How to get into touch with that buried past of Mrs. Tangye's? With that unknown bit that extended from fifteen years ago, from the time when the late Lady Susan Dawlish, her mother's aunt, took her away on her father's death, till she reappeared in the London high school, three years later.
The last time he had seen Tangye in Riverview, the stockbroker had been taking down his wife's fishing-gear from the wall. Her basket had been a roomy, Welsh osier creel. How about the flies in an old book that Pointer had borrowed on his first visit to the den, a fly-book evidently home-made, bearing the initials M. H. on the coarse flannelette cover? He had taken it as an additional proof that Mrs. Tangye had really been left-handed in her girlhood, since it dated from then, so Tangye had told him, when he let him keep it temporarily.
They were not Scottish flies, that Pointer knew. Each locality has its own variants of the regular standbys, and these were different from those he had himself used in Scottish rivers. Apart from whence they came, they had told him several things.
They had been made by a left-handed person, and, though very neatly done, the cheapest materials alone had been used. And they were copies of cheap flies, too, so Pointer thought. Now, neither Over nor Nether Wallop lies by a river, yet these flies had seen much usage. They were salmon flies moreover, and such a complete set would hardly have been made for a mere visit to relations. Nor could Pointer trace any such visits, and he had tried hard. These flies therefore, he thought, might belong to that uncharted bit of Mable Headly's life.
Pointer drove to an angler's shop in Jermyn Street which he himself often patronised.
"Welsh flies these," the salesman said, pouring over the lot, "old-fashioned. Twenty years old, I should say, or copies of flies twenty years old. That's an Usk Canary. But whipped to a string of gut! Tut, tut! Home-made evidently. But neatly done. And neatly used too. You can always tell if they've been jerked. Hullo. That's one of Father William's old Parsons. He's given up those hackles years ago. But that's no copy."
"Sure? It may be important."
"Certain. If I found the Grand Lama using it in Thibet, I'd be certain."
"And who is Father William?"
"He's a character, that's what he is, sir. And the best rod south of the Tweed, amateur or pro. He never leaves the Usk. Not he! To see him cast a fly—oh, it's a beautiful sight! He's always out with his rod as soon as they take the nets off. Began life as a gillie. Used to sell his flies to the gentlemen who employed him, and so started in the business. Those Durham Rangers and Jock Scotts over there are his work. They look a bit light, but Lord, they make the right ripples. And that's the whole secret, ain't it, sir? It's not so much the fly you use, though that counts, of course, it's the way he 'lights. But it takes Father William to get the right kick out of 'em. He has a way!"
Pointer asked for the address of this pattern.
"William Morgan is his name. His cottage is Ty-Cerrigliwydian. It's just outside the town of Usk. But you'll never find him there, sir. He's out fishing all day, and at the Inn of an evening. He loves to talk, does Father William. Age? Getting on for seventy, I should say, and good for another seventy again."
Usk? Now Usk is not far from Cardiff. And Pointer had just been reading that name in connection with the dead woman, though not a close connection. Remembering Tangye's and Sladen's words about Mrs. Tangye having told each of them that she had once had something to do with a bank that had failed, Pointer had had a list of all such failures in the last twenty years sent him. Her name had not figured among the depositors, but that meant little. There had been a big smash fourteen years ago in Cardiff.
And also—oddly enough about that time—he was very vague as to dates, said he never could be sure within a couple of years, Vardon claimed to have had his headquarters at Cardiff for some eighteen months while working partly on some local stage scenery, partly on sketches of the country around. His dates were so elastic, and his localities so vague, that Pointer again wondered whether this were accident or design. He had wrung a few names out of him finally, and turned them over to Watts of the C.I.D. to investigate.
Pointer drove first to New Scotland Yard, and arranged matters with the Assistant Commissioner. Then he dropped in to see Wilmot.
"I'm leaving the affair in Haviland's hands for a while," he explained.
"Who's he to lose this time?" Wilmot asked with great interest.
Pointer had to laugh.
"He can turn to you for advice if he gets hung up in too many facts, and the Yard'll throw cold water on any schemes, which are over-desperate with regard to Vardon. I want to be free to do a bit of routine work."
"In the wilds of Upper, or Nether Wallop?"
"Neither. I'm off to hobnob by the banks of the swift-flowing Usk with a gentleman yclept Father William."
"It sounds a pleasant change from the hurly-burly of town," Wilmot murmured enviously, "a big detectve has a tremendous pull over a newspaper man. We can't suddenly feel that our work demands a dash to the forests of Malay, or a fortnight in the best hotel of a smart winter resort. You can. You don't have to keep a list of the relations who've already died; nor check up your attacks of the flu. What's your excuse?"
Pointer told him. Wilmot was thoroughly interested, but expressed himself as very sceptical of any good results.
"Seems a blind alley to me."
"That's to find out. Merely as part of the regular routine it has to be tried."
"The Insurance Company has just sent me a little reminder that things seem to be hanging fire."
"Why not come along with me on your own? The nets are being left off the Usk a month late this year. Come and help me fish."
"Me! My dear chap, I shall prepare to receive you when you return in silence and tears, and I promise you here and voluntarily, to ask no questions, nor, except under severest provocation, to mention the word Wales in your presence for the next five years."
"That ought to suffice."
There was a ring on the telephone. It was from Watts. Was the Chief Inspector in Wilmot's rooms by chance? Pointer assured him that he was.
"I haven't been able to check up Vardon in Cardiff, sir. The address he gave you was pulled down some eight years ago. The company for which he claimed to've painted that scenery, failed about two years before that. None of the inns about remember him. I couldn't come on any trace of him at all."
Pointer turned away thoughtfully.
CHAPTER 13
VARDON had barely laid down the telephone before he dashed into a taxi and drove to Dorset Steele's office with news that he was now a free men. The lawyer hummed, and hawed, and threw—not so much cold water as vinegar, on the other's apparent optimism. He refused to see the daylight at the end of the tunnel.
Oddly enough, Barbara, too, was not so radiant as Vardon seemed to be. She was more concerned with what Pointer had said than with the mere fact of Philip being allowed to go where he pleased.
"Did he say that he thought you innocent?" she asked more than once. Vardon put her off with pointing out that deeds spoke louder than words. But Barbara was not satisfied.
She went to see the Chief Inspector herself.
"Does this mean that you think he's innocent?" she asked bluntly.
"Do you know what would happen to me if I let him go, and he were guilty?" Pointer asked with apparent candour. "We're not allowed to make blunders like that, Miss Ash. We're expected to go down with the ship."
"Grandfather says he'll be watched in Sweden where he has to go first—about some timber, and afterwards