“You mean, about the mysterious visitor?” said the girl, wrinkling her white forehead. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. Elsie never had a mysterious visitor at all, to my knowledge.”
“And yet you said before that you thought there was someone or something she was afraid of,” Roger mused. “That doesn’t help you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Margaret confessed. “I couldn’t say anything definite about that when you asked me before, you remember.”
“Look here,” said Anthony suddenly, “are you sure she was afraid”? Not just worried? If she was just worried, you see, that chap Woodthorpe would account for it.”
“Yes, that’s a good point,” Roger approved. “Whether she had any deep game on with him or not, she’d naturally be put out by his wanting to break with her. Is that more like it, Margaret?”
“It might have been that, of course,” said the girl doubtfully, “but – oh, I don’t know, but my impression certainly is that it was something stronger than just worry.”
“All the better,” Roger said cheerfully. “That confirms my theory. If it was somebody out of her past, trying in all probability to blackmail her, she certainly would show signs of fear.”
“I know!” Margaret exclaimed. “I could go through her things, couldn’t I? Letters and papers, I mean. I could easily do that, and should think if there is anything to be found out that’s the most likely way of discovering it.”
“I should say the inspector is almost certain to have done it already,” Roger meditated. “Still, there’s no harm in you doing it too.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Margaret, her face falling. “Then it won’t be much use?”
“I doubt it. Still, we mustn’t disregard the possibility. Of course if you could find some place that the inspector may have overlooked –! Documentary evidence of that sort, you see, would be hidden very carefully away by a person of Mrs Vane’s criminal – shall we say? – training. And after all, the inspector wouldn’t have been looking for anything like that. Probably he’ll only have glanced through the obvious, merely as a matter of routine.”
“Well, let’s hope for the best,” Margaret smiled. “Anyhow, if I don’t find something I promise you it won’t be for want of looking.”
“By the way,” said Roger, dismissing this topic, “how’s Dr Vane?”
“George? Oh, he’s all right, why?”
“I only wondered. No interesting developments yet?”
Margaret laughed. “You mean Miss Williamson? Oh, give her time. I don’t think any woman could be expected to propose to a man in less than a week from his wife’s death, really.”
“Roger judges everybody by himself,” interposed Anthony maliciously.
“I wasn’t going so far as to suggest that she’d actually proposed to him yet, Margaret,” Roger explained mildly. “I was just asking whether there’d been any developments, of any sort.”
“If there have been, then, I don’t know them. I hardly ever see either of them in these days. They seem to be spending more time in the laboratory than ever.”
“Well, I don’t know that I personally should care to conduct my courtship in an atmosphere of test tubes, litmus paper, and dead rabbits, but there’s no accounting for tastes. A dead rabbit, I feel convinced, would put me off my stroke altogether.”
“Roger, you’re disgusting. Well, is there anything else you wish to ask me?”
“Not at the moment, I’ll wait for one of your more helpful days. Does that mean, by the way, that ‘Good morning, Mr Sheringham. It’s been so nice to see you. You must come again some day’? Because if so, I warn you that Anthony comes with me.”
“Roger, I think you’re being perfectly horrid this morning,” exclaimed Miss Cross, blushing warmly.
“Shall I chuck him over the cliff for you, Margaret?” suggested Anthony, no less moist.
“It doesn’t mean anything of the sort,” Margaret went on, disregarding this admirable offer. “I was simply going to say that if you don’t want to discuss things with me any more, I wish you’d show me the little cave where Elsie and Colin used to meet. It sounds most thrilling.”
“What I deplore most of all in the young women of today,” remarked Roger sadly, as he rose with reluctance to his feet, “is the unpleasing morbidity of their tastes.”
