"You've been listening to idle rumours," Tangye said suavely. "My firm is in no difficulties. I can't say that the hammer may not be heard to-day over there—" he glanced from his windows toward where the city lay, "but not for me."
He spoke with conviction. His only mistake was to let a note of triumph creep into his voice. There was a village blacksmith's ring of "something accomplished, something done," about that, and his gaze, that told of strenuous effort and hard-won success.
"And you think that after a quarrel with her husband, of the kind you suggest on Monday, a wife would kill herself Tuesday, leaving everything to that husband?" Pointer asked again.
"It's what happened here. Mrs. Tangye was a very fair-minded woman, when there was no question of her temper leading her wrong. She was a splendid character at bottom. Possibly on the other hand, she may not have remembered her will, any more than I did at first." He spoke the last words very clearly.
"Naturally," Wilmot assured him pleasantly. Pointer shot him an amused look. He was sure that Wilmot would find anything "natural" which backed up Tangye's confession that his wife had killed herself.
"And now to get down to facts," Pointer might have been Haviland, "would you be more explicit as to the trouble between yourself and your wife? What exactly did Mrs. Tangye say on Monday?"
Tangye gave a short laugh. Not of mirth.
"I can't tell you half nor a quarter of what she said. I don't think she could herself, if she were alive, poor girl. You know what a woman is when she's beside herself with some fancied grievance."
"Try and remember as much as you can," Pointer suggested prosaically. "For the fact that Mrs. Tangye wrote to Mr. Stewart, yours and her solicitor, asking him to notify your firm that she wished to withdraw the ten thousand pounds invested by her in it, makes the quarrel very important."
Tangye's lids drooped over his rather bold eyes. He stood silent for a moment. Then he wheeled smartly about. The very sound of his heels told that he had made up his mind. He walked to the door.
"Excuse me a moment." He was gone.
Wilmot looked at Pointer. His eyes waved the flag of victory. "I knew I couldn't be wrong!" he said softly. "I knew it must be suicide!" Pointer slipped out of the door like a shadow. Wilmot thought that there was something unpleasant in seeing such a big man move so silently. There was more here than mere absence of sound. Pointer's very body seemed to blur with the shadows of the dark day.
The Chief Inspector stood a second in the hall beside Rogers the constable, listening intently. Then he stole swiftly up the stairs to the first landing. He made for a little sitting-room taken over by Miss Saunders. There he heard a low murmur. In a second a police "stethescope" was pressed against the crack. The ends in his ears. "Very well," he heard Miss Saunders say. "I'm quite ready. I felt sure it would come."
There was a stir.
Pointer was sitting in the same chair as before and in the same attitude when Tangye opened the door again, this time for Miss Saunders to precede him. She was self-possessed as always. Very sure of herself, in her prim way.
"I think Miss Saunders should hear what I am obliged to say," Tangye said briskly. Shutting the door resolutely behind him. His manner was positively business-like.
"You asked me now, Chief Inspector, what my late wife and I quarrelled over on Monday when I returned from my week-end. I'm sorry to say it was over her having unexpectedly found out that Miss Saunders and I had gone for a spin in my car Sunday afternoon. We met at Tunbridge Wells. Lunched together at an hotel there, and drove around to the orchid-show. By bad luck my wife happened to be there, too, and caught sight of us. After all, there was nothing wrong in what we did. Injudicious, of course. We both see that now?" he finished.
"Quite so. Injudicious, but not wrong," Miss Saunders echoed letting her eyes for a second dart from face to face.
"If you would like to question Miss Saunders, I think she would be kind enough to answer you," Tangye went on.
"I don't think there's any need of anything so painful," Pointer said stolidly but with his eyes on the other man.
They were large eyes. Very quiet eyes. Very clear eyes.
"Well, then," Tangye went on, almost as though dictating a letter, "as I said, Mrs. Tangye saw us."
"And you didn't see her?"
"I didn't. Did you, Miss Saunders?" Tangye turned to her. She shook her head.
"Please say whether you did or not?" Tangye ordered, still with that indefinable tone of brisk command of the situation in his voice. He might have been sailing a yacht, with a breeze blowing that just suited him and his boat.
"No, I didn't see her," Miss Saunders spoke up briskly too.
"Yet we stayed in the show some time. How long would you think?" he went on.
"About two hours, I fancy."
"I put it about that too," he nodded. "I thought it better not to see Miss Saunders off in the train, so we said good-bye outside the station."
There was a pause. Tangye looked around on his hearers almost as though expecting applause. Obviously Pointer and Wilmot were being treated to a benefit performance. But whose benefit? Tangye's, or Miss Saunders', or the absent Vardon's. Miss Saunders rose and slipped quietly from the room.
"And now perhaps you'll be able to tell us some of the things your wife said to you on this Monday afternoon?" Pointer asked.
Tangye shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't remember much. She was absolutely unlike herself. We've had quarrels before, of course. But never one like that. I quite misunderstood the position. You see, I thought—I fancied she was bluffing. Mrs. Tangye, I mean. I had an idea—totally wrong as it turned out—that she was not nearly so angry as she chose to seem. I thought she was overdoing it. I see now that it was hysteria, and dangerous hysteria at that. But I give you my word that I only thought then she had decided to give me a bit of a scare so as to teach me not to do that sort of thing again."
"That's very interesting," Pointer said slowly. "She struck you as really not angry? You thought it acting?"
"I swear I did. Overdone acting at that. I thought she was forcing the note all the way along. More fool I!" Tangye sighed heavily. His brief air of triumph had entirely left him.
"Did she ask you to leave the house?" Pointer put in.
Tangye seemed to feel a sudden check. He hesitated for a second. "Possibly. I think she did say that among the flood of other things."
"You weren't discussing money affairs then?"
Tangye stiffened. "I don't understand."
Pointer gave him no explanation, as rising, he made his way to the drawing-room where Miss Saunders sat reading.
"I suppose you know about Mr. Vardon," he began chattily. She stared at him.
"Know what?"
"Well, strictly in confidence, it looks very much as though we might have to arrest him in connection with Mrs. Tangye's death."
Miss Saunders' face flamed a brick red. Her lips parted in a curious tense look, drawn away from her rather long teeth.
"Mr. Vardon? Mrs. Tangye's death? What are you talking about?" There was a spark in the depths of her bright, rat-like eyes.
Pointer repeated that certain facts had come to their knowledge which unless explained, looked very bad for Mr. Vardon. The presence of her keys in his luggage, for one thing.
Miss Saunders sat tapping the end of her thumb nail against her clenched teeth. It was the gesture of one uncertain what to do. What to say. "And of course, Mr. Tangye let you think it!" she said under her breath.
Pointer looked at