But the surprise he tried to put into his voice did not carry conviction to Pointer.
Pointer had only handed him a photographic copy. The photograph itself had been carefully locked up at Scotland Yard.
Tangye flung it on the table.
"I don't take back a word of what I said. Truth is truth. My wife told me she intended to commit suicide. You find her shot, with the revolver beneath her hand that fired the bullet. No struggle. No hint of foul play..."
"There are hints of it," Pointer put in quietly, "only hints, it's true."
"Because I don't think he killed my wife, doesn't mean that I intend to sit still and see Vardon sweep the board clean. Right's right. But one man's wrong is no man's right." Tangye was getting incoherent. "The land yes. If my wife sold a farm, and chose to let him have the money, that's nothing to me, once I know where the money was, but it was agreed, when we married, that her ten thousand—" he was off again.
Pointer had to interrupt the tenth rendering of the same motive to take his leave.
He slipped into the morning-room where Miss Saunders was generally to be found. Just now she was standing looking up at a large portrait of Mrs. Tangye on the wall. A very recent addition to the room.
"I had the enlargement done in Bond Street. Rather good, don't you think?" she asked Pointer. Without waiting for a reply she went on, "I think her picture should be about the house. I like to see it."
Anything smugger than her tone could not be imagined. Finally she took her eyes away with an almost visible effort.
"Has anything fresh turned up, Mr. Chief Inspector?"
"Yes. We've found another will of Mrs. Tangye's. Later than the one read at the inquest. Leaving everything to Mr. Vardon."
She stared at him a moment in silence. Then, compressing her lips, she swept the mantelpiece with the edge of her cupped hand.
"Leaving everything?" she finally asked.
He nodded.
"Genuine?"
"Mr. Tangye thinks not."
"But you?" she gave him a piercing look.
"We see no reason to doubt it, so far."
She made no comment. Turning, she left the room, apparently lost in thought.
Pointer went for a walk in the old Deer Park. It was a sunny afternoon; the elms and larches showing gold under a cloudless sky. There was a buoyant pulse in the wind and sun. The air on his face brought with it smells of frost, of oak leaves, of wet soil under some southern wall, of a belt of spruce to windward.
Blue was the sky overhead, blue the wet ruts underfoot, against the yellow litter of leaves on the ground. Pointer smoked and meditated. His thoughts on Tangye and Vardon first of all.
Miss Saunders, judging from her question to the stranger entering the chambers, had seemed to think that the stockbroker was having a talk with Vardon, but Tangye and Miss Saunders were by no means in each other's complete confidence.
But supposing that Mrs. Tangye's husband had been in the artist's rooms last Tuesday, what would have taken him there? Within an hour or two of his wife's terrible death.
Did Tangye know of that gift of the money—or of the will? Had he come to search the artist's rooms for them? A few discreet questions had told Pointer that Vardon was quite unaware of any search among his effects, and nothing is harder, to an amateur, than to hunt through another person's belongings and leave them as they were.
Still it was possible that the motive which had brought Tangye to the rooms, supposing him to have come, was connected with his wife's visit only a few hours before. But he had apparently taken Miss Saunders there. It might be therefore, that what he had wanted was a necessity, was a step, in somethng which he and she were to proceed to do together.
It was, of course, quite easy to disbelieve Vardon's story, and see in him the man who had joined the waiting woman and driven off. But though Pointer did not distrust simple explanations, he generally tried to make sure that no other ones were possible, before accepting them.
One thing was certain. If Tangye had left the keys on Vardon's table, he had done so unintentionally. His quick confession, or at any rate, his effort to exculpate Vardon as soon as he heard that one of the notes had been traced to the artist, showed that he was not trying to fasten any guilt on the other man. That, too, was evidently the last thing desired by Miss Saunders, but in her case, if she had made a bargain with Tangye, naturally she would not want her purchased help to seem unneeded.
Vardon's room—Mrs. Tangye's keys—Tangye—Pointer's thoughts passed on to the will. And to the new and startling idea it had given him.
Suddenly he came upon Barbara, a couple of irons under her arm, on her way home from the links. She looked careworn, he thought.
"Suppose we exchange news." He fell into step beside her in obedience to a gesture.
"Do you give a fair exchange-rate?" She spoke a little wistfully.
He acknowledged the hit with a laugh. A laugh of sympathy; he was very sorry for Barbara.
"I'll give you full value. Speaking plainly, Miss Ash, I want to find out something definite from Mrs. Tangye's past. Nothing in the least to her discredit, but I want to reconstruct her life. Before she married Branscombe." Barbara's eyes widened. But she was one of the very few people who, when they have nothing to say, say nothing.
"You see," he was not looking at her, but at a fine old stag who paced towards them with ideas of apples, "some people might think there was a good, sound, probable motive for a murder already to hand. But I want to make sure that there isn't a better, sounder, more probable one still, to be got. It's tremendously true that the strongest motive wins, you know."
There was a long silence. The stag walked huffily off. Pointer felt that something was stirring in Barbara, was welling up within her. But after a moment she said quietly, "Surely you know everything there is to know about Mrs. Tangye's past. I've just been talking to my grandfather. He says that the worst thing against Mr. Vardon is that he was seen near Riverview late on Tuesday afternoon. Is that the case? I mean, is that a very important thing against him?"
"Very," Pointer admitted, still not looking at her.
"Of course, if any one else had been seen on Tuesday near Riverview between four and six, it would make a great deal of difference. But as it is Mr. Vardon seems the only one. That—taken into consideration with other things—does look very serious."
They were across Richmond Bridge by now. Barbara said good-bye abruptly. The short winter day was almost over when Pointer turned back. Stray leaves touched his cheek with cold little fingers as they fell. The lights of a barge drawn up to be mended shone red like the eyes of the Great Sea Serpent, who had found a refuge at last. Pale winter moths floated past. The moths that some old folk say are the spirits of the dead. They vanished, or were palely seen, as they drifted now through darkness, now through the rays of a lamp. They were too much like the underlying facts of Mrs. Tangye's death, he thought, to be pleasant company for a detective officer.
Pointer had purposely given himself plenty of time before turning in at Twickenham police court. He was not surprised to find Barbara Ash being politely entertained by Haviland. The Superintendent was showing her his stamp collection, knowing that her grandfather owned a notable one.
"There's something very fascinating about stamps," Haviland was saying as Pointer hung up his hat. "Nothing uncertain about them. I always liked geography at school. History no. There's no proving half of what they tell you in history. But in geography, if they say a town or river is in a certain place, you can go and find out for yourself. You can prove it, as a matter of fact. Even if you don't do it, you know you could go and look. Or dig..."
Pointer