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

Pointer thought of that room that he had just left. Supposing the search there, and the murder at Stillwater to be connected, what was the object that had been hunted for in the Professor's rooms? It was something that could be hidden in a book as well as in a jar. A piece of paper probably. Possibly a letter. But why should it have been thought to be hidden?

Those words which Rose had been murmuring as she turned over her letters last night, were they connected with this hunt? "Where can I have put it? What have I done with it?"

The daughter killed. The father's rooms searched as soon as possible after it.

Pointer had noticed the Airedale kept at the house in town. A night attack of the position would have had to reckon with him. And he looked a ready reckoner.

None of Professor Charteris's letters were to be found in Rose's rooms or in Colonel Scarlett's study. Had they been taken? Stolen? And their loss not yet noticed? Did some one think that among them might be found what was sought for?

If that hunt of the Professor's rooms were not chance timed, it suggested urgency. That suggested—

Pointer thought of the empty, long, envelope which had found beneath the tea-table that had been in use yesterday. It came from her father. "Brown" had had a chat with the postman. It was the last letter that Rose had received from the Professor. Father and daughter seemed linked by this search in town.

When Pointer arrived at Stillwater House he found the police inquiries in full swing. Superintendent Harris had finished with the servants, and the colonel, and was just about to ask Mrs. Lane to come to the library.

Harris had learnt no new facts, but he told Pointer that the colonel took full responsibility for Mrs. Lane. He had assured Harris that he had had a personal recommendation of the very highest with her, from the lady whom she had been a companion for some years, as well as a life-long friend. The lady was the late Mrs. Seymour, widow of a former Bishop of Zanzibar.

Pointer had watched both Mrs. Lane and Sibella Scarlett very closely at the inquest. One of them must have played a part in the strange drama of Thursday night. One, or both. He had been struck by the fact that each told a story so like the other's. That the younger, like the elder woman, had taken up an attitude of absolute stillness and taciturnity, volunteering nothing, and striding all answers to the barely essential; that the elder woman, like the younger, would not dot an i or cross a t until she had made quite sure to what words they belong. Yet the two were essentially different characters. One would have expected them to react differently.

Pointer pigeon-holed both under the heading, "Capable of Anything." But the "Anything" of Mrs. Lane would he thought, only be what she herself had decided on, after careful weighing of all the consequences. Once she had made up her mind, he would expect her to go on unflinchingly to the end. A dangerous type, in connection with a crime.

Sibella's "Anything" would be of a different calibre.

Literally anything to which she was moved. Anything to which her strange personality might incline. If Mrs. Lane could be dangerous because of her energy, coolness, and courage, Sibella might be still more so by virtue of her incalculability, and the smouldering fires which he felt sure were deep within her.

Mrs. Lane looked very composed as she sat facing him. She answered all questions with more readiness than she had shown at the inquest. But Pointer purposely kept to the same round.

Rose had not lingered after the dinner, which, on account of the concert, had been at half-past seven. Mrs. Lane had not seen her since she passed the drawing-room and declined coffee.

As to where she had spent the evening, the lady suggested that doubtless Rose had spent it in her own room, as she often did. The maid had seen her in the gray frock, Pointer threw in lightly. Upon which Mrs. Lane suggested that Rose might have changed for an evening stroll in the grounds or down to the village.

Sibella was next asked to come into the big, comfortable room. She had nothing fresh to add apparently, to what she had said at the inquest.

Pointer asked her finally whether Rose Charteris had heard from her father lately.

Sibella said that her cousin had received a registered letter from him, from Italy, only on Thursday. It had come while they were at the tea-table.

Could she describe it at all?

Long and narrow. Red sealing-wax. Inside was a note for Rose, and another enclosed letter.

Could she say what became of it?

Rose read the note, put it back in its envelope, an laid it on top of some weeklies under the tea-table.

And the enclosure. Could she describe that?

It was another longish envelope, sealed with black sealing wax, and with a name written on it. This Rose doubled in half, and stuffed into the silver chain bag on her lap. Sibella thought that both the writing and the name on this enclosed letter were those of Professor Charteris himself, though she could not be sure.

She went on to explain that while away on his travel her uncle would occasionally send any very private note or memoranda back to himself in sealed, addressed envelopes. He generally enclosed these to his secretary in town, but sometimes to Rose at Stillwater. As a rule the accompanying note would merely ask that the envelop be laid in a certain drawer in his desk, at either place where they would accumulate till his return. But some times later directions would request that the enclosure be sent on to some given address.

Rose was very careful of her father's correspondence. If neither the enclosed letter, nor the note to herself had been seen since her death, she had probably destroyed the one—Rose rarely kept letters—and had dealt with the enclosure as suggested. Sibella described the first as being a half sheet of white paper with some hotel heading a the top.

Pointer had gone piece by piece on Friday morning through the paper baskets and dust bins of Stillwater House, on the plea of having torn up some valuable instructions. He had the envelope, but he had found no trace of any such letter to Rose, any more than of its enclosure. He thought that Sibella, however, was absolutely frank about the whole occurrence, whereas Mrs. Lane, when recalled and questioned, though she confirmed the other's account, showed a meticulous care to answer only what she was asked that suggested caution.

Paul, too, had very much the same to say. But the colonel professed absolute ignorance of the whole matter.

Sibella had hardly left the three police officials when di Monti was announced.

Superintendent Harris glanced at his watch.

"He's to the minute. He tapped me on the shoulder coming out of the courthouse, and asked for a word. So I gave him an appointment for here and now."

Di Monti looked very striking as he strode into the English room with its soft colouring, and stood in its cool spring light, he, a creature of a fiercer sun and of far darker shadows.

His hair, with the waved, floating top locks of a Fascist shone like black satin, springing up from his rather sloping forehead in an impetuous push. His eyes, with the heavy lids, clear-cut like those of a Holbein drawing, were as impenetrably black as ever. Of that shade that never, lightens, never changes The harsh lips were a trifle tense, the heavy jaw well to the fore. He carried himself, as always, with a steel-spring erectness. When he sat, he sat as though on wires.

" Complementi, Signori! I have come to speak to you about something which, unimportant before, is now of great importance. I think the maid was right. I know she was. I feel sure my engaged had something on her mind, especially the day before yesterday. Her last day." He closed on a tone of deep sorrow.