The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

to that, I mean, as to why Mrs. Tangye suddenly paid you that money? I leave your story of an additional fifteen hundred out of it."

      Vardon did not answer for a minute. "I can't explain it either," he said lamely. "We'd never met before. She said she wanted to settle up all her outstanding debts, and she thought I had a claim on Branscombe's estate. A moral claim. She talked a lot about wiping the slate clean before another start elsewhere, and so on. Oh, she meant to kill herself. Not a doubt about it! At the time I was too flustered to have my wits about me. She said that money could be a fetter under some circumstances, or at least of no use. And as I had written to her several times for a loan from her first husband's estate—"

      "Tut! Tut!" barked Dorset Steele, "you had not! but go on in your own way for the moment."

      "That was all there was. I thought I was in a dream, I assure you. I've lived in a dream till that man Wilmot touched me on the arm and, as I thought, saved me. By Jove, when he calls around later he'll hear what I think of him. I'm a quiet chap as a rule, but I won't answer for what I shall say to him."

      Dorset Steele pursed his lips. Obviously he was considering the effect of a possible black eye on the jury as a consequence of the interview.

      "Better not see him." He got up. "I must be off. I'll have a talk with the police and see if they're keeping anything important up their sleeves." He shot a glance at Vardon. There was no answer.

      "You've nothing more to tell me?"

      "I've told you all I know."

      Dorset Steele looked savagely at him.

      "And you expect a jury to swallow it?"

      "Why not? It's the truth," there was a flash in Vardon's eyes.

      "They'll certainly call it stranger than fiction," the solicitor promised grimly.

      He got up off his hat, tossed it on his head, thrust his arms into his top-coat which he had taken into the room with him, and made for the door.

      "See no one—if you can avoid it. Say as little as possible. And—keep cheerful."

      He finished with an unexpected smile.

      While Dorset Steele was talking to Vardon, Pointer was going through the artist's luggage. He found no camera, box or otherwise, but he came on a ring of keys beneath everything else in the suitcase which looked like household keys. The number of the Yale key tallied with that on the Riverview front door. So did the number of the safe key. Clearly these were the missing keys of Mrs. Tangye. The keys which Tangye refused to have connected with the missing notes. Which he said he had seen at Riverview on Tuesday, after the police had left.

      CHAPTER 7

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      HAVILAND was greatly cheered by the news of the keys. "A clue at last!" he chortled.

      "To what?" was Pointer's question. "To whom?"

      Haviland stared.

      "Why, to the whole affair. It's a direct link with Mrs. Tangye. In fact, it's a direct link with her murder, I should say."

      Still Pointer did not reply.

      "Well, it's a fact anyway!" Haviland said desperately, "just as his having two of those notes in his possession was a fact."

      "Yes, but the sole importance of a fact lies in the way we look at it."

      "A most true remark, oh, worthy sir!" chimed in Wilmot who had driven down with Pointer, and was now breakfasting at the Twickenham police station. "And let me also remind you two bloodhounds on the trail, that Vardon may have a perfectly satisfactory explanation of those keys being found in his possession."

      "He's sure to have! In fact, when you see him, Mr. Wilmot, you'll find he'll explain everything so nicely that you'll think what a pleasure it is to meet such a candid young gentleman." Haviland was still sore.

      "Insurance Company's dropping behind, I fear," Wilmot murmured. "I wonder, if after all, it was a crime? I wonder This case certainly has unexpected light and dark places."

      "The fact is, they always have," Haviland announced despondently.

      "It's the charm of the word, of course," mused Wilmot, "that's why people read detective stories. For that and—the love of the chase."

      "The love of justice," Pointer spoke for once with real warmth, "it's because they satisfy that—I suppose the deepest passion of every one's heart, but a criminal's—that people read, and write, detective novels."

      "I read 'em for facts, helpful facts," Haviland volunteered. "Really, some of the dodges these writers get hold of—"

      "You're wrong. Both of you." Wilmot, as usual, spoke with certainty. "The same thing makes people read, that makes you, Haviland, a policeman, and you, Pointer, a detective. And that is for the sake of the thrill. Of the manhunt. There's nothing else in the world quite like it. Why, even I begin to get the whiff of it in my nostrils."

      Pointer was silent. Only his friends knew the Chief Inspector's dislike of that common phrase, and point of view. To himself, Pointer was but a keen, impartial keeper of the open road, the path of law and order. The only path by which civilisation, to his mind, could march on.

      "I suppose Vardon'll be allowed to give his explanation?" Wilmot asked a little curiously.

      "In due time." It was Pointer speaking. "But as Tangye's leaving town for a week-end, we'll go to Riverview first. He's kept in the house with a cold, so he told me. Are you coming with us, Haviland?"

      But a dull affair of a burgled boot-shop deprived the Superintendent of that pleasure.

      "As a matter of fact, perhaps Vardon was the person Tangye suspected all along," he said, hopefully, trying to cheer himself by the suggestion that he was not about to miss much.

      Pointer and Wilmot walked to the house. The sun was shining. A rather apologetic sun, as though begging spectators not to ask too much. To remember that this was November—and England. His rays, faint and pale, seemed to cool rather than warm. Yet their touch spelled beauty. They brought out the thrushes' song. They lifted the lark.

      They set free the strain of wren and robin in a clump of evergreen beside Richmond Bridge. Plaintive and sweet notes. Joyous and pearly. A blind man might have thought it spring, so mild was the day. But the trees knew better. They were only waiting for the coming of a wind with which to wrestle. Like giants stripped for a fight, their old clothes, the withered leaves, lying in tumbled heaps below them, they could now give back as good as they got. Beautiful to look at, fine and firm, they swayed aloft. Concerned solely with their own affairs, till the burden of giving shade and shelter should be theirs once more.

      Pointer's and Wilmot's arrival evidently roused Tangye from a revery in an armchair. He looked very haggard. Very unhappy. He turned an alert eye, none the less, on them when they were ushered in.

      "What I have to say is in strict confidence," Pointer began. Tangye nodded. Looking an almost savage interest.

      "One of the missing notes has been traced. To a Mr. Vardon."

      "Vardon! Philip Vardon?" There was stupefaction in the other's voice. And something that sounded very like chagrin.

      "You know him, sir? Who is he?"

      "Why, a cousin of my late wife's first husband. A cousin of Clive Branscombe's. There's a mistake been made somewhere, Chief Inspector."

      "Not unless the mistake was in the number of the notes given us." Pointer lobbed that ball back very swiftly.

      "Is he with you now?" Tangye half rose.

      "Unfortunately he tricked us by a tale of a document, and got away."

      "Well—I'm—damned," Tangye repeated under his breath, his eyes goggling. Pointer gave him the outlines of what had happened.

      Tangye