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

man in his home, looked at her with marked distaste.

      "Mr. Tangye says you were the last person to see Mrs. Tangye's keys. Could you tell us when that was?" Pointer asked suddenly.

      Her eyes were on his as he spoke. Far back in them a spark glowed suddenly. The question had obviously come as a complete surprise. And all three men thought that the surprise was not the only emotion stirred. There was anger.

      And there was something that for a second suggested dismay. But she looked down her nose immediately, and said with perfect composure, "I can't think that he would say such a thing!" This was true enough.

      "My mistake doubtless," Pointer said easily, and changed the subject to the visitor, the supposed Mrs. Cranbourn, Miss Saunders said that she saw no one as she ran down the stairs. She thought that the caller must have stepped into the drawing-room and let herself out later on.

      "But the reporter who came back with the maid said that you remained in the hall till the police came."

      "That's quite true." Miss Saunders looked puzzled. "But perhaps she left after the police arrived. We were all in the morning-room together for a time then."

      "Impossible. I had a man posted at both doors. Front and back." Haviland was very certain of this.

      "I hadn't thought of it before. What did become of her?" Miss Saunders looked uneasy.

      "Leaving her on one side for the moment, how did you first learn that Mrs. Tangye was dead?"

      Miss Saunders repeated what she had told Haviland, and the Coroner.

      "You came immediately Florence screamed?" Pointer's tone suggested a delay. A suspicious delay.

      "Certainly."

      "At her first scream?" Pointer persisted. As though he intended to prove that in some way the companion had been dilatory.

      "I ran down immediately. She only screamed the once. I glanced in at the open morning-room door, and hurried after her to try and stop her making a scene in the street." Miss Saunders spoke contemptuously.

      "But Mrs. Tangye was not sitting where you could see her from the door."

      Miss Saunders made a movement with the edge of her cupped hand, as though brushing off some imaginary crumbs from the table top beside her.

      The room was very still.

      "I may have gone in far enough to see her sitting in her chair," she said finally.

      "And by merely glancing at her from a distance, you—without any medical knowledge—were able to tell the reporter who met the maid that no help was wanted? That he need not go into the room where Mrs. Tangye was?" Pointer spoke gravely. "You took that formidable responsibility on yourself after one look?"

      "Didn't you try to do something for her?" Wilmot burst out. Both he and Haviland were watching the woman intently, at whom Pointer seemed barely to glance. She looked quite unruffled. But again her hand swept the table top, with a slow, considering movement.

      "I suppose I must have run up to her," she said meditatively. "As to helping her—" there was something repressed in Miss Saunders level tones, "of course, I didn't want to touch her till the police came."

      Haviland nodded official approval of that eminently correct attitude. But Pointer looked very wooden.

      "Why? Did you think a crime had been committed?" She passed a furtive tongue over her thin lips.

      "Such an absurd idea never entered my mind."

      "Any more than the equally absurd one of trying to see if you could do something for the poor lady," Wilmot retorted.

      She did not shift her eyes from Pointer, though she answered the comment.

      "One does not need to be the king's physician, nor yet a gifted detective," her gaze was mocking, "to know what a bullet wound over a heart means, with a dropped revolver on the floor by the body's side."

      "To go back to what happened after Florence screamed," Pointer continued; "you still maintain that you were able to run down the stairs, get across the whole of the morning-room to the recess, make certain that Mrs. Tangye was dead, get out of the room again, and be seen standing in the front door before Florence had more than left the house? The reporter said that as the door opened, and she rushed out, you stepped into the open doorway behind her."

      "It all happened so swiftly," Regina Saunders muttered. "Still, human beings take some time to move from one spot to another, you know."

      "This cross-examination is ridiculous," she snapped defiantly. "It tells nothing."

      "On the contrary! It tells much," Pointer's voice was very hard. "It tells us that you didn't run into the morning-room at all when Florence called out. You went straight down the stairs to the front door, reaching it just as the maid flung it wide. In other words you knew, without going in, what was in the morning-room. You knew because you had already been in there. Don't try to mislead us!"

      Pointer turned on the woman with something very forbidding in his stern face. He towered over her. He stood six feet three. She paled. But her eyes remained watchful and ready. Again she swept the table beside her, her gaze now following the motion of her hand.

      "You're right," she said suddenly, speaking in a pleasant, conversational voice. "You're quite right. When I got back from the library, or rather from the tea-room a little before six, I went in to the morning-room to tell Mrs. Tangye about not bringing her any book. I found her—dead! Just as Florence did a little later. I was so horrified...It was such a shock. I managed to get to my rooms. But once there—I think I fainted. I had just pulled myself together when I heard Florence scream, and ran down to the front door. As you guessed. Frankly, I cannot see what is wrong in my not saying that I saw poor Mrs. Tangye a moment before the maid did. And lost my nerve in consequence for a few seconds."

      Pointer made no comment on this amended account.

      A question put by him as to whether she had ever met Mrs. Tangye's cousin Oliver was answered in the negative. She did not even know, she said, that Mrs. Tangye had a relative alive.

      Florence came in next. She was very nervous, but Haviland soon put her at her ease.

      Pointer, apparently for Wilmot's sake—seemed much interested in Mrs. Tangye's directions about her expected visitor. Especially in her order that she was definitely, and distinctly "not at home," to any other caller. No matter whom.

      "She told me that I wasn't to worry if Mrs. Cranbourn was late. Very late. As the boat train was often hours behind time."

      "Worry?" Pointer echoed, "what did she mean by that?"

      "I suppose that I wasn't to worry her," Florence suggested shrewdly, "the mistress couldn't abide fuss. Never liked me to go in and out much. Oh, I had to make my head save my heels with Mrs. Tangye, I assure you, sir. I think she spoke as she did to stop my bothering her with more hot water, or freshly-toasted cakes."

      "That was quite usual, was it?"

      It was. Florence repeated that there had been nothing in the least unusual, or out of the way, in her mistress's manner or directions yesterday, and also that nothing however trifling had happened then, or before, which she had not already told.

      "How was it that the police only found a couple of logs alight in the morning-room fireplace when they were here yesterday evening? Was the fire only lit very late?" Pointer asked casually.

      "Oh, that fire!" Florence clasped tragic hands.

      She told them that the chimney was always uncertain, but that yesterday it had distinguished itself. Nothing the maids could do would make it burn, let alone blaze. From before breakfast until the hour set for tea it had smoked sullenly. "I wonder that Mrs. Tangye didn't use another room," Pointer mused.

      "You'd have wondered more, sir, if you'd seen how thick it was in there. Fit to kipper a haddock, it was really." Florence went on to tell how she had urged her mistress to let her bring the tea-things into the drawing-room, as