I looked at my companion.
“Curious, Pons.”
“Extremely curious, Parker.”
“It was past nine o’clock by this time, Mr. Pons, and Rollo was cold, hungry, and extremely angry. Eventually, he turned off the lights, relocked the front door on the automatic latch, and returned to Stonecross. He intended to go back to the house yesterday morning to seek an explanation of his aunt’s absence and failure to keep her appointment but he was arrested at the hotel by an officer of the Essex Police before he could do so. His aunt had been found murdered, something like £10,000 had been stolen from the safe and all the evidence pointed to his implication.”
Pons passed a hand across his chin.
“What time was this, Miss Chambers?”
“At about midday, Mr. Pons. He was having a drink in the lounge bar to fortify himself for his icy walk to The Pines. Mr. Pons, the police have got hold of the most preposterous story! The London C.I.D. officers searched Rollo’s lodgings, where they found the silver statuette, The Hound of Hell. Of course, it had originally come from Miss Schneider’s house and that made things even blacker. You would not credit the monstrous allegations, Mr. Pons! Rollo is said to have swum a river in these icy conditions. The person who committed the murder must have been fiendishly cunning.”
Pons’ deep-set eyes were concentrated on his client.
“What makes you say that?”
“Miss Schneider was found strangled in a woodshed in a lonely spot at the side of the large garden after her housekeeper instigated a search when she was unable to find her mistress yesterday.”
Miss Chambers paused and looked sombrely at us.
“Mark this, Mr. Pons. There were only two sets of footprints in the snow leading to the wood-shed. One were those made by the murdered lady herself. The other set of tracks, presumably those of the murderer, were made by a pair of rubber boots. Mr. Pons, they went clearly to the woodshed but they ended there and never returned!”
-3-
There was a deep silence in the room which was broken suddenly by Pons striking his palm on his thigh with a crack like a pistol-shot.
“Excellent, Miss Chambers,” he said crisply, getting to his feet.
He reached for his pipe and started re-filling it with tobacco. “We shall be with you no later than midday tomorrow. Are you going back to Colchester?”
“Tonight, Mr. Pons. Rollo is being held by the police there.”
“Good. We shall take an early train, join you there and then travel on together to Stonecross. Who is the officer in charge of the case?”
“Inspector Stanley Rossiter of the Colchester C.I.D., Mr. Pons. He thinks…”
“I would rather not hear what the police think for the moment, if you please,” said Pons. “I prefer to form my own impressions on the ground. You may tell your young man when you see him that I will do everything I can to assist him. I would be grateful if you would book accommodation at the hotel at Stonecross.”
The girl got to her feet with shining eyes.
“Then you will take the case, Mr. Pons?”
“I had already decided to take it as soon as I learned your errand. Parker, I know you have had a hard day but I would be infinitely obliged if you would procure a taxi and see Miss Chambers safely to the station.”
“With pleasure. You have no objection if I accompany you to Essex tomorrow? I am free on Tuesday and Wednesday as these are my rest-days and my locum owes me the time.”
“By all means, gentlemen,” said Miss Chambers. “I will look forward to seeing you both tomorrow. If I am not at the police station you will find me at The Mitre Hotel in Colchester.”
When I returned from my errand it had turned piercingly cold, though the snow held off, and I poured myself a stiff whisky as soon as I had regained the comfort of our quarters. I found Pons enveloped by a cloud of fragrant smoke, and hunched over the table on which a cloth had been laid, deeply immersed in a gazetteer.
“Well, Parker,” he greeted me. “Here is a pretty puzzle.” “A puzzle indeed, Pons.”
“What do you make of it? Pray give me the benefit of your ratiocinative gifts.”
“You are making fun of me, Pons,” I ventured as I sat down at the table at his side, holding out my feet to toast at the fire. “There is certainly no shortage of suspects.”
His face cleared.
“Ah, you have seen the newspaper reports then.”
“I bought an evening paper at the station. The Star is full of it. There seem to have been a constant procession of people to The Pines on Saturday afternoon, a number with good motives for the crime. Apart from the two female servants, who knew of the money in the safe, there was the grocer who had a row about an unpaid bill; a farmer, who wished to discuss the boundary fencing of the properties; a tramp, who was given a dusty answer and turned away; the milkman, who had not been paid either; the postman…”
“Do not go on, my dear fellow,” said Pons, with a short laugh. “You will cause me to become confused otherwise.”
I looked at him suspiciously.
“That day will be marked in my diary in letters of fire, Pons.”
He glanced at me in surprise.
“Why, Parker, you are becoming quite poetic in your middle years. Perhaps I exaggerated. I merely meant that I was pursuing one line of inquiry to the exclusion of all others.”
He pushed the gazetteer over toward me.
“Just look at this large-scale map here. I knew this set would come in handy when I bought it.”
I soon saw what he meant. At various points throughout the book he had stapled large-scale, separate sheets, relating to areas of the Home Counties round about London. The map indicated gave Stonecross in great detail.
“This is Miss Schneider’s property, Parker, and you will see that a stream runs behind it and across her land and that of her neighbours on either side.”
“I have got it, Pons.”
I looked at the map with great interest, noting that Pons had pencilled dotted lines on to the sheet, indicating the route taken by the murdered woman. There was another, heavier set of lines, which gave me some thought.
“You see the second set there, Parker. The man who made those heavy footmarks, as of rubber boots, came down the drive from the main road, entered the house and committed the theft and then presumably, if we are to believe Miss Chambers and the newspaper reports, walked to the woodshed where he found Miss Schneider, strangled her and then vanished into thin air.”
I looked at him reflectively.
“It certainly seems baffling, Pons.”
He puffed furiously at his pipe, enveloping his figure in a mantle of blue vapour.
“It would be, Parker, if that were truly the case. Only fieldwork can give us the right answers. Let us pray that the snow holds off in that district until after tomorrow.”
“You regard that as important?”
He nodded.
“It is vital, Parker. It will not only give us the time-table for the crime but establish the exact movements of victim and murderer.”
I took off my coat, putting it down across the back of a chair and stretched myself in my armchair next to the fire.
“I can understand the movements, Pons, but I do not quite understand about the time-table.”
Solar Pons stabbed the air with the stem of his pipe, fixing me with a piercing eye through the thinning wreaths of smoke.
“If Miss Chambers’ fiancé’s story be true, then the murder was committed sometime between five P.M. and seven P.M. We can perhaps narrow that down a little. Between five and six would be nearer the mark.”