"Luckily, I'm not asked to do more than investigate any claim Tangye may make in proper form by a fortnight from yesterday. It's a fascinating cross-word puzzle. Though, mind you, suicide's the right word, and all these others are only duds that Dame Fortune insists on slipping into the spaces." The newspaper man spoke, as usual, with certainty.
"It's a funny show for a fact." Haviland's voice marked but little enthusiasm for the humour of it, but a great deal of determination to find the right word. "I thought at first that this money alters the whole case. So it would, in fact, but for the way she died." Haviland ran over the whole array of beloved facts.
Pointer unfolded his idea of a portrait—of a camera.
Haviland gasped. Wilmot actually let his eye-glass drop from a distended eye. He stared at Pointer with something like awe.
"By Jove! You really...? By Jove! I wonder! But, of course, it was suicide. Yet—If by some miracle it weren't!" He paused for a moment. "That criminal you're supposing has brains, Pointer!"
"So have we!" Pointer retorted briskly. "Better brains. Just because we're not criminals. They may commit clever crimes, but those gentry are never really clever, or they wouldn't commit them at all."
"That's not been my experience," Wilmot said sadly. "No. On the whole I'm afraid I think a criminal brain can be a very clever one. Too clever to be caught sometimes."
"You can't compare a crooked thing with a straight thing. Their minds must be warped." Pointer, apart from being one of the heads of the finest detective force in the world, was by nature of that "deep goodness given to men of real intelligence." He would never permit a crime to be invested with any aureole of genius, if he could help it. Wilmot shook his head, after another long "think."
"And how far does this new idea waft you? Mind, I don't for a moment think you're right, Pointer. But I like to have the novel read to me chapter by chapter."
Pointer clasped his hands behind his head, and looked up at the ceiling, his pipe between his teeth.
"Keeping my belief in a secret visitor—whether cousin or not—out of it, for safer reasoning, speaking offhand, going merely by the camera, not trying to fit it in with any other idea, I should say that it looks as if the murderer, if a man, was not a big man. Not a crack shot. Or hadn't good sight. He's very careful not to be able to miss. He's quick and deft with his hands. Those scratches on the revolver aren't fumbling ones. I should say his little machinery worked well. Quick and deft with his brains too, I should say. Neat and careful in all his ways. He makes no real blunder. Not one. I think, to be fair, we can't count the trifling overdoing of the butter a fault. Except for the machinery part, the whole has an almost feminine touch."
"I'm bound to say you're half persuading me there's something in your theory," Wilmot spoke grudgingly. "But no, no! That's the primrose path of fancy. I stick to the humdrum—the proven. The more I think it over, the more I doubt that camera idea of yours. It's too brilliant. It does too much credit to your imagination. Yet it's most alluring! Of course there is that cousin—but no! no!" He seemed to pull himself up on the brink of a swerve.
"Then you think her finger-prints were made for her? That she was dead at the time?" Haviland could add two and two together as quickly as any man, provided they dealt with facts.
Pointer nodded.
"Haviland, farewell!" Wilmot declaimed dramatically. "I see that thou art lost to me. From now on, 'I am even as it were the sparrow that sitteth alone upon the house-tops.' I grant that it's a seductive theory—" Wilmot looked as though greatly tempted to come over to the official camp too, "but there's too much of a revelation from Sinai about it for me. I'm a slow-going chap. I plod. I stumble. I grope."
Pointer and Haviland burst out laughing. For Wilmot's lightning deductions were famous. Though, as he truly said, they had hitherto always been made after the facts had been clarified and sifted, and the possibly relevant set aside from the provenly irrelevant.
"The strange thing is that use of the left hand," Pointer ruminated. "For—unless a blunder, of course—it dates the murderer. And as, so far, we've found no other blunder, it's possible that it was unavoidable. That he didn't couldn't—know that she had educated herself out of it. That would mean that he belongs to an early part of her life. Before she went to France. Before her first marriage.'"
"In fact, it looks as if that left hand pointed directly to her cousin; first met again after long years, on Sunday," Haviland suggested. "Do you think he took Mrs. Tangye's keys off with him?"
"Possibly."
"If so, then it looks as though Mrs. Tangye had something he wanted to get hold of. Something more than the money, supposing he took that. I've tried banks and safe deposit vaults, and so on. I can't think of any other lockable place..." Haviland sat turning over in his mind possible misses.
"You know," Wilmot thoughtfully swung his glass of light beer to and fro, "if I thought this a crime. If I were you in fact, Pointer, or you either now, Haviland, I should remember that it's quite possible that neither the cousin nor Miss Saunders, are connected with the murder, and yet that Tangye is. He seems to've been hard up for ready cash on Tuesday. Cheale's going to wire me in code if he learns of anything definite over in Dublin about that Irish failure that's expected to be announced next Saturday." And on that the party broke up.
CHAPTER 5
THE first name on the list which Pointer had drawn up before coming down to Twickenham was that of Mr. Stewart, the solicitor to the Tangyes, and also the Twickenham Coroner.
The Chief Inspector was shown in without any delay on sending in his card, and at once explained that he was acting for Wilmot, who was unavoidably prevented from coming.
Stewart put the tips of his thin white hands together and waited. He was a very punctilious, elderly man, who did not look over pleased at Wilmot's substitute.
"Did Mrs. Tangye withdraw her will even temporarily from your keeping?" Pointer asked.
"She did not, Chief Inspector."
"Then I take it that she wrote to your firm suggesting altering her will, or at least asking for it back."
"And why do you 'take it' that way?" Stewart asked bleakly.
"Because of the character of the very searching questions you put at the inquest."
Stewart was drumming on the table before him.
"The point—about her having possibly asked for her will back—will have to be cleared up," Pointer spoke as though regretting the necessity. "Since Wilmot inclines to the belief that Mrs. Tangye's death was suicide. And you know his standing. The Company has given him carte blanche. He did think of applying formally for the handing over of any papers, or letters, in your possession, but I think we can arrange it between ourselves. After all, it's only just a matter of routine. She did write you on the point. We feel sure of that."
Stewart pressed a bell, and a moment later handed Pointer a docketed letter.
It was from Mrs. Tangye, and was dated the night before she died.
Dear Mr. Stewart,
Please send me my will at your earliest convenience for some alterations I wish to make. And please treat this request as strictly confidential.
Sincerely yours,
Mable