“Well, of course you must know your business best,” she murmured from among her cushions, “but it would take more than a Frenchman's word to have made me set that man free!”
She asked very kindly after Christine, and he did not mention the fact of that young lady's coming marriage to the object of Mrs. Erskine's suspicions.
Mrs. Erskine evidently feared that it would be quite useless, but she had not the slightest objection to his going over again all the Erskine letters in her possession.
“But Robert's letters are missing. You remember the packet I showed you in Paris?”
Pointer did.
“When we returned here—Mrs. Clark came to fetch me: she thought I was too ill to be left to Marie's care alone—the letters had gone. I am sure I placed them in the top of my trunk, or saw Marie put them there just before we started. I had them under my pillow before that. But when Marie unpacked here there was no sign of them. On the whole, I am not sure that their presence was not more of a grief than their absence. But I confess the thought of those letters, sacred to me by my loss, having been lost by some carelessness—” She paused with a worried frown.
It was nearly half past eleven before Pointer made his appearance on the following morning.
Mrs. Erskine had had an old trunk brought down from the attic in which, as she sent him word, she kept everything belonging to family matters of any kind.
There were several letters from Mr. Henry Erskine which were new to the officer. They were all affectionate in tone. It was quite clear from them that he only contemplated remaining away a twelvemonth on his brother's ranch. In all of them, however, there was no faintest clue, no hint of any mystery. The rest of the box concerned the Abercrombies more than the Erskines, and the Chief Inspector gained a very good idea of the stiff but honourable upbringing of Margaret Erskine from them. He went through them and the old books, old bills, and personal trifles which the trunk contained with amazing speed and thoroughness. Then he shut the lid and stood awhile in thought. As he stood there, he heard a soft thud in the next room. To a practised ear, there is only one thing which makes that sound. A safe-door was being closed in the wall adjoining. A few minutes later he heard Mrs. Erskine speaking from the room beside him. She told Marie to be on hand to let out the gentleman—she had referred to the Chief Inspector as connected with her firm of lawyers—as soon as he should be finished. She did not mention refreshments, he noted, though the day was hot, and the work dry and dusty. Like Christine, Pointer saw that the good lady did not encourage unnecessary expenditure.
He heard her deliberate steps cross the marble hall and the front door shut. He heard Marie go into her mistress's room. Like a shadow he stepped into the drawing-room, of which the door stood open. From an oriel window he looked down at the car waiting below. There was a man sitting in one of the front chairs and a handsome, painted, plump woman on the back seat, dressed in the very height of fashion. Pointer eyed her keenly through his glass from a discreet position behind the curtains. Her black eyes were fastened on the front door. These were evidently the Clarks, and even after Mrs. Erskine had taken her seat he kept his glass levelled until the car turned up the drive and purred out of sight.