Dorothy Fielding - Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries

Pointer shook out the dottle from his pipe.

"Time's up. We had better return to the house. After that, I, or rather you, Wilmot, have an appointment with Stewart, he's the Tangyes' family solicitor as well as the Coroner, you know. And then you got Miss Eden to give you an appointment over the telephone for later in the afternoon."

"Miss Eden?"

"The friend with whom Mrs. Tangye spent the greater part of Sunday at Tunbridge Wells. She's up for the inquest and the funeral. I doubt though, if it will be easy to learn anything fresh from her—judging by her deposition."

"Sorry," Wilmot said apologetically, "but you'll have to deputise for me. I seem to've made double engagements for this afternoon. So, unless you would like to write my next article, and send in half a column of your opinion on the new Opera—"

Pointer declined with a laugh.

Table of Contents

POINTER stepped in for a moment with Haviland at the police station. He wanted the photographs of the revolver. They were ready for him. An Inspector hurried in. "Mr. Tangye's been telephoning, sir. He says he's gone over his wife's papers, and finds there's a large sum of money missing from the house. Fifteen hundred pounds. Says it must have been at Riverview yesterday."

"This does alter things for a fact!" Haviland jumped up with the eyes of a good watch dog who hears some one on the step. Was it possible that facts, real facts, facts which you could marshal and exhibit, were going to bear out the Chief Inspector's fantastic idea?

They telephoned the news on to Wilmot, and walked quickly up to Riverview. Tangye was waiting for them. He looked both angry and uneasy. Taking them into his study he closed the door, and rapidly amplified his message.

It seemed that Mrs. Tangye had employed a separate firm of solicitors for the management of her property. Sladen and Sladen of Baker Street. Tangye said that he himself knew nothing of her estate. Had always refused to know. But on going over the papers which the firm had sent him, he had found that half of a sum paid her during the past fortnight was missing.

"Like her keys," Pointer reflected aloud, and Tangye turned a swift, wary, glance on him. But he answered impatiently:

"The keys are of no importance. A sum of money is a different thing. It seems she sold a farm over a week ago for three thousand pounds. The money was paid in at her solicitor's office, and remained there till yesterday. But just after two, Mrs. Tangye drove up in a taxi, without an appointment, and took the whole amount away with her. She was paid in bank-notes. Half of those notes are missing."

"Bank-notes? Why not a cheque, sir?"

Tangye explained that his wife had had an invincible dislike to cheques. A bank had once failed, leaving her with an uncashed, worthless cheque. Since then, all her transactions had been strictly in notes.

"Well, of course," Haviland repeated, taking down the numbers of the notes, "this does alter things, for a fact."

"Not in the essentials. Mrs. Tangye's death was an accident. Couldn't of course have been anything else," Tangye said shortly, "but that missing sum may have been stolen."

"She would keep the money in her safe, I suppose?" Pointer suggested.

"She might have."

"You think the loss was unconnected with her death?"

"Obviously. But how many people would you trust in a house with the mistress dead, and a wad of notes like that?" Pointer and Haviland nodded their agreement with the only possible answer to this question.

"But what makes you think your wife had not invested the money in some way? She might have posted that fifteen hundred off at any time between two and the hour she returned to Riverview—about four."

"I've always seen to her investments. Why should she pay a stockbroker's charges when she could get it done for nothing?"

"Perhaps she wanted a bit of a flutter with it, and did not like to you know. There's a tremendous boom in cotton just starting."

"Don't you suppose Sladen and I have 'phoned to every inside and outside man, every bucket-shop in the kingdom, before turning to you?" Tangye asked impatiently. "No offence, Chief Inspector, but I'm afraid you're only losing time with your questions. The best thing for you to do is—"

"For me to decide, sir," Pointer finished very quietly.

Tangye mumbled what was meant for an apology.

"I don't see how you can be sure that Mrs. Tangye might not have gambled in another name," the Scotland Yard official went on.

"No point in that. She was absolutely her own mistress."

"The exact halving of the money looks as though she had some definite purpose in view," Pointer went on unruffled.

"And how do you know that none was spent yesterday, sir? A lady can get rid of a lot of coin in a couple of hours, for a fact," Haviland said with the gloom of a husband and father, as he went off to the library to telephone the numbers of the missing banknotes to his inspector at the police station, with instructions as to where to try to-night.

"Fifteen hundred pounds!" Tangye repeated the sum under his breath as though the figures loomed large to him. "It's not the money in itself. But I don't like to be done. No man does. I won't be done!"

"It seems quite simple to me," Pointer said mendaciously. "Those lost keys and the lost money will be found to belong together. Find who has taken the one, and you'll find who has taken the other."

He was watching Tangye in the mirrcr, as he seemed engrossed in getting his pipe to draw better.

Tangye stiffened in his chair.

"Damned nonsense. You must excuse me, Chief Inspector. But that cock won't fight. Can't. I know those keys are somewhere in the house, as I told you. On thinking it over, I remember now quite clearly seeing them myself lying about the place after the police left. I can't recollect where—but I know I saw them."

Pointer dropped the subject of the keys.

"Mr. Tangye," he said instead in a low voice. "You know more than you're telling us. About this missing money. Or, at least, you suspect more. You have some reason for feeling so certain it was stolen."

Tangye's face paled a little. He detached a cigar-band with extreme care, and laid it on the exact centre of a log, as though it were a votive offering, and as such had to be presented with strict conformity to rule.

"Not at all. But my knowledge of my wife's habits makes me feel sure that Mrs. Tangye had done none of the things with the money you suggest. I believe it was in the house when she had that fatal accident. I believe that some one, knowing it was there, stole it."

Pointer bent forward.

"Whom do you suspect?"

Tangye got up and walked to the window. Drew up the blind with a snap, and let it down again with a crash. That done, he helped himself to a stiff drink. Then only did he reply.

"No one. That's what I want you to find out. You're so extraordinarily interested in Mrs. Tangye's death, which is no mystery, and perfectly simple—though God knows it's terrible enough—yet, when I hand over to you a genuine inquiry, you seem to want me to do the work, the investigation."

Tangye's nerves were evidently strained.

"It's the idea of being done, I can't stand," he said himself, as though in excuse.

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"By the way, while the Superintendent is putting one of his men on to trying the railway stations and other open-all-night places, I'd like another word with you about Mrs. Tangye's cousin. We want to be sure he wasn't in touch with her just before her death."

"You can be sure. They were on anything but a friendly footing. Naturally. Oliver is a thoroughgoing blackguard. My wife usually refused to even speak of him. He would hardly venture to write to her—"