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I


MYSTERY
AT THE RECTORY


BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces
The Case of the Missing Diary
Tragedy at Beechcroft
The Paper-Chase Mystery
The Cautley Mystery
The Tall House Mystery
The Westwood Mystery
Death of John Tait
The Upfold Farm Mystery
The Wedding Chest Mystery


A. E.
MYSTERY
AT THE RECTORY

H. C. Kinsey & Company, Inc.
New York, 1937


Copyright, 1937, by
H. C. Kinsey & Company, Inc.
Printed in the U. S. A.





CHAPTER ONE
The rector got up from his writing table and laying
his pipe down, stood a moment as though collecting
his thoughts. A distinguished-looking man of around
forty was John Avery, with his tall spare figure, his
clever, scholarly face. He was frowning as he
absent-mindedly straightened a yellow china jar on
the corner of the mantelshelf. Then he returned to
his knee-hole table, and, taking an apple from a
plate which always stood on the corner, began
slowly to eat it, still with a look of abstraction on
his face, still with some inner discomfort marking
a frown on his fine forehead.
The apple automatically disposed of, he drew out
his watch and looked at it. Four o'clock. His
sister-in-law would probably be in her own sitting-
room.
Stepping out into the rectory's big hall-lounge,
he went up the stairs, broad and curving, and with
a gentle preliminary knock opened a door giving on
a room of blue and white harmonies. The rector's
sister-in-law—Doris Avery, whom most of her
circle, including the rector, voted a very beautiful
woman—sat writing at one of the windows; the
strong light struck naming gleams from the burnished
hair that grew in a lovely crescent around her smooth
white forehead. Otherwise, however, her features
were just averagely good; the hazel eyes of no
particular size or shape, their shade dependent, like
most eyes of that colour, on the mood of the moment,
and the mouth similarly neutral in its general
placidity, though the mobile lips looked ready to
smile on the least occasion. Her seated figure, too,
5
I


6 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
revealed a length of slender limbs that bespoke her
tallness and fine proportions when up on her smartly-
shod feet.
As she caught sight of him, she gave an excla-
mation of pleased surprise. "Why, John! I thought
of you as still a captive in Damascus—or was it
Ephesus? But since you're free—try this chair."
The cheery invitation, although he seated himself
in accordance with it, failed to dissipate the troubled
expression on John Avery's face as he said with
evident reluctance: "My dear Doris, I'm afraid
you'll think me unpardonably impertinent for what
I've come up to say to you. But I feel it a friendly
no less than a conscientious duty."
At her glance of inquiry he said in a low but
firm voice : " It's about Anthony Revell." Adding
gravely, as her raised eyebrows and puzzled ex-
pression continued to silently question his meaning,
"Are you being quite fair to him, Doris? / know
your devotion to Dick, of course. But Revell may
not realise it so fully. It's not the first time that
something in his voice and look, when talking with
you, has given me the same anxious fear that he may
possibly misunderstand your quick sympathies. But
it has nerved me to say frankly that I think it would
be well for him to see less of you, my dear."
Doris Avery had a very charming laugh. It rang
out now. Then she stifled it to exclaim: "My dear
John! How deliciously nattering! But you should
say it to Olive Hill. Not to me."
"Olive Hill ?" he repeated blankly.
"She would be pleased at your tone!" Doris
spoke with a spice of malice in her own. "Yes, Olive
Hill. But don't say a word yet, or you'll choke him
off. He has intervals of qualms. Olive may yet be
sacrificed—but he is tempted."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 7
The rector got up. His handsome face was all
alight now. Gone was the touch of austerity which
showed when he was grave.
"I confess I never thought of that simple explana-
tion." He did not add that it had never occurred to
him that any man would fall in love with Olive Hill
when Doris Avery was before his eyes. Though Olive
had an interesting face and really fine eyes. Olive
was his sister Grace's companion. A slender brown-
haired girl whose quietness had won her the nickname
of " Mousie " as a child. She was an orphan. Her
father had been a colonel in an Indian cavalry
regiment and her mother a friend of Grace Avery's
mother. Except for certain set duties, Olive was
treated at the rectory exactly as a member of the
family.
Grace came in now and sank into a chair with
some compliment to Doris on how charming her
room always looked.
"Wait till it gets its new covers," Doris said to
that. "Olive's engineering them. Blue taffetas with
black and white embroideries here and there.
Awfully smart. By the way, Grace, I've just been
confiding to John's well-known discretion—as now
to your own—that Olive's the magnet responsible
for Anthony Revell's increasingly frequent calls."
Grace looked perturbed. The news seemed un-
welcome. "Surely you're mistaken, Doris," she said
slowly, but was silenced by the smiling assurance:
"I have it from Anthony himself, my dear. Only
just now he was asking me whether I thought he
had a chance with her. But this is in absolute
confidence, remember, please. The secret's between
us three until he musters up the courage to declare
himself openly. But tell me how you like my new
covers, John?"


8 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
The rector was, however, thinking only of Anthony
Revell. Smart, well-groomed Anthony Revell, with
a very large fortune and a beautiful old house
"You really think he's in earnest," he queried
doubtfully.
"Olive would be pleased to hear you," Doris
answered dryly. "Oh, yes; he's very much in
earnest, though I don't say I'm for nothing in the
affair. He's a shocking flirt, of course. We all of us
know his deserved reputation in that respect. But
I've made it plain to him that he's gone too far, now,
for further"
The rector's attention was suddenly caught by a
door slightly ajar. It led into a sort of nondescript
room which used to be one of the schoolrooms.
Avery clearly remembered that this door had been
quite shut when he began speaking to Doris just
now. He was a man of shrewd perceptions and the
wind was blowing from the other side of the house.
As the door had opened, therefore, it had been
opened by a human hand. Stepping to it, he flung it
suddenly wide.
At the other side of the farther room stood a
young woman doing something to a jar of flowers.
But the tassel ends of a cushion between her and
the door were still swinging. Evidently set in
motion by her swift movement backwards.
Olive Hill—for it was she, looked round in well-
simulated surprise.
"Do you want me?" she asked with her faint
surface smile, her eyes glittering as she turned them
on the rector.
"There's a book on the hall table that's just
come for you," he answered gravely.
"Really? Oh, thanks, I'll run down and get it."
And with another artificial smile she left the room


10 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
monial possibilities," she finished with a rueful
laugh.
Grace gave a nod that signified her complete
agreement on that point as she rose and left her
brother and sister-in-law to their own conclusions.
Doris's glance went to the table in front of her.
"I'm just writing to Dick," she said, tapping the
paper softly as though the messages it carried made
it precious. "I wish he weren't so mysterious about
when he's coming home. It makes me dreadfully
afraid that he's once more going to spend his leave
out there. The Gold Coast isn't the health resort he
tries to make me believe it. And oh ! I do miss him
so frightfully!"
Mr. Avery laid a sympathising hand on her
shoulder. He was very fond of his sister-in-law who
had kept house for him now for nearly two years. He
hoped that Richard really was making his fortune,
as he had hinted that he was doing in a letter to
himself nearly a month ago. Richard was a clever
chap with many irons in West African fires. He had
written in the highest spirits of one of his invest-
ments. A banana-grove that he had bought from a
tired owner, and still more, some ore samples
uncovered when a torrential rain had washed away
a whole hillside, promised a bonanza. But, he added,
it was too soon to write with assurance. Which was
why he was not letting Doris in for a disappoint-
ment. But if his hopes were realised, that month-old
letter had said that Richard would be back with
Doris very shortly. And with money enough to stay
in England and comfort for the rest of his life.
"Patience !" the rector encouraged her, therefore,
before saying that he must get back to Ephesus.
"To 'the Street called Straight' ?" she asked.
"The street where you certainly belong, Jack," Doris


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 11
said gratefully as she turned to resume her letter-
writing.
Descending the stairs thoughtfully, the rector
caught sight of Olive below. She was standing by
the table on which lay the book that he had
mentioned to her, and he looked at her with new
eyes. If she married Anthony Revell she would
become a prominent member of his parish. The
Causeway, Revell's house, lay quite close; and his
father, the Admiral, had been a friend of the Averys
for years before he died. Anthony had a privileged
place in the community.
Studying his sister's companion with these
considerations as he came down, Avery was struck
by the intensity of the still figure. Will-power,
concentration, leashed-in energy, all were expressed
by it. She suggested a tautly-drawn bow, as she
stood arched slightly forward over her hands, spread
out across the book. A drawn bow? Or? Well,
with a humorous twist of his lips the rector privately
thought that at this moment Miss Hill was much
more like a " Pussy" than a " Mousie." Her eyes
were staring straight ahead of her with a very
curious light in their depths. A light which the
rector did not think had anything to do with the
beauty of the bed of Anchusas and Sidalceas lying
directly in their line of vision.
Without speaking he went on into his study, and
back to his beloved books, with a feeling that
whether it was pussy or mousie just outside the
study door, the lines had indeed fallen in pleasant
places for all within the rectory ; until he remembered
Grace's suggestion that Olive was in love with Byrd.
A most disquieting suggestion.
For Byrd represented to the rector the very spirit
of evil in his parish. Byrd—Captain Byrd, to give


12 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
him the rank which was his when he had retired on
a full disability pension of thirty shillings a week—
was a " Red " of the most vivid shade. He was not
merely an atheist. Avery could have forgiven that.
He was an " anti-God "; zealously and potently so.
Able and quick-witted in debate, he was an ever-
present thorn in the side of the Churchman. And
the idea that, even though only through his sister's
companion, his rectory could be linked to that man
was intolerable.
Then he reflected that Grace might have no
foundation for Olive's supposed sentiments. Doris
did not take the assertion seriously, he had seen.
Also—(and here the rector reached for his fountain-
pen) also, Doris, it appeared, had set her heart on
strengthening Anthony's errant fancy for Miss Hill
into an actual engagement. And what Doris set her
heart on, she usually obtained. So that Olive's own
happiness might be confidently hoped for, to the
rector's relief on all scores.
Four days later a telegram came for Doris from
her sister. Their mother, who lived with this
married sister, was seriously ill. So ill that her life
was in danger. Doris was off within the hour, leaving
very careful instructions with Olive as to the
running of the house. Such detailed instructions
that she had rather the air of the Matron of a Home
for the Feeble-Minded, when leaving one of her
charges perforce in command. Mousie, however,
listened with her usual air of careful silent attention.
Her post as "companion" was now tacitly ex-
changed for that of housekeeper, with special regard
for the order to take Mike, Doris's Irish terrier, for
daily walks; though "jumps" would have more
accurately described his favourite exercise.
The walks seemed invariably to end up by Mike's


