Pointer decided quickly. He could easier keep Carter under observation in France than in England. To have had a hand in his partner's death, that death that removed from him the necessity to repay past loans, that left him in undisputed possession of a huge fortune,—he must have had an accomplice. Any effort to communicate with the actual poisoner would be far more difficult to carry out undetected in Nice than in London.
"Thank you, Mr. Carter, for your offer. I am starting as soon as I can get away for France—for Nice. I shall be very glad if you care to come—"
"Care to come! You bet I do!"
"But you understand that it may be some time before I can ask your help. There is a good deal of clearing up work—mere routine—to be done first." His tone implied that when a stroke of real genius was felt to be needed, Carter's hour would come.
"I quite understand. As long as I can hope to be of any help—at any time—I'll come. Christine feels as I do. We can't marry until this thing is cleared up. She's as keen on seeing justice done Rob as I am, or nearly so. He wasn't her partner as he was mine. If you'll come downstairs we'll go around to her hotel and hear what she says for herself."
Christine had treated herself to comfortable rooms in a quiet hotel near Baker Street. She was as emphatic as Carter that the one thing for them to do now was to find out and bring to justice the murderer of Robert Erskine. "Though I certainly wasn't much of a help to you?" Her voice made it a question.
"Oh, I don't know about that. I don't deny that I hoped you might have got hold of some direct clue while at the villa,—but that's always a matter of luck, and Mrs. Erskine looks the kind of woman to keep her own confidence—or the confidence of another, even supposing she knows more than she chooses to say. Besides, remember you gave the very important tip of the loaded revolver which she keeps at hand, and the suggestion about her body-guard, as you think her friends may be."
"You don't agree with me?"
The police-officer laughed. "Pointer's away on his holiday. Impenetrable official reserve is the order of the day now, and on your and Mr. Carter's part absolute, unquestioning obedience. Is that a bargain? Thank you; I was sure that you would both see the necessity for my making that an essential of your co-operation. And you must be patient, Miss West. As I told Mr. Carter, there'll be a lot of spade work to be done, if we are to discover any clues at Nice, before there can be any question of either of you helping."
Like her fiancé, Christine said she did not care how long she had to wait, if only she could be of some use.
"Very well, then, we quite understand one another." Pointer seemed regardless of the fact that Carter's real thoughts were a subject of much doubt to him, and that some of his speculations about them were very far from being understood by that young man—"and agree that no plan can be drawn up until I have reconnoitred thoroughly."
"Would it be a help," asked Christine, "if I were to stop with Mrs. Erskine again?"
"I can't say yet."
"I don't think I like the Chief Inspector as much as I did Mr. Pointer." Christine's smile robbed the speech of its bluntness.
"Oh, don't say that!" implored the officer. "Do be original and have a good word for the police! But now about our going. Mr. Carter can start at once. I shall follow by the day after tomorrow at the outside. If you"—he turned to the Canadian—"will put up at, say, the Negresco or the Angleterre, I shall find your name at once and be able to get into touch with you. Should we meet by chance, we are, of course, strangers. And you, Miss West, if you will let Mr. Carter know where you are stopping near Nice—"
"It won't be Avignon!"
"—you could meet quietly. But not more than once a week, please, and, naturally, always at different places and on different days. Through him I shall have your address, and if you'll excuse my addressing you inside any letter or telegram or 'phone as Miss"—his eyes fell on an open magazine—"Miss Gladys—"
Christine shivered.
"—you will know that the message is from me. What name are you going by, Mr. Carter?"
"Crane."
"Good, and you are starting?"
"Tonight, if I can get a ticket. But for God's sake don't let Beale slip through your fingers. Mark my words, he's the man!"
"He won't slip." Pointer shook hands and walked briskly away. He had arranged matters to his liking and his plans were in his own keeping. He wired to the Nice police to be ready to keep an observant eye on Mr. Crane. He would have been glad of the Canadian's immediate help, but he intended to take no risks of confusing the trail.
Pointer's first act on arriving at Nice was to 'phone up the Canadian at the Negresco. Over the wire he obtained a minute account of the way he had spent his two days on the Côte d'Azur. Then he rang up his police friend, and Carter's account of himself was verified in every particular. So far so good. He next presented himself at Mrs. Erskine's. That lady was lying down with a severe headache when his card was taken in to her, but she sent him out word to please call back later, as she very much appreciated his having come to see her. Pointer found her quite full of questions—for her—as to Carter's release. She evidently feared that the police had been hoodwinked by some plausible villain.
"I'm not a revengeful woman," she explained with her plaintive Scotch accent, "but I do not want the murderer of my son to escape."
The Chief Inspector had apparently no explanation to offer beyond the fact of Carter's belated, but absolutely water-tight, alibi.
"Well, of course you must know your business best," she murmured from among her cushions, "but it would take more than a Frenchman's word to have made me set that man free!"
She asked very kindly after Christine, and he did not mention the fact of that young lady's coming marriage to the object of Mrs. Erskine's suspicions.
Mrs. Erskine evidently feared that it would be quite useless, but she had not the slightest objection to his going over again all the Erskine letters in her possession.
"But Robert's letters are missing. You remember the packet I showed you in Paris?"
Pointer did.
"When we returned here—Mrs. Clark came to fetch me: she thought I was too ill to be left to Marie's care alone—the letters had gone. I am sure I placed them in the top of my trunk, or saw Marie put them there just before we started. I had them under my pillow before that. But when Marie unpacked here there was no sign of them. On the whole, I am not sure that their presence was not more of a grief than their absence. But I confess the thought of those letters, sacred to me by my loss, having been lost by some carelessness—" She paused with a worried frown.
It was nearly half past eleven before Pointer made his appearance on the following morning.
Mrs. Erskine had had an old trunk brought down from the attic in which, as she sent him word, she kept everything belonging to family matters of any kind.
There were several letters from Mr. Henry Erskine which were new to the officer. They were all affectionate in tone.