“Mrs. Norbury?” Pointer asked, as Pelham went to meet him.
Pelham shook his head.
Norbury came up and told again of the strange incident of the postman and of the savage blow that had stunned him.
“It looks to me as though my wife might have seen the incident, recognized the man perhaps, and been laid out too,” he finished.
“Or heard of it, and got frightened,” Pointer suggested. “Suppose we all go round the farm calling out that everything’s all right. That there’s no danger in her coming out now? Has anyone questioned Miss Blythe? From one of her windows she may have seen Mrs. Norbury.”
“Miss Blythe!” called Norbury instantly.
Out over the balcony leant Miss Blythe in prompt response. The men stared at her in bewilderment. This was not Miss Blythe, surely! This was her younger and very pretty sister. As to whether she had seen Mrs. Norbury after lunch, Edna said that she had—quite latish. She had seen her going out of the gates dressed as though for a call—that way! She pointed.
“What did I tell you, Norbury?” said Rackstraw triumphantly.” I knew it!”
For answer there was a shout of: “That’s the man! There he is! Halte là!” Norbury fired as he shouted. He was a very good shot indeed, but he only hit the branch of an old olive tree, for Pointer had struck his arm up with his walking stick.
“Don’t fire at that scarecrow, Norbury—your wife’s inside!”
Pointer shot Pelham a meaning glance as he let go Norbury’s arm which he had grasped.
There was a gasp from the men around, as Pointer strode to the scarecrow. They saw him cut the rope-bracelets and gather up the extraordinary figure in his arms.
“It’s Mrs. Norbury, all right!” he added to the others, “she’s fainted.”
At that moment two cars swung in through the gates. His burden in his arms, Pointer wheeled to face them. Pelham tightened his grasp of Norbury, who asked him what the devil he meant by keeping him away from his wife.
But the commissaire getting out of the first car saved Pelham a reply. One swift glance expressed polite surprise at finding the chief inspector holding the farm scarecrow tenderly in his arms. But Pointer silently made for the dining-room, while the men from the second car grouped themselves around Norbury.
“In the Name of the Law,” said the commissaire. “On sworn information I detain you, Frank Norbury, for the murder in England of John Inskipp on the fifteenth of January. You will be handed over to the representative of British justice in due course, and be taken to England to stand your trial. Vive la République.”
Like a wild animal’s was Norbury’s leap for the orchard.
Pelham had been utterly taken by surprise. He had held Norbury back to save him from danger, not because of any suspicion of him. Now he would have rushed forward but Pointer’s calm voice through the dining-room windows checked him. “Better leave it to them, Pelham!” The chief inspector knew how susceptible the French can be, when it is a question of an arrest on French soil. It was a pity that the others were too far off to have a chance of stopping the running man, for the police had made the mistake of thinking of Norbury—in spite of the accusation against him—as the Norbury whom they had hitherto known. They had left a place open in their circle, and he had dashed through. Pointer felt sure that he was making for some definite objective known only to himself, prepared by himself within the last couple of hours for this emergency—improbable though it had seemed. A ladder against a wall somewhere, and a car on the other side he rightly guessed, and once in the car, there would be scant hope of capture, with Italy so close. Norbury would know the frontier twists and turns like any smuggler. He would be sure to have plenty of friends among those gentry, too, on both sides of the frontier. Once let him get clear of the farm, and he stood a very good chance of escape. He was running, too, like a trained athlete. Pointer bent over the scarecrow that he had laid on the sofa. So he did not see the tall figure that rose suddenly in front of Norbury and closed with him just before he reached the hedge. Du-Métri had muscles of iron. He needed them.
The gendarmes were at his side in a moment. It took the three of them to master Norbury, who fought first for freedom, and then for the possession of one of the policemen’s revolvers. Once he broke away for an instant—once he all but got the revolver in his grasp. Round and round on the ground the tangled heap surged, all arms, and legs, and heads, and boots, but in the end the policemen rose, pulled a handcuffed, very battered Norbury to his feet, hauled him to the car, slung him in, tumbled in after him, and drove off. The scene had had a nightmare quality of lack of speech about it, which suggested something seen in a motion-picture show.
“I wish I’d had a cinema camera,” said Rackstraw breathlessly. He had not offered to join in the struggle.
“I found a note to Sabé slipped in the basket of confetti,” came, in heavy breathing, from Du-Métri. “Asking her to meet him at the wine vats—to meet him—my daughter!” Du-Métri became too Mentonnais to be coherent. One of the gendarmes took him to the kitchen, while the guests at the farm followed the commissaire into the room where Pointer had laid what he claimed was Mrs. Norbury down on the farm’s one sofa. He had already untied the rope around the neck which held the calico cover in place, and they all now saw the white little face inside it. They saw, too, the four purple bruises on the one side of her neck and the dark, single mark on the other where the strangler had got his grip on her.
