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

Harris sent him in to have "something from Mrs. Harris," after he had made quite sure that Jim could not identify the man.

"We don't need identification beyond what he heard," Pointer said at once "The echo that Jim heard spoken about was, of course, the Italian for here!'—Ecco! This only bears out what we know already, but it does explain as well why the count decided to leave so hurriedly."

"Once he knew or heard that that pendant was found he was up a tree!" Superintendent Harris agreed, locking the stone carefully away in the safe. "The chief told me that on Saturday the count had spoken of a large reward he wanted to offer for this stone, and then on Monday morning he had dropped in to say that on the whole he thought he would postpone the offer till he heard from his father."

"Just so," Pointer stared at his boot tips. "His flinging that stone at Jim here is all of a piece with his slashing Miss Charteris's portrait, with his dropping a pebble or two on her coffin, with his trampling on the flowers that she had worn in the studio, and which came off as she scrambled out of the window, I suppose, or which she took off when she flung her knitted frock on over the other. Yes, the count both wanted, and feared, to get that stone back. If he could lay his hands on it again without any risk of it leaking out how and when he had flung it away, he wanted it back in safe keeping. But as soon as he remembered that the man at whom he had dashed it in his mad fury at ten on Thursday night might bring it to the police instead of to him, he decided to let sleeping dogs lie. So that was why he insisted at the inquest and afterwards on the fact that it was of no value whatever. Not of much value, perhaps, but of considerable danger—to him!"

"I see it all now." Harris spoke as though the sight were rather pleasant, compared with some mental visions which had been vouchsafed him lately.

A telephone inquiry confirmed Pointer. Di Monti's rooms were empty. Master and man had gone, and had their luggage, conveyed piecemeal to cleaners and bootmakers by the astute valet to be re-assembled elsewhere, and packed in new valises.

Pointer had hardly rung off when his telephone tinkled again.

"Chief Inspector Pointer wanted. Mr. Gilchrist speaking."

Speaking, apparently, from the context both as coroner and as the Charteris's family solicitor.

"I acted on your suggestion, and managed to reach Miss Jones, the professor's secretary, who was on a walking tour in Devon. She went up to his club last night and fetched his correspondence. The hall porter knows her, and that she is empowered by the professor himself to take charge of any letters in an emergency."

"Good!" said Pointer, for there is no place in the world more inviolable than the letter-rack of a club, and within the august portals of the Athenum, Scotland Yard's highest were lower than the youngest buttons.

"If you care to step in this morning about eleven," Mr. Gilchrist went on "she'll be here with the letters and you can have a look at them."

Pointer was prompt to the minute. He found Miss. Jones to be an intelligent, middle-aged woman, evidently devoted to her employer and his interests.

"Here is a letter which the professor has sent, addressed to himself and sealed, in another covering-envelope, also so addressed." Gilchrist handed it over to be looked at.

"He often sends me private papers in that way," Miss. Jones explained, as had Sibella before. "I put them in his desk, just as they are, till his return."

Pointer saw a long envelope, looking much the worse for wear, having evidently been folded across the middle, sealed with black wax, and addressed to Professor H. Charteris.

"Where's the envelope it came in?" he asked.

Miss Jones fished it out of the waste-paper basket.

It was addressed to the professor at his club, and had been sent from Milan on the Friday that Rose had been found murdered.

The handwriting on the outer envelope was not Professor Charteris's, but Miss Jones explained that his eyesight being weak when he had mislaid his glasses, which occurred every five minutes, he would commission the nearest-at-hand waiter, or hall-porter, to address an envelope for him.

"You have not heard from him otherwise in any way?"

She had not. Like the solicitor, she was not in the least anxious on account of the silence, though the latter was beginning to think it time that Charteris should come across the daily advertisement asking him to wire or write, if he could not come to England.

"I should like to examine this a little more closely." Pointer still held the long envelope with the black seals. "I should like to photograph it at my rooms."

"Short of opening it, you're welcome to do whatever you think fit," Gilchrist said heartily. "The rest are a couple of circulars of no importance."

Pointer, in his own rooms at the police station, tried the little fragments of black sealing-wax that he had found in the professor's envelope that he had fished out of Rose's chain bag and taken from the table in the studio. He found that they were not too numerous to have dropped off the seals if the letter had been carried about for some hours.

He believed, from the envelope's frayed look, that this was the same letter that had been posted to England once before, reaching Rose on Thursday at tea-time, and which had not been seen since her death. There was still a faint fragrance lingering about the flap that matched the perfume in her bag. The description tallied absolutely. He looked up the trains in Bradshaw. It was now Saturday.

Suppose some one left London by the boat train either Thursday night or even Friday morning and his Paris-Milan express was on time, then he would have an hour in Milan station in which to post the letter back again in the returning Milan-Paris express.

That looked as though some one had taken the letter by mistake, or accident, and posted it from Italy in order to make it seem as though the professor were sending it. In that case, it must be some one who knew that the professor had sent it, to his daughter in the first place, but that she was now dead.

Suppose that he, Pointer, were right, and that Rose had taken it with her in her little bag to the studio, had noticed it when there, and, taking it out, had laid it on the table by the door, in a place where she thought that she could not overlook it on leaving, had forgotten it in her hurried dash when she heard the furious Italian at the front door. Suppose that di Monti, finding Rose gone, had swooped on the proof of her presence in the room. Pointer imagined that he might intend to keep it to confront her with. But after her murder the letter would be very incriminating evidence. Yet, however violent, di Monti was a gentleman. He might kill, but Pointer could not see him tampering with correspondence.

Pointer imagined him giving the letter to a friend. In all likelihood to a brother of the Prince Cornaro who had confirmed the count's alibi. For Scotland Yard knew that young Prince Amadeo Cornaro had left early on Friday morning for Italy. Certainly the envelope must have been returned by some one who knew of the professor's little way of sending securely fastened letters back to himself.

Pointer photographed the envelope. There were no signs of its having been tampered with in any way Or rather, to his microscopic scrutiny, it showed many little proofs that it had not been opened.

With a thin, warm knife he sliced off the seals, and then steamed open the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper, headed, in the professor's writing, "Memo on Refractions." Below came couple of lines of figures and equations.

Pointer photographed the paper and fastened the envelope up again exactly as it had been. When the wax was cold he returned it to Gilchrist, who put it with the professor's private papers.