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

"What country did he belong to, do you think?"

"Frenchy, I shouldn't wonder, though more like Eye-talian."

"He didn't speak to you?"

"No, though he wore half-minded to do it. Ay, and more than speak to one. He gives me a look from those black eyes of his as though he would 'a liked to've flayed the skin off me bones to make me tell him summat I wanted to know. But he thought better o't. He can bide his time, can that young gentleman, and 'tis more than thick fleece would be necessary to keep him from getting his teeth into ye, if he wore so minded."

Table of Contents

POINTER left Harris talking to the shepherd and walked on. The first house he came to was set back behind some cedars, but it had two gates opening on to the common, and would have been in full view of the ruins were it not for a deep bend in the road and some tall trees. An obliging postman had told him already that it was Mr. Bellairs's studio.

He swung the gate open and looked around him. There was no one about. The windows, of the bungalow-like building were all shuttered. Close to the front steps was a patch of grease and oil. A car must have stood there a couple of days ago. The path was too narrow for its wheels to mark the gravel; The knocker next interested the caller. Some one had nearly wrenched it off. And long ago. Pointer opened the door with one of his own keys.

The studio itself was a black and white and gold affair, superbly lit from behind a gilt cornice.

In front of one of the four fireplaces a black rug made an oasis, on which gilt Bergère chairs with thick black satin cushions stood around a gilt table.

Pointer walked the black and white marble squares of floor carefully, looking them over inch by inch.

He heard steps outside. Superintendent Harris had followed him, and was breathless with shocked amazement at this infringement of a fellow-Briton's castle.

"I'm glad the inspector isn't with us. You big-wigs of the Yard are the limit!" He looked fearfully about him. "Not a search warrant between the pair of us!"

Pointer swept a flake of black sealing-wax on to a sheet of paper and examined it. It matched the other dots that he had found in Rose's chain bag and in the empty registered envelope beneath the tea-table.

Then he began examining the built-in cupboards. In one was a black and gold Spanish tray set with gleaming amber glass. There were peaches, and strawberries, and a few macaroons. A small decanter with some Château Yquem, a beautiful crystal jug, evidently intended for water, and a couple of glasses, finished the preparations.

"I don't call that much of a spread," Harris said "Not for a young lady, I don't. Just a bite for himself, I fancy. Nothing's been eaten, I see."

Pointer thought that the tray showed a very good knowledge of Rose Charteris's tastes. She never touched wine, she never ate cake, and the fruit was perfect. But he continued his search without speaking.

"Looking for anything in particular?"'Harris asked.

"Miss Charteris's portrait."

"Eh?" Harris almost dropped the tray.

"Well, a studio suggests a painting. So does an R.A.," Pointer went on casually. "Suppose she was here to have her portrait painted, that might explain that pretty, frock under the knitted dress, and yet the fact that she didn't bother about shoes and stockings to match. It's the only explanation that I can see. I rather expect to find the picture damaged," he went on, half to himself.

It certainly was. Some one had hacked at it till it hung from the stretcher in ribbons, and then stuffed the whole behind a black velvet screen.

Rose's face in particular had been cut and cut again. There was something cruel about the way that the damage been done. It suggested a ferocious pleasure. But nothing could undo the fact that it was a three-quarter size painting of Miss Charteris.

In her pale peach silk frock with a knot of pink and the camellias on one shoulder tied with silver, and another gleam of silver at one hip, she sat in a gilt arm-chair, her white shoulders coming up like a tea rose from gold shadows around her. One hand toyed with a line of deep purple amethysts that ran around her neck on to her knee. The men gazed long at it. Bellairs caught something of a Rose whom even the superintendent had never seen. The young face was turned up, a wistful, eager, inquiring gaze, and the effect, considering the darkness even then about to close around that head, was tragic.

Harris's eyes were dim as he moved away.

"It doesn't seem possible," Pointer said at length, "that the man who painted this had anything to do with the murder of the girl there on that canvas. No, it doesn't seem possible."

"Mr. Bellairs gave my boy Arty French lessons, and helped him to get his first place in town." The superintendent spoke as though that clinched the certainty of the young man's innocence.

"My boy Arty" lay with many another father's only son in one of those corners of France that are for ever England, but to the superintendent he still lived on.

"As for the picture, painted by Bellairs right enough, but signed by—" Pointer began wrapping the torn picture in paper.

"Signed?" asked the literal Harris.

"Someone learns of these meetings," Pointer went on, "and gets them to open that front door at last. Then the canvas is chopped up. Now I wonder who would be likely to do all that?" He looked at Harris with a smile.

"Sort of thing one might expect of the count." Harris began to think that he, too, might have distinguished himself in the detective line.

Pointer was off again, continuing his search of the room. He stopped before one of the windows by the side door. The pulley arrangement was out of order. Some one had not waited to find out which acorn, the black or the gold, would open the heavy velvet curtains, but had jerked them apart, and the cords almost off the eyelets. He looked at the sill and then at the other window-sills. Only one showed those newly-made scratchings.

Stooping, he picked up an amethyst bead, and an opened link of silver chain. He examined the catch of the casement window.

"Looks as if she caught her chain of beads on that as she jumped out of the window—probably at the time that the Count was performing his fantasia on the front door. I wonder how she made her way home?" Pointer mused.

"I particularly questioned Maud about Miss Rose's shoes when she saw her at ten, as you told me," Harris put in. "She says they were quite clean."

"That means some one must have taken her home in a car. There were no taxis going begging Thursday night in Medchester, because of the concert. And, by the way, Harris, I wish you'd ask about, and find out, who really saw Miss Scarlett or Mrs. Lane there, and whether at the beginning, middle, or end of the entertainment. Try Doctor Metcalfe."

Harris's eyes bulged his question.

"Oh, just as a matter of routine. Just to check off all statements."

Harris made a note of it.

"It wouldn't be Miss Scarlett, in any case, who drove her cousin home," he assured the other. "She never drives at night. Too timid. Mrs. Lane now, she likes a bit of a risk all right."

Pointer thought of the garden mould on Sibella's shoe-buckles. But he went on with his work, testing each piece of furniture by laying hold of the back, and shaking it vigorously. When he did this to the table, a leg promptly parted company.

Harris, with a householder's feeling for another's property, would have stooped with an exclamation, but Pointer grasped his arm.

"Hold hard a minute. Your finger-prints aren't wanted, old chap!" Pointer lifted the leg as though it were a blazing faggot, and looked carefully at the break. It had been wrenched off the table, and very recently. He tested it for finger-prints and smiled a little as he looked at them.