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

"Sunday?" Vardon seemed puzzled. "At a concert in the Albert Hall."

"Meet any friends?"

"No."

"Did you go alone?"

"Yes."

"And Monday afternoon?"

"Writing letters in my diggings."

"And Tuesday afternoon, from four to six?"

Vardon waited a moment as though to be quite sure.

"I did a lot of strolling through shops generally," he said vaguely.

"You were seen near Twickenham on a motor-bicycle about five," Pointer said suddenly. "Can you explain that?"

"I was thinking of calling on a friend who lives out that way. Then I changed my mind. Half decided to call on Mrs. Tangye and ask a question about the sending off the rest of the money. Thought better of that, too. Decided that I was too wrought up to think clearly, and roamed the shops instead, chiefly the Army and Navy stores."

"Just so. But may I ask why you didn't mention this trip across the river just now? Why you didn't tell it me voluntarily?"

The worm turned.

"Does any one ever tell anything voluntarily to the police?" Vardon asked, and Pointer's eye acknowledged the hit. "You didn't go to Riverview itself last Tuesday?"

"I only wish I had." Vardon leant forward. "I looked at my watch as I crossed Richmond Bridge. It was a little before five. Had I gone on, it might have made all the difference. A chat sometimes does."

"Were you on friendly terms with Mrs. Tangye?'

"I'd never met her before. She came up last Tuesday unannounced. As she came in she introduced herself."

"I see. You never went to see your cousin after his marriage?"

Vardon played with the covers of the book beside him. He had the true artist's hands. Small-boned, slender.

"Once. Our parents had not been on good terms. He was much older than I. By chance Mrs. Branscombe was out that day. Just as, by chance, I was in South America when they married, and at sea the day he died."

"Mrs. Tangye was different, you say, from what you expected?"

"Rather!"

"And how was it that you had so clear an idea of what she would be like? Since you had never met her?"

"Oh—well—I had heard of her, you know. Got an impression of a rather masterful character—"

"I see." Pointer looked at his boot tips as he sat resting his head on one hand. "Have you written to Mrs. Tangye lately?" Pointer asked next.

Vardon hesitated. Palpably.

"I think I've said all on the subject that I care to say, for the present," he said finally.

"So you did write? You did ask her for money? You see, I've no intention of being unnecessarily prying, but we know that you came home from South America some ten months ago now, and approached various people in the city with a view to interesting them in some proposition of yours. Now it seems likely that you would have mentioned the matter to the woman who had inherited all your cousin's money. Was the proposition a gold mine, as they say?"

"In a way. I'm afraid I can't discuss it with you." There was a silence. "Don't think I'm keeping anything back that can help you." Vardon went on quickly, "to my mind, what will help you best, would be to make you realise Mrs. Tangye's whole manner on Tuesday. She struck me as being in a most extraordinary—I don't know what to call it—moodstate of mind? She was paying me one thousand five hundred pounds in ready money. Not being a rich woman, that must have meant something to her. It did to me, by Jove. Yet she gave me a feeling that she wanted to get it over, and be at something else. I doubt if ever such a large sum was given to a totally unexpecting person with such casual speed." For the first time Vardon smiled a little. "She tugged the envelope out of her handbag and handed it to me..."

"One moment! Was it already in an envelope? I mean didn't she have to separate it from any other notes?"

"No. She had two envelopes. The other looked about the same size. She handed me the one without looking at it. She asked me to count the money. I could hardly see. I had to count it four times, and each time it added up to something different. So I let it go at that, and pretended to find it correct. I had to almost hold on to her to get her to sit down and write that note saying that it was a loan, before she was out of the room in a sort of whirl of hurry and flurry. I felt that way, of course. I had a hundred things to do. But I should have expected Mrs. Tangye, or any woman, to talk a lot. Give me some good advice. Ask questions as to how it would be first applied. But no. All the business part of the interview I had to force on her. She acted as though she had handed me a ticket for Peter Pan. I can't explain it except by her intending to kill herself."

"What makes you so sure?"

"This gift of the money, for one thing. I didn't see it at the time in that light, naturally, but above all, her manner, her air of being done with things. Finished with them. I can't express clearly what made me think that. For, after that loan of the money, the rest was a confused jumble, but the impression was made very clearly.

"One thing I'm certain of. If it wasn't suicide, then it was accident. Mrs. Tangye struck me as just the kind of woman to have an accident with a weapon. She was very hasty in her movements. Very impatient. I can imagine her snatching at something that caught in her laces, and giving a pull. Thank God, if the shot had to be fatal, at least, it was instantaneous." And at that Varden walked to the window to raise it.

As he did so, he all but tripped. It was but a second's catch in his step, but Pointer, like Wilmot, thought of those words of the maid.

"And what exactly was it that made you change your mind on Tuesday about going on to see her? When you were so near Riverview."

"I thought it seemed rather ridiculous. Like an interchange of state visits. She had been to see me at three. I to run in to see her at five. I didn't want her to think that I was going to sit in her pocket."

"You didn't pass the house?"

"No."

"Do you know the companion at Riverview?"

Vardon started. Whether because of the question, or because his mind was on something else, it was impossible to tell.

"No."

"My I ask the name of the friend who lives out Twickenham way?"

"You may not. Sorry."

Pointer was fairly certain that it was Barbara Ash.

"Mr. Vardon, we want nothing in the world, nothing," Pointer spoke very convincingly, "but to get at the truth about the death of Mrs. Tangye. That's the only reason, I assure you, why I ask unpleasant questions, dig up uncomfortable things, and generally make myself a confounded nuisance. The only things I'm interested in, the only things I remember, are what help on the search. A search for truth, remember. Truth and justice. Nothing else.

"You say you think Mrs. Tangye's death was a suicide. I don't. But if you could convince yourself that we don't want you, or any man, unless he's guilty, we might be able to help each other.

"If you're guilty, of course you must do the best for yourself you can. I think I should get you in the end," Pointer gave the other a knife-like look. "But if you're innocent, I assure you that no one—not even the girl you were going to see Tuesday 'out Twickenham way,' can want more earnestly to prove you so. For that means a step nearer to the right man, the guilty man."

It was a long speech for Pointer. But it had done its work—apparently. Vardon seemed in a more friendly mood. "You mean I'm as suspect as all that?"

"Frankly, things look very black against you."

"But how could there be a murder here? Why? Mrs. Tangye wasn't the kind of a woman to stir people to violent emotion either way, I should have thought. She seemed a nice, warm-hearted, hot-tempered, high-spirited woman."

Why hot-tempered and high-spirited, Pointer wondered.