EIGHT

Pointer saw Mrs. Pratt next. She struck him as a woman of great force of character. Also of unusual energy. She seemed to have some difficulty in knowing, or at least in saying, just what she did think of the dreadful event. Pointer got the impression that, provided her daughter took it sensibly, it would rank as a wise decree of Providence, though very sad and dreadfully pathetic, of course. But if her daughter lost her head still further, then Mrs. Pratt would look on Ingram’s death as an act of God ranking with plague, pestilence and earthquakes. She struck Pointer as being more on edge, tenser, than he would have expected. Where her daughter was concerned he could understand it, but that would only be connected with Gilmour, one would think, whereas she seemed, to the astute and penetrating brain studying her, to be most in tension where Ingram was concerned. More than that he could not gather from his brief talk. Mrs. Pratt was an experienced wielder of shields, and turned his cleverest points aside with nimbleness. She had hardly left him when the door was opened and in darted the lovely girl he had seen before, but now in something jade green and white which made her look more like an exquisite flower than ever. She was still all exclamations, all protests.

“Oh, he’s not guilty! He never did it! He never meant it!”

“Who says he’s guilty?” he asked quietly. She checked herself and stared at him.

“Why, my mother says that everyone says—I thought he acknowledges that he shot Mr. Ingram——”

“By accident, yes,” he finished.

“And of course it was an accident,” she protested again, with that air of defying the world to say it was not, that seemed so utterly uncalled for. She made a bad impression. It might be but the result of some nerve-storm, but she certainly protested too much. Was it love defending, or its opposite suggesting? She fled out again as swiftly as she had entered. Pointer looked after her. If her looks covered a criminal, there was nothing in them to suggest a pioneer, a high flyer. Pointer would expect always to find Winnie Pratt on the beaten path whether that path were the right one or the wrong one.

Tark came next. His face would have arrested any detective’s interest at once, it was so intentionally impenetrable, his eyes so studiously blank, his mouth suggested so rigid a curb. He gave his answers as briefly as possible. He was a mining engineer by profession, he said, but he had been at a loose end for some years, owing to the closing down of some mines in Russia. He was born in Beausoleil, aged thirty-seven, the son of the Curator of the Duke of Monaco’s Deep Sea Museum. He remained docketed in Pointer’s mind as the man with the coldest eyes and the tightest lips that he had met for some time. It was a very determined face, nevertheless, with its hint of utter callousness to human emotions. It was the face of a man of no nerves, who would hardly know the meaning of the word fear. He claimed to know nothing of the dead man and never even to have seen him until his visit here, except for a chance meeting at Haliburton’s flat.

Haliburton came next. He explained about himself and Tark with his usual air of quiet frankness. Tark was at The Tall House simply and solely as his friend, he said. Like Tark, Haliburton seemed to take it for granted that Ingram’s death was, as Gilmour said, the result of a terrible accident. A taxi drew up as he was talking. Pointer had expected the dead man’s sister or brother-in-law before this. He knew that Moy had notified them of the accident as soon as the police had been telephoned for.

Now he saw a neatly-dressed woman get out and glance up at the house with dark eyes full of horror. It was Mrs. Appleton. Pointer went to the door to meet her. She came in with a look of almost unbearable anxiety, and hardly listened to the chief inspector’s brief introduction of himself and his few words of grave sympathy.

“How did it happen?” she asked breathlessly.

He told her.

A look of relief swept over her face. “I see,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “Poor Charles! Poor Charles!”

Moy came down the stairs murmuring in his turn some expressions of sincere sympathy.

“Were you there—when it happened?” she asked, catching at some word of his that seemed to bear that meaning.

“I was.”

“Do you mind telling me again just how it happened?” she asked, and resting her hands on a little occasional table in the hall beside her, she listened very intently. When he had done she asked:

“Where is Mr. Gilmour? I want to see him.”

Moy was afraid of a scene. Something in the woman’s face suggested nerves that had been, if they were not now, strung up very tensely. He temporized.

“He feels it terribly—naturally. He’s not fit to be questioned much and give coherent replies, I’m afraid, Mrs. Appleton.”

“Of course I want to hear what he has to say! You didn’t really see how it happened! Of course I must know! Charles was my only brother.”

She did not seem to rank Frederick as even half a brother. On her face the look of terrified anxiety that had been there when she hurried into The Tall House was returning in part.

“Shall I ask him to come down here?” Moy turned to Pointer, who nodded. While they were alone he did not speak to Mrs. Appleton, who stood staring down at the table as though some map were spread out on it, and she were trying to find her way by it.

When Gilmour came in, he stood for a moment in the doorway, an expression in his brown eyes that was at once dumbly pleading and heartbroken.

Mrs. Appleton came to what seemed like natural life for the first time since Pointer had seen her. She took Gilmour’s hand very warmly.