“Brandy!” said Pointer. And held it to her lips—“ if she can swallow”—but Mrs. Norbury could not.
He had to content himself with trickling a very little water between her parched lips.
“What happened here?” asked the commissaire, helping to fill the spoon. “I have your letter—but what is the reason of this?”
“The Menton bank manager left the numbers with Mrs. Norbury of the notes that he had handed Inskipp to the amount of a thousand pounds”—Pointer broke off to see if by altering the position of the unconscious woman they could get her to swallow.
“But Norbury knew we all knew the numbers,” put in Pelham, “He didn’t try to harm any of us!”
“Evidently, therefore, the notes didn’t matter to anyone but Mrs. Norbury,” Pointer explained without looking round. “So she must have known some fact about them, and, I feel sure, taxed him with it. The two were in Marseilles together making purchases for the farm after the notes were paid to Inskipp by the bank. Finding that she had some dangerous knowledge—or proof—he evidently tried to strangle her, and only some lucky chance must have saved her life—for the moment—and given her time to slip into the scarecrow’s clothes, and take its place in that orchard.”
Edna hurried in then, and, without asking any questions, relieved Pointer from his place at the head of the sofa. She, too, had been spellbound by the suddenness and the violence of the scene which she had watched.
“Money?” echoed Laroche, “ah, if Inskipp was killed for money, it would be Norbury, undoubtedly! Some securities left here in his charge, I suppose, when Inskipp went to England, and which Norbury decided were too good to have to hand back? But where does the postman come in? Was that Norbury’s doing too, hein?” He turned to Pointer, so did the commissaire, who had not yet heard the last piece of news.
“I think we shall find that Norbury had been told by his wife that she had posted some letter, possibly containing one of the notes in question, or some information, to the police, and wanted to secure it. I take it she said that, hoping to save herself when she saw how unwise she had been to tackle him alone in a room—or a barn—about the matter.”
Mrs. Norbury gave a sort of gasping choke. Edna’s massage had helped her to swallow a sip of brandy, and a few minutes later she was carried to her room where they left her with Edna and Sabé.
The commissaire and Pointer had a long talk in a room to themselves, guarded by a policeman with a bulging holster. Laroche shot Pointer a keen glance at the name and title by which the commissaire called him as he shook hands finally and hurried out to his car.
Pointer found that Edna, since the doctor was down in Menton, had, with the sublime confidence of ignorance, given Mrs. Norbury a strong sleeping draught such as she herself had so often had to take. It had calmed the woman almost instantly, and she was now sleeping heavily.
“I hope I’ve done right,” Edna said a trifle fearfully.
Like many other people, she asked herself that a trifle belatedly. But Mrs. Norbury appeared to be sleeping tranquilly. Pointer said as much. And then he asked her why she had said that she had seen Mrs. Norbury passing through the farm-gates dressed as for a call.
Edna flushed. “I did see her, but slipping round the corner of the barn,” she confessed, “and her face—and her manner of doing it——“ she paused for a second. Then she looked full at the chief inspector. “I know what terror looks like—and feels like! Naturally one thought of Mr. Norbury—I never liked him. And I didn’t think she did—much. So on the off-chance that it might be of use to her I said that I had seen her making for the opposite direction from the one she had really been taking.”
She stopped to look down at the sleeping figure. By this time the arrest of Norbury for the murder had been discussed over and over again by the guests at the farm.
“I suppose there’s no question of his being acquitted?” she asked now, in a low voice.
Pointer said that he did not see any possibility of such a miscarriage of justice.
“And she will be pilloried everywhere as a murderer’s wife. A ghastly fate. I like Mrs. Norbury.” She folded an outflung hand into a more comfortable position. “She’s straight. And she’s any amount of grit. She would make a splendid pioneer. I’m thinking of taking her with me on the world-tour which I’m planning after my affairs are cleared up. She will probably be free from giving evidence against her husband by then—and will be glad to come. We may find some spot on the other side of the world where we can start life afresh. My mother will come too.”
They talked for a few minutes and then Pointer slipped out again. Laroche stopped him to ask after Mrs. Norbury. That done, the Frenchman hesitated a second.
“How in the world did you guess that she was hidden in the scarecrow?” he asked curiously.
