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

Like the other two, Professor Orison had carried the camera away with him.

So it was a Lux that Tangye had bought. What had become of it? Pointer had already sent a man down with careful instructions to Norfolk, to the house where Tangye had week-ended. He had learnt that the stockbroker had only been absent from the shooting-party from early on Sunday till the evening.

He knew too, that Tangye had arrived at North Walsingham with a camera, because the railway porter had identified his portrait as that of one of Mr. Riddell's guests who had brought one with him on his arrival on Saturday, and refused to let him, the porter, carry it even as far as the car. When the same man left for town, Monday noon, he had no camera with him. A footman at the house, too, was quite sure that Mr. Tangye had left on Sunday morning with his camera in the car beside him, and had not brought it back on his return in the late afternoon. He said that Tangye had spoken as though he intended making a present of it to a lady, and was only testing it first, he supposed that the stockbroker had done so on the Sunday.

Detective Inspector Watts represented himself as sent from the photographic dealers to whom Tangye had complained of a faulty lens. They maintained that the camera must have had a bad fall after it left their hands, and he, Watts, wanted to trace the camera's movements very carefully. Pointer sat a moment gazing across the river running beneath his windows.

That youngish, sunburnt-looking man at Exmouth—Vaguely the description would have passed for Oliver Headly—supposing Oliver to be alive. He took up his pen. It seemed a hopeless quest, but instructions were sent to the Exmouth constabulary to do their best. They were furnished with portraits of the man as he had been twenty years ago. The photographs from Fez were no good here, for that man had undoubtedly been stood against a wall by a firing-party. Then came the last of the three purchasers—Professor Orison.

Pointer had heard of him as one of the smart lads of the moment. A lecturer in duchesses' drawing-rooms on the Power of the Mind. For all that his erudition, like his degree, was laughed at by scholars.

Pointer had seen him a couple of times. At a royal garden party. At a ducal wedding. Orison was a striking figure. Thin, elderly, bent, with a face like a wrinkled glove in which burned two dark, keen eyes beneath tufted white brows. He claimed to be of noble Polish descent on his mother's side, and wore a long drooping Polish moustache, and a Paderewski-like mop of fine silvery hair. He even spoke with a Polish accent.

Pointer turned to Who's Who, and learnt that Drummond Orison, Ph.D. of Palmyra, U.S.A., the son of a physician, had been born in Brussels some seventy years ago. That he had travelled a great deal, especially in the East. That he had, never married. That he now lived in Hampstead, and that his recreations were "Thinking and butterfly catching." That his publications included two volumes on "The Quantum Theory as applied to Mind," and other books of a like ilk. All of them fairly recent publications.

To any one but Pointer it would have seemed a blameless record. Even a Lux camera might have passed as innocent in such hands, but the Professor had bought it last Monday, and in Folkstone—Folkestone, the end of the railway line on which Tunbridge Wells lies!

Pointer marked his report with a sign that meant that the thinker's home was to be the object of special, but very discreet attention by the policemen who passed it, and that the passing of it should be included in their programme as often as possible.

He added in his neat legible writing that the Folkestone salesman should be skilfully tapped for possible further details of last Sunday evening. Then he wrote out some instructions for his own C.I.D. and wound up by cabling to his confreres in Brussels for particulars of Orison's life while there.

Pointer's man had already learnt that the Professor had apparently spent last Sunday afternoon travelling to Folkestone, and Monday and Tuesday in his study at Hampstead.

All seemed quite as it should be, bar that untimely purchase of a camera. But Pointer took no one at his face value. Or at least very few people.

It was now high time to drive off for Tangye's office. Pointer was shown in at once. Tangye met him with some impatience.

"Some important development, I suppose? Since you've asked me to lose a week-end in town."

"The case is developing," Pointer assured him a little grimly, "but do you think it's quite fair to your old clerk to let him in for perjury? For a criminal prosecution? We have a very reliable witness who saw you during five to six last Tuesday—not here in your office."

"Impossible!" Tangye said fiercely, "a damned lie!"

"What was in that package, sir, that you were seen carrying out of the tradesmen's gate at Riverview about half-past five?"

Tangye seemed to shrink into his clothes. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the edge of the writing-table.

"I tell you I wasn't near the place," he began to bluster. "Mistaken identity!"

"Independent witnesses," Pointer bluffed back.

Tangye rose, and Pointer had to take his leave; to find Haviland waiting for him in his room at the Yard. The Superintendent had had a chat with Mrs. Bligh's maid. Tangye had brought the camera in question with him when he came to lunch at Tunbridge on Sunday. The maid explained that her mistress then expected to be invited on a certain yachting cruise to Egypt, and since her hostessto-be was a keen photographer, she had asked Tangye to buy her the best camera for temples and indoor work, and to show her how to use it.

"But she either lost it, or it didn't please her, or something. Anyway, she didn't have it with her when she came home. Nor he neither. I know, for I went out to the car. There wasn't any camera in it," the maid explained.

In the course of further conversation she let it drop that at the best of times Mrs. Bligh was not a lady who permitted questions, and that since she had not received the invitation in question, it would be as much as the maid's life was worth to speak of photography in any form.

Pointer had already had a private note issued to all photographic dealers, second-hand shops, and even to all dustmen in town, asking them to watch out for a large box-camera which might have been left for repairs, or been thrown out, broken up. So far nothing had resulted. He had not thought that it would.

What had become of Tangye's—or Mrs. Bligh'scamera? Duly entering its absence in his notes of the case, he turned to some other work, but within an hour there came another message over the 'phone from the stockbroker. Would Pointer make it convenient to see him again at his office?

It was a very chastened Tangye who was speaking.

Pointer dropped everything and hurried into the city. Tangye shook hands almost eagerly.

"So glad I could catch you. I wanted to see you again at once. I want to—er—modify—er—In fact, I've a damned unpleasant statement to make." He spoke as though it were the fault of the detective-officer, then he got himself in hand again. "It's about my alibi. There's no use trying to throw dust in your eyes, I find."

Pointer thought that bricks rather than dust had been used, but he only bowed.

"As a matter of fact," Tangye avoided Pointer's placid gaze, "I spent part of those two hours which interest you so much with Miss Saunders, in the Old Deer Park."

Tangye went on to tell of an appeal to him on Tuesday from his wife's companion after she had received notice to leave Riverview at once. They had met in the Park, talked it over until at half-past five, he had driven back to his office to see what could be done.

"Miss Saunders, of course, will bear out every word of this," he finished.