He pushed open an arched, ornamental door that had no lock. Behind it he found a mass of broken geraniums and pots.
The damage was recent, not more than twenty-four hours old.
All around the house, except on the side that interested him, the side below the smudged balustrade, were similar pots set close in against the walls and outlining the paths to the four doors.
Behind another door Pointer found a bag labelled Fertiliser, and some gardener's tools. Out of an iron stove in the middle he fished a piece of sacking that had been used as a floor-cloth. It was smeared with blood, and spots of what he first took to be earth, but which he found differed from the earth around. Then he guessed it, rightly, to be fertiliser spilled in the afternoon by the gardeners, a little of which had got blown against the house in between the pots, and so escaped the downpour.
Pointer stared at the sacking. It was soaked with blood. But whose blood?
Not Rose Charteris's. There was far too much here for that. Besides, this had taken place after the rain. Nothing is more misleading as to the amount of damage done than bloodstains. But even so, this must have been a formidable affair.
Besides the sacking, he found a mass of what might be the remains of six or seven more flower pots, but so ground to powder were they, so trampled the plants, that it was impossible to count them. They told one thing plainly. The paving outside had been washed. Not so these broken remnants. They were soaked with blood, trampled into it.
He cut away a corner of the sacking and dropped it into an indiarubber envelope. He added to his bag a couple of lengths of cord, very stout, and of a kind new to him in colour and texture.
He heard steps on the gravel path. He had replaced everything as he went along, and now lit his pipe and waited.
It was Bennet, the under-gardener, and a boy wheeling a barrow. They began to collect the branches.
"You prune so late?" Brown pointed to the almost stripped thorn.
"The master he thinks the trees at the doors want thinning. Done it before we got to work this morning." Bennet gave a wrathful sniff.
"Must have lost his head over that terrible accident," Brown mused aloud. "I'm staying with Mr. Thornton at his cottage. Colour-printing is my trade. His niece's death must have upset the old gentleman."
"It couldn't upset him beforehand," retorted the gardener. "Not beforehand! And I must say he made thorough job of it all right. Killed the old tree, that's what he's done. Murdered it! And then fell off the ladder on top of them pelargoniums. Collected them in a lump just on purpose, he says, so as not to damage 'em. And then went down bang on top of the lot. Nose bled; too, he says. I don't wonder. Next time he'll leave it to those as understands the job, let's hope."
"Fond of gardening, is he?" Brown struck in wheezily "That's like me. I like to do a bit that way myself."
"Fond? Not beyond seeing as there isn't a stray leaf, and that the flowers come up to time. They mustn't be late for parade, or he wants to know the reason why." Bennet began to help the boy to pick up the broken pots inside. "Just look at 'em." The gardener was almost in tears. "I think he's going dotty, lately, that's my opinion. I wouldn't stay on, not if he asked me."
"Leaving, eh? The colonel hard to please?"
Bennet straightened himself with some difficulty.
"I was fourth gardener at Welbeck," he said with dignity, "and I take it there's nothing in my work I aren't up to. No, he gave me notice out of temper. Pure bad temper."
"Because some of the flowers didn't come up to time?" Brown asked, with the tactlessness of the dull.
Bennet's eyes snapped.
"I've told you once already that I know my job, thank you. The colonel gave me notice because he lost a telegram, or a letter. He called it first one, then the other. Couldn't find it, and said it must have blown out of the window. I'm not a betting man. I'm not interested in tips. He would have it that I'd picked it up. I was marking out some plots in front of his study. Later on, next day it was, the thing turned up. Daresay he still was able to put his bit on. Anyway he was ashamed of himself. I will do him that justice. He apologised quite handsome. But I'm leaving at the end of the month. He's getting too peppery lately. There's no pleasing him. He'll order a thing one day and change it the next. Look at this place. Yet just before he drove off he says that he wants nothing more done here till further orders. Told me not to cart away the broken pots. But I knows him and his little ways by now. This time to-morrow he'll be raving because the rubbish has been left here."
"Mr. Thornton'll miss your good lady. When do you leave?"
"Four weeks from this last Wednesday. I don't say that if—"
Bennet was interrupted. He was wanted down on the grass courts immediately. The colonel had left an order that they were to be prepared for returfing, and it was a case of all hands on deck.
"There!" Bennet handed Brown back his tobacco pouch. "Thank 'ee. Those courts was new sown last week. Mr. Cutbush won't stand much more of this. He'll be leaving next."
Bennet hurried away.
Pointer mounted a short flight of stairs inside the house to the landing where two doors opened, one on either side. He found both to be prettily furnished bedrooms, and guessed them to be used at times as an overflow from Stillwater House.
The left room he only glanced at. The right room detained him longer. Some one had lain on the bed last night. There were the marks of dusty boots on the flowered coverlid, and still an impress in the crumpled pillows. He was a tall man and very light, Pointer decided. His walking had been done before the rain. "Before the rain" had come to mean to him by now "before the murder of Rose Charteris."
One of the lace blinds that covered half the window was on the floor. He found that it was liable to come off at a touch. The window looked out over that side of the tiled surround where Rose must have fallen. On testing it, the pear-shaped window latch gave a nearly perfect print of a thumb and first finger. A long, slender finger which had never been calloused by toil.
It was not Mr. Thornton's first finger and thumb. Pointer had prints of those already from the back of a prepared notebook that he had handed his host to hold for a second. He examined the ground around the summer house while apparently looking for a dropped pencil. He found no marks, except once that same hard-tyred wheel mark which he had seen before on the short cut.
He thought of Mr. Thornton's cottage, which lay quite close.
Opening the gate into the lane beside it, he looked around him. From that gate to where the lane turned into the high road to London, Pointer saw the marks where a light little car had run up and down many times about three this morning, judging by the depth of the half-dried earth. He decided that this case was going to be a shining example of how favoured detectives are in the British Isles in the matter of damp. Seldom indeed is the ground not able, and willing, to date some event for the investigator. He often maintained that the work of his confrères in really good climates must be much more arduous.
The little car had apparently been used as a shuttle. Four times it had run out to the main road and back to the gates close beside Mr. Thornton's cottage. It had been going light and had been driven very slowly. One might have thought that someone was waiting? But why not wait patiently? Why patrol that one little part of the lane, now as close as possible to the Stillwater hedges, now as close as possible to the other side?
Pointer, deep in thought, entered the grounds again, and decided to have a look at the two garages.
The colonel's chauffeur was busy at work, but Brown asked for a little petrol to take a stain out of his coat. He used his eyes while he sponged. Then he went on to Red Gates. Thornton's two-seater was out, but a big Bently saloon was there. Pointer lit one of the lamps, as well as the electric light, and began his examination.
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