Pointer did not explain. On the way to the farm, rushing up hill and down dale, he had decided that it alone would offer any chance of concealment to a desperate woman. And inspecting it with very carefully-veiled intentness, he had, just at the last, seen the eyes move. He was not certain, however, but that Mrs. Norbury was in hiding in order to learn some vital fact in the case. It was only when he saw that Norbury, too, had seen the eyes move, and saw him in the same instant draw his revolver, that he had to act.
“Do you know, I all but called attention to the fact that the dog had lain down at the foot of the scarecrow when we wanted him to hunt for his mistress,” went on Laroche, as the other remained silent. “Norbury was turned away from him, scanning the hedges, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say that Hero seemed to mix up Mrs. Norbury and l’épouvantail—but because it hardly sounded polite, I left it unsaid. My mother complains that I have no notion of manners. But I shall be able to tell her that it was precisely that that saved a life—for I think he might have caught on to the idea then at once—eh? And you would not have been there to save her!” Laroche looked really moved.
“Just as well you didn’t make your little joke,” Pointer agreed. “Norbury is very quick, I fancy, in spite of always referring to himself as a slow-witted farmer.”
Laroche nodded assent. “And he is absolutely ruthless—and heartless absolutely—and only cares for money. A true farmer in some ways,” said Laroche. “As I said just now, if money was the motive for Inskipp’s murder, Norbury could have been predicted to be the answer. And he deceived us by his earnest desire to find his wife. There is no deception like truth. I have been expounding the reasons to Pelham. By the way, since you are not a solicitor, nor called Parnall—what is he? And what is his real name?”
Pointer explained that Pelham had not needed an alias. He himself had.
“I have been hearing from Pelham the really formidable chain of deductions that led you here,” Laroche continued, “Or would you call them guesses?”
“No, routine work,” replied Pointer, passing on, while Laroche burst out laughing.
In the morning, they found that Mrs. Norbury had waked up quite her usual self; and to Pointer’s relief he discovered that she had no reluctance whatever to giving away her husband. Chiefly from genuine horror of what he had done, but partly also from the growing dislike of the man, that Edna Whin-Browning had divined. Mrs. Norbury had wanted back the money that she had put into the farm so as to be able to leave him. As Pointer had thought, she had recognized one of the numbers of the notes when, after the manager had left, she had read through the list carefully. For when they had gone to the Marseilles at the end of December, she had noticed that Norbury was always slipping away from her. She suspected some other woman, and had followed him—to five banks. Watching, she saw him change a thousand-franc note in each. He paid, too, for their purchases, entirely in thousand-franc notes, and had dealt—though she had not noticed the significance of this—entirely with shops where he and she were not known. She bought back one of the notes which he had just changed, found that it was perfectly good, but kept it. It was the number of this note which she had read on the list handed in by the manager. And when Norbury refused to explain how he came to have had it in his possession at Marseilles, it was her false assertion that they would soon see about that, as she had just explained, when and how it had come into her possession, and posted the explanation to the Menton police which had led him, when he found her gone from the locked barn, to hurry after the postman in rubber shoes, stun him, and search his postbag. What had saved her life had been, as she thought, Laroche calling and looking for Rackstraw who was late for a proposed jaunt over the bills together. Norbury, who had snatched his wife by the throat in a passion of murderous fury, knew that in another minute the Frenchman would try the door of the barn—and that it was unlocked. His wife hung limp in his grip. He dropped what he thought was her dead body on the floor, stepped out, walked on with Laroche, slipped back to lock the door of the barn when Rackstraw joined them, and then went on a little way with Blythe and Pelham. It was the latter’s chance insistence on questioning Norbury about some of the lemons in a farther orchard which had given the half-dazed Mrs. Norbury time to hide in the scarecrow.
Had his shot killed Mrs. Norbury, her husband would afterwards have sworn that he saw a stranger slipping behind the hedge, and fired at him—if indeed any one had noticed that the scarecrow was sagging still more after the shot. Had they not done so, he would have claimed a miss and disposed of her body during the night, and what had really happened to his wife would have always remained a mystery. Just as it would have, had he really strangled her in the barn.
Pointer was called several times to the telephone that evening and once even at midnight. The name of Oreille seemed to occur a good deal, and after the last time that he was summoned the chief inspector looked as though a load were off his mind. Christopher only glanced at him now and then as he made an occasion to pass, but he had been promised that, on the return journey next morning, he would be told everything, and he was patient. Besides, he was much more interested, hearing the answers to questions, the first of which concerned himself, than with any queries about Oreille.
“Look here,” said Christopher, as he and Pointer stood on the platform at Menton and watched the train swing out that was carrying Norbury back to
England between two very burly fellow-passengers, who kept always one or other Hand thrust through his arm, “Look here, I know the cat must only loot at the king, far less question his Majesty, but why did you tell me over the telephone, when Mrs. Norbury was missing, to take such care of Norbury? Why stuff me about his being in danger?”
