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

      Vibart.

      Within five minutes Wilmot was connected with his temporary Chief, editor and permanent friend, Lord Vibart, the owner of the Daily Courier. To him the other spake winged words. Since the affair which Wilmot had been commissioned to undertake had fizzled out, Vibart had another suggestion to make. It seemed that the Courier's youngest reporter had just had a stroke of beginner's luck by being the first outsider to find a Mrs. Tangye, wife of a member of a well-known county family, sitting dead beside her afternoon tea-table. The police thought it was suicide. Would Wilmot take a look at the case, and send along one of his special articles.

      "Of course, I quite understand, my dear chap, that you're above any suicides except royal ones," Vibart said dryly (Wilmot's high opinion of himself was well known) "but I particularly want the spot light to play on Twickenham just now."

      Wilmot knew that, and knew why. Vibart was backing a new helicopter, and the trials were to be staged there next month. But he failed to see why he should alter his plans for the sake of the other's pocket.

      "It's not in my line," he said unyieldingly. Nor was it. Outside of the realms of politics, murders, difficult and involved, were Wilmot's province. He had no superior in laying bare the psychology of the criminal. And he did it, not with the scalpel, but with the pitying touch of one who saw something beautiful dragged through the mire, something fine blunted. No man living could surpass him in investing the most sordid crime with a touch of the Inner, of the Noble. He was a master in the art of suggestion. Like some marvellous chemist Wilmot could extract 'atmosphere' from a poker and a bottle of stout.

      "Anything's in your line, if you'll undertake it," Vibart said placatingly. "Look here, there's no other chap can handle it as you can. Stir up the public to run a special bus out to see the house where it happened."

      Vibart had the soul of a tradesman.

      "But the arrangements for my holiday are already made," Wilmot protested truthfully enough. As the other affair had fallen through, he did not see why he should not put the clock forward. In fancy he was already basking in a green, sunny nook between Lequectico and San Sebastian, where little black pigs curled their tails in the orchards, and the trout were only waiting to rise to anything with blue Andalusian cock-hackles on it.

      "Well, my dear chap, forgive the remark, but he who pays the piper—you know. You stood out for a pirate's ransom before you promised to go to Gretonia. I think we must get our money back somehow. I don't see you returning that cheque." Vibart thought plain-speaking might avail.

      It did. Wilmot capitulated. He had gone out with Newnes to Twickenham. To the handsome old house near Richmond Bridge, had sent in an article of "The Hollowness of the Solid," which was a little masterpiece in its own morne line, and was prepared to send in one last, on the blood-lust that crowds inquests. Neither article was in the least what Vibart wanted, but Wilmot was apt to take his own line.

      Haviland turned away from the safe.

      "I've finished now, sir. But I can take you up to Riverview after lunch if that would suit you better."

      Wilmot reached for his hat. "I'm off for my deferred holiday in Spain." He spoke with an anticipatory smile. "Otherwise I should have enjoyed hearing how it all flattened out into a most ordinary affair."

      "Why not wait a day or two," Haviland urged, "it won't take long either way. I mean, until we find out for certain. The Tangyes like the Branscombes had lived here, or near here, all their lives. We know all about them."

      "That's why I'm off," Wilmot tossed a match away. "People whom you know all about, Haviland, aren't in my line at all."

      "Don't you believe it, Superintendent, and waste a fond farewell." Pointer scoffed: "We shall see Mr. Wilmot again at Riverview this afternoon, depend on it. And very welcome you'll be," he finished, turning to the newspaper man. "You, and any help you can give us."

      "Help? What in?" Wilmot opened his eyes till they looked like round marbles. "Oh—you mean in putting the room to rights after you've had the carpet up, and the wallpaper down, and taken the furniture to pieces. I know your airy methods. But possibly I may drop in on my way to the boat-train for the last time. Possibly I may."

      "Very possibly," Pointer agreed. Wilmot, with an answering smile, walked briskly down the steps of the police station.

      A hand touched his shoulder, it was Cheale, a solicitor, and the claims investigator to the Company in which the dead woman had been insured.

      "I've been combing the streets for you since I lost you after the inquest. Come and have lunch with me."

      "This is Twickenham," Wilmot pointed out sadly, "yonder is Bushey Park. Do people lunch hereabouts? If so, prithee where? In Richmond tea-gardens?"

      "They take a seat in a friend's car," Cheale steered him towards it, "and let themselves be whirled away to Picadilly."

      "Cold grouse? Moselle?" Wilmot bargained, his foot on the step.

      "We'll split a bird and a bottle," Cheale answered handsomely. Like the car the lunch was his Company's.

      He chose a safe corner, and in guarded voices they discussed the inquest.

      "It's a clear and simple case of suicide," Cheale began. "Clear and simple!" repeated Wilmot. "Is anything ever quite limpid?"

      "You think it's suicide," Cheale looked at him with certainty. "What about your article in to-day's Courier?"

      Wilmot met his gaze with a faint, deprecatory smile. "I'm a newspaper man. When it's a case of two alternatives I naturally choose the more spectacular, or the more dramatic. Whichever word you prefer."

      "But speaking as man to man?"

      "There you go again," complained Wilmot. The two were old friends. "As what man to what man? As a journalist to the consultant of an insurance company that bars suicides from payments, of course I back suicide. If I were Tangye's friend, and speaking to him, I should equally agree with him as to his wife's death being undoubtedly an accident."

      "Turncoat!" the other muttered reproachfully. "Backslider!"

      "I'm a broken reed," Wilmot confessed. "Don't lean on me. I change sides as often as a Chinese regiment—or a lateen sail.

      "Singing with the wind;

       Veering with the current."

      Cheale looked pointedly at the grouse, the wine, and then at the man opposite him. Wilmot and he laughed.

      "Our directors read that article of yours this morning. They want you to investigate this case for us, if you will. For, as you say, we have a suicide clause in all our policies. Of course the Company doesn't want to contest an honest claim, as you know well. Not that I mean that Tangye would put forward a dishonest one—"

      "But you think so!"

      "Well—no. I wouldn't go as far as that, either. Other people too can sit on both sides of the fence. But Tangye struck me as over-keen this morning in the court-room about the death being an accident. Ram it down your throat—dare-you-to-disbelieve-it tone and manner, that I thought a little odd. Though he looks a bit of a blusterer. Also the evidence itself seems to me to point as much to suicide as to a slip. But I must go over to Dublin at once on a complicated investigation that may need time. Will you take the case on? Prove for us that Mrs. Tangye's death, was, what I believe it was, a suicide?"

      "How do you prove a suicide?" Wilmot asked captiously. He was known to his conferes as Wilful Willie. "Isn't it rather like proving something to be a ghost? I can see how you prove a murder, but a negative?"

      He inhaled the bouquet of the wine. Fragrant. Hinting at far-off violets.

      "Yet, quibbling apart, you think it's one? Come, out with the truth! You were better than the best detective in the Brice Revenue Frauds. And in the Tomkins murder, you were right again as to where the murderer would be found. I heard that you prophesied before any one else how the Palking diamond theft would turn out."

      "Some