The two young people returned next morning, very pleased with themselves. Old Lady Susan would have to make the best of it now. But she never returned. That afternoon a telegram arrived to say that she had been knocked down by a motor, and killed instantly. That was all the manageress knew. She, and others in the hotel, still remembered the sea-marriage of the young couple. The woman identified the portrait of Mrs. Tangye as that of the gay, brisk, young woman of fifteen years ago.
As for Hart, like the hotel keeper at the inland resort, she had liked him immensely. "So gentlemanly," "such a sweet temper," "so romantic."
The description was still the same as Pointer had heard on the Usk. Apparently Hart had no distinguishing marks of any kind except his good tennis, and even better singing.
A solicitor's story came next. A solicitor in Chester where Lady Susan lived. She had made a will years before, leaving everything to the relatives whom she had gone to Holyhead to see that Saturday. Mable Headly was not even mentioned in it. The solicitor remembered a young whelp quite clearly who had come to splutter and bluster about the will.
He had also a vague recollection of a pale, silent, haughty-looking wife, the great-niece of his late client, who seemed only anxious for her husband to come away with her. The solicitor had wondered how on earth she had come to marry him. Again Pointer could not obtain any definite description. The solicitor proved quite unable, as well as unwilling to identify Vardon from his portrait, but neither could he say that the photograph might not be that of the man he had only seen once.
Pointer devoted himself to Hart's surroundings. With great difficulty he unearthed some one who remembered Hart in Newport. Hart at that time was an auctioneer's assistant.
This was just before his holiday in Bettws-y-coed. Pointer's informant told him with a chuckle that Hart always saved up, and took a holiday "regardless," hoping to meet some wealthy girl, or widow, preferably the latter. "Not so long to wait," added his one-time friend, "at least, that's what he used to say."
Here, too, the portrait of Vardon, a good one, was not of much use. One moment, like the hotel manageress, the man did not think it possible for Hart to have changed his appearance so completely, but the next he weakened, and murmured that fifteen years would make a difference.
Apart from identification, the sordid tale so far was clear enough. Hart, at that time the young auctioneer's clerk, just then out of a job, had cajoled what he doubtless mistook for a wealthy girl of the upper classes into a hurried marriage with him. It was easy to picture his disgust when he found himself instead of better off, saddled with a girl without a penny. Pointer too imagined her desperate efforts to right things. He thought that the woman whom he had only seen lying, as he believed, murdered, would have put up a good fight to make and keep a home.
This acquaintance of Hart's had no idea where Mr. and Mrs. Hart lived. The shop of which Hart claimed to be, and probably was, the manager, was the kind known as a lockup. The man had never met Mrs. Hart except in the shop, where, according to him, she was a live wire wasted. Hart had a way of shutting himself up for hours—drinking, the man said, and the shop, already at the bottom of the hill when the Harts had taken it over, slid completely out of sight. Then came, after nearly two years of married life, the finding of the boat, the tragedy, as it was assumed to be.
This was something learnt, but it left the kernel of the riddle—to Pointer—still unexplained. From many small things in the report of the inquest, he believed that the wife had really gone out in that boat, but not so Hart. Yet his wife would know that he was not in the boat. His wife would surely have made some inquiries again later on. Especially would that be the case, if she were of such a character as "the murdered woman," so Pointer called her in his mind.
Finally Pointer got the real explanation. He got it from the Chaplain of a Sailors' Home at Cardiff, whither his search for Captain Todhunter, had led him. Todhunter was the master mariner who had married Irving Hart and Mable Headly in that swift fashion, nearly fifteen years ago.
Drunk when in charge of his old tub some four years later, he had lost her. And with his boat, lost his own means of livelihood. He had died in the Home about two years ago.
Before he died, he had made a statement on oath which was duly taken down and witnessed. It was still in the Chaplain's care. By it, Captain Todhunter revoked a statement which he and his mate had made to Mrs. Hart two years after her marriage to Hart. It seemed that the husband had tired of the tie and had arranged "for a consideration" with the needy captain to come and make a so-called confession to his wife. The confession being that the ship was within the statutory three-mile limit, not outside it when the marriage was solemnised, and that, therefore, Mable Headly and Irving Hart were not, and never had been, married. The captain said that the young woman had taken it quietly enough.
She had made inquiries, but as his mate stood in with the captain, these had only confirmed Todhunter's story. Miss Headly had not noticed the name of a ship off for Pernambuco, which had sighted them, and signalled them a message to take back to the owners in Cardiff just before the ceremony, which she was now told was worthless. Had she done so, she could have proved, as Pointer now did, that over four nautical miles, not three, separated them from the nearest shore. She had finally, after her interview with the mate, accepted the "confession" as genuine. And on the next day, had come the news of the fatal accident to both plotter, and plotted against.
All the parties were dead, said the Chaplain. There were no children. There seemed to be no living relatives. So, after communicating the paper to the Chief Constable the Chaplain had kept the matter to himself.
As to the accident to Mrs. Tangye, the only other name given in the papers had been that of her previous marriage. Headly had not been mentioned.
Captain Todhunter had always kept his log books, and Pointer verified the place of the marriage by them, and by the log of the signalling ship whose first mate, through his glasses, had seen the marriage actually performed, and would have signalled his good wishes to the young couple but for lack of time, and trouble with the crew.
Pointer further learned that his owners had received a letter only a little over a week ago on the matter. A letter signed M. H., and dated that last Sunday of Mrs. Tangye's life. It was in her writing, without any attempt at alteration, and was to the effect that the writer enclosed a five-pound note to pay for immediate inquiries to be made as to a ship which was off Colwyn Bay on a date fifteen years ago and at a given hour. The date and the hour of the marriage of Hart and Mable Headly. Had any such ship signalled to a little steamer called the Sea-foam? The writer wanted to know whether the latter, the ship sighted, was within three miles from land or not. A great deal hung on the fact the letter added, and requested that the reply be sent with all possible speed to the initials at the foot, Paddington Post office. To be called for. Something in the note, more than the money, had hurried up the inquiry which was only a matter of a couple of hours.
On Monday night a reply had been posted as directed, giving the exact description of the Sea-foam, stating that the present captain, the then first officer of the passing steamer, had seen a marriage ceremony performed aboard her, beside a little garlanded rail. That the Captain's testimony, and the log book from which the information was taken, were open to inspection and verification at all times. The readers of the note had guessed M. H.'s reason for writing.
"Run to earth at last," Pointer said to himself. He meant the interpretation—the making clear, of Mrs. Tangye's last days, and at least some, if not all, of the motive for the murder. Mable Hart had either staged that boat accident, or had had a genuine one.
In either case, she had decided to cut the complicated hateful string that her life had become. Hart had probably believed that she had killed herself intentionally; but the thought had aroused no pity in him. Only suggested the idea of escaping himself by bribing the beach loafer to say that he had seen both husband and wife set sail in the ill-fated boat.
At any rate, Hart had doubtless believed her drowned, and continued in that belief. Until when?
If he were