Moy took Pointer into the room where Gilmour sat with his head hidden in his hands. He looked up with a start as the two came in. Moy, after a word of introduction, would have left them alone together, but Gilmour asked him to stay.
“My memory seems to’ve gone spotty. You may be able to prompt me.”
An assenting glance from the chief inspector said that the young solicitor’s presence would be quite welcome, then he turned to Gilmour and asked for an account of what had happened.
Gilmour said that he was awakened by someone opening his bedroom door with a snap and giving a hollow moan or groan. As he sat up in bed, the door was left open, the corridor outside was flooded with moonlight, and he saw a sheeted figure walking down it away from his room. He stepped to a chest of drawers by the door and took out his revolver which he had loaded with blanks for just such an occasion. In answer to another question he said that owing to some talk about ghosts in the evening, he had rather thought that someone might play that old joke on him. He had never thought of Charles Ingram, but of Moy, or possibly Frederick. Taking his revolver, he went into the passage, where the ghost was now half-way down. At his call of “I’m going to shoot, you’d better disappear!” the “ghost” turned round and faced him with another moan. He fired full at it, and, to his horror, heard it give a cry, and then sag to the floor. After that awful second Gilmour said he could not be sure of what happened. He tried for a switch on the wall but could not seem to find one. The next thing he remembered clearly was lifting the head of the ghost and finding that it was Ingram, and that he was quite dead.
Pointer then began his questions. Gilmour said that he was a good shot, but that on this occasion he had not troubled to take aim, though it was possible that, as the head would be thrown into relief against the oak paneled door, it would have offered a target at which he had fired without consciously selecting it.
Pointer asked for a very careful account of the ghost’s appearance. Gilmour, looking very white, shut his eyes, and described minutely a figure draped in a sheet, with the end drawn over the head and covering the whole face to below the chin, walking with head thrust forward and a shuffling gait.
Moy noticed that Pointer took Gilmour over this part very carefully, harking back and repeating several of his questions, though in different forms.
Next he produced the revolver just handed him by the solicitor. Gilmour identified it as his, and again went over how he had loaded it, where the box of blank cartridges were in the drawer, and where the loaded ones. He said that he and Ingram shared a flat in an old house in Harrow which stood quite isolated, and for that cause both of them kept a revolver and some cartridges handy. He went into details about where he had purchased his, and finally handed the chief inspector his license.
Pointer next wanted to know whether anyone had been in the room with him when he had loaded with blanks. Yes, Gilmour said, Ingram had been. He had done it on coming up from the lounge only this evening, or rather, since it was now early morning, only last evening, after the talk in the lounge.
He gave a brief outline of that talk.
“So that Mr. Ingram would have expected you to fire blank shots?” Pointer said thoughtfully, “and would not be concerned when you pointed the revolver at him?”
Moy was sorry for Gilmour. Gilmour looked appalled at the question, but he answered it with a brief acquiescent gesture.
“Was the dead man fond of playing practical jokes?” was the next question.
Gilmour said that that would be the last thing anyone could say of Charles Ingram. “But,” he went on, “he had a theory, which I now think he must have been testing last night. He said that, given any sudden emergency, or waked from sleep—as I was—a man would only do what he was accustomed to doing. That is to say that, however much I, or any other ordinary Londoner, laid his revolver ready, given an emergency, he would never think of using it, but would dash out empty-handed. Unfortunately he was wrong,” Gilmour added.
Pointer asked next on what footing he and the dead man had been. Gilmour said very simply that he and Ingram had always got on well, and that no subject of discord had ever come between them.
“Has he any close relations?” Pointer asked next, turning to Moy, so as to give Gilmour a little time to recover. He looked as though he needed it.