“Poor Mr. Gilmour! How terrible for you! But please tell me exactly what happened. Forgive my asking you to speak of it so soon, but I must know. I must!” For a second her voice shook, and Pointer saw her bite her lip hard.

Gilmour drew a deep breath. “I fired what I thought was a blank shot full at him, Mrs. Appleton,” he began brokenly, “and—and I killed him. There was some mistake. The cartridge was loaded—not blank.”

“But what was he doing?” she asked, as though groping in a mist.

He explained about the dressing up as a ghost.

“Charles?” she said in a tone of utter bewilderment. “Dress up and play a joke of that kind!”

He repeated the explanation that he had given the chief inspector, and a little of her amazed look passed off. “Yes, that’s quite a possible reason...” she murmured. “Testing a theory...? Poor Mr. Gilmour!” she repeated gently, and her face looked as though some terrible weight had slipped from shoulders that could hardly bear it. “Thank you for telling me everything. There are still lots of questions that I want to ask. Naturally. But I don’t think there’s anything more I must know immediately.” She held out her hand, and Gilmour, taking it, thanked her with a twisted sickly smile for her kindness and walked up the stairs as though he could hardly lift his feet.

Mrs. Appleton turned to Moy.

“Can I see him? Is he—is he—much disfigured?”

Moy told her that the body was not in the house. He explained about the necessity for an autopsy. “And there’s another little matter,” he went on. “Have you any objection to my opening your brother’s will? It’s still in my possession. It leaves everything to you, as you know. Do you mind if I let the chief inspector here see it at once?”

“The chief inspector? Oh, I took you for someone staying in the house—for a friend of my brother’s.” A taut line showed for an instant around Mrs. Appleton’s well-cut, decisive mouth. Pointer saw that she could be quite formidable on occasions, and also that she had not heard one word of his own self-introduction.

“Of course the police have to look into it, Mrs. Appleton,” Moy said soothingly, “and with a man of your brother’s position, since it is within the Metropolitan area, the Yard takes charge of the investigation. Just as a precaution.”

“Fortunately my brother’s death is so evidently due only to a terrible accident,” she said, and immediately looked as though she wished the words unsaid. Pointer took her to be a very truthful and not particularly diplomatic woman. The relief in her voice was the most interesting part of her remark.

“I’d like to sit a while and pull myself together,” she said now. “The room my brother used as a study is on this floor, isn’t it?” She turned to Moy who, after an assenting glance from the chief inspector, opened the door of the study and closed it after her.

“Well, really,” he said in a low tone, coming back to the chief inspector, “if I didn’t know Mrs. Appleton, I should fancy she was trying to get points as to how to shoot a person by mistake. She seemed positively insatiable—couldn’t seem to have the account of how it happened told her often enough.”

Pointer waited for three minutes by the clock while Moy talked on, then:

“I want another word with her,” he said in an equally low tone, and walking lightly across the hall’s thick runner, he opened the door of the library and stepped in. Moy followed.

Mrs. Appleton was leaning far out of the window. She turned her head over her shoulder and with no sign of emotion, drew back into the room.

“I was smelling the heliotrope in the window boxes,” she said. “I love flowers. Well, I feel better now. I think I’ll go home. My husband wanted to come, but as he had a most important engagement, I wouldn’t let him put it off. The children will be wondering what has become of me. How they will miss their uncle!” With a little bow, she went on out and they heard the front door close behind her before Moy could get to it.

“She was very attached to Ingram, I know,” Moy said. “She’s a domestic sort of person anyway. Devoted to her home and her family, whether brother, or husband and children.”

“Devoted to flowers, too,” Pointer murmured dryly, and Moy looked at him inquiringly.

Pointer had decided to take the young solicitor into his confidence to a certain extent. As far as Moy could help him, that was to say. Even if guilty, there were certain facts which the criminal could not now alter. Supposing there was a crime here, and even supposing Moy was connected with it, which Pointer did not suppose, knowledge of how the inquiry progresses is often of no use whatever to the criminal, who cannot change the past nor alter the traces left by it.

“I wonder if she thinks cigarette ash helps flowers to grow,” Pointer indicated a Majolica saucer which he had last seen full of cigarette ash. “I have quite a lot of the ash that was there done up in an envelope. The rest is now on the window-box. She’s shifted that blotting pad, too. But the paper basket hasn’t been touched...”

“Those books, too.” Moy followed the other’s keen eyes. “Yes, they’ve been shifted. Every one of them. Ingram always kept the line forward, so that the backs projected over the shelves. They’re all back now against the wall behind them.”

They had been pushed back when Pointer had seen them before. It only confirmed his belief that the room had been searched before he got to The Tall House. But he had a test of his own as to whether Mrs. Appleton had also gone through them.

