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

The enlargements showed that his keen eyes had been right. The grip was a most singular one. The tips had clutched the revolver no harder than the palm of the hand. If as hard. But Pointer could not believe that such a shock as a bullet through the heart sends to every atom of the body, would not have contracted the hand sharply. Here, all had been even—flaccid. The only really strong pressure shown had been made by the palm and the bases of the fingers.

Pointer could think of but one explanation to that. An explanation so terrible that he must make sure that it really was the only one. Or at least, as sure as possible.

He looked long at his boot-tips. Then he studied the photographs again. But this time of the scratches on the revolver. They looked freshly made. Though in a weapon kept in a closed box that might not mean much. Apparently at some time or other the weapon had been bounced up and down among a lot of metal oddments. But that is not usually a Webley's fate, even unloaded. Nor did they look erratic enough for that. The enlargements showed him that two small marks were exactly duplicated on both sides. And the trigger had a central rake which did not extend to the bevelled edge. But for the finger-prints, it looked as though the trigger had been fired by some mechanical means. He thought of the missing key-ring. The mark on the trigger could well have been made by a ring snapped back.

But apart from probability, was there even the possibility of such a plan as that would mean, having been carried out here? The marks on the Webley puzzled Pointer, but not so much as the fact that it had been fired actually touching the woman's dress, pressed against her breast. This was the real kernel of the problem. How could a revolver have been got as near as that by any hand but her own, without alarming Mrs. Tangye? Haviland and Wilmot were one in saying that here lay the proof of accident, or suicide. And to crown all, as Haviland pointed out, the Webley must have been held very level. No hasty swing, or chance pointing of a weapon, this, if it were a crime. Full front, level with her heart, touching her dress.

And the bell beneath her nimble fingers had not even rung! It was a riddle. Granted that the firer was an intimate friend, companion, husband even, how could they have got that weapon so close against her? There had been no struggle. Pointer agreed with the upholders of the suicide, or accident theories on that.

He slipped out across the hall and stood a moment by the smoking-room door. Haviland had interpreted his glance correctly and was leading Tangye on to discuss past and present men to whom he had given odd jobs about the house and who might therefore, be labelled possible suspects.

Pointer heard the gush of the soda water, and Haviland's "I don't mind if I do, sir," and returned to his own problem.

He locked the door behind him and took a turn up and down the room. He felt as though he were faced by a stone wall, on the other side of which lay his goal. Somehow, or other he would get over or break through.

The fine poise of his head, the set of his jaw became more pronounced. Danger signals both with him.

It was the photograph of the dead woman herself, which he stood in front of him this time. Square and at her ease she sat in her light chair, feet together, one hand, fingers up, on her knee, the other extended limply down with the revolver on the floor below it. Why did she sit beside, not turned towards her tea-table?

Pointer did not believe that she had been moved after death. Yet there was something artificial about her pose which had struck him from the first. Something arranged...Something set...Set!

Pointer had an idea. She looked as though posed for her portrait. Suppose she had been!

Suppose the revolver had been hidden in a box-camera, and that Mrs. Tangye had been asked to sit for her picture.

That would explain her position. Straight on her chair, facing into the room where the murderer would be pretending to focus her. The composed and yet stiff attitude of her body, especially of her feet. It would also explain the scratches on the revolver.

Pointer imagined an emptied box-camera, fitted with a few wires to hold the revolver. Its muzzle pressed against the hole in front where the lens would have been taken away.

The click of the shutter at the side could be made to pull the trigger by the simplest of mechanical arrangements, such as a ring passed through a stout elastic band.

Pointer imagined the murderer asking for a portrait of the seated womn. Coming close and apparently focussing her in the "finder." Then suddenly advancing the box with a rush, and sending the bullet straight through her heart, almost noiselessly.

As he saw it, the murderer at once picked up Mrs. Tangye's left hand, rubbed it lightly with butter from the muffin dish, he had used his handkerchief probably, and then, pressed it around the weapon as much as possible as a living woman would have done, had she fired it. Then he had dropped the hand. It was a most artistic performance, but, as almost inevitable, just a shade over-acted. He had been a little too prodigal with the butter. He had pressed the palm a little too closely on the revolver.

Those footsteps in the garden, the "footsteps that stopped"...Pointer did not think the murderer would be late for his appointment. Rather the other way. Suppose he had been waiting in the garden till the exact time set. When Mrs. Tangye walked out into the darkness he might well have thought that a still better variant of the original idea was possible. The camera packed probably with asbestos shavings, would deaden the sound of any bullet—even if fired when all was still. There is always a certain risk in an indoors murder that some one may enter, and the crime be prevented, or suspicions aroused, or the murderer be caught red-handed. Pointer thought that those steps outside on the gravel path which the maids had heard coming closer, closer yet to Mrs. Tangye, might well have belonged to the murderer stalking his prey, until Florence's unexpected turning on of the light had stopped him, and told him that, after all, it would be best to proceed according to plan.

But whose steps were they? Whose? Man's or woman's? It was a devilishly ingenious idea. Who had thought it out, and carried it out? It could be any one, provided he, or she, had some excuse for taking Mrs. Tangye's photograph. There was Oliver Headly? He fitted many of the spaces very well indeed. Was he back in England? He had been an orchid-hunter at one time. It was to an orchid show that Mrs. Tangye had gone on Sunday. Had the cousins met at Tunbridge Wells? Had a reconciliation of sorts taken place?

There was Miss Saunders...There was Tangye—Pointer thought of the glance which they had exchanged just now. Some understanding was between them. Her belief that Tangye had something to do with his wife's death must rest on some foundation, or Tangye would not be so reluctant to take a high hand about the money which he claimed was missing. For that Tangye suspected the woman of having stolen the money, Pointer was certain. His alibi was not what Pointer considered a good one. Like a middling hand at Bridge, it was neither bad enough to pass, nor good enough to bid on. All depended on what other cards might fit in with it.

And that quarrel with his wife. Her ordering of him out of the house which legally was hers. Tangye's face showed a temper that could, if let loose, be violent enough. He had used a Webley in the war. He reaped an immediate reward in the cessation of the double premiums, in the payment of the Insurance money, as well as in the control of his wife's invested funds.

Yes, Tangye stood to gain tremendously by his wife's death. In more ways than one, if gossip were true. One thing was certain. Whoever had killed Mrs. Tangye knew that the heralded visit of Mrs. Cranbourn was a bluff. The Chief Inspector did not believe that they would have chanced it otherwise.