14 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
fectly dressed, clever, amusing if not actually witty,
Mrs. Green was considered to be a social acquisition
to the neighbourhood.
She had appeared in the district about four months
ago, sending in her card to Lady Revell at The
Flagstaff, and asking whether she might be allowed
to copy the "Revell Morley." Lady Revell had
given permission at once, had met her later at her
work, and been struck by it and by her. A com-
mission followed to paint a ceiling for the Chinese
room, Lady Revell's pride. Mrs. Green's terms were
ridiculously low, but she had explained, with seeming
frankness, that she had been ordered by her doctor
away from the North of Ireland where she lived, to
the milder climate of England, and that the idea of
idle hours filled her with horror. The two women had
become very friendly. Lady Revell had insisted on
her putting up at The Flagstaff, and there Mrs. Green
had met Anthony on one of his infrequent calls on his
mother. Anthony, twelve years older than Gilbert
Revell who was his mother's idol, had been left a
very large fortune when a boy of ten by his grand-
father, between whom and himself there had been
one of those warm affections that sometimes run
between children and old people. Along with the
fortune had gone The Causeway, a large house where
Anthony had lived since coming down from Oxford.
Mrs. Green, the well-read, the widely travelled, the
splendid artist, had at once offered to paint some
panels in his study for him. In other words, she had
fallen head over heels in love with him, said local
gossip, adding that she would not have been the
first woman to find his very unusually good looks
irresistible. Anthony flattered, and very much
attracted, had at once closed with the offer. Mrs.
Green had installed herself at The Causeway. Lady


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 15
Revell had made no comment, though she had lent
Mrs. Green her own maid to stay with her there.
Anthony must marry some day, the wonder was that
he had not done so before. Mrs. Green was a widow,
evidently of independent means, and might carry it
off, though Lady Revell thought her foolish to
risk a slip, for she did not think Anthony was at all
in love with the artist; but that, Lady Revell
decided, was the woman's own look-out, and
certainly Mrs. Green was both keen-eyed and
clever, though a good deal older than Anthony.
This was the woman then who now faced Olive
with an appraising glance which was faintly ironic.
Olive said nothing, only looked at the little
picture nearest her. Even she recognised the
quality of the work being done.
"You're painting the steeple tile by tile," was her
only comment. "It'll take a very long time at that
rate, won't it," she added sweetly, " but I suppose
you won't mind that."
This was the third time that the two had met.
The other times Mrs. Green had shown an apparent
friendliness, which Olive felt was but skin deep—
if that.
Anthony came back now. He looked a mere lad,
tall and rangy, though handsome as few lads are, as
he jumped through the window on to the rug by
Olive.
"Mike refuses to hear my explanations," he said,
"you've wounded his feelings deeply, Mrs. Green.
Outraged all his notions of hospitality. His last
word was that he wouldn't come here again ! Ever!"
"But that's the idea," Olive said brightly, " Mrs.
Green doesn't like his coming. But, Mr. Revell, will
you look out for me a good book on Euripides. You
spoke of a Life of his"


16 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Oh, I hope not !" came from Anthony in mock
horror. He had taken a First in Classics. "When?
Where?"
Olive only laughed, and had him take her to the
big library. There she started him on his favourite
Greek authors, and from them to philosophies of life
in general. She talked amazingly well, he thought,
rather revolutionary ideas—unexpectedly so—but
very charming, and how charming too she looked.
How her large eyes shone . . . She was so keen on
hearing what he had to say—what he thought—
especially about modern problems
The time flew—as it had flown before when
talking with her, Anthony recollected. He said as
much when begging her to use the library. She had
just explained that she could not go to the rector's
fine collection of books, as he so often needed to
consult them himself. It was in the middle of his
ideas on how to help unemployment, ideas which
were like and yet interestingly different to those held,
or at least talked of, by her, that she said she must
be back in the rectory. They walked home there
together. Anthony struck anew by some of the
things that she said; things, had he but known it,
that Mr. Byrd proclaimed at his weekly talks to any
who liked to drop in at his little cottage which he
had named, with his characteristic bluntness—The
Hut. It too was not far from The Causeway, but
on the other side from The Flagstaff.


CHAPTER TWO
Three weeks passed, and still Doris was not able to
leave her mother, but Olive managed her affairs
quite nicely without her aid, so nicely that one
afternoon Anthony hurried after her as she was
leaving The Causeway. He had been out when she
had arrived " to return a book."
"I hope Mrs. Green didn't really annoy you,"
he said earnestly.
Anthony had not heard what the trouble had
really been, he had only come on Mrs. Green looking
quite flushed, and on Olive facing her with a look as
though she were a little girl being scolded by her
governess.
"She hates me," Olive now said. "She adores
you," she added.
"Not adores," he said uncomfortably. "She's a
very warm-hearted woman, and—well—very great
friends at first sight—almost "He plodded on,
but Olive was not listening—apparently. Her face
upturned to the trees, she was content to be now in
the sunshine, now in the shade—apparently.
And then Anthony told her how he loved her, how
he had fallen in love with her when he had seen her
in Mrs. Richard Avery's sitting-room at the rectory
only three weeks ago, and how he would never love
any one else all his life.
"I wish I could say that I never had loved any
one before," Anthony went on, "though in a way
I can. That's the worst of not falling in love—true
love—early. Had I met you before—other things
wouldn't have happened. Couldn't have happened.
17


18 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
But I can swear that from now on you'll be the only
woman in my life. Had I known what love is, I
wouldn't have been deceived by its counterfeit. Not
I. But now"—and Anthony's arms went round
her—" I love you, and you only, and do you love
me?"
"Yes," she murmured, letting him kiss her.
Suddenly she drew away. "There's some one over
there. I saw a shadow slip behind those bushes.
They must have been behind this tree and heard
every word we've been saying!"
"Who cares," he replied; and again forgot the
world and other people.
Quite half an hour later, Anthony overtook Mr.
Avery as he was walking home.
"I want you to be the first to know," Anthony
began, and with that he went on to tell him of
his engagement that afternoon to Olive. "We're
keeping it to ourselves until I come back from my
annual fortnight's rock climbing," he wound up.
Was the delay in order to get Mrs. Green to leave
The Causeway, the rector wondered.
"And what about Mrs. Green?" he now asked
gravely.
Anthony turned and faced him. "I told you
before, Padre, that there was nothing between us
—except friendship. I can repeat that. Honestly.
She's a lonely woman," Revell went on, "a most
charming friend. Very affectionate. But she might
be a hundred, for all the love-making there's ever
been between us. And on her side as well as mine,"
he added earnestly. "I know what people are saying,
and she can be frightfully tiresome with her airs of
—well—proprietorship," he flushed, "but it's only
friendship, Padre. Only."
"Will the friendship extend to Olive?" Avery


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 19
asked quietly. He was a man of few words, but he
could cut in with the one question that went to the
root of the matter under discussion.
"I'm afraid not," Revell said, "no, I'm afraid
not. It's comical, but she doesn't think Olive good
enough for me. Olive! Me I Me, why, I'm not
worthy to breathe the same air with Olive!"
The rector liked the lover's hyperbole. He had
had a romance of his own once.
"Mrs. Green's leaving The Causeway in any case,"
Anthony went on. "The paintings are finished, and
jolly fine little things they are."
"So I'm told. Fairy tales from Grimm, I
understand?"
"Yes. They're painted so as to seem just
emerging from dreamland. Little house where the
Seven Bears lived. Church, to which the hero rides
for his marriage to the princess. Mountain peaks
and bits of a blue lake far below, as seen from the
window of the Sleeping Beauty. Landscape, such
as Red Riding Hood ran through—all that sort of
thing, but they're not nursery stuff. They're
rather wonderful. Olive agrees about that."
"And your own portrait?" Avery had heard
that Mrs. Green was painting one.
Anthony laughed. The rector liked his laugh. It
was still boyish and unspoiled.
"That's too awful for words. Only equalled by
the awfulness of the lines of the dinner-jacket in it.
I've come out as a cross between Shelley, Byron, and
the picture of Bubbles that hung in Gilbert's
nursery."
"Olive seen it?"
"Yes. She thinks it stands for Mrs. Green's dream
of what I ought to look like." And both men laughed.
"Mrs. Green's moving to my mother's. You know


20 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
—apart from to-day, there was a horrid row yester-
day," and suddenly he burst out. Mr. Avery had
always been a sort of father confessor to Anthony.
The two liked each other sincerely.
"Mrs. Green was infernally rude to Olive. She
has been near enough to the line before, but she
stepped over it yesterday—with both feet. Olive
had dropped in to borrow books from my library.
She's keen on books. Uncommonly well read, as I
don't doubt you know"
The rector did not know.
"Mrs. Green seems to have taken a dislike to her
—a quite ridiculous dislike "—Anthony looked
furious—but also sheepish. "Every time Olive has
come in about books, Mrs. Green made herself a
fearful nuisance, and yesterday, as I say, we had it
out. I told her she would have to apologise to Olive.
She—she—oh, she was insufferable. Burst into tears
and flung her arms around my neck "Poor
Anthony looked so miserable that the rector stifled
a smile with difficulty.
"One of the penalties of youth," he could not
resist saying. "When you're my age, no one wants
to throw her arms around your neck."
But Anthony was not listening.
"She's gone back to my mother's to finish a
ceiling she's painting in the Chinese room there.
And The Causeway will be shut up till I get back."
There fell another silence. "Though, mind you, till
this happened, Mrs. Green has been the most
delightful friend a man could find. She told me in
the beginning that I reminded her of a son she had,
who died years ago."
The rector made no comment. The Mrs. Green
whom he had met did not look in the least motherly.
Exquisitely dressed, charmingly pretty, with her air


