He looked at Miss Eden with that quiet, pleasant glance of his that seemed to see so little, and saw so much.
She was on the alert now for questions about that letter. He knew as well as though he could read her mind that every defence was up, plenty of rounds ready, and no possibility of getting past her unnoticed. She had been taken by surprise when he had opened with the letter. But she was ready now. So that, throughout the rest of the interview he learnt nothing but the barest of facts. That Mrs. Tangye had arrived for lunch. That the two had gone to the orchid-show about three and left at five.
"Did you meet any one you knew down there?"
"Mrs. Tangye has no friends down there, and I know very few people in Tunbridge," was the evasive reply.
"But Mrs. Tangye was seen with—" Pointer spoke hesitatingly. "Perhaps she wasn't with you all the time," he added as a bright afterthought.
"All the time," Miss Eden said in a low voice. She was an exceedingly poor liar.
There was a short silence.
"Did she enjoy the show?"
"Not very much," Miss Eden spoke slowly, "it gave her a headache. Glasshouses are stuffy things at best, aren't they? Perhaps she got overtired." Her lip quivered as she finished.
"Oh? Wilmot thought you walked to the station afterwards?"
Again there came a little pause, then, "Mrs. Tangye fancied the air would do her headache good. So I told the car to go on to the station and wait for me there."
"Enclosed car?"
Miss Eden nodded.
"Partition between the driver and the other seats?"
Miss Eden's eyes darkened. After a second she said briefly, "No. But really these questions seem to me rather wide of the mark..."
"Just part of the regular routine. Mr. Wilmot wants me to cover as large an amount of obvious ground as possible," Pointer reassured her. Asked about Oliver Headly, she relaxed for the first time. She grew natural. She had never liked Oliver, she said at once. His was one of those rare natures which, even when quite young, showed no trace of softness, of any thing but self-seeking.
She thought that his cousin had not heard from him since he left England years ago. She agreed, however, that, in spite of everything, a certain amount of family feeling for her only relative might have remained in Mrs. Tangye's heart.
Pointer seemed very interested in getting a description of Oliver. He listened closely though apparently casually. "Striking appearance? Easy to recognise again if one met him suddenly?"
"Oh, unmistakable. But we think he must have died abroad—after all these years without a sign of life."
Miss Eden looked at the clock.
"What would you say was the most outstanding characteristic of Mrs. Tangye? Of her attitude to life I mean?" Pointer asked thoughtfully.
Miss Eden pondered.
"She had so many all about equal qualities," she murmured. "There was pride—the right kind of pride which one might call self-respect. And there was directness—she was a very direct woman. There was a way she had of dwelling on the past...Once she had lost a thing, she valued it higher than anything she owned; but, otherwise her's was a strong character."
And on that the interview ended.
Pointer had a most useful, though bulky, stud on one of the gloves which he never wore. Properly handled, it yielded a roll of tiny films the size of a pea, which could be enlarged into very useful portraits. Armed with these one of his detective-inspectors would be able to comb the show early to-morrow, and also the town. On Tuesday afternoon Mrs. Bligh was supposed to have been at her club. A woman detective was sent to try that out, by means of a bribe, and a substituted waitress.
Pointer drove off, feeling that to-morrow should bring some useful facts to light. But facts alone never solved any puzzle.
He ran over the events chronologically as he made for his rooms.
Friday night, Mr. and Mrs. Tangye had been at a dinner and a dance. Both apparently on the best of terms with the world and each other. Saturday morning all went as usual. In the afternoon Mrs. Tangye had attended a matinee with friends and gone on to a cheerful tea. Tangye had left about ten in the morning for his Norfolk week-end. Pointer had called up his host over the telephone, and had been told that the stockbroker had spent all the time shooting wildfowl, until he left after lunch on Monday. Yet Tangye only owned two suitable guns, and neither of them had been taken down from their rack in his den. The dust on them had told Pointer as much, and the answers by the maids to a casually put question of his had proved it.
The Chief Inspector considered the visit to Norfolk as very hypothetical. Yet Tangye's friends were standing behind him solidly. And they were all men of good position. Here was no criminal clique. Pointer thought that if they backed his story up as they had done, it was because they knew quite well that he had spent the week-end, or at least, some of it, in company with a lady. With Mrs. Bligh probably. With the writer of that note—possibly—that Olive had seen Mrs. Tangye reading.
And Mrs. Tangye's interest in orchid-shows at Tunbridge, which had arisen so suddenly, was very likely connected with that letter too, as Haviland had thought.
Last Sunday! What had occurred, presumably down in Kent, that had so altered all Mrs. Tangye's quiet, well-ordered existence? That had—so Pointer expected to find .—led to her death two days later?
He did not think that here was a crime dropped accidentally into events which were already stirring before it happened. The flight of Mrs. Tangye from her home, which he believed had been pending, and the death of Mrs. Tangye, were, he thought, linked. Though whether closely or loosely, time alone could show. Time and routine-work.
That night an undetected burglary was committed in London. The victim of the crime never knew of it. Tangye's offices in the city were entered by a tall, quick-moving figure, wearing rubber soles, and with the arm torch and adjustable keys of his craft. The burglar seemed to be an original. Everything that was not in the safe—a burglar-proof safe—was looked at, but the only things taken were oddments such as blotting paper, and the contents of the waste-paper baskets.
Pointer, for it was he, paused longingly on his way home, outside the flat over a shop where Miss Saunders lived with her sister, but the yapping of a small Pom sent him reluctantly off. Back in his own rooms he examined his haul, which did not include the keys as he had hoped. An hour's work piecing, reading, deciphering, made him certain that he had drawn a blank. And on that he turned in, and slept the sleep of the hard worker.
Next morning Pointer sent in his card to the particular Sladen who had acted for Mrs. Tangye in all estate matters. The solicitor was a cheery young man who looked on life as a great joke. He substantiated Tangye's story of the purchase of Clerkhill farm for three thousand pounds by a Mr. Philpotts, a farmer living near Rugby.
The money when paid over had been left in his safe by Mrs. Tangye who had discussed the merits of various Funding loans without deciding which appealed to her most.
Sladen, too, had heard from his late client herself about the bank that had failed, and knew of her unconquerable aversion to cheques.
"Pleasant lady, I understand?" Pointer asked.
"Very. Terrible shock to hear of such a death having come to her." Sladen actually looked grave for a moment.
"Of course, we're only concerned with tracing this money, but the Insurance Company is trying to decide whether accident or suicide was the more likely explanation." Pointer seemed in doubt himself.
"Not suicide," Sladen said positively. "Oh, dear ino! Not suicide! Very shrewd eye for a bargain. Very keen on having a quid for her quo>."
"That's