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

The Assistant Commissioner had paid no heed to the little scene.

"Yes, Cockburn's tricked us," he muttered in anguish after the others, still silent under the spell of what they had heard, had gone.

"He's done us, right enough, at the end. He'll die a nice, quiet death before the hour's over. Why the devil didn't you keep your feet under you, Pointer? It's not like you, of all men!"

"It's not as bad as you think, sir," Pointer interrupted tranquilly. "We noticed that Mr. Cockburn began wearing a ring just after Miss Charteris's death, so naturally, as a matter of routine, we had it examined that first time the casts of the hands were taken."

He did not explain that that was the sole reason for that performance. Even superiors need not know everything until the last day.

"The room was so tight, that the rings were put on that ledge behind there. A sliding panel had been cut in the back, and to-day, while the typewriters in the outer room clicked like hall-stones on a tin roof, the pearl that we had made was substituted for the other. Mr. Cockburn swallowed a small black ball of properly prepared flavoured soap enclosed in glass. When he discovers the truth, I shouldn't wonder if there was quite a storm scene."

And there was.

Table of Contents Table of Contents The Eames-Erskine Case The Eames-Erskine Case Table of Contents The Charteris Mystery The Charteris Mystery Table of Contents The Footsteps That Stopped The Footsteps That Stopped Table of Contents The Clifford Affair The Cluny Problem The Wedding Chest Mystery The Craig Poisoning Mystery The Tall House Mystery Tragedy at Beechcroft The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces Scarecrow Mystery at the Rectory

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

Table of Contents

"I THINK I'll go on up to Riverview." Chief Inspector Pointer, one of the Big Five of New Scotland Yard, laid down the report which he was reading. "Yes, I think I'd like to see the house where yesterday the mistress was found shot, the companion seems to've been endowed with second sight, and where a caller apparently dissolved into air."

Superintendent Haviland stared at him blankly, and then around his own Twickenham police station.

"The coroner's verdict was 'Death by misadventure," he said finally, glancing at the clock as though to assure himself that that was only half an hour ago. "Of course, as I was just saying to Mr. Wilmot here, the verdict's all wrong, but it was the only possible one according to the witnesses. Perhaps it's just as well. It sounds better than 'suicide,' for the relatives."

They were talking of the death of Mrs. Tangye who had been found, yesterday afternoon, sitting dead beside her tea-table, with a service-revolver lying on the floor beside her, and a bullet from it through her heart. The Webley was a souvenir of her days as an officer in the Waacs during the last year of the war, and was kept on a bracket in the room. Her husband had explained to the Coroner that his wife had recently spoken of having her initials engraved on it. He suggested that she must have been looking it over with that in her mind when she had met with her fatal accident. The Coroner thought this sounded highly probable. There was no question at the inquest, or before it, of foul play. To say that there was no sign of a struggle, hardly did justice to the ordered neatness of the room and the dead woman. She wore at neck and wrist fine lace frills which would have torn at a touch. The very material of her new gray velvet frock was as spotless and smooth as when she had slipped into it after lunch. The bullet fitted the revolver. The only finger-prints on the butt were those of the dead woman. Apart from these facts, Mrs. Tangye was the last person to sit tamely in a chair and let any one press a weapon against her breast, as the blackened frock, as well as the autopsy, showed must have been done. She was a good shot. She had once in France put a bullet through a drunken Annamite's foot with most unrattled precision.

The chair on which she was found was a fragile, gilt affair which she favoured for making tea. Any struggle, and over it would have gone. It was not so much as scratched. Behind her stood a none too firmly placed electric stand-lamp. It too would have crashed very easily. On the table beside her lay a china bell-push. The bell was in perfect order, and had not been rung.

Nothing was reported missing. Her purse lay in her handbag with over five pounds in it on a chair in the room. The French windows were said to have been found locked from the inside. The servants were certain that no one could have entered the house unnoticed between four, the hour when Florence, the parlour-maid, had brought in the tea-things and seen her mistress alive, and six, when she had made the terrible discovery.

No sound of a shot had been heard, and yet the revolver bore no marks of a silencer. It was thought that it must have gone off when some noisy vehicle was passing.

All the friends of Mrs. Tangye with whom the police had been able to get into touch agreed that she had seemed in the best of spirits, and that the suicide was out of the question.

She was thirty-five, and even the gossipy circle could not hint at any entanglement on her part.

Yet Haviland, the Twickenham police Superintendent, did believe that it had been a case of suicide. For on the day before her death Mrs. Tangye had sent off a large trunk of clothes to the Salvation Army leaving out for herself only the garment she was wearing. And yesterday, the fatal day, she had spent some hours destroying all her private papers.

"What on earth do you mean, Pointer?" Wilmot, the third man, asked curiously. "I've seldom listened to duller evidence. But I suppose I'm prejudiced. Naturally, as a newspaper man, I had hoped for something more worth while, more—"

The door flew open. A young man dashed in. Nodded to Wilmot and Haviland. Shot a discreet glance at Pointer. Seated himself in front of a battered typewriter in one corner, and began a spirited imitation of a machine-gun in action.

Pointer looked at him.

It was a pleasant glance, and Newnes was one of the youngest reporters on the Staff of the Daily Courier, but he interpreted it correctly.

"Let me see to-morrow's sun rise!" he pleaded. "I was the first person called in by Mrs. Tangye's maid, you know. And this is my last will and testament concerning her. You needn't caution me to print nothing without permission. I'm more than discreet. I'm dull."

The men laughed.

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling your story again. I wasn't at the inquest." Pointer settled himself in a chair.

Newnes, like all his craft, minded nothing but exclusion. He began at once:

"Yesterday afternoon, about six, I had just strolled over Richmond Bridge, when a maid rushed out of one of the big houses screaming, 'A doctor! Help! Help! She's dead!'

"Behind her in the doorway stood another woman, who called to the first to 'Come back, Florence! Come back at once!'

"I thought if 'she' was dead, I couldn't do much harm. So I said 'Hold on. I'm half a doctor. Let's see what's wrong.'

"'She's killed herself. Oh, she's dead! Come in and see what you can do for her, sir. Oh, the poor mistress!'

"I took her by the arm and walked her back to the door again, where the other woman, who turned out to be Mrs. Tangye's companion, was still standing. I explained that I had been a medical student (I didn't add that it was only for two months) and that perhaps I could do as well as anybody. 'Quite as well.' She said as coolly as you please: 'There's been an accident. Mrs. Tangye has shot herself. I think no one ought to go in till I've telephoned to the police. Better give that hysterical girl something to quiet her meanwhile.'