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 21
of ease and poise, she was the kind of woman who,
the rector thought, played the part of friend to a
handsome young man like Anthony at her own risk.
He asked Anthony to dinner, and the latter
accepted with pleasure. Though he would have to
leave rather early afterwards as he had a long-
standing engagement in town which he could not
break. He would be off next morning, in any case,
for his fortnight's holiday in Derbyshire.
Olive showed a charming side of her at dinner
that night. The rector had no idea there was so
much hidden in Mousie. It was as well she filled
the canvas, he thought, for Grace was no use at all.
She kept glancing from one to the other of the young
couple, but she talked very little.
When dinner was over and Anthony had had very
reluctantly to tear himself away, she stepped into
the rector's study, and stood a moment watching
him fill his pipe.
"I haven't told you !" he said with a cheerful
grin. "I haven't said a word!"
"Oh, it's plain enough. And yet, but for Doris's
meddling, Olive would have married that horrid
Byrd man, and I needn't have had this talk with
you. Olive mustn't marry Anthony, Jack." Grace
spoke with vigour—and anger.
The rector waited in surprise. He had to wait
some time.
"That must be stopped," she said at last in a low
voice, "for I've a dreadful thing to tell you. I
suspect now that Olive had been pilfering from my
things ever since she came," were her next and most
unexpected words. "I can't otherwise understand—
there's no other way of explaining—what has
become of things that seem to vanish. Real lace—
I had yards of it that I never wore- -trinkets that


22 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
I don't use—that gold-fitted dressing-case that you
gave me. It was a frightfully handsome affair, but
heavy as sin. They have all gone. I never thought
of its being Olive till yesterday, when two one-pound
notes were taken out of my purse—and could only
have been taken by Olive. The purse was lying on
a table in my sitting-room where I sat reading. She
was in and out several times, and as it happened I
counted the notes over when I picked up the purse,
just as, by chance, I had when I laid it on the table,
for I was half minded to ask you to give me a
couple of five-pound notes for the lot. When I
counted them the second time, I was two pounds
short."
"You are absolutely certain it couldn't have been
any one else. Or that you didn't make a mistake?"
he asked very gravely.
"Absolutely." Grace's tone was very distressed.
"I haven't spoken to her, for I don't know what to
do about it." She looked as though she did not.
"It's a dreadful position. I loved her mother. I
owe her a tremendous debt for her help when my
mother died. And besides being Gertie's child, Olive
is so quiet in all her ways, so amusing—always
contented—marvellous memory—as a companion
she's irreplacable. But she mustn't many Anthony.
You see how impossible that has become!"
The rector said nothing for a full minute.
Grace was his half-sister really. Born when he had
been at Winchester, they had grown up with the
unbridgable distance of years between them. She
had married the year that he returned to his
father's rectory as a curate. It was only on her
husband's death a couple of years ago that she had
made the rectory her home—at least for the summer.
She always spent her winters out of England. He


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 23
did not really know her much better than he knew
Olive, he was reflecting uncomfortably. Was this
that she had just told him to be taken literally, or
was it exaggerated? Was she so vexed at losing a
companion that she had—the rector hesitated over
the right word. He was aghast at what she had
told him. Much too much so to talk the matter
over at the moment. It would require the most
careful thought ... a sudden remembrance of
some incident in her childhood came back to him.
A nurse had maintained then that little Gracie had
deliberately Med in order to get a governess whom
she disliked out of the rectory. This extraordinary
accusation, or series of accusations—made just now
—the rector felt the ground underfoot to be very
yielding.
"You must prevent the marriage," she said again.
"It's absolutely impossible. Mr. Byrd—yes. He's
always talking about people having no right to
money and things they don't need, but not young
Revefi. The old Admiral would turn in his grave
at such a daughter-in-law at The Causeway."
"But why have you left it so late to bring
the accusation?" Avery asked, his face very
grave.
"I hadn't an idea that Olive could get him,"
Grace said. "She's in love with Mr. Byrd really. I
thought it was just some notion of Doris's."
"Doris's notions generally have something solid
behind them," the rector spoke to gain time. "As
for what you tell me about Olive—we must think
out the best thing to do. The best thing for Olive
as well as for Anthony. And meanwhile, not a word
to any one else, Grace!"
"No one else, of course," she agreed, "though
Lucy-May Witson or Mrs. Green would rejoice to


24 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
know about it. Fortunately Anthony is going away
for a fortnight. What is to be done?"
"No one must be told one word of it," the rector
said sternly. "No one!"
Avery spoke with a sternness he rarely showed.
He had great personality under all his sweetness.
Where he thought the question one of right or
wrong, he could crack the whip, and if need be use
it.
Grace promised to say nothing to any one until
they should talk the matter over—before Anthony's
return from his holiday.
"And meanwhile keep your things under lock
and key," he said. "Do not be the one ' by whom
offense cometh.'"
She looked shocked.
"If only she can be cured. It must be klepto-
mania! I'm really deeply attached to her, but
However, I shall say nothing to her or to any one for
the present."
She left him, and the rector smoked his pipe and
tried to see how to combine justice and mercy—
that as yet unsolved problem. He had not solved it
when next day Doris arrived back at the rectory.
She was looking very fagged, and told him that
though there was no immediate danger she might
be summoned again to her mother's bedside at any
time. There could be no question of any permanent
improvement.
"But to talk of something happier," she went on.
"I hear that Anthony and Olive have come to an
understanding."
"Who has been indiscreet ?" he questioned in his
turn.
"I think it was Miss Jones when I stopped
at the post office for some stamps. Or no. I believe


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 25
it was Harmsworth the tobacconist—I was out of
cigarettes."
The rector laughed at the idea of keeping anything
from his villagers.
"I'm going up to have a word with Olive," Doris
went on. "I do hope you will let the marriage take
place from here, Jack?"
He made some non-committal reply at which she
opened her eyes a little. Then she was gone and the
rector heard her merry laugh overhead, and Olive's
rather throaty voice replying.
Late in the afternoon he had to go some distance
to see a sick parishioner.
He walked back by the oak wood whose last outcrop
ran from The Flagstaff past The Causeway. There
was there a glade that was none too easy to find, in
which he loved to linger when he had the time to spare.
Strolling through it he pondered on what could be
done about Olive Hill. Her face rose before his mind.
Rather pale, heart-shaped, with big black eyes that
could look like pieces of jet, or like rounds of velvet.
It was not a sly face—exactly. Or was it? Subtle
it certainly was. Trying to sum her up, the rector
to his dismay realised that he had no fixed ideas
at all about her. Yet he could not help her if he
could not reach her. And you cannot reach a land
whose latitude and longitude are unknown to you.
He walked on, his light footsteps inaudible on the
thick soft turf. Suddenly he stopped. In a natural
recess which nearly enclosed them stood two figures.
Avery recognised the trim slight figure of Byrd by
the erect carriage and the challenging tilt of the
square chin, in the same instant he saw that the
slighter, shorter figure beside Byrd was Olive Hill.
Both had their backs turned to him. From her
attitude, she was talking earnestly. Byrd was


26 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
listening with head bent, poking the earth with the
cane that he always carried. Something about his
attitude suggested anger, but as he turned his face
slightly, the light was on it, and Avery saw Byrd was
smiling that saturnine, malicious smile of his.
Meeting it, Olive threw back her head and with a
quick farewell nod slipped on out of sight. Byrd
stood a full minute before he took the same path,
one which led on past The Causeway to his own little
cottage farther down the road.
Avery was slightly disturbed. There had been a
suggestion of intimacy—of secretiveness—in the
place. But at any rate this meeting was no lovers'
talk . . . there had been something very un-
pleasant in Byrd's smile. . . . Pondering earnestly
on the right course to take about his sister's
surprising companion, the rector made for his home
by a short cut. He finally decided to do nothing
for two more days. Then there would have to be a
thorough clearing up of the position. But by that
time he hoped to have come to some definite
decision


CHAPTER THREE
Next morning, Friday, the rector was in his study
before breakfast. The waiting that he had imposed
on himself was a strain. It did not seem fair to
Olive either. She and Doris were making plans for
the wedding—Grace had very sensibly gone away
for the time being to stay with a friend who lived
nearby, but who was tied to her room as the result
of a car accident. She would come back on the
Monday when, the rector had told her, he and she
could thrash out what had best be done.
Doris had taken it for granted that Olive was no
longer a companion, but was merely staying on at the
rectory as a guest. This put the rector in a most
uncomfortable position. But he could not alter it
at the moment.
He pulled some papers towards himself, and took
up his pen. He was busy bringing out a Life of
Saint Paul. In another moment the machine began
to work, the wheels to turn, the wings to lift, and
then he was up and away; far away from the
problems of ordinary life. In short, he was that
enviable thing a writer in full swing.
Fraser, the butler, came into the study, and stood
in the door which led into the library. The two
rooms opened out of each other.
"Major Weir-Opie to see you, sir."
Major Weir-Opie was the Chief Constable of the
county. He and the rector were old friends.
"Put them on the writing table," murmured
Avery without looking up, "and I hope they're
riper than the last lot."
27


28 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"It's not fresh apples, sir, it's Major Weir-Opie to
see you, and I've shown him into the study."
Avery came to earth. Rising, he went into the
next room and greeted a short, thick-set, straight-
backed, man warmly. Weir-Opie had a red face with
keen eyes, and a business-like expression.
"I've called on very tragic business," he said at
once, "but I wanted to let you know immediately,
and I hoped to find you alone. Anthony Revell has
just been found shot dead at The Causeway. Ap-
parently he had an accident with his revolver. It
was lying under his fingers."
Mr. Avery was profoundly shocked.
"But I thought—we thought—that he was away
in Derbyshire."
Weir-Opie agreed. "We thought so too. We had
entered the name of The Causeway on the list of
houses on which to keep an eye during the owner's
absence. Well, he evidently returned late last night.
"One of our constables patrolled all round the
house at ten last night and it was shut up then, he
says. Yet a milkman, who called there at half-past
seven this morning for some bottles that the cook
had promised to put out when she left, and which
he hadn't had time to fetch before, saw that one of
the ground floor windows was standing wide open.
He went to the back, to ask if he should leave any
milk, and got no reply. He tapped on the open
window and got none either. Meeting P.C. Marsh a
little later, he spoke about it to him. The constable
went to investigate, and found Revell's sports car
in the garage, and his dead body stretched out in
the drawing-room."
Avery was astounded. Why had Revell returned
home without a word to any one, or had it been
without a word?