“I wanted to prevent his finding his wife at some moment when he was by himself, and immediately finishing her off,” Pointer said gravely.
“—as he would have done!”
“Also, it’s ghastly work pretending to be friends with a man whom you believe to be a murderer,” Pointer’s voice took on a deeper note, “let alone suspect of being on the verge of a second murder. You would have had to talk to him—sympathize with him—perhaps drink and eat with Him—take his hand—I assure you, there’s nothing harder to do! So I thought I would spare you that—if I could. Also,” his eyes twinkled, “I don’t know how good an actor you are. And it takes uncommonly good acting to deceive a man who’s watching for the shadow of the rope. Norbury was not to be suspect that he was suspected. But there’s our train just coming in.”
The two were only going as far as Nice and the British Consulate-General for tonight. When they were seated in an empty compartment, Christopher leant forward.
“Thanks for sparing me. I certainly should have loathed the job and equally certainly should have bungled it,” he said. “But when did you first suspect Norbury? I had no idea—somehow I never thought of him. He looked what he called himself—such a typical farmer.”
“When did I first suspect him?” Pointer was in no doubt about that. “When I first got to the farm and learnt that the dog was let loose at night. His kennel was near the scarecrow from which the clothes were taken. That couldn’t have been done noiselessly, and he would have barked at any one but his master. That seemed to show that Norbury was either an accomplice or the murderer. Probably the latter, since there seemed no need of help in this crime. But that was only my notion. The Whin-Browning complication had to be cleared up first.”
“Did he rely on it to throw off suspicion, do you think?” Pelham asked,” since he knew about them.”
“I think he counted most of all on the tramp-effect of the dead body passing muster for genuine,” Pointer said, “as it would have done but for two women both having claimed the body.”
“As it would have done but for you!” Christopher protested energetically, “My uncle told me how you saw through that disguise—and that the clothes had come off a scarecrow, and then found that the scarecrow had stood in a maize field near a lemon grove. Then, that in France, lemon orchards are to be found only at Menton—which led you to the Farm of the Golden Goat.”
“A straight line, and purely routine work,” said Pointer quickly. Since the arrest he had found copies of all the letters to Oreille and Oreille’s actual replies, and copies of all the letters to and from Inskipp about Mireille first from Florence Rackstraw.
There was a short silence. Christopher, as well as the others at the farm, had been told about the money obtained by Norbury from Inskipp in the name of a fictitious Mireille. Rackstraw had given Pointer a very intent look, but he had made no observation when the chief inspector had said that Norbury had evidently taken the portraits of the so-called Mireille from his—Rackstraw’s—photographs, and then invented a character to fit which would be sure to captivate the romantic, lonely Inskipp.
“Frankly,” Christopher said now, “I can’t imagine what set Norbury off on the idea of the lovely Mireille. A girl who was dead before he ever saw her portrait! It worked—up to a point. But how did he come to think of it? It seems so out of his line of country. Laroche can’t sleep at night, he tells me, for puzzling over it.”
Pointer explained the origin of the trick that had been played on Inskipp. Spite on the part of Florence Rackstraw—and a desire to humiliate Inskipp’s very soul when she would have the joy of telling him of the deception, which had set a ball rolling that in the end had led to Inskipp’s murder.” Mrs. Norbury suggests that it was when Norbury was hunting for the mother’s address to let her know of the daughter’s tragedy that he found those copies of the letters written by Florence to Inskipp that we have just discovered among his personal papers. Sabé’s evidence, too, will be taken about the change in the postmarks just after the death of Miss Rackstraw.”
“Sabé seems only excited about Norbury’s arrest—not in the lest heart-broken,” put in Christopher, who had a soft spot for the pretty Mentonnaise.
“That’s all. Her father feels that he paid back handsomely whatever score there was to settle, by collaring Norbury so usefully. Luckily for Sabé, Mrs. Norbury was on the qui vive about the girl, though she had not thought of connecting her flightiness with her own husband. She suspected Rackstraw or even Blythe, of being the trifler, she says.”
Again there was a pause, as the train carried them along the wonderful coastline at which neither man so much as glanced.
“Norbury was starting to sell his farm—without Mrs. Norbury’s knowledge. The place was bought in both his and his wife’s names, but I think he would have managed to swindle her out of her share in the proceeds,” Pointer said next.
“Trust him!” The fervor of Christopher’s tone meant just the opposite.
“You think that Norbury would have sold—and vanished?”
“I do. He was getting things ready, and he was a good planner.”
