"I see." Pointer looked at his boot tips as he sat resting his head on one hand. "Have you written to Mrs. Tangye lately?" Pointer asked next.
Vardon hesitated. Palpably.
"I think I've said all on the subject that I care to say, for the present," he said finally.
"So you did write? You did ask her for money? You see, I've no intention of being unnecessarily prying, but we know that you came home from South America some ten months ago now, and approached various people in the city with a view to interesting them in some proposition of yours. Now it seems likely that you would have mentioned the matter to the woman who had inherited all your cousin's money. Was the proposition a gold mine, as they say?"
"In a way. I'm afraid I can't discuss it with you." There was a silence. "Don't think I'm keeping anything back that can help you." Vardon went on quickly, "to my mind, what will help you best, would be to make you realise Mrs. Tangye's whole manner on Tuesday. She struck me as being in a most extraordinary—I don't know what to call it—moodstate of mind? She was paying me one thousand five hundred pounds in ready money. Not being a rich woman, that must have meant something to her. It did to me, by Jove. Yet she gave me a feeling that she wanted to get it over, and be at something else. I doubt if ever such a large sum was given to a totally unexpecting person with such casual speed." For the first time Vardon smiled a little. "She tugged the envelope out of her handbag and handed it to me..."
"One moment! Was it already in an envelope? I mean didn't she have to separate it from any other notes?"
"No. She had two envelopes. The other looked about the same size. She handed me the one without looking at it. She asked me to count the money. I could hardly see. I had to count it four times, and each time it added up to something different. So I let it go at that, and pretended to find it correct. I had to almost hold on to her to get her to sit down and write that note saying that it was a loan, before she was out of the room in a sort of whirl of hurry and flurry. I felt that way, of course. I had a hundred things to do. But I should have expected Mrs. Tangye, or any woman, to talk a lot. Give me some good advice. Ask questions as to how it would be first applied. But no. All the business part of the interview I had to force on her. She acted as though she had handed me a ticket for Peter Pan. I can't explain it except by her intending to kill herself."
"What makes you so sure?"
"This gift of the money, for one thing. I didn't see it at the time in that light, naturally, but above all, her manner, her air of being done with things. Finished with them. I can't express clearly what made me think that. For, after that loan of the money, the rest was a confused jumble, but the impression was made very clearly.
"One thing I'm certain of. If it wasn't suicide, then it was accident. Mrs. Tangye struck me as just the kind of woman to have an accident with a weapon. She was very hasty in her movements. Very impatient. I can imagine her snatching at something that caught in her laces, and giving a pull. Thank God, if the shot had to be fatal, at least, it was instantaneous." And at that Varden walked to the window to raise it.
As he did so, he all but tripped. It was but a second's catch in his step, but Pointer, like Wilmot, thought of those words of the maid.
"And what exactly was it that made you change your mind on Tuesday about going on to see her? When you were so near Riverview."
"I thought it seemed rather ridiculous. Like an interchange of state visits. She had been to see me at three. I to run in to see her at five. I didn't want her to think that I was going to sit in her pocket."
"You didn't pass the house?"
"No."
"Do you know the companion at Riverview?"
Vardon started. Whether because of the question, or because his mind was on something else, it was impossible to tell.
"No."
"My I ask the name of the friend who lives out Twickenham way?"
"You may not. Sorry."
Pointer was fairly certain that it was Barbara Ash.
"Mr. Vardon, we want nothing in the world, nothing," Pointer spoke very convincingly, "but to get at the truth about the death of Mrs. Tangye. That's the only reason, I assure you, why I ask unpleasant questions, dig up uncomfortable things, and generally make myself a confounded nuisance. The only things I'm interested in, the only things I remember, are what help on the search. A search for truth, remember. Truth and justice. Nothing else.
"You say you think Mrs. Tangye's death was a suicide. I don't. But if you could convince yourself that we don't want you, or any man, unless he's guilty, we might be able to help each other.
"If you're guilty, of course you must do the best for yourself you can. I think I should get you in the end," Pointer gave the other a knife-like look. "But if you're innocent, I assure you that no one—not even the girl you were going to see Tuesday 'out Twickenham way,' can want more earnestly to prove you so. For that means a step nearer to the right man, the guilty man."
It was a long speech for Pointer. But it had done its work—apparently. Vardon seemed in a more friendly mood. "You mean I'm as suspect as all that?"
"Frankly, things look very black against you."
"But how could there be a murder here? Why? Mrs. Tangye wasn't the kind of a woman to stir people to violent emotion either way, I should have thought. She seemed a nice, warm-hearted, hot-tempered, high-spirited woman."
Why hot-tempered and high-spirited, Pointer wondered.
"You say, she wasn't the kind of woman to stir people deeply," the Chief Inspector repeated. "I'm afraid the fact that she very likely had some fifteen hundred pounds, on, or near her, last Tuesday afternoon, and that they may have thought she had three thousand with her, would stir some hearts to their very foundations."
Vardon showed an aghast face. He asked about the money. Pointer told him the outlines of the land sale, and then questioned him about his work.
Vardon spoke interestingly of it. He had started out as a painter of portraits in Buenos Aires. Come down to barns, fences, and signposts in Argentina, then, so he told Pointer—drifted to Patagonia, taken up photography when he had a frozen right wrist that refused to limber up—and now was working as a film photographer of wild animals. Of the creatures that live lives so like, yet so unlike our own.
Pointer asked him whether he could change his own film camera into one that would carry plates, and the two discussed mechanical means. Vardon showed an expert's skill in taking a kodak to pieces that he drew out of his pocket, and re-assembling it.
Finally Pointer questioned him about the lost bag. Vardon did not seem in a hurry to let him have the details.
"I'm afraid it's gone for good. Left in the taxi probably. Fortunately, except for that paper of Mrs. Tangye's, there was nothing of value in it."
"Rather an important exception," Pointer said dryly. He had ascertained that the young man had not acted as though there was nothing of any value in the bag when he first learned of its disappearance.
"Very much so," Vardon agreed. "I thought I gave it to the page-boy when I drove up. But they deny that. I was paying the cabby at the time, who was slow about making the right change. Then in the lounge, after a room had been given me, I stayed down looking up time-tables and comparing routes. It must have been nearly half an hour later that I finally went upstairs. Even then I didn't miss the bag at once. When I did, I ran downstairs but the hotel denied all knowledge of it. We got a bit warm, and I went off to another hotel."
"Did you go back to the first one afterwards to inquire?"
"I did, naturally. I asked for the manager. And the band played the same tune as before. Hall porter, lift-boy, chamber-maid, and reception-clerk. I think on the whole, now I'm cooler, that they're doubtless right. I must have left it in the cab or at my old diggings. Or on the pavement outside while I waited for the taxi to come up."
Pointer