30 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
It was for Weir-Opie, who listened, murmured
"Good !" and hung up.
"We've got into touch with the couple with whom
Revell was climbing. They say that he told them
early yesterday morning that he must go back to
London to see his dentist about an aching tooth. He
drove off around nine. That accounts for his
being able to drop in at his home last night. He
evidently came on here after having had his teeth
attended to, to fetch something he wanted while
away. Now to the next step, Padre. Lady Revell
told me that she had just had a letter from Anthony
—she's been away till Tuesday and so didn't see him
when he left—saying that he was engaged to a
Miss Olive Hill, who, she tells me, is Miss Avery's
companion, and that she was on the point of coming
over to see Miss Hill and get up a dinner-party for
her, when I brought her the news of this. That's
why I came on at once from The Flagstaff to you.
It's a terrible thing to have happened. Is the young
lady in?"
The words were a fresh shock. Avery had for-
gotten Olive for the moment. What an appalling
piece of news for her. Whatever her faults, what a
dreadful blow!
Avery rose and with a word of excuse went up to
Doris's sitting-room. Some one was on a couch, her
head buried in the cushions. As he stood a moment he
heard a sound as of an animal in agony. It was too
late to withdraw. Doris, for it was she, had sensed
a presence in the room. She sat up with a jerk.
"I locked my door," she began in a harsh sort of
whisper.
"My dear Doris !" came from the doorway. It
was Grace just entering. "I had no idea that you
cared for poor Anthony like this"


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 31
"Anthony?" came from Doris in a sort of
screech. "Who cares about Anthony! It's
Richard!" There was no mistaking the lack of
affection in the one case, the agony in the second.
"But what's happened?" Grace was aghast as
Doris staggered to her feet.
"I've had no letter, and I told him I should count
the days," Doris said wildly.
"But there was a letter for you that came
yesterday. I sent Olive to you with it at once.
She wanted to ask you about some dress or other."
Grace was speaking to Doris.
"She didn't give it to me. I haven't had a line
for ages—I thought—I thought "Without
finishing, Doris, with a travesty of her usual grace,
fairly swept the two from her room under the plea
of a frightful headache.
Grace stepped into her own.
"She's been worrying lately. Something that
Violet-May Witson said started it, I think," Grace
whispered.
Lady Witson was a dreadful gossip as they both
knew. And one of her brothers was a fellow
Commissioner out in West Africa.
"But what does she mean about not having had
Dick's last letter? As I met Olive running down
with some patterns that Doris had promised to help
her with yesterday, I handed her the letter. She
went on straight into the room, I'm sure."
"Well, we can't ask about it now," remarked the
rector.
Grace nodded and gave him a meaning look. "No
need to worry about telling poor Anthony now, and
you would have had to tell him"
"How did you know that something had happened
to him ?" he asked.


32 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"The milkman, of course! He told cook. Cook
told Margery who brings in my tea. Well, I wanted
the engagement broken off, as you know, but hardly
like this! I can't understand it! Poor Anthony!
She stopped as Doris, looking herself again, came
in.
"Where's Olive?" she asked. "I want that
letter from Dick that you gave her, Grace."
"And John wants to break some bad news to
her."
"Bad news? Is Anthony ill? Was that what you
meant just now? I'm afraid I was too wrapped up
about Dick to care what had happened to any one
else." She was facing the rector.
"It'll be a shock to you too, though," he said
now. "Revell is dead, Doris."
She stared at him open-mouthed.
"It seems that he has accidentally shot himself,"
he explained. "Weir-Opie has just told me. He
thinks Anthony was cleaning his revolver and did
something awkward—a bullet went through his
temple."
"How awful!" breathed Doris. "What will that
poor girl do? What a dreadful thing for her!"
"I want to tell her at once. Weir-Opie wonders
if she knew that Anthony was back last night."
"Back? But he's away rock-climbing surely.
How could he be back! You don't mean—" her
tone grew more shocked still—" that it happened at
The Causeway?"
He nodded gravely. "In the drawing-room there.
I don't know more myself."
"I'll find her," Doris volunteered. "And 111 let
the letter stand over for the time being."
For a moment the rector wished that he could also
let her break the news to Olive. But with all her


34 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
world, but even so, he was a prize in the matri-
monial market, and this white-faced girl had won it.
She was, he saw, quite pretty, but still—and then she
raised her eyes.
"Any thing's possible with those eyes," he thought,
meeting them full on. They were so intelligent.
They seemed to be asking something of him ... or
trying to suggest something to him . . . The Major
felt touched. He expressed his sincere sympathy
with her in her great loss. Then he asked if she knew
about Revell's return to his house some time last
night after ten o'clock?
She said that she only knew what the others knew,
that Anthony was joining a friend and his sister
rock-climbing, as the three had arranged months
before. Anthony's engagement to her was to be
publicly announced on his return. The delay in
doing this was her wish.
"Now, Miss Hill," the Chief Constable went on,
"had he any valuables in the house? Anything
that would especially attract thieves?"
"He had lots of cups," she said, after a long
silence.
He cocked his head to one side. Cups nowadays,
with silver at the price it was—not much temptation,
besides Major Weir-Opie had an idea that Re veil
sent his silver to the bank when he left his house for
any length of time, and he was leaving for a fortnight,
wasn't he?
Except for the cups, Olive seemed to have no
suggestion to make.
"You're wearing no ring," he went on a little
anxiously. Tears must be near, he did not want to
start the flood. "I wondered whether by any chance
he would have the ring he meant to give you at the
house? Would that be possible?"


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 35
She said that she did not think it likely. He
intended to bring her the ring on his return. A
London firm was setting it.
And then, since she could not apparently help him
with any information, Major Weir-Opie left. Olive,
palely composed, held out a hand which he found
icy to the touch. She turned at once and went up
to her room, locking herself in.
Weir-Opie hurried away.
The rector walked up and down his study. No
need now to raise the question of Grace's terrible
accusation. No need for him to prevent the marriage
now. He felt the sincerest pity for Olive, and yet she
baffled him.
He had his car sent round; he must call at once
on Lady Revell. But when nearly at the flagstaff he
had his man take the turning to The Causeway,
where the tragedy had happened. The house, a
large one, lay isolated but for one cottage on the
winding road, the cottage where lived the unsatis-
factory Captain Byrd, or Mr. Byrd as he preferred
to be called.
The door of The Causeway was standing open. A
policeman rose from his chair in the hall and saluted
as the rector stepped in. Jamieson, the young butler
whom Byrd had got Anthony to try, and who was
doing well, came forward, his face working.
"They sent word," he explained. "I came up at
once, sir—not that I can do anything now—but
at least I'm here."
"The other servants?"
"No need for them to come back, the Major
says, till the inquest to-morrow, sir."
The rector stepped into the room, the drawing-
room which had been turned by Jamieson and the
gardeners into a sort of chapel. It had a raised part


36 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
at one end and there, on a draped bed, lay a long,
motionless figure covered with a beautiful Chinese
rug.
The rector spent a quarter of an hour beside the
dead boy, then he let himself out and continued along
the road to The Flagstaff. This was a big house
which stood behind high walls. It had, unlike the
homely Causeway, regular entrance gates, and a
lodge beside them. There was quite a sweep up to
the front door, of a size that suggested that nothing
under a Rolls or a Bentley could ever stop here.
There were footmen. There was a butler. There was
a general air of exalting the fussiness of life, that had
always amused the rector, for the Admiral had
considered anything less than a dozen servants as
squalor. Small wonder that Gilbert lent a discreet
ear—when his mother was out of the way—to some
of Byrd's stinging words, Byrd whose theory was
that no man should serve another, except the latter
were a cripple or over the age of ninety. Anthony,
with the excuse of attachment to his grandfather,
had early escaped to The Causeway, where life was
more to his liking.
Lady Revell, dressed in pale blue, rose to receive
the rector. She flung her cigarette into the fire and
motioned him to a seat beside her. Her face wore
its usual thick coating of white, on which level black
eyebrows were beautifully drawn above her eyes,
which were small and close-set.
She had strange eyes, had Lady Revell. Green as
the sea, and of an infinite melancholy unless she
were laughing, when they could glitter like cut glass.
"I was just thinking, as you came in, Mr. Avery,"
she said in her rich deep voice, a voice with an
enormous amount of verve and " go " in it, "that
one doesn't trust Providence half enough."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 37
The rector was surprised. Piety had not been a
quality which he had ever found in Lady Revell.
"I've been a pig to Anthony," she continued in a
remorseful tone, " because Gilbert was so obviously
better fitted to have all that money that it made me
wild. And, after all, in the end, it's Gilbert, and not
Anthony, who is to have it."
She had been a pig indeed. The rector knew how
the elder boy had felt the frost that seemed to
grow harder and more severe with each year after
Gilbert was born. Lady Revell might well feel
remorse now. She had acted as though she hated
Anthony because his grandfather had left him his
vast fortune. But for the genuine sweetness of
Anthony's nature she might have ruined his temper.
As it was, she had saddened the lad. Still, it was
something to find that the mother had come again
to the surface, the mother who used to be so fond of
little Anthony, before Gilbert came to sweep all
her affection up to himself.
They talked a while of the death. Lady Revell
asked warmly about Olive, and, just as Anthony
had thought, did not seem opposed to the match.
"She might have steadied him," she said finally,
"and he needed steadying. His looks were too
much for most women. I know of two at least
around here who would have gone any length."
"Mrs. Green for one," murmured Gilbert, who had
just come in. "The silly woman was really off her
chump about him."
"Mrs. Green for one," agreed Lady Revell. "But
scandal bores the rector " ; and they talked of the
dreadful accident instead.
Gilbert was only eighteen years old, and though
to the rector, as to his father and grandfather, he
had none of the charm of Anthony, Anthony the