Moy said that Ingram had a sister married to a man called Appleton, and a half-brother, Frederick Ingram. Mrs. Appleton had two children and she and they were, according to Ingram’s will left with Moy’s firm, Ingram’s sole legatees. As to how much he had to leave, Moy said that he had no exact idea. But he fancied that the dead man’s income was around five hundred pounds a year. Gilmour, appealed to for corroboration, said that figure would be fairly accurate, though, as Ingram lived at the rate of four hundred, there were possibly some savings to be divided up. Ingram, Pointer was told, as he knew already from Who’s Who, had taken high honors in mathematics at Cambridge, where he also held a Fellowship for a few years, only relinquishing it to become examiner and lecturer in his especial field. He wrote on many other subjects as well, though they were all more or less kindred ones, such as ciphers and odd numerical puzzles.
Pointer now asked something which was exceedingly painful to both men. He wanted Moy and he wanted Gilmour again to go over the incidents of the shooting. That is to say, Gilmour was to act as far as possible as he said that he had when he was first awakened, and Moy to do as nearly as possible what he said that he had done when he heard the shot, the cry, the thud.
It was an ordeal for both, but they each of them bore out what they had said as to their different stations at the different times of the tragedy.
Pointer thanked them and went on by himself into Ingram’s room. It was the bedroom of a very orderly man. The only untidy thing in the room was the bed, which showed that the sheet had been hauled off without any regard as to what other bedclothes were dragged on the carpet with it. Rather oddly so, Pointer thought, considering that the man who was supposed to have dragged it off would be supposed to want to sleep in that same bed again. But it had been the top sheet, so, though the foot of the bed was undone, the bolster and pillow end were apparently untouched. Slipping his careful hands under the bolster, Pointer found some shreds of tobacco; Player’s Navy Cut. Yet Ingram’s waistcoat hung over the back of a chair by the armholes, and he had no pipe in the room. Examining the waistcoat, Pointer found some shreds of tobacco in the pocket where the tobacco pouch was kept. He also found a very unusual long inner pocket on the left hand side running down nearly to the bottom and closed at the top by a zip fastener. It came well below the top of the waistcoat so that it would not show, whether open or closed. Pointer examined it very carefully. There was nothing in it now. The size was four inches wide by nine long. It would hold quite a long envelope. He put the waistcoat away in his attaché case. The dust of that peculiar pocket might tell what it usually held. Ingram’s other pockets held a handkerchief, a fountain pen, a book of stamps and a small pencil stub. A letter case with letters of no importance, a key ring with keys on it fastened by a chain, and some money—under three pounds.
He rang for the butler. Since there was no sign of any books or writing materials in the room, the chief inspector rightly guessed that Ingram used some other room in the house as well. But first Pointer wanted to see the footman who usually woke Mr. Ingram and probably valeted him. Pointer had learned from Moy that the staff consisted of two men and four women. Windover, a fresh-faced young countryman, was summoned by the butler. He waked Mr. Ingram at half-past seven every morning, he said, took away his shoes and anything that needed brushing, and turned on his bath.
Where did Mr. Ingram usually keep his waistcoat? Pointer asked next. Windover fancied that it was under Mr. Ingram’s pillow or bolster, as it was never in sight of a morning. In the evenings, Mr. Ingram would often leave it out. Now Pointer had noticed just such another pocket down the back of Ingram’s only pair of evening trousers. He asked the two men whether either of them had ever seen Mr. Ingram use it, or the inner one in his waistcoat. Neither had. Nor had the footman ever found anything in those particular pockets when he brushed either article of clothing. Windover, however, closely questioned, seemed to be concealing nothing and really to have nothing more to tell, so Pointer followed the butler to the ground floor and into the library, which he was told was given over to Mr. Ingram’s sole use. Mr. Ingram had last been seen by Hobbs sitting writing at the bureau in the window when he brought him in, as usual, a decanter of whisky and a siphon. Mr. Ingram was a very moderate drinker, the butler added, generally asking for a small bottle of beer in preference to anything stronger but occasionally, as last night, whisky would be brought him. Mr. Ingram had told him to take it away again and had seemed unwilling to be disturbed by even the briefest of questions as to what he would prefer instead.
