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

Di Monti listened with eyes on his hands, which were clasped lightly on the hilt of his sword. About his mouth was a suggestion of reverie. Once only he looked up. Across to a little hunchback standing in the back row line of starred ribbons across his narrow chest, neatly in a waiter's black. The man caught the glance. Up and out shot a toil-worn hand in a salute at once friend and proud. A comrade saluting a comrade.

Di Monti's harsh mouth softened for a second. Straight back to crippled back he and this man had stood, never expecting to see more of life than clubbed rifle butts whirling in the air, and stabbing bayonets and Monti's own flashing, dripping, broken sword.

Suddenly di Monti turned and caught sight of Pointer. The Italian was singing, and he finished the line without a tremor of his strident voice.

Then he stepped back.

"A word with you in private," Pointer said quickly.

"Impossible."

"Then in public."

"Impossible. If it comes to words—one from me and you would be torn to pieces."

"Costly pieces, Count di Monti," Pointer said coldly. "I think the price would ruin your party." Pointer jaw was well to the fore. Di Monti stared at him and he stared back. The chairman turned questioningly.

"This gentleman brings me a message of congratulation from London, and some very urgent news," di Monti explained to him. "May I be excused a moment?"

They slipped out of a side door. Some one filled in the gap with a speech, some one else started La Giovanezza , the song of youth, the song of the Fascisti, and then more speeches.

Finally di Monti came in again. He was very pale. As for Pointer, he walked away from the hotel deep in thought. Di Monti had sworn solemnly to him that he was innocent of the murder of Rose Charteris, that he was caught in a web of circumstantial evidence possibly, but that he was not guilty. His desperate attack on Pointer's life made the assertion ring false, but the count maintained that that had been simply a way of gaining time until his own election should be ratified. He did not stoop to try to pass it off as less than it was—an attempted brutal murder, but he insisted that he had had an anonymous letter from England, warning him that Pointer was going to have him detained at once, pending an extradition order, which Scotland Yard had already applied for. Pointer had stood awhile, looking at his boot-tips.

"If I go straight to your Duce with the account of what happened to me this morning, where will you be?"

Di Monti was very pale. He said nothing.

"If you will give me your word of honour—I will trust it—to come to England any time within the next ten days, I shall be silent on that point. If you do not give me your word, I go to Signor Mussolini at once, and you will be arrested at once," Pointer went on.

Flight again for di Monti was out of the question. He would not try to escape from his own country, his new position. Both men knew as much.

"You mean that I am to come to England to be arrested for the murder of Miss Charteris?" di Monti asked slowly.

"That's as may be. Even so, you would have a chance of proving your innocence, a chance of an acquittal. You will have none if I go to your chief with the story of what has just happened to me at the Castello. I have witnesses who helped me to get out."

"I might have known that you wouldn't come alone!" di Monti said bitterly. He walked up and down the room for some minutes. "I must agree. I give you my word of honour as an officer and a gentleman to come if you summon me within ten days."

"Not necessarily to be arrested." Pointer did not want a suicide; and di Monti was capable of anything. "Possibly merely to help the case."

Di Monti gave him a long look, and uncovered his teeth in an incredulous smile, then, with a curt nod, he returned to the council room, and Pointer walked on downstairs.

He dismissed the young Italian from his mind for the time being. Pointer wanted to find the professor. Rose's father might hold the key to the whole involved series of events which had taken place that Thursday night at Stillwater. Di Monti said that he had not been near his family. As he was quite willing for Pointer to check that statement by a talk with his father, the Chief Inspector accepted his word.

That registered letter that Rose had received had been sent from Bolzano. To Bolzano, Pointer was therefore bound.

He telephoned to the old count. A telephone message obtained a hearing often when a caller was kept waiting. He spoke of himself over the wire as Gilchrist, Professor Charteris's family solicitor. Had the professor made any arrangement to stay with Count di Monti? A feeble voice told him that the professor had. He was to have come to Verona to the Palazzo di Monti on May first, and spend the week-end there. But he had telephoned from Genoa earlier, asking whether his visit could be put forward a week, as otherwise he must give it up. It had not been possible for the count to do this, much as he regretted the fact. There the matter had rested. The voice of the old man showed that he thought himself somewhat summarily treated, for he had had no word from his once-invited guest of explanation or apology.

Pointer caught the night train up to Bolzano. He had much to think about as the train wound up beside the Adige.

The next morning he woke to true Bolzano weather, though the year was unusually cold. May, as a rule, is hot in this wonderful little spot of Europe where north and south meet, where the grape ripens under the pine trees, where the same valley can show glacier and coral formations. Pointer liked Bolzano. Though he thought its old name of Bozen suited it better. There is something angular and wooden about the Tirol word that goes with the gables, and turrets, and arched passages of the busy town, where the swifts swoop like hounds on the scent down the main streets, dodging under the elbows of passers-by, and chasing each other like children at tag through the arcades.

The professor stopped at the Hotel Laurin.

Pointer knew by inquiries made already from England that he had arrived on the Sunday before Rose's death, alone, and had left, alone, the next day. His only luggage had been a suit-case, which he had sent to the station early on Monday morning, saying that it was to be forwarded to Meranoo.

Pointer found that it had been duly forwarded and fetched from the latter station. Either the professor, or some one else, had handed in the scontrino and been given the bag. But who had produced that voucher?

Pointer's first walk was to the Bolzano post-office, where he verified the registered letter sent off on the Monday before Rose's death, some twelve days ago now.

He was shown the duplicate slip, which stated:

Assegno L. —Charteris. Hotel Laurin.

Destnario —Charteris. Medchester.

The hour, Pointer learnt, must have been before noon, as at that time the clerks had been changed, and the one in whose writing the slip was made out had gone off duty for the day.

At the hotel he learnt that the professor had shown no preference either for people or for solitude. Some of his meals he had taken in the dining room, some in his own bedroom. Apparently he had acted like any ordinary traveller.

Pointer began to be more certain than ever that the murderer had made a mistake, that he had expected that registered letter's enclosure to contain—what?

What was it, what could it have been, that might have been enclosed instead of that memo, that might have been wanted by some one who thought that some important piece of news might have been sent to the daughter by the father, news so important that at all costs to the receiver, at all risks to the criminal, it must be prevented from being passed on?

Where was the professor? What had happened to him between Bolzano and his promised visit to Meranoo?