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

The colonel breathed hard

"God forgive me, yes. Horrible! But it seemed necessary. Mrs. Lane knelt and said a prayer before we left. Then we walked back by the main road. I wheeled the carrier to close behind the garage. Mrs. Lane crumpled up Rose's bed. Then we took my son, and the rug we had used for Rose, away in Thornton's big car, which Mrs. Lane got him to lend her without asking the reason. My own was too difficult to get out, with Wilkins sleeping overhead, and too noisy. Mrs. Lane blurred over the tracks we made in the lane in a little two-seater afterwards. We drove to a Doctor Bodley, who had suggested the Genoa sun cure and knew the whole story. He rang up Sir Martin Martineau's home, and arranged matters so that nothing should leak out. My boy's whole future was at stake. At least, we thought nothing had leaked out, but—"

"It didn't leak out! We only learnt what we know as the result of quite a bit of—eh—routine work," Pointer assured him.

"He had an operation," the colonel continued. "The surgeons found a splinter of steel from that old shell wound pressing on the brain. The motor accident had only aggravated it. He's as right as rain now, with no more chance of any trouble of that kind. But you know all this. You know the whole story. According to you, I shan't have to break his heart by telling him that he—" suddenly Colonel Scarlett's eyes fairly seemed to turn to glass. "There's no mistake?" he asked in a croaking, harsh voice. "There isn't a catch somewhere? You know Reggie is innocent?"

Pointer nodded. "I do, sir."

The colonel relaxed again. He sank back into his chair and drew a couple if deep breaths. That had been an awful moment just now, when he had wondered if this were a police trap.

"But who was the murderer? Who was it? Of course I know it was no tramp—but, for God's sake, who did it? Not—not the count?"

Pointer did not reply.

"And afterwards, sir?"

"We got back before any one was up, and spent the time making sure, as we thought, that no traces had been left. As early as I dared, I cut down the branches of the tree below the outlook where my poor niece had gone crashing through. They were badly broken. I gave out that I had had an accident with the ladder, but that no one was to do anything to the place until further orders."

There was a short silence.

"The difficulty will be," Pointer said slowly, and studying his boot-tips as though they might have a word to say on the subject, too, "the difficulty will be, how to keep all this part of it out of the trial. I don't mind telling you that the criminal is going to be arrested shortly. But about this moving of the body from the summer house—the chief commissioner thinks with me that we had better deny all knowledge of that. It's up to the murderer to prove who did shift the dead girl. It won't alter the verdict one way or another. I think I can go bail, that, without the help of Scotland Yard, no one will be able to get at the truth. So silence on your part, sir, is the best thing."

The colonel agreed forcefully.

"And now, sir, I'm sorry to tell you that Professor Charteris has met with an accident while in the Dolomites. The exact explanation comes into my fuller report, but I think you should know at once that you brother-in-law is dead."

The colonel was deeply shocked. He had had a hard time lately, and he was very fond of the professor.

"Climbing accident, I suppose," he muttered after some minutes, "and there, too—when he didn't turn up. I wondered if my poor son—that cable of the Genoese doctors terrified me, Pointer, as I've never been terrified before. You do hear of such things when it's a question of homicidal mania. That was why I had some Italian papers sent to me—to learn if—if—he stopped—"

"You took the letter of the professor's to his daughter that accompanied the enclosure, didn't you, sir?" Pointer prompted again.

"Yes. It was in Italian. I was nervy that nothing should leak out about Genoa. The professor has—had—the kindest heart in the world, but he was a dreadful chap to let things slip out. And Rose had a way of leaving her letters around. The word Genoa hit me in the eye. And I took it till I could have some one skim through it, and tell me if it were safe. I meant to get Sir Henry to just run it through for me, but he wasn't in. Then Mrs. Lane suggested that she could do it. She bought a dictionary in Medchester and worked it out on Thursday night in a restaurant near by. She only slipped into the concert hall at the very end. Of course, we intended to return the letter to my niece at once that was why the hurry—if there was nothing about my son in it. But next morning—I'm afraid I don't know what's become of that letter. Mrs. Lane doesn't remember what she did with it either—"

"And Miss Charteris's papers—you didn't take them, I suppose?"

"Take them? Surely the police took them. I went through them first, I confess, to see if any of my son's letters were there. He was a bit in love with my niece. That's why I pressed for the di Monti engagement before Reggie should come home on sick leave, before matters got so bad with his head that he had to go to that 'cure'. I didn't want a marriage between them. Cousins. Apart from—well, many things. I knew Bellairs wasn't a marrying man. But one thing did strike me, Pointer. There wasn't a line of her father's among her papers. I had put all his letters to me in my safe in the city when I went up to town that Friday, just in case of any reference to my son, but what became of his to her. I can't imagine."

Pointer could. He knew. He rose to his feet now.

"And Lady Maxwell? Why did you act the day of the funeral as though you—well—were disturbed by her presence?"

Colonel Scarlett flushed.

"Between ourselves, if a woman could marry a man against his will, I should be a re-married man. See?"

Pointer saw.

"Also I wasn't sure that she had heard or seen nothing that Thursday night."

"And Miss Scarlett, does she know?"

"Trust a mere girl with facts that could ruin her brother's whole future? My dear fellow, Sibella couldn't keep a secret to save her life! My only terror was lest she should guess, or had guessed, something of the truth. I was afraid she had. I suppose I can't ask how in the world you found it all out?"

"Just routine work, sir. I went wildly astray about those broken flower pots at first. You would have done much better to've confided in us from the start, though I will acknowledge that in this case the position was difficult for you."

"Difficult? It was damnable. But I still don't see how you got on to my son's presence in Europe, when the Nairobi papers reported his progress week by week around Mombassa."

"It was something I heard in town, after I got on the track of a man having been taken to the nursing home."

And the colonel never knew that it was the kiss that he had given Mrs. Lane which had first opened Pointer's eyes to the true, the only possible explanation.

A man does not kiss a woman with whom he is not in love, and Pointer was certain that there neither was, nor ever had been, any love between the colonel and his lady-housekeeper, because a man whom one, or both, has badly injured is safely in a nursing home. Gratitude alone, he thought, could explain that little scene. A sudden burst of gratitude for loyal help. Scarlett had no male relatives but his son. Granted it could be that son, which it apparently could not be, then all became coherent. The operation suggested brain trouble. That suggested some epileptic-like seizure, which explained the singular way the plants were broken, the lashing of arms and legs on the stone flags. Pointer attacked the apparent proof of the commissioner's presence in Uganda. Found he could pierce it, and had the facts worried out for him while he was in Italy. He had read the report in Paris. Now the last lap was in sight Pointer's heart beat quicker as he entered the middle room. The business of taking the imprints of each man's fists was done exactly as on the first day, except that there was no accident this time. The typewriters of the constables in the outer room drowned all possibility of talking, until Pointer sent out word, asking them to defer, their activities until later in the day. The two commissioners came in as they were finishing.