38 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
sunny who never lost his temper, never complained,
never blamed others, Gilbert was not without his
friends. Spoiled he was, but he had unexpected grit
in him which had refused to let his mother turn him
into a pet. He had insisted on going to Rugby, and
that breezy and robust school had liked him, while
Anthony was a true son of Eton. The two brothers
had been fond of each other, which spoke well for
both. And now all that had been meant for the one
would go to the other, with probably a good slice for
Lady Revell. She was Irish, a sailor's daughter, and
had no settlements, the rector knew, and from
certain signs at The Flagstaff he was sure that she
was hard pressed for money lately. The Admiral
had had no idea of retrenchment, and there were
hair-raising tales told of the extravagance that still
went on in the servants' hall.
The rector drove away feeling that his dislike of
Lady Revell had been mistaken, that in spite of her
biting tongue to Anthony, she had really loved her
first-born.


CHAPTER FOUR
Lunch next day was a painful meal. Olive sent
word that she was going for a long walk, and would
not be back till late in the afternoon.
The rector seemed to see still before him that
handsome young face which had turned to him at
this very table so short a time ago.
Grace had returned and was very silent.
"When is the inquest on Anthony to be held?"
Doris asked after a long interval of silence.
"This afternoon," Mr. Avery said. "It's a
foregone conclusion—the verdict I mean. Poor
Anthony, I should have thought, was the last man
to be awkward in handling anything, let alone a
gun!"
"I suppose it couldn't have been suicide ?" Grace
asked in a low voice. The sweet was on the table
and the servants were gone.
"Suicide!" Doris stopped helping her sister-in-
law to the tart. "What on earth?
"What put that idea into your head, Grace?"
the rector asked gravely, " or rather what made you
say it." He wondered if Grace were developing a
tendency to wild statements.
"Well, it's all so funny," Grace said irritably.
"Olive was out last night; no one knows this of
course, but it's a fact. I went to her room for some
toothache drops I knew were in that wall cupboard
in there, and she wasn't there. That was nearly
midnight. Her bed hadn't been slept in. She says
she was up on the roof watching the stars, as she
does at times. But I'm wondering whether she met
39


40 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
Anthony and told him that she didn't want to be
engaged to him—that she didn't love him"
"But she did !" broke in Doris imperiously.
"You chose to think she did," was the tart reply,
"and so engineered that ridiculous engagement, but
Olive didn't care for him. That was her charm for
Anthony, I think. Such a contrast to most of the
women he'd met. No, Doris, you spoilt a girl who
was in most ways one of the best companions I
shall ever have and all to no purpose. She was
quite happy here with me."
Doris helped her brother-in-law to apple tart, and
passed him the cream with an expression that said
that she considered Grace's words not worth a reply.
"What do you say ?" he now asked turning to
her.
"Of course she was in love with Anthony !" she
said with certainty. "Why, the two were all eyes
and sighs for weeks past. Violet-May suspected
Anthony of being in love with Grace," she said
maliciously—Doris could say very cutting things in
her light easy way—"you believed he wanted to
flirt with me," she added as Grace's face flushed—
"but it was Olive all the time—from first to last."
"Except when it was Mrs. Green !" Grace said.
"Mrs. Green !" scoffed Doris. "Mrs. Green is an
artist, Grace. She adored Anthony's good looks and
she liked him personally as well. But as to the
garbage that people talk about her being in love with
him—" Doris made a sweep of the sugar sifter do
duty for her opinion of that.
Remembering Anthony's own words about how
irksome he had himself found Mrs. Green when
Olive came into his life, the rector felt uncomfortable,
but the two young women were not looking at him.
"You're bound to take that view, as you


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 41
engineered the whole affair," Grace said in a very
unconvinced voice.
"No, Cupid did that," laughed Doris. "I simply
arranged with you to let me get Olive to design and
engineer those chair covers for me," and Doris, with
an excuse to the two, rose from the table with her
usual air of swift decision, which suggested the brisk
alert mind which she turned to everything. Just as
Grace's slow languid way of getting out of her chair
suggested the uncertainty that was an integral part
of her nature too.
The inquest was soon over. At no time was it
interesting except to the local people who crowded
the room. Lady Revell, looking almost indecently
cheerful, was there with Gilbert who wore a very
sober expression. Near them sat Mrs. Green. Some
of those present refused at first to recognise the
middle-aged, badly dressed woman with the deep
pockets under her eyes.
"If that really is Mrs. Green and not her mother,
she must have made-up well up to now," was the
general spoken or unspoken comment.
First came the evidence of identification, which,
as the Coroner was also the Revells family solicitor,
was purely perfunctory. Then came the evidence of
the police as to how the body had been found.
Then came the evidence of Anthony's man-
servant, who spoke of his master's high spirits before
he left and coyly admitted, when pressed, that he
had told him, Jamieson, about his coming engage-
ment to Miss Hill. He identified the revolver found
on the table as one which Mr. Revell had bought a
month or so ago, when there were so many cases of
housebreaking around them, saying that as The
Causeway was so isolated and so hidden in trees,
it might be as well to have one in the house. The


42 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
revolver was kept in an unlocked drawer in Mr.
Revell's bedroom. He had no idea, he said, as to
what brought his master home last night. Mr.
Revell had apparently touched nothing in the house
but some mixed biscuits and the whisky and soda.
As to why he should have gone to the drawing-room
—Mr. Revell liked that room of an evening. But as
to why he should have had his revolver with him,
the servant professed to have no idea—beyond the
obvious one of Mr. Revell having seen some suspicious
person loitering about, or heard footsteps.
The doctor gave evidence next. He described the
wound which had been made by the entry of the
bullet in the right ear. The scorch marks showed
that the weapon must have been practically touching
the head, and the passage of the bullet had been on
a dead level; it looked to him as though Revell had
had his head turned sidewise down over the
revolver, as though to look along the table top at
the moment when the fatal shot was fired. Dr.
Black did not insist that he shot himself in that
position, but the course of the bullet suggested it.
Dr. Black went on to say that Revell was a most
casual young man, and while holding the revolver
in his right hand, might very easily have made some
incautious movement with the cloth in his left hand
which had sent a bullet through his head. The
doctor showed just what he meant. He thought that
Anthony had been about eight hours dead when he
was found. Which meant that he had been killed
around one o'clock in the morning. Black was a
young man, also a Cambridge graduate, and he and
Revell had been very friendly. He spoke of his
certainty that there was no reason whatever for
Revell to have taken his own life. He too had been
told of the engagement which was to be announced


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 43
on his return from the climbing holiday. The doctor
had happened to pass him on the road as he started
off, and Revell had said that he was the happiest
man in the world.
The two friends with whom Anthony had been
climbing were called next. They were a brother and
sister of the name of Gartside. The latter, a plain-
faced, very resolute-looking young woman of around
thirty to thirty-five, the former a little older, with
a taciturn expression. Both were very short in their
replies, but both told how on Thursday morning, two
days after they had started their climbs, Revell,
who seemed in excellent spirits, came down to
breakfast with a very worried look and said he that
must go back to London at once to his dentist to
have a tooth put right that was worrying him badly.
He expected to be back on Friday in the after-
noon. Revell had suffered agonies from toothache
once before when climbing a rock exposed to the
east wind.
In answer to a question by the foreman, the jury
learnt that the dentist to whom Revell usually went,
was away on holiday just then, but the secretary
said that at least two people—men—had rung up
Thursday in the late afternoon, and on hearing that
he was away had declined to make any appointment.
Revell might have been one of these.
The police gave further evidence of the undisturbed
appearance of the body, the room, the house and the
garage, of Revell's fingerprints on the revolver, and,
in answer to a question of the Coroner said that they
had no reason to think that death was other than
due to misadventure.
The jury brought in a verdict accordingly, and
expressed their profound sympathy with the family
and friends of the deceased. The inquest was over.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 45
at the girl who, but for this unexpected tragedy,
would have been his sister-in-law. Olive did not look
at either mother or son.
"I don't think I can. ... I can't leave Miss
Avery at once"
Lady Revell was very sweet and soothing, and
let the invitation drop for the moment as she moved
away to speak to a very smartly-turned-out young
woman, thin as a rail, whose expensive perfume
filled the air, whose paint lay like plaster on her
cheeks, and yet Lady Witson was good-looking in
her own way, with a very intelligent face under all
its make-up. And she was quite young—well under
thirty.
As for Grace and her brother, they drove to the
rectory in silence, each busy with their own thoughts.
On the rectory steps, they heard Doris's laugh
floating out through the open window. Joyous and
happy. Free and clear. Looking into the morning-
room Grace and the rector came on Doris radiant,
hugging a letter to her heart.
"I've found it behind the hall table. And the
cable is its postscript. He's coming home! He's left
the Service! He's going to buy a place near you,
Jack! He's at Las Palmas 1—" Doris was almost
incoherent with sheer joy.
"You sound happy—" Grace said almost re-
provingly. "It's not a very happy day for most of
us—" she looked after Olive who had run on up the
stairs.
"I know! I know!" Doris's tone was remorseful
for a second only, "But I'm too happy to live!"
The rector thought of Anthony's words to Doctor
Black. He could not but be pleased at the joy shown
by Doris after her agony of Thursday morning. It
might not indicate a high degree of unselfishness, so