“He had that small clock over there down beside him on the writing-table, sir, and motioned me when I came in not to come closer,” Hobbs went on. “Stopped me just by the door, and told me he wouldn’t want the whisky.”
Was it usual for Mr. Ingram not to let him come up to him? Pointer asked. The man said it was Ingram’s invariable rule.
Questioned further, the butler could only say that Mr. Ingram had no visitors last night as far as he knew, but in a household of five young men who brought their friends in with them at all hours, it was impossible for him to be sure on this point. As to Mr. Ingram himself, the butler evidently had liked him immensely. The same seemed to be true of all of the five temporary owners of the house except of Tark. Of him the butler could only say that he had a nasty silent way, which the maids much resented, of showing when he did not like things. However, bar that trifle, he had never served easier gentlemen than the five. Yes, they all seemed to get on very pleasantly together. Mr. Ingram and Mr. Gilmour too? Oh, certainly. The butler was quite sure that up till last night, at any rate, there was no slightest hint of ill-feeling between them.
The butler seemed to have been squeezed dry and Pointer let him go, and began to go over the room inch by inch. Three pipes lay neatly on the mantel, pipes that had smoked Navy Cut recently. The top part of the writing bureau yielded nothing of interest. Ingram apparently did not use the blotter except as an underlay for his hand. On a copy of yesterday’s late evening paper was a candlestick with some drops of sealing wax on it. The wax itself lay on another corner. So something had been sealed since that paper came into the house. In the bottom drawer of the bureau was a locked attaché case. The lock was a most peculiar one. Un-pickable, Pointer fancied. Unlocking it with one of the keys on Ingram’s bunch, he found it chiefly filled with books neatly strapped together and three piles of manuscripts. The first was on Baphomet of the Templars. The second consisted of the first seven chapters of a book on The Law of Rationality of Indices. The third was the first volume, finished apparently, of a work on cryptography. It dealt exclusively with ciphers. Ingram seemed to be just finishing an exposition of Dr. Blair’s clever three dot system with sidelights on an adaptation of the A.B.C. system in use during the war. He stood awhile looking down at the pages. They seemed to have been proof-read by some other hand, a sprawling, rather smudged hand. Apparently the bundle was just about to be sent off to the publishers...He examined the books. They were works on ciphers, such as that of Andrew Langie Katscher, there was one on Lord Bacon’s famous two-letter cipher, a copy of Bacon’s De Augmentis...and many others, mostly on the same subject, or on some mathematical point. He also found, last of all, two dictionaries, one a Chambers, one a Nuttall’s. Opening them he found beside many words a dot or a collection of dots. The compiler of a cryptogram might well have made them. That was all, barring some notes on The Theoretical Measurements of Angles. Pointer stood a moment deep in thought. Was the motive for Ingram’s death, if it were, as he thought it might be, a murder, to be found in this attaché case which had been so carefully locked? Was it possible that he had been killed for the sake of a clever cipher? Had he by chance stumbled on one like, or sufficiently like, one in use by some foreign power, or great business interest, to make it necessary to remove him? It seemed rather a melodramatic idea for the present day, but so was the notion of murder. Ingram’s despatch case was laid beside the one which Pointer had brought to the house with him. He passed on to the fireplace. In the open grate was the remains of a wood fire. On the tiles inside the fender were some burned matches evidently pitched there by a smoker. Three were like the ones on the mantel, two were of a different kind taken from a match booklet. There was no such booklet among Ingram’s belongings. The carved oak fender was movable and, lifting it out, he found underneath it, as though blown there by the draught, some little scraps of paper with words or parts of words printed in Ingram’s writing. They were quite fresh. The paper had been torn so small that none of them held more than four letters on it. Each scrap was carefully collected and put away in an envelope. He next turned to the waste-paper basket. It had a lot of odds and ends of paper in it, but someone had knocked the dottle of his pipe over all, presumably Ingram, since it was still the same tobacco. He stood looking at it thoughtfully. Then his eyes went back to the bureau. It was odd. The bureau had been searched, of that he was quite sure by many a little sign, things laid where there was dust beneath them, dustless vacant places...the outline of a rubber in one place and the rubber itself in another...the very way the papers were put together told the experienced eye of a good searcher that all these had been gone through. But not the basket...Whoever had been hunting here was looking for something which they were sure would not be thrown away; something of value. The basket stood where it was impossible to be overlooked. Pointer added its contents, too, to his collection, and continued on around the room. In the seat of an armchair beside the bureau he found a bus ticket. It was for a Fulham-Sloane Street stretch. It was rolled into a tight squill. That too he took. Then he left the room. The door remained unlocked, but one of his men was placed in an inconspicuous position in another room through whose wide open door he could watch the library. Pointer wanted to know if anyone in the household had been interrupted in their hunt for anything, and would resume it if they thought that the coast was clear.