As they walked abreast along the top of the cliff, Roger’s thoughts were busy round a certain point. Margaret’s reference to her dead cousin as Dr Vane’s wife tended to show that Anthony had not told her that the two were probably not legally married. Roger was glad of this; he had meant to warn Anthony that morning to say nothing to the girl on this delicate matter, but it had slipped his memory. Until the matter was settled one way or the other, either by the discovery of the living Herbert Peters or by the establishment of his death prior to Mrs Vane’s marriage to the doctor, it was much better to leave the girl in ignorance of the issues involved. For (and this was the point which was really worrying Roger) if Mrs Vane’s second marriage turned out to be a bigamous one, would that not mean that the settlement was invalidated and Margaret’s legacy vanished into thin air? Without knowing the exact terms of the document it was impossible to say, but Roger meant to go into the matter with a solicitor on Margaret’s behalf at the earliest possible moment.
His attention was recalled to the present moment with a jerk. “I can’t tell you how thankful I was to hear of this new theory of yours, Roger,” Margaret was saying with an effort of lightness. “It’s such a change from – well, from the way things seem to have been heading. And you really think you’ll be able to substantiate it?”
“I’m quite sure I shall, my dear,” Roger replied, perhaps with more confidence than he actually felt at the moment. “I’ve what is termed, I understand, a hunch about it. Don’t you worry any more; Uncle Roger is going to see you through this and get to the bottom of it for you.”
“I shall never be able to thank you enough if you do,” the girl said in a low tone. “Perhaps you can imagine something of the nightmare the last day or two has been, since I realised that I – that they –” Her voice broke.
Roger drew her arm through his and patted her hand paternally. “That’s all over now, my dear. No need to worry about that again. Uncle Roger’s on the job now. Besides,” he went on, instinctively shying away from any such display of feeling, “to touch on lesser matters, I believe I can promise you that even the inspector is giving up that theory now too.”
“He is?” Margaret did not attempt to conceal her joy. She looked at Roger with shining eyes. “He is really? Did he tell you so?”
“Well, not in so many words,” hedged Roger, who had not the least solid ground for this assertion. “But he meant me to infer it, I think. He’s a very cautious bird, though, and would never say anything outright.”
“Oh, thank Heaven!” Margaret murmured. “At last I can begin to breathe again!”
Anthony glared at the horizon and muttered beneath his breath. The words “damnfool”, “anointed ass” and “tommyrot” were indistinctly audible.
The rest of the way Margaret seemed to dance on air, and Roger rejoiced openly with her. Even Anthony was so far infected by the general feeling as to forget his dark broodings regarding the inspector’s state of anointed asininity and possess himself of Margaret’s other arm. It was a singularly hot day, but Margaret did not appear to mind the extra burden in the least. Perhaps she liked having her arms carried for her.
They reached the nearer flight of steps and descended to the ledge.
“I’ve only been down here once since Elsie’s death,” Margaret remarked, as they made their way along it in single file with Roger in the van. “I’m not even sure whereabouts she – where it happened.”
“Just along there, it was,” Roger said, pointing ahead of them. “You see where the ledge broadens out for twenty or thirty yards. Just in the middle of that. The little cave’s there too.”
As they arrived at the spot
where the ledge began to widen Margaret stopped and peered over the edge. Down below the waves were thrashing and beating, with a sullen roar and a seething white foam, among the huge boulders. She shuddered.
“How – how horrible!” she said in a low voice.
Roger had waited for her and she walked slowly on, but still gazing down into the turmoil as if fascinated. Anthony watched her with a nameless anxiety: there were people (weren’t there?) who got a bit rocky on heights and as often as not threw themselves over from sheer fascinated funk. “Better not walk so near the edge, Margaret,” he called out to her above the roar of the waves.
Suddenly she stopped short and stared down among the rocks, leaning perilously over; it seemed as if something had riveted her attention.
“What’s that?” she asked Roger, pointing a slim forefinger. “Isn’t there something on that big greeny rock, just out of the water? It looks like a – yes, it’s a shoe, surely.”
Roger followed the direction she indicated. “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s an old shoe, I think. There must be a good man – hullo, wait a minute!” He stood for an instant staring down, frowning. “Shin down and get it, Anthony, will you?” he said abruptly the next moment. “You’re younger than I am. I’ve got an idea.”