46 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
to forget Anthony and Olive, but who could be vexed
with a wife looking as Doris looked now at hearing
that her husband was on his way home?
"Well," Grace said, closing the door, "did you
think that Olive acted to Lucy Revell as to her
ali-but mother-in-law? You can see now that I was
right. Olive didn't care for Anthony"
"I have no way of guessing what goes on inside
Olive Hill's heart," the rector said, "presumably
she has one, but only presumably."
"I think it's given to young Byrd."
The rector frowned. "You said that before. I
hope not, I sincerely hope not. How could she have
got to know him sufficiently. I should have thought
that you would have seen to it that Olive did not
see much of him," the rector said in a tone of some
warmth. "She's in your charge. An orphan girl—"
"My dear Jack—" Grace only called him that
when she was very annoyed, " you know as well as
I do that Olive has all along done what she liked—
apart from her set duties I mean, and whom she saw,
or when she saw them, are things no one knows but
herself."
"Then what makes you persist in thinking"
began the rector.
I saw her kissing Byrd about a fortnight ago.
Lost to the world, my dear."
"A good-bye perhaps," the rector said shortly.
"Oh, probably," Grace agreed, "Olive is very
thorough. She would never try to play a double
game. But that's what I meant by wondering if
Anthony might not have shot himself. He was
spoilt, passionate, and really immensely in love. And
if she told him that after all she loved Byrd—and he
knew he had lost her—she's a most fascinating
person, John."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 47
"Really ?" he asked dryly.
"Oh, quite inexplicably so. You notice her
absence, you notice her all the time. I don't know
what she's going to do now"
"I hope not marry Byrd," the rector said gravely.
"Putting aside what you told me about her, you
must do your best to prevent that. Byrd has no
standards, no health, no morals, no desire to work—
nothing that would mean happiness if he had to
provide for two. His temper is proverbial—it's won
him the nickname, of Blackbird. As for the rest, he
told me that he had thirty shillings a week to live
on and not a hope of a penny more. He bought that
cottage he has called The Hut with money he won
on a bet. He can just manage to live on his lordly
income—somehow. But a wife?"
"Funny," Grace now said, " I was just thinking
that no one seems to care much for Anthony's death,
and yet a month ago one would have said that
every one would be awfully grieved. I except that
artist woman—she is all in."
"And you can except me, and yourself too, and
Gilbert, and Lady Revell, and many many other
people, Grace," the rector said firmly. "But as a
matter of fact, I don't think that most of us can
realise yet that Anthony is gone. That we shall never
see his handsome face again—nor hear his eager
voice "and real emotion made the rector stop
for a moment, before going on to his study.
On the Monday, Doris woke with a vague feeling
that some sound in her room had wakened her. She
sat up and looked at the clock beside her bed. It
was only a little past five, when as a rule she was in
her soundest sleep. Could the cat have got in?
Bending lithely over her bed, she called it. Nothing


48 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
stirred. Then she saw that one of her slippers was
lying on its side and had evidently been stepped on.
Not by Doris. She had put them as usual side by
side ready to thrust her feet into. That was what had
wakened her. She lay back and tried to think out
what it meant. She had nothing in her room worth
stealing. Nothing of any interest to any one. Yet
some one had stepped on her slipper, which meant
that they must have been very near her bed, been
bending over it, or over her . . . But she was very
sleepy and, turning over, she fell asleep again on the
instant.
After breakfast, Olive stepped into the morning-
room. She wanted to know whether Doris could use
her services as a secretary "or anything of that
sort." From things Doris had said, Olive thought
that there might be a great deal to do just now, before
her husband got back home. . . .
Doris was puzzled. It seemed to her an odd request.
What about Grace? she asked, for since Olive's
engagement the three women called each other by
their Christian names.
"I want to get work as a secretary rather than a
companion," Olive said," and I can't do that without
having a reference for my work. If I could stay
with you for a while—it would be a help"
Doris fuzzled the cat's ear and thought hard.
Something lay behind this request, or rather this
plan. What? Curiosity was always strong in Doris.
"But you have to know shorthand to be a
secretary," she said finally.
"I'm fairly good at it," Olive replied, " I've been
having lessons in it. I've taken down the rector's
last sermons quite easily. He speaks fairly slowly
of course, but I shall improve, I know."
Doris laughed. "So that's why you have taken to


50 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
mind you, all I was certain of was that Anthony was
in love with her. I never pretended to be sure about
her feelings."
Grace let this pass. She looked very uncertain
about something.
"She wants to earn a good reference for her work,"
Doris said after a little pause. "Rather pathetic
considering how near she was to being a wealthy
woman."
"I understand Lady Revell and Gilbert intend to
settle The Causeway on her for life, and a sufficient
income to keep it up," Grace said.
"Yes. And Violet-May says that Mrs. Green is
doing her best to put a spoke in that wheel. She
wants to buy The Causeway herself it seems."
Doris did not pay any attention to any speeches
of Lady Witson's. She was notoriously inaccurate,
to put it politely, though there were those who called
her plainly an awful liar.
"You have no objection to my taking on Olive?"
she asked, " frankly she would be a tremendous help
just now. It would save my having to find a
secretary who knows my ways, and is as clever as
Olive is."
"She's very clever," Grace said hesitatingly,
"very capable. You never have to tell her anything
twice. And her loss makes one terribly sorry for
her. I mean merely her loss of position and wealth.
I really don't know what to say, Doris. Try her by
all means—but—I'm not sure whether I ought
not "she stopped uncertainly. "You might ask
John "she suggested.
Doris was glancing at some letters. She had only
heard the first words. She looked up.
"Well, I'll try Olive, partly because I want to
see what's her object in staying on in the house. Oh,


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 51
I know what she says. But what's behind her
words?"
"To be near Byrd," was Grace's confident reply.
"I don't think that you understood the position at
all, Doris. Anthony may have been in love with
Olive, but she was, and is, in love with Byrd,
who in his turn doesn't care in the least for her.
To make the circle complete, of course, he ought
to be in love with Mrs. Green," she wound up
regretfully.
Downstairs in his study the rector was talking
to Mr. Smith, the Coroner.
"I was sorry you weren't at the reading of the
will this morning," Mr. Smith was saying. "We
couldn't get it out of the bank in time on Saturday."
He had invited the rector to be present. "Every-
thing was left to Gilbert. Bar a few legacies.
There was one for you. I've dropped in to tell
you of it."
"His stamp collection ?" Avery asked.
"No, his Vauxhall. Insurance paid to the end of
the year. A very lively car apparently, judging
from the time he drove her here from Derbyshire
the day before yesterday, stopping in at town on the
way too. I understand she does a hundred in the
shade. Anyway, it's his fastest car."
"It was a kind thought," the rector said grate-
fully. "My own car is very slow. He told me years
ago that he was going to leave me one of his cars
in his will, but I thought that that was only a joke.
Who gets his stamp collection?"
"It's not mentioned specifically. The Gartsides
may, since they're to choose as souvenirs any four
articles which are in his house at the time of his
death—bar furniture or family portraits. Is his
stamp collection a good one?"


52 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Not as far as I know. But he was talking of it
when he dined here a week ago—only a week ago,
Smith !—I have some boys in the clubs I run who
collect—what they can. Unwanted stamps are
always welcome therefore, and he said he'd let
me have his albums to distribute when he got back,
as he'd given up collecting years ago. As a matter
of fact, the very last thing he did was to leave some
stamps that he had mentioned, here at the door,
before he drove on up to town."
The two talked very kindly of the dead young
man.
"I suppose," Smith said finally rising and reaching
for his hat, " I suppose—eh—you were at the inquest
—eh—strange affair, that death!"
"Terribly," Avery said.
Mr. Smith still lingered, pinching the crown of his
felt hat in quite a spiteful way. Then he seemed to
decide that there was nothing more to be said, and
held out his hand. He himself looked rather troubled
as he walked away after telling the rector that the
car would be sent around when certain formalities
were completed, which would probably be in about
a month's time.
Grace looked in on her brother when he was
alone.
"Olive wants to become a secretary, and Doris is
willing to try her out. I haven't said anything. I've
missed nothing more. I don't know what's the right
thing to do?"
"Olive's to have a fresh chance? Good," said
Avery kindly. "I sometimes think that interesting
work could cure any criminal, Grace. And a
companion's life is not a normal one for a girl. . . .
We'll see how she shapes with Doris."
The rector did not add that there would be no


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 53
question of stolen articles not being instantly missed
by Doris. Olive must know this. Supposing Grace
to have made no mistake—of which the rector did
not feel at all sure—it looked as though—if a
pilferer in the past—Olive meant to go straight
now, or she would not have asked to work for
keen-eyed, business-like Mrs. Richard Avery, who
had no old ties of friendship to blind her.