He asked for a word with Moy again. They went into the dining-room, a huge and spacious place, where, in a corner by the fire, no one could overhear them.
“It’s about Miss Pratt,” Pointer said, “and Mr. Gilmour.”
Moy broke in. “I’ve been wanting to tell you about her, chief inspector. It would be so easy, even for you, to get quite a mistaken idea of how things are. Ingram, poor chap, was in love with her, so is Haliburton, but as for Gilmour, as Miss Pratt said, he’s all but engaged to another girl who is also staying here, a girl called Alfreda Longstaff. Just at present she’s angry at the idea of getting into the newspapers, and, of course, Gilmour will be in the spot-light for a while. That can’t be helped. But though Miss Pratt is evidently kinder-hearted than discreet, I can assure you that all of Gilmour’s heart and attentions were devoted to his own girl.”
Pointer said that he had got that, and then asked how the household now at The Tall House had got itself together. By which, he explained that he meant who had proposed the plan in the first place.
“Frederick Ingram,” Moy said promptly. “Because he knew his brother Charles wanted to please Miss Pratt who had said she’d like immensely to stop in a really fine old London house for a few weeks, not just for a few days.”
“And Frederick Ingram is by profession?” Pointer asked.
Moy hesitated for the fraction of a second. But there was no use trying to make Frederick out a man of substance held in high esteem in the best clubs. He acknowledged that he was a bookmaker’s partner for a season. By original profession he was an architect who did very badly and tried to turn his hand to many things since he left Oxford. His mother died when he was a lad and left him originally a much larger fortune than eventually came to his elder half-brother from their father.
“Where did he live?”
“All over the place,” Moy said. He went on to explain that most of the time Frederick lived with his half-sister, Mrs. Appleton, or had lived with the Appletons, paying his share of their little house in Markham Square, but that he, Moy, understood him to say that he had left there some months ago and taken rooms in Hampstead. Since Charles had come to The Tall House for five weeks, Moy believed that Frederick had gone back to Markham Square in order to be nearer his brother.
Markham Square, Pointer reflected, was off Fulham Road. Anyone living there and wanting to take a bus to The Tall House would use just such a ticket as he had found. As for Appleton, Pointer learned that Edward Appleton had once been a well-known actor, that Miss Ingram had married him—he was a distant connection of the Ingrams—just before he came into quite a little fortune, on which he had left the stage and appeared to have gone the pace a bit. Certainly very little of the fortune seemed to be left. There were two children of the marriage. Appleton had been raising, or trying to raise, money lately on his life insurance, Ingram had learned, but that was securely tied up.
“Look here, chief inspector,” Moy broke out, “you don’t think there’s anything wrong about this shooting, do you? Some of your questions seem to me a bit wide sweeping.”
