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

Pointer left the three to a dreary silence, and drove off.

"So he really had a real bag and a real paper from Mrs. Tangye," Wilmot murmured when he dropped in at the Yard in answer to a telephone message from Pointer.

"And the latter fact interested him far less than his uncertainty as to whether something else was, or was not in the bag."

"Perhaps he was acting?"

"He was far too absorbed in finding out what was in the bag—and what was not. So am I therefore."

"Pretty wide field." Wilmot gave his little smile, "I mean, what might have been in the bag, and wasn't."

"Pretty wide, but not illimitable."

"Well, of course, as a matter of fact, it would have to be something the bag would contain." Haviland had managed to make time to be present at the interview too.

Wilmot at once agreed that that would shut out certain articles.

"And I can see the objections to it being a live animal, or a gas, or a liquid," the newspaper man went on suavely. "But even so, the field seems pretty wide for guesswork. Pray, how do you start, Pointer?"

"Something like this: Vardon expected to find something in that bag that wasn't there. He did not look in the least worried, or regretful at its absence, and was on the whole, thankful not to find it.

"So, evidently it was something that would have made his position worse. That is to say, that would have thrown a deeper suspicion on him.

"While his fingers actually passed by the sheet of paper we all wanted to see, the one he claims Mrs. Tangye wrote when she gave him the money, they kept searching the pockets in the bag's lining. Pockets that would only admit of papers. He stared first and hardest at a long envelope-which proved to contain his cheque-book. He pulled it half out while he thought we were all busy with the paper. As soon as he had a clear view of its top, he thrust it back. The address was away from him. It was an unopened envelope evidently, but of the same long, narrow shape, that's the danger. He eyed the remaining papers and books but he didn't take any up."

"Securities?" asked Wilmot, "do you think he is missing anything of that kind?"

"I don't think it's money. Vardon didn't look as he would have done if anything on which he had counted were missing, let alone anything for the sake of which he might be supposed to've committed a crime. And the oddest thing is he didn't know whether it was there or not. It's not a case of something missing in the ordinary sense. There aren't many things which would fit the facts. He doesn't seem to be nervy of it turning up anywhere else, whatever 'it' is. At least, he has made no efforts to go back on his tracks in any way."

"That's his cunning!" came from Haviland.

Pointer rose. His minutes were valuable.

He himself was off to Vardon's late lodgings in Fulham. An Inspector of his had been there and found nothing. Watts could be trusted, yet Pointer felt that something had escaped his eye, as it must have Haviland's. But he came down to the ground floor in the draughty house with nothing scored. The rooms, still empty, were detective proof.

"Mr. Vardon can't come himself," he explained to the frowsy manageress, who seemed to think that a pearl necklace, which would have staggered a Romanoff, went particularly well with a woollen pullover. "But he's afraid he's left something behind. I couldn't quite make out what, over the telephone. Something about a paper..."

She shook her head.

"Not here. He's lost it somewhere else. Mislaid it like as not. He reely was too rushed to notice what he was doing last Tuesday."

"Yes, he took all his luggage with him," she went on in answer to a question of the Chief Inspector's. "A new cabin trunk; old trunk for the hold, a suit case and a bag."

That was the tally. Pointer tried again.

"Still he misses something, and thinks it was left here. I couldn't make out over the 'phone just what as I say. How about an overcoat, or a hat, or a cane even, left in the hall stand?"

She made a motion with her hand and ran down to a semi-basement, negotiating the holes in the carpet with the skill of a pilot among familiar buoys. A moment later she called up:

"Here's his top-coat. His old one. He was wearing a new one when he left. He must have forgotten this. It's his, all right. I mended those pockets for him once myself." Pointer laid it over his arm and thanked her. Then he stayed on chatting. He learnt nothing about the artist from the woman. Vardon's had been a quiet, unobtrusive figure in the house, liked, but hardly noticed.

He switched the talk to Mrs. Tangye's accidental death. The manageress remembered reading the case in the papers. She had had no idea that her late lodger knew the lady.

"He more than knew her. He was a relation. There's a regular family row raging just now because he says he wasn't told of her death till he saw it in the papers. The family say that one of 'em came here that same evening—last Tuesday—and left a message for him."

Pointer wanted to find out whether the keys found in Vardon's luggage might have been left on his table, as he alleged, though not necessarily by Mrs. Tangye. Florence was still as certain as ever that she had noticed them on the desk at Riverview at four—after Mrs. Tangye's last outing.

"I didn't hear of any message. But, of course, in a house like this..."

"Under a management like this," Pointer amended mentally.

"Still, if any one at all called last Tuesday evening, it would likely have been about the death. I expect it was a lady," he hazarded.

"A lady did call here last Tuesday for Vardon"—a young man lounged in for some change for the telephone. "She waited in a car outside for him. As I came up the steps she bent forward and asked me, if by chance, I knew whether Mr. Vardon were in. I glanced up at his windows, saw a light, and told her he was. She sat back with a grunt—but without a thankee."

"Pretty woman? Young? Fair-haired?"

"Look here! I'm off!" the stranger backed out laughing. "No, no! It's all right. She's a rising cinema star. Is she as pretty as they say?"

"If she's a star, she belongs to the Milky Way. The face I had a glimpse of wasn't one to fill the stalls."

"About twenty?" persisted Pointer.

"Times two!"

The Chief Inspector looked disappointed.

"Oh, you mean his cousin! Thin, hatched-faced type, with small dark eyes?" Pointer went on to describe Miss Saunders very accurately though apparently casually.

"That's her!"

"Well, of course then he's right. And he wasn't told. She—his cousin;—wouldn't know either. Not at that hour. I take it it was about eight?"

"About."

"I wonder she waited for him. I wouldn't. Vardon's such a careless chap. I dare say she had to sit on for another hour."

"No. I heard him come running down only a few minutes later and the car buzz off. My rooms are below his."

"I'll bet he was still wrestling with his tie as they drove away," laughed Pointer. But the other had not looked out of his window.

The manageress knew nothing more. No one in the house knew more. Pointer shook the patently expectant hand, raised his hat, pressed the starter, and let in the clutch in one co-ordinated action. There was a paper in the inner pocket of the coat. It felt like a letter.

In a quiet square he examined his find. It was a long, official-looking envelope addressed to, "The Registrar of Wills, Somerset House, London."

With his penkife he raised the flap which was stuck down but not sealed. He drew out a will. By it Mable Tangye left everything of which she should die possessed, to Philip Vardon, cousin of the late Clive Branscombe, and appointed him sole executor.

The will was on a form obtainable at any stationer's. Below the printed matter was written in Mable Tangye's writing, but a singularly uneven writing—that she requested Philip Vardon, if possible, not to withdraw the ten thousand pounds invested in Harold Tangye's firm for at least two years, unless the stockbroker had pre-deceased him.