CHAPTER FIVE
Two weeks passed and apparently left no trace of
their going except that by a tacit agreement Anthony
Revell was rarely mentioned. Hisending was too sad
for his name to be spoken easily, and the result was
that to a stranger it was as though he had never
been. The Causeway still belonged to a Revell, only
the first name of the owner was Gilbert instead of
Anthony. But Mrs. Green never came to paint in
it, and Olive avoided it after a week of daily visits.
It was when coming away from the last of these,
that she almost walked into Mrs. Green, who was
standing by a stile with folded hands staring straight
before her. At Olive's startled exclamation, she
turned slowly, and looked at her from between
narrowed lids.
"Some one told me to-day that there is and
always has been some talk of your marrying Mr.
Byrd," she began. Her voice was harsh and
threatening.
"There is no question whatever of my marrying
any one—now," Olive said tersely. "Don't agitate
yourself again—needlessly."
Mrs. Green's face worked. Then she continued
with at least outward calm. "In that case, I should
agitate myself, as you call it, and not needlessly.
For I know something that I haven't told the police,
nor the Coroner, about the death of Anthony. But
I will tell it you now. I know that you met Anthony
Thursday night, the night that he—died."
"Never! burst vehemently from Olive.
Mrs. Green looked as though she could have rent
her limb from limb. "He told me so himself. I met
54
*


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 55
him driving into The Causeway late that night. I
wanted to get a sketch of the house by moonlight,
and had no idea he was anywhere near. He told me
that he had hurried home to see you about something
tremendously important—to you. And he was never
seen alive again! I don't claim to understand your
motive. If I had, I should have told the police my
story at once. You never loved him, never I"
"Told them what? That you were up, and at
The Causeway the night that he was shot ?" Olive
asked, and there was venom in her tone too. "They
would have been interested, Mrs. Green, much more
so than in the ridiculous story you are telling me.
It was not to my interest to shoot Anthony, whether
I loved him or not. I didn't as it happened. You're
right there. But he loved me. And that would be
quite enough to make a revengeful woman who
wouldn't believe that he was not attracted to her,
shoot him rather than let him marry some one else.
Or rather than let him finish telling her what his
real opinion of her was!"
Olive stopped. Mrs. Green looked as though she
were fainting, but jerking herself away from Olive's
very perfunctorily steadying hand she gave her a
terrible look, and turned down the lane beside them.
For a long moment Olive hesitated. She looked
worried and undecided. Then with a very un-
mouselike set to her jaw she walked on back to the
rectory. She went no more to The Causeway.
By the end of fifteen days it was shut up, with the
butler in charge as caretaker. Lady Revell still spoke
occasionally of offering it to Olive Hill, since Gilbert
said that he would never live in it himself, but
nothing was done in the matter. As for Lady Revell,
she refused point-blank to go over it with /the
solicitor.


56 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
One Saturday, a month after the inquest, Major
Weir-Opie was sitting in his comfortable bachelor
quarters talking to Chief Inspector Pointer of New
Scotland Yard. A pleasant though very reserved-
looking man was the Chief Inspector, with something
in the gaze of the fine grey eyes that was unusually
unemotional, lucid, and resolute. It suggested a
very well-balanced mind behind it, and yet there
was that about the mouth and chin that spoke of a
secret store of dynamic energy. It was a rather stern,
very grave face, but the eyes could twinkle, and the
face could change in the instant into a really merry
one.
He had come down in person to make some
inquiries about a missing girl, and the deductions
made by him from a couple of seemingly idle facts
as supplied by Superintendent Shilling had just
resulted in the swift finding of the damsel in question,
and her restoration to her family, much to her own
indignation. Pointer had but this moment had a
telephone talk with the mother, and blandly agreed
with her that no matter what the doctors said,
darling Gertrude evidently had quite lost her
memory as the result of a recent attack of influenza.
"This finishes the job," Pointer said contentedly.
But the Chief Constable promptly asked him to stay
on over the week-end none the less, promising him
some good trout fishing. Pointer cheerfully agreed to
borrow his host's fishing tackle and relaxed in his
arm-chair with the air of a man enjoying a slice of
unusual good luck.
"Perhaps I had better warn you, though, that I'm
due to dine at the rectory to-night," Weir-Opie said
suddenly. "Shall you mind coming too? The rector,
Mr. Avery, is the most delightful of hosts. I'll ask
if I may bring you."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 57
He picked up the telephone, and in a moment a
warm invitation was extended to Pointer. Weir-
Opie hung up with an affectionate smile, and then
he and his guest talked shop for a solid hour.
"And now about a spot of lunch, and then we'll
have a try for a fat old trout, whose continued
existence is a disgrace to us fishermen," suggested
the Major. "It looks like rain," he added gleefully.
They spent a wet but cheerful afternoon, which
"the fat old trout" enjoyed as much as they did,
till finally, with some younger members of his family
whom the old gentleman, fanning himself with his
fins at the bottom of his favourite pool, thought
could very well be spared, Weir-Opie and Pointer
presented themselves at the rectory at eight
punctually.
The dinner was a pleasant affair. Olive was not
present, but Mrs. Richard Avery was the gayest of
hostesses. Her beauty shone like a lamp lighting
up the room and all in it. Grace Avery too was a
handsome addition to the board, if rather a quiet
one. But there was a cut to her mouth which made
the Chief Inspector think that when really roused,
she could be as "alive" as her slender, laughing
sister-in-law.
The next morning, rather to the Major's surprise,
Pointer accompanied his host to church, where the
Major went, as usual, from a feeling of duty.
"I will say that for Byrd, he's made us join up
our ranks. He's a ruddy ' Red' who lives down here.
Though, mind you, Mr. Avery's a capital preacher,"
he said as they drove off.
The little church showed a mellow growth. A
tablet to a crusader, a Tudor window, Stuart
carving, Hanoverian organ pipes. . . . The choir
sang well. The congregation, far larger than it


58 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
would have been if any other than the rector himself
was to preach, followed valiantly.
Mr. Avery mounted the pulpit and gave out the
text in his clear resonant voice. "The third verse
of the second chapter of the First Book of Samuel.
'Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not
arrogancy come out of your mouth : for the Lord is
a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are
weighed.'" He opened his own pocket Bible at a
place marked by a folded paper, repeating again
the second half of the text, "For the Lord is a
God of knowledge, and by Him actions are
weighed."
Pointer was all interest. This sounded a verse
after his own heart. His mother was a crofter's
daughter from the Hebrides, and a good sermon
delighted the Scotland Yard man. Mr. Avery had
now opened up the paper, he always jotted down the
headings for his sermon on a half-sheet of letter
paper, and beginning " Our text to-day—" suddenly
stopped. His eyes were riveted on the slip of
paper. He bent forward, reading it with an attention
that seemed breathless. All colour left his face,
he stretched out a hand, not in rhetoric, but to
catch hold of the pulpit edge.
Then he looked around and down at the puzzled
attentive faces and once more he repeated " For the
Lord is a God of knowledge," in a strange, awe-
struck whisper. He replaced the slip of paper, folded
up as before, in his own Bible and laid them both
on one side. Then, for a long minute, he stood in
what was evidently silent prayer. His hands which
were clasped tightly in front of him, trembled as
Pointer saw.
Then only did he begin his sermon. Never had any
of those present heard a better. Pointer doubted if


60 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Mysterious? Unsolved? What, are you a
psychic investigator? No. Nothing whatever."
After dinner that evening, the two played chess.
Very much to Weir-Opie's surprise, for he had played
with Pointer before, he won the first game.
"Your mind wandering to the fair damsel you've
sent home to her parents ?" he asked.
"I was thinking of the sermon this morning,"
Pointer said truthfully. "Mr. Avery didn't preach
to-night, or I'd have gone to hear him make half his
congregation uneasy again."
Weir-Opie grinned. "Fine effort. By the way, I
phoned him up this afternoon before we went
fishing again to ask if he is all right again. He said
he was—quite. But he seemed in a great hurry, and
hung up before he had really finished. Very unusual.
I guessed he must have a bit of a throat coming on,"
and with that the two settled down to another game
of chess. Pointer finally won it, for he gave his mind
to it, deciding that the—to him—significant affair in
the pulpit was none of his business.
Next morning Pointer was down to breakfast at
eight. Weir-Opie had to be off very early about a
missing car, and the Chief Inspector had to get up
to town as soon as possible, and report for duty.
The two talked of their fishing, and the Major was
just recounting how he had first missed Colonel
Spots, the trout in question, when the telephone
rang. The Major still talking, still with his mouth
full of devilled kidneys, reached for it. As he
listened, the amused reminiscent look was wiped
away as though by a magic sponge, and his face grew
rigid. His eyes told Pointer as they lighted on him
that what he heard concerned him too, but he
hung up before he turned to his guest.
"The rector's been found dead in his study about


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 61
two minutes ago. That was Dr. Rigby on the
telephone. He lives almost next door. A case of
toadstool poisoning, he thinks. Care to dash along
with me? Unofficially? It's not likely to be any-
thing but a genuine accident. Avery hadn't an
enemy in the world. Avery! Best of parsons! Best
man I ever met!"
A quick affirmative, and Pointer ran upstairs three
steps at a time for the small attache-case which he
always had with him. The Chief Constable sent
word to his Superintendent to be at the Rectory to
meet him, then he hurried out to his car. Pointer
joined him, and the two were off at top speed.
"About the likelihood of its being a case of
toadstool poisoning," Weir-Opie began at once, " I
must explain that. Some months ago three children
in the village died from eating what they thought
were mushrooms. The parents nearly went mad
with grief. The rector was with the children when
they died, and brooded on it a bit. Finally, he got
the idea that it might be possible to find out some-
thing which if cooked with the damned things would
make them harmless. We have a very clever chemist
called Ireton who believes he can do the trick. The
rector is—was—tremendously keen on it." The
Major could not immediately get used to speaking
of John Avery in the past. "He's financing it. As
Ireton's a family man with half a dozen kids, the
toadstools are boiled down at the rectory, and Ireton
fetches the resulting extract in a bottle whenever he
needs some fresh stuff for his experiments. Here we
are. There's Shilling on the steps!"
A moment more, and the three stepped into a
large sunny room beside the front door.
There on a couch that ran across one corner from
wall to wall, lay the twisted, contorted figure of the