“You have?” Margaret asked eagerly, as Anthony hastened to obey. “What?”
“Half a minute, till I’ve had a look at it.”
Five minutes later Roger was turning the shoe over in his hands. It was a lady’s, size six, soaked with sea water and in a dilapidated condition; the buckle had been torn off, and the leather was slit on either side of the toe down to the sole.
Roger’s eyes gleamed. “Eureka!” he exclaimed softly. “Good for your sharp eyes, lady. You understand what this is, both of you, don’t you?”
“Roger!” Margaret cried. “Do explain! I don’t know what it is, except an old shoe. What is it?”
“It’s one of the shoes worn by the murderer to disguise his footprints, precisely as I said,” Roger explained, with a not unjustified triumph. “Don’t you see why the leather’s cut like this? To enable the shoe to be crammed on to a foot several sizes too large for it. He had the pair all ready with him, made use of them, and then threw them down into the sea.”
“Jolly good, Roger!” Anthony exclaimed, smiting his cousin on the back in his exuberance. “Then you were right when you said the murderer was a man.”
“I was, Anthony; and this clinches it once and for all. No woman would want to make a shoe this size still larger to fit her foot. I shall have to hare off and see the inspector about this. In the meantime, you shin down again and hunt among those rocks for the second one; it’s bound to be somewhere about. Children, this is the biggest thing that’s happened since I took up the case!”
chapter sixteen
Inspector Moresby Intervenes
“The biggest thing that’s happened since you took up the case, is it, sir?” said a voice behind them. “Well, well, that’s interesting. May I have a look at that shoe?”
They wheeled round, startled. Then Anthony glared, Margaret stiffened and Roger grinned.
“Hullo, Inspector!” cried the last. “Where in the world did you spring from?”
“The cave, sir,” the inspector replied, a little twinkle in his blue eyes, as he possessed himself of the shoe. “Though not so much sprung as crawled.” He turned the shoe over in his hand, examining it with professional intentness.
“Find anything interesting in the cave, by the way?” Roger asked airily.
The inspector glanced up from the shoe, his twinkle again to the fore. “Only what you did, I fancy, Mr Sheringham, sir,” he replied blandly. “A copy of London Opinion, eh?”
“Well, I hope you found that as interesting as I did,” Roger returned, somewhat discomfited.
Anthony had been watching this exchange without joy. When one has been anointed ass enough to suspect, on grounds of mere material evidence, a particularly high-souled young woman, it would only be decent, to Anthony’s mind, on finding one’s self confronted with the said high-souled young woman at least to exhibit signs of uncontrollable embarrassment and gloom. Yet so far from exhibiting any such signs, the inspector had completely ignored the high-souled young woman’s existence. Things like that were simply not done.
“I expect you’d probably like to be getting back now,” said Anthony to the high-souled young woman, in tones of frigid correctness. “May I see you home?”
“Thank you, that is very kind of you,” replied the high-souled young woman no less stiffly.
They turned and walked, like two faintly animated ramrods, back the way they had come.
Inspector Moresby must have been singularly devoid of all sensibility; even this pointed behaviour failed to move him to any exhibition of remorse. “You’re quite right, Mr Sheringham, sir,” he observed, inhumanly unconscious of the censure conveyed in every line of the dignified retreating figures. “This is interesting, this shoe. I’ll send a man down some time to look for its fellow. Now sit down and tell me all about it. What made you think that the murderer is a man, and what had that copy of London Opinion got to tell you?”
Now it had certainly been no part of Roger’s plans to give the inspector, for the time being at any rate, any idea for his new theory. Beyond reporting to him, as in duty bound, the discovery of that significant shoe, he was going to say nothing of the deductions he had been able to draw from it. The inspector himself had chosen to establish a rivalry between them, and Roger had not been slow to accept the challenge. Yet in a quarter of an hour’s time, by a judicious mixture of flattery, cajolery and officialism, the inspector had succeeded in scooping from Roger’s mind every thought that had passed through it during the last twelve hours, together with the full story of his activities for that period. It was not for nothing that Inspector Moresby had reached the heights he now adorned.
