| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
II
sat staring in front of him thoughtfully. He had, indeed, new food for
thought. Mary Dove’s statement that she had seen a man in the garden at
approximately 4:35 opened up certain new possibilities. That is, of course,
if Mary Dove was speaking the truth. It was never Inspector Neele’s habit
to assume that anyone was speaking the truth. But, examine her statement
as he might, he could see no real reason why she should have lied. He was
of having seen a man in the garden. It was quite clear that that man could
not have been Lancelot Fortescue, although her reason for assuming that
it was he was quite natural under the circumstances. It had not been
Lancelot Fortescue, but it had been a man about the height and build of
Lancelot Fortescue, and if there had been a man in the garden at that par-
up a line of thought.
Added to this statement of hers, there had been the further statement
that she had heard someone moving about upstairs. That, in its turn, tied
up with something else. The small piece of mud he had found on the floor
of Adele Fortescue’s boudoir. Inspector Neele’s mind dwelt on the small
secret drawer in it. There had been three letters in that drawer, letters
written by Vivian Dubois to Adele Fortescue. A great many love letters of
one kind or another had passed through Inspector Neele’s hands in the
course of his career. He was acquainted with passionate6 letters, foolish let-
letters. Inspector Neele was inclined to classify these three as of the latter
kind. Even if read in the divorce court, they could pass as inspired by a
foot!” thought the inspector inelegantly. Neele, when he had found the let-
ters, had sent them up at once to the Yard since at that time the main ques-
tion was whether the Public Prosecutor’s office thought that there was suf-
ficient evidence to proceed with the case against Adele Fortescue or Adele
Rex Fortescue having been poisoned by his wife with or without her
lover’s connivance11. These letters, though cautious, made it fairly clear that
Vivian Dubois was her lover, but there had not been in the wording, so far
as Inspector Neele could see, any signs of incitement12 to crime. There might
have been incitement of a spoken kind, but Vivian Dubois would be far too
cautious to put anything of that kind down on paper.
Fortescue to destroy his letters and that Adele Fortescue had told him she
had done so.
Well, now they had two more deaths on their hands. And that meant, or
should mean, that Adele Fortescue had not killed her husband.
Unless, that is—Inspector Neele considered a new hypothesis—Adele
Fortescue had wanted to marry Vivian Dubois and Vivian Dubois had
wanted, not Adele Fortescue, but Adele Fortescue’s hundred thousand
pounds which would come to her on the death of her husband. He had as-
sumed, perhaps, that Rex Fortescue’s death would be put down to natural
worried over Rex Fortescue’s health during the last year. (Parenthetically,
Inspector Neele said to himself that he must look into that question. He
had a subconscious16 feeling that it might be important in someway.) To
continue, Rex Fortescue’s death had not gone according to plan. It had
been diagnosed without loss of time as poisoning, and the correct poison
named.
Supposing that Adele Fortescue and Vivian Dubois had been guilty, what
state would they be in then? Vivian Dubois would have been scared and
Adele Fortescue would have lost her head. She might have done or said
foolish things. She might have rung up Dubois on the telephone, talking in-
discreetly17 in a way that he would have realized might have been over-
It was early as yet to try and answer that question, but Inspector Neele
Dubois had been in or out of the hotel between the hours of 4:15 and 6
o’clock. Vivian Dubois was tall and dark like Lance Fortescue. He might
have slipped through the garden to the side door, made his way upstairs
and then what? Looked for the letters and found them gone? Waited
there, perhaps, till the coast was clear, then come down into the library
when tea was over and Adele Fortescue was alone?
But all this was going too fast—
Neele had questioned Mary Dove and Elaine Fortescue; he must see now
what Percival Fortescue’s wife had to say.
点击  收听单词发音
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- 发表评论
-
- 最新评论 进入详细评论页>>