“Just what did the Whin-Browning story stand for in his plans, do you think?” asked Christopher after another pause.
Pointer’s explanation started earlier in the tale.
“When Norbury knew that he would have to pay back that thousand pounds and risk being prosecuted and convicted, he foresaw that probably Inskipp would have to be killed.” Pointer was lighting his pipe.
“And when did that dawn on him?”
“When he saw an envelope handed to Inskipp from Clermont-Ferrand in another writing than Oreille’s, he must have suspected—wrongly, as it happens—that Oreille had fallen down on the task of completing the hoodwinking of the poor victim. When he watched Inskipp’s appalled face, he guessed that the game was up. We know now that Norbury came down late for dinner and excused himself with a tale about wandering around corridors and not finding lift or stairs. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had slipped into Inskipp’s room and read that Clermont-Ferrand letter, left probably by Inskipp in his suitcase. Norbury’s keys, we find, would have unlocked it. What he read would tell him that he would be wise to get Inskipp out of the way at once. He may have written the note as much to get a chance to read the letter from France, as with any idea of settling matters there and then, but once he read it, he would know that there was no time to lose. He went to the appointment carrying a small despatch case containing the clothes off the scarecrow, and the sock with the brass bed-knob in it. The sand he could get on the spot.”
Christopher digested this swiftly. “And the Whin-Browning story?” he asked again. “I wonder why he didn’t go all out on it.”
“I take Norbury to be a man who dislikes to alter a plan,” said Pointer. “The tramp scheme was simple and promised well. But should it go wrong there was the other to fall back on. Inskipp had supplied him with the name of the maid in Dover, thinking him a helper—or at least a sympathizer. Norbury talked to me, and he probably had to Inskipp, of his belief in Mrs. Whin-Browning’s innocence—but he really was certain that she was guilty. That I’ll swear. And because of that certainty, he imagined that she would be a perfect second-line of defence if by any chance things went wrong with his tramp plan. The success of that must, of necessity, largely depend on circumstances beyond absolute certainty.”
“Inskipp might not have gone to the rendezvous,” suggested Pelham.
“Exactly. Or there might have been other people in the shelter.”
“Or a lamp might have lit up the interior too clearly?” Pelham again proffered. But Pointer shook his head.
“Norbury is a cautious villain. He had inspected that shelter before he chose it, we may be sure.”
“And, of course, he wrote the letter to Rackstraw giving him every conceivable right in Inskipp’s scenario——“ Christopher gave a reminiscent chuckle at the man’s cunning.
“Of course. And so could point out afterwards how odd he thought it!” The detective officer, too, gave a grim smile, adding that there was nothing so easy to pass off successfully as a forgery when no suspicions were roused.
There followed a long silence.
“Mrs. Norbury’s evidence about the thousand-franc note will stand any cross-questioning.” Pointer’s tone was one of deep satisfaction. “You can’t bully Mrs. Norbury into changing black into white. And then, above all, the French police have got hold of Oreille.”
Christopher was only mildly interested. “You seem very keen on Oreille, but I take it he stood for nothing in the actual crime, only in the deception?”
“His character meant the difference between life and death to Inskipp. Rather in Laroche’s strain that, but I think it’s true none the less,” was the slow reply, spoken very gravely.
“You mean ‘all the more,’” prompted Christopher, whose forehead was wrinkling as he thought over the other’s last words. He did not follow the reasoning behind them, and said so after a short silence.
“As I see it, Inskipp’s death, after his claim for the return of his thousand pounds, was necessary only because Oreille couldn’t be trusted,” said Pointer. “Otherwise, he would only have had to disappear, and Inskipp could never have cleared up the taking of the money, or the truth about Mireille, who would merely have ‘disappeared’ too.”
Christopher frowned at his own dullness. “You run faster than I can,” he said ruefully. “You’re right, of course.” There followed a short silence.
“Miss Blythe—that name is shorter—doesn’t seem to dislike Blythe any more. He’s showing up very well, I think.”
“He finally realized that things couldn’t have run on along his proposed lines much longer. And possibly—just possibly,” Pointer’s eyes twinkled, “he, too, may have found, during the months at the farm, that there are more agreeable companions than a captive.”
“And thanks to you she’s free—“ Pelham gave a little crow of sheer enthusiasm.
This time Pointer gave him one of his swift, transforming smiles.
“That’s a plum such as doesn’t often come my way—though, mind you, every criminal caught means innocent people freed from the danger of suspicion, let alone of a false arrest—or a wrong verdict.” And the chief inspector knocked out his pipe with a feeling that he could now enjoy a well-earned rest.
FINIS