment later, and took her place.

      "It's a dreadful idea about some money being missing, sir," she began earnestly, "I don't like to stay in a place where there's been a loss like that. None of us do. But what had we ought to do, sir?"

      Pointer advised her to stay on until she could go to her next place.

      "No one suspects you, or any of the servants," he reassured her, keeping the qualifying "so far" to himself. "But Florence, there's something that may have a bearing on this money, which you haven't told us."

      "I, sir? Oh, I'm sure I've told you everything I could think of!"

      Pointer hoped she had not been quite so thorough as that. "It's about this quarrel between Mrs. and Mr. Tangye on Monday when he didn't stay to dinner."

      "But there wasn't any quarrel, sir."

      "Oh, yes, there was! Over—well, to be quite frank with you, I wouldn't say this to every one, mind, we heard it was over some one—a gentleman—whom Mrs. Tangye had known before, who used to write to her, and meet her now and then on the quiet."

      Pointer looked inquiringly at Florence. She was shocked. "Oh, sir what a thing to say! And Mrs. Tangye not even buried yet!" Apparently there was a close time for scandal.

      "We know she wasn't very fond of her husband," Pointer spoke as though half sorry for what he had said.

      "Then you know more'n me, begging your pardon. Anyway, that's no reason for thinking that of her. She wasn't that sort. Not at all!"

      "Yet there was a quarrel," Pointer spoke as though he knew what he was only guessing. "Was it connected with Miss Saunders, do you think? We've been told that Mrs. Tangye was sometimes a little jealous of her."

      "My goodness! Whatever for?" Florence opened amazed eyes. "Why, Mrs. Tangye was twenty times handsomer! And whatever her faults, the mistress had a heart. Miss Saunders hasn't any heart. Cruel unkind she can be, if she thinks she dare."

      "Oh, we were told that Mr. Tangye—"

      "Don't you believe all you're told, sir," she said earnestly. Pointer kept his grave face. "There was nothing of that kind. At least I think so. I mean, I think not." Florence's tone showed that the idea was new to her.

      "Then what did Mr. and Mrs. Tangye quarrel about on Monday afternoon? It was a very violent one. He struck her!—" Pointer went on in a low voice. Florence jumped.

      "Oh, no, sir! Never! The master wouldn't do such a thing. Besides, it was she who was so angry. He kept trying to pacify her." Florence put her hand to her mouth. Too late. Then she began to cry.

      "Oh, I wouldn't do anything to make things worse for any one," she sobbed. "And it hadn't anything to do with her accident the next day, nor to do with this missing money, sir. It hadn't really!"

      "Well, of course, if we knew that for certain—" Pointer said in an undecided tone, "of course if we could be sure it had nothing to do with the case why, that might be different. But you're certain it wasn't he who was in a rage?"

      "Oh no, sir. That he wasn't! He never is!"

      "But you told me that there was no quarrel at all between them? How can I believe you now?"

      Pointer did not speak angrily. Florence was a gentle soul. She choked.

      "I didn't want to make bad trouble worse, sir. But the mistress did go for the poor master last Monday. She seemed quite beside herself. Yet just before she spoke to me very quiet, as she'd been all day long."

      Pointer still looked undecided.

      "Well, of course, if we knew for certain what the quarrel was about, and it might not have to be entered at all," he repeated vaguely, "what exactly did Mrs. Tangye say? But be very careful, Florence, to only tell what you really heard. Not what you thought was said."

      "I didn't hear anything worth repeating sir. Just half bits and ends. I wasn't listening, only putting something right on the tea-tray that had toppled over. I had to wait a moment before I could come in. The mistress—it's dreadful to say of her now she can't ever speak again—but she was raging wild. 'The house is mine and I insist on your leaving it,' was the only sentence I heard. Complete that is. But she never meant it. Fond of the master she was, and he of her too, in his own way. But she kept on that he was to leave the house. A thing I shouldn't have thought she'd have said. He said he was going all right. But he stayed on for tea after all. So they must have made it up."

      "But Mrs. Tangye must have said more than one sentence."

      "Lots more, sir, but I couldn't give you her exact words. She said she had come to the limit. That she wasn't going to put up with things any more. That sort of talk, sir. Not meaning