“Well, I’ll not say you’re on the wrong tack, sir,” he observed cautiously, when Roger had hung the last bow and tied the final ribbon about his newly decorated theory. “I’ll not say you’re on the wrong tack, though I won’t say I think you’re on the right one either. The reasoning’s clever, and though it’s easy enough for me to pick holes in it, it’s just as easy for you to fill ‘em up again. The thing’s too vague to say either way just yet.”
“I made a perfectly legitimate set of deductions, and I’ve just had them confirmed in a rather remarkable way,” Roger insisted not altogether too pleased with this hardly exuberant praise for his efforts.
“That’s quite right,” the inspector agreed soothingly. “But the trouble is, you see, that in a case like this when the known facts are so precious few, it’s possible to make half a dozen sets of deductions from them, all quite different. For instance,” he went on with a paternal air which Roger found somewhat hard to bear, “for instance, I’ve no doubt that if you gave me time, I could prove to you, just as conclusively as you’ve proved your own theory, that the real murderer is the doctor’s secretary – (what’s her name?) Miss Williamson.”
“Miss Williamson?” Roger echoed, startled out of his mild annoyance. “Good Heavens, I never thought seriously of her. You don’t really think –?”
“I do not, sir,” the inspector smiled. “Not for one minute. I can’t say it ever entered my mind before. But – wait a minute!” He thought rapidly for a moment, still smiling. “How’s this? Miss Williamson’s setting her cap at the doctor –” Roger caught his breath and looked at the other narrowly, but the inspector returned his gaze with bland innocence “– but knows she can’t get him, or thinks of course that she can’t get him, till Mrs Vane’s out of the way. You’ve seen the lady, and you probably gathered as well as I did that if Miss Williamson makes up her mind to a thing, that thing’s going to happen. She strolled over from the house to the top of the cliffs that Tuesday afternoon to get a breath of air, and sees Mrs Vane making for the Russells’ house, alone; not a soul in sight. ‘Here’s my op
portunity!’ she says, joins Mrs Vane and easily persuades her, on some pretext or other, to accompany her down to the ledge; and there all she’s got to do is to push her over. That fits the facts all right, doesn’t it?”
“But was Miss Williamson out that afternoon?” Roger asked shrewdly.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the inspector, with an air of mild surprise. “Didn’t you know that?”
“No,” Roger had to admit. “I didn’t.”
“Oh, yes. She went out just as I said, for a breath of air. It was a hot afternoon and the laboratory got a bit stuffy. She was on the top of the cliffs for about half an hour, and says she saw nobody. It was a bit before the time of the murder, but we’ve only got her word for that. If nobody saw her go out and nobody saw her come in, how are we to know she is telling the truth? I tried to get some confirmation of her statement from the doctor, but he’s as vague as you like. Might have been the morning, so far as he remembers. Besides, he wasn’t in the laboratory all the afternoon himself; I got that from the maid who took his tea into him there; he wasn’t there then.”
“Well, how about the coat-button? How is that going to fit in?”
“On her way down the drive,” responded the inspector glibly, “Miss Williamson noticed a coat-button lying on the ground. She recognised it as one of Miss Cross’s, and being a precise, careful sort of person, picked it up and slipped it in her pocket, meaning to give it to Miss Cross later. After the murder, however, she says to herself: ‘Well, there’s nothing to beat a murder that looks like an accident, but I’ll just make sure that if anybody is going to be suspected it shan’t be me!’ and with that she climbs down to where the body is lying (she’s a strong, active-looking woman, so that wouldn’t give her overmuch difficulty) and puts the button in the dead woman’s hand. As for the footprints, they might just as well have been made by her as anyone else.”
“Very neat,” said Roger approvingly. “And the shoes, eh? What about them?”
The inspector laid one finger along the side of his nose and rubbed that organ slowly; his eyes began to twinkle again. “Ah! Well, I can think of several ways of working those shoes in, sir, and I’ve no doubt you can do the same.”
Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery Page 14