"Did you send her the will?"
"It would have been posted to her Tuesday night, but for hearing of the terrible accident," Stewart stressed the word, "that happened to her."
"I think Mr. Wilmot would like to keep this. I'll give you the usual receipt." Pointer folded the letter away in his pocket book. Stewart said nothing.
"Had she ever asked for her will back before?"
"Never."
"Have you any idea as to the nature of the change she wished to make?"
"None whatever. I doubt if she would have made any—perhaps a small bequest to Miss Saunders. A very faithful, conscientious woman that. Otherwise I feel sure that the principal beneficiary would have remained Mr. Tangye."
"Yet you didn't mention the letter at the inquest."
"Mentioning it, which means producing it, would have served no useful purpose except to arouse painful and most unfounded gossip. And would have been contrary to her own written request." Stewart looked sharply at the man in front of him. "I, too, take it that you are not satisfied with the finding of this morning?"
Had Stewart asked before that verdict was given he would have had a full reply, but now he was a dethroned monarch. Pointer said briefly:
"I am helping the Insurance Company, or rather Mr. Wilmot, to get a few facts together for his final judgment, and unfortunately I was not at the inquest myself. I've only read the reports."
"To some purpose," Stewart said acidly.
"You knew the dead woman for many years?" Pointer asked.
"I drew up her first marriage settlement. Or rather Branscombe's. She had nothing to settle. Her father had a small annuity. Her mother left nothing."
"What about her cousin Oliver?"
Stewart looked an inquiry.
"I understand that he is her only relative."
Stewart smiled faintly.
"I've had the pleasure of being on a case with you before, Mr. Chief Inspector. You understand a good deal more than that about Oliver Headly, I'll go bail. I shouldn't be surprised if you know where that unmitigated scallywag is at the present moment."
Pointer assured him that as yet he only knew of his existence, and the most outstanding features of his murky career.
Stewart added a few more. Among them that as he was a penniless orphan, his uncle, the Hampshire rector, had practically adopted him, had lavished a small income and a great love on the lad, and had died after a very painful interview with his bank manager. The parson, white and haggard, had told the only big lie of his life. He accepted as his a signature on a cheque which the cashier had refused to pay out to the nephew. The old man had collapsed before he reached his home. Dying from a literally broken heart. Greatly to the relief of all who knew Oliver, that young man had left England about twelve years ago, and since then, as far as Stewart knew, had not been heard of.
Pointer asked if there had been anything of a love affair between the cousins.
Stewart did not know. But in the early days the rector had hoped they would marry. Stewart went on to say that he doubted if the wish would have come to anything, even without Oliver's putting himself outside the pale, for he understood that Mrs. Tangye had always disliked her cousin intensely.
Stewart was a man of scrupulous honesty. He would hold back what facts he could which would tell against his client, but nothing, not the wealth of Golconda, would have made him deviate from the truth. He now leant forward and tapped Pointer's knee with his glasses.
"There never was a more respectable, creditable past than Mrs. Tangye's, I should say."
He ran over the points of her uneventful life again, and of her first husband's settlements.
"You never came upon any trace of any one who might have a claim on her? Who might bear a grudge against her?"
Stewart made a gesture of definite negation.
Pointer looked at his boot-tips.
"She didn't also write about withdrawing her money from her husband's firm? She is bound to give him six months notice of any such action."
Stewart looked at the dock.
"Sorry to cut you short, Chief Inspector, but I have a client waiting."
"I should like that letter too, please," Pointer said placidly. Stewart smiled.
"There is none such in existence."
Pointer felt fairly certain that in that case, it was Tangye who had destroyed it. Your family solicitor never destroys a paper, which may yet be wanted.
"Would you be prepared to swear that it had never reached you?"
"My time is up, Chief Inspector," Stewart said firmly, rising, and opening the door politely.
Pointer drove on to see Miss Eden, the next name on his mental list, with plenty to occupy his mind.
So Mrs. Tangye had asked for her will back. After that —presumed—quarrel on Monday afternoon. If it had taken place at all, it must have been a serious one. And she had apparently either given notice, or been about to give notice of withdrawing her money, ten thousand, from Tangye's firm.
Mrs. Tangye seemed to have done some quick work on her return from Tunbridge Wells. Monday must have been a full day. Items:
Trunk packed, and sent off.
Husband quarrelled with, and apparently sent off too. Temporarily at least.
Will sent for.
There was a precipitancy, an urgency, about her actions which had struck him from the first.
He found Mary Eden, the friend with whom Mrs. Tangye seemed to have spent this last Sunday afternoon which the Chief Inspector thought so important, to be a quiet young woman of around thirty. She looked very self-possessed. He also thought that she looked as though she were steeling herself for an ordeal, as she turned towards him when he was shown into the drawing-room of her flat.
As for Miss Eden, the Chief Inspector was a surprise to her. In his quiet manner. In the kind of good looks which nature had given him. He did not resemble in the least the Scotland Yard detectives of fiction, she thought. He reminded her a little of her brother, the finest amateur cricketer in England. Such splendid physical fitness generally meant a brain to match in her opinion, and always meant tireless energy.
Something in her glance made Pointer think—and rightly—that she regretted having given him the interview at all.
"I hope you won't think me troublesome when I ask—in Mr. Wilmot's stead—to see the letter that Mrs. Tangye wrote you after her return from Tunbridge," was Pointer's opening.
The hazel eyes fixed on his did not waver. Rather they steadied.
"Letter?" Pointer had an impression that Miss Eden would have liked to tell a lie, but either dared not, or would not.
"Just so. We know she sent you one," bluffed Pointer. There was a pause. Miss Eden turned her face still more away from him.
"I'm afraid I didn't keep it. But I'll look for it afterwards, if you like, and send it on to Mr. Wilmot. I see his address is here—"
Pointer had used Wilmot's card with a pencilled line introducing himself only by name.
"Why does he wish to see it?"
"I believe the Insurance Company want to be sure of the hour when it was posted." He explained vaguely. "When did you receive it?"
"By the first post Monday morning," she said, after a slight pause.
That was what Pointer would have expected had any such shock taken place at Tunbridge as would adequately explain Mrs. Tangye's action of Monday and Tuesday. Judging by her appearance, she was not a woman to take counsel about her