“I put slips of paper in at page twenty in six of these books, beginning with the first and taking every tenth on this row. I wonder if they’re still there.”

Two of the slips were in the paper basket. The others had either not yet been touched, he thought, or had been put back at random.

What was she looking for? Both men speculated. A later will cutting her out? But some of the books were too short to take a sheet of paper the length of the usual will. Whatever she had been looking for, again in her case, it seemed to be something which she felt sure would not be in the paper basket; it was odd—taken in conjunction with her manner of seeming relieved—immensely—by the account of how her brother had been killed.

Pointer believed Ingram might have sent some letter or parcel off by late registered post from the sealing-wax and candle on the late evening paper. But he had not yet found any registration slip. Was this what was being hunted for? And hunted for by several people?

Pointer next interviewed the servants. He learned that the front door had been left unbolted last night. The butler never bolted it, but the last in of the five usually saw to it, though it had been forgotten once before—by Mr. Haliburton, who had assured the butler that he would be more careful in future. The fact, therefore, did not amount to much, for supposing there were a crime here, a murderer with any sense, if a member of the household, would have taken the elementary precaution of undoing the door so as to suggest an outsider. But there was also the fact that Ingram had sat on working in the library last night after the others had gone to bed.

It would have been quite easy for him to have stepped out, and drawn the bolts back and admitted anyone. Hid his sister think, or know, that he had, and was that why she had tipped the cigarette ash out into the window box so that it could not be identified?

Apart from the fact of the door being found unbolted this morning, there was one other interesting piece of information that came to the chief inspector. The second housemaid told him that last night, while crossing the landing, she saw Mr. Ingram and Mrs. Pratt meet, on their way out to the car with the others for a dinner to which all were going. Mrs. Pratt had said something very low and very quickly to Ingram as thought not wanting to be overheard. But the maid’s sharp ears had caught the final sentence. “Please be sure and burn it.” Mr. Ingram had nodded and said what looked like words of reassurance and agreement. He looked very grave and very disturbed, the housemaid thought. Where exactly had this meeting taken place? Just outside Miss Longstaff’s door, the maid said. Miss Longstaff was still in her room, she thought, but she could not be sure. As for the bus ticket, the housemaids had found similar ones several times before and all during this last week. And always in the morning, when there had been no known visitor to account for it in the evening. The butler added one more time during the day when a similar ticket had been left on a wine tray after Mr. Frederick Ingram had been in.

Pointer asked for another word with Mrs. Pratt when he had finished with the servants.

“What exactly did you ask Mr. Ingram last night to burn?” He put the question without any preamble, as soon as he had closed the door behind himself.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked as though hard of hearing. Pointer repeated his question.

“Oh, a ridiculous doggerel I had written about some theory of his, to do with circles and squaring them,” she explained lightly. “It really was such silly stuff that I didn’t want it lying around and read by everyone who might think that I fancied such rhyme poetry!” She smiled pleasantly at Pointer.

“When had you written it?” he asked, as though chatting.

“A few days ago,” was the airy reply. Mrs. Pratt evidently did not intend to be pinned down to hours.

“By the way, have you seen Mrs. Appleton this morning?” Pointer asked next.

She opened her eyes. “Who’s Mrs. Appleton, pray?”

“Mr. Ingram’s sister. I had an idea——“ Pointer’s tone expressed surprise that the two did not know each other, but either Mrs. Pratt was a splendid actress or she really had not even heard the name before, and thanking her, Pointer opened the door for her.

Those burned papers in the library fireplace, were they the result of this talk? Was it for them that someone had searched the room this morning before the police arrived and was it for them that Mrs. Appleton was looking? It was because of the similarity in the double search that Pointer had asked Mrs. Pratt whether she knew the sister of the dead man.

There was a ring at the front door. Pointer went on out. A short, rather round-shouldered, slender, young man was stepping in with the air of one of the family. Moy hurried past with outstretched hand. This was no moment to stay on personal likes or dislikes. After a few words of horror and regret he turned and introduced the chief inspector to Frederick Ingram. Had he been a horse, or a dog, the chief inspector would not have bought him. Frederick Ingram had a treacherous eye.

Frederick listened now with an appearance of deep grief to Moy’s account of how his brother had met his end. Then he moved towards the library.

“As his literary executor, I take possession of all his papers, of course. I think I’ll have them removed en bloc to my rooms at Hampstead.”

“All of them?” Pointer asked.

“Well, perhaps I needn’t burden myself with all,” Frederick said promptly, with the air of a man conferring a favor. “I’ll make a selection.” He walked on into the room. Pointer and Moy followed.