“In case it should turn out different from what you think, it’s always just as well to have all preliminary questions over and cleared up,” Pointer said evasively. “And now, I’d like to see Miss Longstaff.”
Moy looked worried. “She’s not herself at all this morning,” he repeated and left it at that.
Pointer rather expected to see a case of wrecked nerves, but the girl who came in almost immediately did not look as though she knew the meaning of the word. She explained at once that, though she had come to the house as Mr. Gilmour’s guest, there was no question of any closer relationship growing up between them.
“Mr. Moy told me that it would prejudice you against Mr. Gilmour to be told that,” she wound up.
“I don’t see why.” She fixed that baffling stare of hers on the chief inspector.
He had a feeling that he was seeing her in some moment of triumph, and yet her face struck him as fierce and starved and repressed all at once. Three dangerous ingredients to mix together. As far as words went, she was very controlled. Of course she did not I disbelieve Mr. Gilmour’s account of what had happened, she said, it was corroborated by Mr. Moy, but she had no intention whatever of marrying the man to whom such a misfortune had happened.
“Once unlucky, always unlucky, I think,” she said with a curious little smile. “I really couldn’t marry an unlucky man.”
“Am I to understand that you and Mr. Gilmour were engaged then, until the death of Mr. Ingram this morning?” Pointer asked stolidly.
“Not at all,” she replied at once. “We weren’t engaged at all. He asked me to stay here for a fortnight, while Mrs. Pratt would be here, and I don’t deny that the idea on his part was—that after my visit, I might perhaps agree to marry him. I think Miss Pratt’s stay in the house here suggested the scheme to him. The agreement was that I should have a little time in which to make up my mind. It’s quite made up now.”
“When did you first meet Mr. Gilmour?” Pointer asked. And she explained, a trifle hastily, that they had met at her father’s rectory. Questioned as to what she herself had heard of the tragedy, she said that she was awakened by a shot and a cry, and rushed downstairs as soon as she had collected her startled wits.
Pointer was rather surprised that she, or any woman, would have known that it was a shot that she had heard, for Gilmour’s automatic would make but a comparatively small pop, not anything like as loud in the front of the house on an upper story as a car backfiring, and her bedroom was at the other end of a side wing.
“Why did you draw the sheet out from around and under Mr. Ingram?” Pointer asked next in his most official voice.
Miss Longstaff shot him an odd look from those impenetrable eyes of hers.
“Oh, just the natural impulse to cover up a dead body,” she said, still eyeing him with that blank but by no means meaningless stare of hers. Had she picked anything up in the corridor, he asked her next. She said that she had looked at the automatic before handing it to Moy. She had seen no spent cartridge case.
Pointer asked her to describe exactly how the sheet had been wrapped about the body, and the position of the body itself. Her account tallied with Moy’s but was much more detailed. She had a most unusually accurate eye for details, Pointer saw. He left the question of the sheet and asked her about the dead man, but she seemed to have no knowledge of him except from her stay here at The Tall House, and nothing helpful to say about him. Yet he was certain that something was stirring in her connected with the death. If so, she refused to let him catch hold of it. Whenever he thought that he was getting close, she would dive from sight with it down into deep water again. Finally he thanked her, and, with an ironic little acknowledgment of his thanks, she left him.
A dangerous young woman to a detective just now, he thought, for she was keen on some purpose of her own, and quite capable, he believed, of putting a false clue down, or taking a real one away, as suited her own plans. She was mentally agile too, for Pointer had been clever with his questions. Both by nature and by training he knew how to ask the one slight query which, added to one previous little question, would make a quite unexpectedly complete answer.
He stood staring down at his shoe-tips after she had gone, rocking himself backwards and forwards deep in thought. Was she in the crime itself, if a crime had been committed here? Even Pointer could not yet say, but if this was a crime, it might very possibly be one into which malice entered, and certainly Alfreda Longstaff could not be set on one side in that case.