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

"When did you last see Mrs. Tangye at her safe?"

"Many months ago I saw her lay some books in it. She used it as a sort of cupboard at times. It was always unlocked."

"Could it be locked?"

"I don't know." She turned to Tangye, whose jaw shot forward.

"Of course it could be," the master of the house said briefly.

"And the key was on her key-ring, I suppose?" Pointer, continued.

"Possibly."

"Then the missing keys might be important, after all."

Tangye said nothing. Miss Saunders brushed the top of the marble mantelpiece with her hand. She, too, said nothing.

"Florence saw them at four on her mistress's desk," Pointer went on.

"So she says." Miss Saunders' tone was contemptuous. "You seem to attach great weight to a maid-servant's word—almost as great as to a reporter's!"

"As a rule, neither have anything to gain by mis-statements in a case of this kind," he said blandly. "You didn't happen to notice them in the room on your return from the library? I mean, before Florence came in?"

Tangye started. He cast a quick, furtive, look at Pointer and then at the woman.

"No," Miss Saunders said very composedly. "I do not think they were there then."

Pointer was apparently bending over a table near him, but he saw the hard, suspicious stare that Tangye gave the speaker. She returned it with something of defiance. There was a silence which the detective officer did not break. Here was no love affair, he thought. Whatever had been in the past, these two did not like, did not trust, each other now.

He wondered why Tangye seemed so unwilling to link the lost keys with the lost money. The stockbroker did not strike him as a clever man outside of his own walk of life. If there. Though Pointer had a feeling, had had it from the first, that Tangye's path was beset—at least to the man's own thinking—with pitfalls. That he was afraid of saying one unweighed word, one hasty conclusion.

"She invested it, you may be sure," Regina Saunders said, turning towards the door, "but it's most distressing for every one until it's found. Olive's already given notice. Florence wants to leave when she does. Cook's looking out for a new post. I'm afraid, Mr. Tangye, that you won't be able to keep the house running many more days." She left them at that, with a cool nod apiece. Tangye looked after her without saying anything. There was a set to his full mouth which was not easy to read.

"I should like to see the maids, please—alone."

Olive came in first. She had told Pointer already that she had not seen the keys since just before lunch yesterday, and then in Mrs. Tangye's hands. Mrs. Tangye was in her bedroom at the time talking to Miss Saunders.

He had not asked for further details then. Now, he did. Olive was quite sure that she had heard the door of the safe shut and locked as she went on down the stairs, dusting the banisters. No other lock in the house sounded like a safe lock, she maintained, and Pointer privately agreed with her. Miss Saunders and Mrs. Tangye had passed her a moment later, going in to their lunch.

"Had they been quarrelling, do you think?"

"Oh, no, sir. Mrs. Tangye was looking quite calm. She was saying something like 'I can't help that, Miss Saunders. By this evening, if you please.'"

"And Miss Saunders?"

"Oh, she said nothing, sir. But she gave her a look as she stepped behind her for to pass. It was a look that said 'Just you wait; my lady!' if ever one did."

"Mustn't make too much out of a glance, Olive," Pointer said lightly.

"But you see, sir, Miss Saunders—she has a way of getting even with you. You can't tell yourself how she does it. If the mistress had lived—but there!" Olive stopped herself or tried to, then she burst out, "If Mrs. Tangye had lived, Miss Saunders wouldn't be acting as if she was mistress here. But there!" Again she pulled herself up. "We're leaving. It won't matter to Flo and me."

"Why are you leaving?"

Her voice faltered.

"I can't stand it, sir. I'm not so sure as I was that it was an accident. The more I thinks it over the more I feel as though there was something—something—not quite right about the mistress's end, sir. It's thinking about those footsteps does it."

"You've no other reason for leaving?"

"I've nothing to complain of, sir. But how can I stay on in a house where there's a room I can't abear to enter, and a garden I can't pass through without it gives me a turn."

"The garden too?"

"Oh yes, sir! I never go through it without hearing those footsteps coming up behind me same as they come up behind the poor mistress. Seems as though they was after me too."

Looking at her pale face, Pointer thought it high time that she left.

"Have you any place in your mind?"

"Well, sir, Florence thinks—"

Pointer laughed.

"I'm quite sure she does. And so does Cook. But I want to know what you are going to do."

"I'm to go to Lady Ash, sir, and Flo is to come too, later on. It was Miss Barbara as settled it. I'm glad to be going there. There won't be nothing to be frightened of in a house where Miss Barbara is."

"Ash? Wasn't that the name of the partner of Mr. Branscombe, Mrs. Tangye's first husband?"

"That's the lady, sir. They live just over the bridge in Kew. She's a friend of Mrs. Tangye's. But Miss Barbara, she never comes here. She's on the committee of the G.F.S. That's how I know her. She's a dear, Miss Barbara is I I'm going at the end of the week."

"Miss Saunders is leaving Riverview too, I understand?" Olive looked surprised.

"Florence thinks—" she caught herself up and laughed for the first time since Pointer had heard her.

"To think of not being allowed to speak of me own sister, sir! But that's Flo on the stairs now."

She really had quick ears. And accurate ones. Florence stepped in a moment later, and took her place.

"It's a dreadful idea about some money being missing, sir," she began earnestly, "I don't like to stay in a place where there's been a loss like that. None of us do. But what had we ought to do, sir?"

Pointer advised her to stay on until she could go to her next place.

"No one suspects you, or any of the servants," he reassured her, keeping the qualifying "so far" to himself. "But Florence, there's something that may have a bearing on this money, which you haven't told us."

"I, sir? Oh, I'm sure I've told you everything I could think of!"

Pointer hoped she had not been quite so thorough as that. "It's about this quarrel between Mrs. and Mr. Tangye on Monday when he didn't stay to dinner."

"But there wasn't any quarrel, sir."

"Oh, yes, there was! Over—well, to be quite frank with you, I wouldn't say this to every one, mind, we heard it was over some one—a gentleman—whom Mrs. Tangye had known before, who used to write to her, and meet her now and then on the quiet."

Pointer looked inquiringly at Florence. She was shocked. "Oh, sir what a thing to say! And Mrs. Tangye not even buried yet!" Apparently there was a close time for scandal.

"We know she wasn't very fond of her husband," Pointer spoke as though half sorry for what he had said.

"Then you know more'n me, begging your pardon. Anyway, that's no reason for thinking that of her. She wasn't that sort. Not at all!"

"Yet there was a quarrel," Pointer spoke as though he knew what he was only guessing. "Was it connected with Miss Saunders, do you think? We've been told that Mrs. Tangye was sometimes a little jealous of her."

"My goodness! Whatever for?" Florence opened amazed eyes. "Why, Mrs. Tangye was twenty times handsomer! And whatever her faults, the mistress had a heart. Miss Saunders hasn't any heart. Cruel unkind she can be, if she thinks she dare."

"Oh, we were told that Mr. Tangye—"