"That wasn't done by filling a pipe. Looks as if some one had stirred that Shiraz like a Christmas pudding within the last twenty-four hours. For they're fresh." He passed on. "Letter-book of the Professor's missing unless his secretary took it with her."
Pointer turned to the book-shelves and pointed.
"Five books upside down in one batch." Watts stepped over to them. "Been lifted out in lots apparently."
Pointer clapped the boards together of a couple taken out at random. They seemed to be unusually dust free. Much more so than the furniture, or the carpet, would have suggested. He rang the bell.
"Look here. Has the professor's secretary been in these rooms lately? A book is missing that we were sent to fetch."
The man shook his head.
"She left before the professor. Some ten days ago, that was."
"But some one was in here lately. Yesterday or the day before?"
The man raised a mildly surprised eyebrow.
"Sharp that! You're right A young person did come to do some repairing on one of the professor's rugs They're his own, and quite valuable, I understand."
"Who sent her?"
"She came from Liberty's, I think she said. Anyway she brought me a visiting card of the professor's, with instructions to let her mend the carpet in front of the sitting-room hearth, which I did. I didn't stay in the room, of course, but I was in the hall when she went out. She had nothing in her hand but the little sewing-bag she brought."
"What was she like?"
"Seemed the usual sort of sewing woman to me. Middle-aged, stout party. Not the kind to notice much. Dark-skinned, very."
"And the hour? Mr. Gilchrist'll want to know all about this."
"She came shortly after eight. Most unusual time, but being a foreigner—"
"And she left—about when?"
"Close on nine. I was just carrying in breakfast to a very punctual gentleman."
"Got the card she brought?"
The man said that she had kept that.
"Well, we'll have another look. It doesn't sound as though she could have taken anything," Pointer finally. He looked at Watts as the door closed. "That settles the tobacco, I fancy."
"Was the point of any importance, sir?" Watts asked.
"I think so. That spilt tobacco looks as though the woman had been hunting for something which she thought might have been deliberately hidden in these rooms. Not merely for something which might have been in professor's possession. And now let's go through correspondence. I want, first of all, anything that will have arrived within the last few weeks that looks important or interesting. Next, I want anything that may give a clue to his whereabouts. Italy is a bit large, and a post-mark isn't much to go by."
They found nothing definite. Pointer made up a packet of "possibly wanteds," and dropping Watts at the Yard, returned to Medchester.
He drove back deep in thought. He had already a very fair idea of how and when the murder was committed. He had something more than a suspicion as to one man in Rose's circle. But the accomplices? For there seemed to be accomplices. This search of the professor's rooms had taken place at an hour when the man to whom Pointer thought that the clues led most directly was not in town. It might, of course, be unconnected with it. Professor Charteris's correspondence had shown world-wide interests. He believed himself to be in possession of at least one fortune-making discovery.
Pointer slowed down a while as he reflected.
If the motive behind the murder of the beautiful young creature, whom he had seen, lying ready to have the coffin lid closed, was connected with jealousy or with money, then the investigations would easily enough be able to prove as much, and would be able to prove nothing else. Where motives were concerned, Pointer always left the obvious on one side at first. You did not have to be afraid that motives would bolt for some earth before it could be stopped. And if the motive were not obvious in this case, to fit the man whom Pointer believed guilty, it would be a difficult one to find.
Pointer thought of that room that he had just left. Supposing the search there, and the murder at Stillwater to be connected, what was the object that had been hunted for in the Professor's rooms? It was something that could be hidden in a book as well as in a jar. A piece of paper probably. Possibly a letter. But why should it have been thought to be hidden?
Those words which Rose had been murmuring as she turned over her letters last night, were they connected with this hunt? "Where can I have put it? What have I done with it?"
The daughter killed. The father's rooms searched as soon as possible after it.
Pointer had noticed the Airedale kept at the house in town. A night attack of the position would have had to reckon with him. And he looked a ready reckoner.
None of Professor Charteris's letters were to be found in Rose's rooms or in Colonel Scarlett's study. Had they been taken? Stolen? And their loss not yet noticed? Did some one think that among them might be found what was sought for?
If that hunt of the Professor's rooms were not chance timed, it suggested urgency. That suggested—
Pointer thought of the empty, long, envelope which had found beneath the tea-table that had been in use yesterday. It came from her father. "Brown" had had a chat with the postman. It was the last letter that Rose had received from the Professor. Father and daughter seemed linked by this search in town.
When Pointer arrived at Stillwater House he found the police inquiries in full swing. Superintendent Harris had finished with the servants, and the colonel, and was just about to ask Mrs. Lane to come to the library.
Harris had learnt no new facts, but he told Pointer that the colonel took full responsibility for Mrs. Lane. He had assured Harris that he had had a personal recommendation of the very highest with her, from the lady whom she had been a companion for some years, as well as a life-long friend. The lady was the late Mrs. Seymour, widow of a former Bishop of Zanzibar.
Pointer had watched both Mrs. Lane and Sibella Scarlett very closely at the inquest. One of them must have played a part in the strange drama of Thursday night. One, or both. He had been struck by the fact that each told a story so like the other's. That the younger, like the elder woman, had taken up an attitude of absolute stillness and taciturnity, volunteering nothing, and striding all answers to the barely essential; that the elder woman, like the younger, would not dot an i or cross a t until she had made quite sure to what words they belong. Yet the two were essentially different characters. One would have expected them to react differently.
Pointer pigeon-holed both under the heading, "Capable of Anything." But the "Anything" of Mrs. Lane would he thought, only be what she herself had decided on, after careful weighing of all the consequences. Once she had made up her mind, he would expect her to go on unflinchingly to the end. A dangerous type, in connection with a crime.
Sibella's "Anything" would be of a different calibre.
Literally anything to which she was moved. Anything to which her strange personality might incline. If Mrs. Lane could be dangerous because of her energy, coolness, and courage, Sibella might be still more so by virtue of her incalculability, and the smouldering fires which he felt sure were deep within her.
Mrs. Lane looked very composed as she sat facing him. She answered all questions with more readiness than she had shown at the inquest. But Pointer purposely kept to the same round.
Rose had not lingered after the dinner, which, on account of the concert, had been at half-past seven. Mrs. Lane had not seen her since she passed the drawing-room and declined coffee.
As to where she had spent the evening, the lady suggested that doubtless Rose had spent it in her own room, as she often did. The maid had seen her in the gray frock, Pointer threw in lightly. Upon which Mrs.