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

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 so. But I live by my fancies, whereas I thought you at the Yard depended on footing the solid earth for your daily bread. And once again, what about the woman who came at six, and said she was frightfully late? It looks as though in your solution of the problem A and B would have to meet 'Which is absurd.' According to your own premises, I maintain that there was only one caller at Riverview yesterday. The woman whom Florence showed in. Or do you suggest that Mrs. Tangye was playing the part of Providence to a young couple? And the gentleman arriving first, shoots her as a lesson not to meddle?"

      "I don't think Mrs. Tangye would have put herself out to such an extent for any mere friend. For anything but sheer necessity."

      "Then your theory exonerates Tangye—I mean, if it's a fact that there's a criminal here?" Haviland asked. "Though, as a matter of fact, there can't be, sir! You must excuse me, but I can't see it your way."

      "So much the better! If I'm right you'll come round, both of you. If I'm wrong, there's only one misled. As to Tangye—it could have been an accomplice of his. Though I see no reason for that thought, and many objections. Still, it could have been."

      "And where's Miss Saunders in this most bewildering dream of your's?" Pointer laughed; he knew Wilmot would ask that.

      "She's outside. Not inside."

      "Really? Like the late caller, eh? Forgive the question, but are all the facts of the case going to be outside your theory?"

      Pointer only made a good-humoured gesture of not being able to tell yet.

      "You'll have to keep her outside," Wilmot warned him in mock anxiety, "because otherwise she blows it sky-high."

      "She does," Pointer agreed. "My theory presupposes no inside helper except Mrs. Tangye herself."

      "Well, a suicide verdict doesn't fall to pieces because of the companion," Wilmot murmured in high good humour, "personally, I welcome her as a human note. So you call a 'theory' something that begins in smoke and ends in mythical steps heard by a couple of hysterical maids?"

      "They struck me as very truthful young women. Don't run down the only corroboration I've got so far as to the existence of that unknown visitor! As I see it," Pointer watched the river as though he did see 'it,' and only 'it' in the running water, "some one came into that morning-room by the long windows yesterday just after four. Came in, after having been to the house the day before, and laid his plans. Came in after having possibly followed her about in the garden until the flash of light from Florence's pantry warned him that he might be seen. Very likely he had overlooked that little slit high up in the ivy. But afterwards—after he came in—" Pointer fell silent.

      "It sounds most alluring. Most dramatic! But no, no! I can't see," Wilmot prodded the air with his cigarette to accentuate each word, "no, I cannot see how there's the possibility of foul play here. Mrs. Tangye in her own home—a good shot—the bell to her hand—her maids within call—her finger-prints on her revolver—"

      There was a pause.

      "And Miss Saunders..." Pointer said again, "is she shielding some one? If the latter, what is the motive? Love?"

      "Of lying," Wilmot finished cynically.

      Pointer laughed, but refused to believe that here they had an example of art for art's sake.

      "I had thought when I read about that visitor in the reports on the inquest that Miss Saunders might be shielding her, but assuming her ignorance about the lady's departure