“The work I was correcting of his was locked in a case in the bottom drawer. If you’ll hand me over his keys I’ll take it along for one thing—and his letter case and so on...I’d better have those too...He spoke carelessly, but his small eyes darted round the room in a very searching look as he bent over the pigeon-holes. For a second he ran through their contents then he turned. “The keys?” he said pleasantly.

“They’re at the Yard,” Pointer said as pleasantly and as carelessly. “Just for the moment, of course. They and the attaché case.”

Frederick’s smile turned into a mere show of teeth. But he said nothing.

“You were here last night,” Pointer went on, remembering the bus ticket. “Did Mr. Ingram seem just as usual?”

Frederick Ingram said nothing for a moment, merely went on turning over some papers in his hand.

“Just,” he said, laying them down and turning round. He had pleasant manners as a rule. The trouble with Frederick was that when they were not pleasant they were so very much the other way.

Now if ever a loosely hung mouth spoke of garrulity, this young man’s did, but not even Tark’s tight lips could have answered the chief inspector’s question more briefly. There was a short silence.

“I take it that my brother’s papers—and keys—will be handed to me as soon as all the usual formalities have been complied with?” he asked the chief inspector, who said that he should have them back as soon as possible. “I think I ought to go through them to see if there’s anything missing. Among his papers, that is...” Frederick went on.

Pointer said that if Mr. Ingram would use his, the chief inspector’s car, he would be taken to Scotland Yard and shown all the papers belonging to Mr. Ingram.

“I can soon tell you if anything is missing,” Frederick promised.

“Do, and we’ll send them, as soon as we’ve done with them, to Markham Square.” Pointer seemed to be finishing the interview on a note of meeting the other’s wishes as far as possible.

“Oh—eh—Hampstead, please. I only stopped with my sister while running in and out of here, as I had to do several times a week. After this terrible tragedy, I shall go back to my own digs.”

“But Mrs. Appleton is her brother’s chief legatee, and also an executrix. I think it might be as well if you and she worked through them together with Mr. Moy,” Pointer persisted.

“But surely I’m his literary executor,” spluttered Frederick, turning indignantly to Moy who shook his head.

“He’s left a bequest to the Author’s Society and asks the secretary to appoint a regular literary agent to act in that capacity—we to settle the remuneration,” Moy murmured.

“Still—even so,” Frederick went on as though in anger, “even so, there will be all sorts of family papers and so on that my sister won’t be competent to deal with. I’ll just look through what you’ve taken, chief inspector, let you know if any are missing, and then we can talk over what had better be done with what’s left.”

He was clearly in a hurry to see the papers.

“Mrs. Appleton seemed to miss nothing,” Pointer threw in casually.

Instantly the little dark eyes fairly snapped as they looked at him.

“Oh, indeed? My sister has been here, has she? Gone through his papers?”

“She probably did when she was here in the library,” the chief inspector seemed to think that of no importance.

“She was in here? When?” There was something very attentive in Frederick’s voice and face.

Pointer explained how Mrs. Appleton had gone into the room to recover after coming to the house. Frederick’s eyes had a gleam in them as he said good-by rather abruptly.

At the Yard he went through everything very carefully after asking to be left to himself—he put it that he need not detain anyone as he would ring when he had finished, he knew how busy the Yard always were, etc. They seemed charmed with his thoughtfulness, and one pair of eyes was on him throughout his careful but most painstaking search. When every paper had been unfolded and shaken out, every envelope searched, he had locked the case again and laid the keys on top of it. Then he sat a moment smoking a cigarette with what looked like a frown of concentration on his face.

He took quite a brisk walk along the embankment until he made his way by tube to Chelsea, and to Markham Square. Here, in a little two-story house that looked on to one of the melancholy cats’ gardens of town, he rang a bell. The outside of the house might be dingy, but inside everything glittered, and it was a very efficient-looking elderly woman who greeted him with a smile of acquaintance.

“Mr. Appleton’s in, Mr. Fred. He’s been ‘phoning you, so I think he expects you.”

He walked on past her into a neat but cold room.

“Please excuse there being no fire. It’s gone out and I haven’t had time to lay it again yet. We’re upset with Mr. Ingram’s dreadful death. Dreadful to think of! His own friend to’ve done it! And him being all dressed up as a ghost makes it seem worse, somehow.” She was shedding her prim “official” manner as she spoke. Fred stared at her for a second as though he wondered impatiently of what she was talking, his narrow little head, the head of a man who would always prefer to gain his ends by scheming, rather than by force, a little aslant, as he murmured some brief acknowledgment. The next moment the door was swung open with a certain deliberate regal air and there stood Appleton. And he stood a full minute framed in the cream painted doorway staring at his brother-in-law with his head thrown back, an eyeglass fixed in one rather wrinkled eye, before, with an effect of some spiritual meaning in the physical act, he took a step into the room and, still staring at Fred, closed the door behind him without shifting his steady gaze.