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

"If you care to come down with me in my car to a town called Medchester, I'll spin you a yarn. It's a hop, skip and jump affair, or I would wait and have supper here. Just let me send off some telephone messages first."

O'Connor doubled his long legs in beside his friend and Pointer drove off for the Barnet road.

He gave the other a brief summary of the facts as they sped along. When he got to the marks on the green balustrade of the summer house, O'Connor struck. "You think she was killed there? Flung off the top of that lookout?"

Pointer nodded "I do."

"Was she as lovely as the papers make out?" the Irish man asked irrelevantly.

Pointer slowed up for a second and handed him a photograph that he had annexed. O'Connor stared at it.

There is something infinitely touching in beauty, in spite of all that saw or tale may say of its deceitful quality, the heart knows better. Knows the contrary.

Knows that here before it is Truth, is Abiding Reality. Is a message faint and dim, which the soul has managed to get through to mind, or body, or character—rarely to all three—and of which we see but the blurred record.

O'Connor handed back the portrait without a comment. He looked moved.

"Glad it's you! You'll get him yet, or her! But what beats me is why was the body moved? Sure it was a perfectly good accident. She just overbalanced herself. I call it a capital murder. Why botch it by taking her off to the sand-pit? It looks inexplicable, it does that—so far as you've told me the story."

"And so far as I know the story. I found the carrier later on which she was moved. It's practically a shed door mounted on a pair of old-fashioned bicycle wheels. A man pushed it, a woman walked behind, steadying it."

"A woman! It must be a woman in a million to stand in with such a crime! And where's the motive?" demanded O'Connor, as though Pointer had it in his pocket. "Jealousy, of course," he assured himself, "though it's a bit carefully worked out for that. Yet that might depend on the man—" His voice faded off into thought.

"Now, Jim," Pointer said briskly, "that's the end of the links that fit together, even though poorly. Here comes a jumble of odd bits. And odd, they are!"

He told of the blood in between the wiped tiles of the broken flower-pots.

"A fearful struggle must have taken place on that same side of the summer house last night. But what sort of a struggle? The plants aren't trodden into the earth, except a few found stuffed into the stove. The rest were broken off horizontally. A lasso? It's a fantastic thought, but so's the nature of the damage done. You'd expect a powerful snake to leave traces like that, supposing some one had tried to capture it."

O'Connor sat rigid.

"Another tragedy, or attempted tragedy?" he asked finally.

Pointer pursed his lips.

"You think it was the murderer and the girl herself?" O'Connor asked under his breath. "Sure that would be a terrible thought! A lovely young thing like that, struggling for her life within a stone's throw of home, and help and then losing it."

"I don't believe it happened that way." Pointer looked far ahead of him. "Apart from anything else, I can't think her face would look as peaceful as it does, if death hadn't been instantaneous. The doctors will tell us that at the inquest for certain, of course, but I think she was looking up at the sky when the end came. I'm sure I hope so. For bear in mind that the girl hasn't a scratch on face or hands, except such as would be made by the branches of a tree on one wrist, nor her frock a crumple bar that cut-out place. But none the less, the fact remains that an awful tussle of some sort went on close to where she fell."

"Could the struggle have come first, and she got away, rushed up those outside stairs you spoke of, got to the top, and then been flung over by whoever was after her?" O'Connor was intensely interested.

"Then why didn't she cry out?" Pointer asked. "If it was some one else, why didn't they shout for help? The damage looks as though done by men. Footprints, as we mean the word, there are none, but still... Now, as I see it, this is a sort of side-show, for it took place after the murder, but it evidently occupies some vital place in the mystery, or why is nothing known about the man or his fate. To my mind, he is in all probability connected with a letter that the colonel received at lunch on Wednesday, and thought afterwards had blown out of his study window, and been picked up by the under-gardener. Thornton spoke of the colonel's marked discomposure when he read it. Suppose that letter, which so upset him, was to say that some one, some enemy likely, was coming on to see him. Perhaps it was a friend's warning. No post gets in at that time. I take it it was sent by hand, though I haven't been able to find out yet. Perhaps it was written by the man himself. At any rate, let's say that Scarlett expects him some evening soon, which is why he makes no move to put up any visitors, and, as I've learnt from Maud, Miss Charteris's maid, was exceedingly annoyed that Lady Maxwell was asked down by his niece for over the week-end. I think he expected some one. And those marks on the flagging rather suggest that he made his arrangements accordingly."

"Big man, I suppose, the colonel?" O'Connor asked.

"Fair. Bit overweighted, but quite powerful in an emergency. Now as to the unknown himself, the murderer or another victim, I can't see yet which he stands for. He lies down on the bed. Apparently till a certain time, or till a signal is given."

"Ah ha! That shot!" breathed O'Connor.

"Seems so. Still, that lying down is odd. As far as time goes, he could have been the murderer all right. But in that case—" Pointer gave a short impatient movement to his head, like a horse tossing his bit.

"The bits of cord you found pointed to binding," O'Connor said thoughtfully, "probably to gagging also. Was the man gagged immediately he stepped out of the summer house, was he bound, nearly got free from his bonds and fought on a losing battle, unable to call for help?"

"I doubt if any gagged man could have put up such fight. Besides, if he could have struggled like that, he could have loosened the gag. And then, what about the lateral break of so many of the plants. You asked why the girl was moved." Pointer drove on in silence for minute. "Well, there's only one easy guess, so doubtless it's the wrong one. But one might think that the murderer was seen by the man in the summer house. Knew that he had been seen. Moved the body of that poor child to the sandpit just in case—and carried off the man."

"How?" asked O'Connor.

"He was driven off in Thornton's large car."

"By Thornton?"

"Ah, if I knew that! But I don't, yet. All I know so far is that the man was taken away in that car of his bound, and presumably gagged."

"And how does the pencil come in?"

Pointer told him where he had found it. "I think it dropped from some medical man's pocket as he stooped to lift out the man, on his arrival."

"That's why you set your myrmidons on to investigating last night's arrivals at all the hospitals and nursing homes of London before we left?"

Pointer nodded.

"Why not try mortuaries?" O'Connor asked.

Pointer only shook his head.

"Unless he were already dead," mused the Irishman, "that cord looks as though the man was not to be killed outright. Why? Pity? Hardly. Something which he knew, and was to be made to tell?"

"Ah," Pointer nodded, "now you're making for the same place as I am. Something, possibly, for which he's to be nursed back to life in secret. And that's as far as I've got yet. And here's as far as you get, Jim. An up-train's due in ten minutes. So long." And Pointer unceremoniously dropped his friend, at Medchester railway station.

It was midnight when he slipped out of Red Gates and up to the big house again. He expected to find work enough there to last him till morning.