62 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
rector. His face was dreadful to look at, bearing as
it did every sign of his having died in torment. The
doctor looked shaken as he straightened up and
nodded to the two newcomers.
"Been dead for some hours. About eight, at
least, I should guess. Just as I think I can guess what
happened." His eyes rested for a minute on a door
facing the one by which the Chief Constable and
Pointer had entered. "People were saying only last
Saturday that Ireton had found what he was after—
the antidote, or rather the nullifying agent. I hope
the rector didn't believe this too implicitly, and
try it on himself with this result."
The three police officers, to include Pointer in a
section where he did not strictly belong, had moved
away from the body to a tray on a table by a
window. On the tray was a plate with remnants of
cold beef and smears of dark brown liquid on it. A
bottle half full, marked as a well-known brand of
mushroom ketchup, stood beside the plate. There
was, besides, some bread and butter, what looked
like the remains of some sort of a sweet, and
an empty quarter-bottle of a good Australian
wine.
The doctor came over and looked down at it too.
"That stuff on the plate must be toadstool extract.
See how it has blackened the fork? That wouldn't
be true of the ketchup. However, plate and bottle
will be analysed, of course. Not that it will bring
Avery back to life! He'll be terribly missed.
Terribly! And to have died in such torment! I
can't think why he didn't ring one of the bells in
here."
The Chief Constable went to the mantel and
lightly touched both. Two distinct rings could be
heard.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 63
"Now I must see to the housemaid who found
him. She's had a shock, poor girl! That face will
give her nightmares for weeks!" The doctor went
on out.
Pointer stepped into a room that opened out of the
study. The library as he saw that it was. It had no
other entrance or exit. Going to the fireplace, he
touched the bells there with his gloved finger.
Nothing happened.
"Don't they ring?" asked the Chief Constable
who had followed him in.
"Oh, yes, sir, they ring all right," came the
voice of Fraser who had been summoned by the
study bells.
Pointer pressed again.
"That's queer!" the butler was surprised.
"They rang all right yesterday afternoon. All the
other bells are all right. Must have these two seen
to," and then his automatic, professional interest
dropped away, and he turned back to the other room
and the body of his master. Weir-Opie and Pointer
followed him.
"What about the ladies? Are they up yet?"
Weir-Opie asked.
To his relief he heard that the early morning cups
of tea had only just been brought them. Breakfast
at the rectory was at nine.
"Too bad that Mr. Richard Avery isn't back yet,"
murmured the major. "But failing him, I ought to
see Miss Avery first."
Fraser, a shortish man with an honest and
conscientious face, just now pale and tremulous-
looking, only nodded.
"The rector! To think of him being gone !" he
said, staring in horror at the couch.
"I know!" Major Weir-Opie said sympathetic-


64 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
ally, "it's a terrible business. But now tell me
exactly how he was found."
"Margaret, the second housemaid, came in to open
up the room as usual, sir. I was outside having a look
at the front door varnish when I heard her scream. I
rushed in to find she'd fainted dead away—she had
touched the rector, sir. Cold and stiff and all
screwed up as he is. I carried her out into the lounge
and telephoned for the doctor. He got here before I
had more than hung up. Then I took her downstairs
to my pantry and told cook and the maids to stay
that side of the baize door. I locked the door as well,
in case—and I've just let the doctor through—and
locked it again."
"Quite right, Fraser," Weir-Opie said approv-
ingly, "though the ladies must be told shortly, of
course."
"What was it, sir? He looks awful!" Weir-Opie
and Shilling had covered up the body on the sofa
with a rug. "Maggie thinks it's heart," the butler
said, "but I know that it's worse than that from
the questions the doctor asked me."
"Let it be thought to be heart at first," Major
Weir-Opie ordered, " it won't be such a shock to the
ladies that way. But between ourselves, the doctor
thinks he may have eaten some of those toadstools of
his by mistake. Who brought in that tray there?"
He learned that Fraser himself had. The rector,
every now and then, liked to work late at his
writing, in which case he would skip the regular
dinner, and have a tray instead.
After he had brought in the tray Fraser had as
usual on Sunday gone off for a walk, got back by
ten, and went to bed, after locking up at eleven.
Had he looked in on the rector? asked Shilling.
Fraser had not. As usual, he had taken every care


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 65
not to disturb him, for the rector was writing in the
library. He had closed the shutters both in the
library and the study when he brought in the tray.
He had opened them this morning after telephoning
for the doctor. In reply to a question of Pointer's
he said that no bells had rung after ten last night,
or he could not have failed to hear them. No, he
would not have heard the rector calling, not if the
study door had been shut, but he would at once have
heard the opening of the door in question, as, unless
done with the utmost caution, it jarred the house,
and he slept on the ground floor, at the back of
another wing.
"Were the lights on?" Shilling asked him.
"No, they had been turned off, or I should have
noticed them this morning, for the study door shows
a ridge of light under it. The rector must have turned
them out so as not to dazzle his eyes when he felt
queer, and lay down on that sofa," the man
volunteered.
Fraser answered all the questions put to him very
carefully and helpfully. Pointer, for instance, learnt
among other things that the rector kept the library
exclusively for religious work—even to the talks in
there, even to every book and paper in the drawers
of his writing-table. Worldly—in which he included
friendly—affairs were transacted in the study, where
he wrote all letters that came under that heading.
Fraser said that the dead man did not like him to
come into the library with a message, let alone with
a tray. In short, the library was really consecrated
ground to the rector, a sort of chapel, but one in
which he wrote on religious subjects.
Weir-Opie's nod said he knew of this, but he let
Fraser talk on, to give Shilling time to think out his
questions for the servants' hall. Then he cut the


66 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
butler short, and told him to prepare the women
servants.
"The Superintendent and I will come down to the
hall now and see the housemaid, and cook, and so
on, and ask questions about that tray. Remember,
Fraser, that indigestion often leads to heart attacks.
"Care to come with us?" Weir-Opie asked
Pointer. The latter said that he would prefer to stay
where he was, and look about him. "Much obliged
if you will," said the Major, "for I don't like to
leave the body—though as things are, I'm sorry I
bothered you to come. Distressing sight, and nothing
to be done. By the way, before we have our talk to
the servants, I'll show you where that toadstool-
stuff was brewed."
The Major and Shilling opened a door opposite
to the one by which they had entered the study. It
led into what had evidently once been a small
fernery. But it now held a fitted basin, and a small
kitchen table on which stood a gas-ring, the gas
turned down to the merest sparks. On it was a
covered red-enamelled saucepan, half full of what
looked like brown rags which gave out an acrid smell
even though the ventilators in the roof were wide
open. A funnel stood beside the saucepan, and four
bottles which had once held some sort of sauce, but
on each of which a label had been pasted showing a
skull and cross-bones and the word POISON in
capitals. Around the neck of each a small bell, such
as is used for kittens, was fastened with a wire.
Even in the dark the bottles could not be mistaken
for anything else. There was further a small trowel,
and garden fork, and a basket half filled with
repulsive toadstools beside which lay a thick pair
of gardening gloves. A door—locked—led down into
the garden by a couple of steps.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 67
"And the rector always locked the one into his
study when he was out of the house, I know, for he
told me so," Shilling added. "Very careful always
he was."
"And Ireton and he were the only persons to have
a key to this garden door." Major Weir-Opie looked
with a shudder at the toadstool basket. "That was
so that Ireton could come in for fresh material any
time."
The Major wheeled as the door of the study
opened. It was the doctor. He came across to them.
"Those toadstools weren't worth the rector. Not
by a million miles. Nothing was worth losing him.
You'll let the Coroner know, of course. I've given the
girl a sedative," and with that the doctor hurried
away—before Grace and Mrs. Richard Avery would
have to be told of the tragedy.
The Chief Constable and Shilling left the room for
the servants' quarters.
Pointer went back to the study. Standing in front
of the closed door into the lounge, he studied the
room. Going round the walls, clockwise, there was
first a table with books on it, then the couch on which
the dead man lay. At his foot was the fireplace with
a wide marble mantelshelf on which stood a clock in
the middle, and a bunch of honesty in a white
alabaster jar at the end nearest to the couch. Then
the wall continued with the door into the library.
Then, facing Pointer, was the east wall with a big
window in it, and, where another window to match
would be expected, was the door into the little glass-
roofed fernery where now stood the apparatus for the
toadstool broth. Then came the south wall with two
big windows in it, one of which was beside the front
doorsteps, and then the wall with the door where
Pointer was standing. Besides many easy-chairs,


68 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
there was a table by the east window, on which
stood the tray brought in by the butler. Apparently
it was a table used for books and oddments. Between
the two south windows stood a kneehole writing-
table, like one in the library itself. It was tidy and
seemed to be used for occasional writing, Pointer
fancied. There were several bookshelves and a few
more occasional tables. It was a cheery room, with
its light cream walls, parquet floor and green covers
and hangings. The library beyond was very like it,
except that Mr. Avery had completely covered its
door into the lounge with fitted bookshelves. So
that there was only the one door into, or out of, the
two rooms. On its writing-table lay the small Bible
which the rector had taken into the pulpit yesterday
morning. But neither in it, nor beside it, was the
folded half-sheet of paper which had so disturbed
him.


CHAPTER SIX
In about a quarter of an hour Major Weir-Opie
stepped back into the study with a " Well, that's
done. Nothing fresh learnt. I've left Shilling taking
it all down. Now there's nothing to detain us after
I've had a word with the family "He stopped
and looked hard at Pointer.
The Chief Inspector, when on the hunt, was a
formidable-looking man. The swiftness of decision,
strength of will, and powers of endurance that
were integral parts of him at all times showed then.
"What have you found?" Weir-Opie asked
sharply.
"For one thing, why those bells in the library
didn't ring."
Pointer led the way into the inner room, and
stepping to the fireplace again, still wearing the
gloves that he had not pulled off, unscrewed the bell-
cover. He showed the puzzled Major a scrap of paper
inside, slipped in where it would break the contact.
"This has the same," he unscrewed the bell on
the other side of the fireplace.
Weir-Opie looked puzzled. "Odd," he agreed.
"Apparently the rector didn't want them to
ring"
"There's a sheet missing from yesterday's
Observer. The rest is lying by the waste-paper basket
in the other room," Pointer said quietly. "These
two scraps are torn from the missing front page.
See these bits of the name? That means that these
bells weren't put out of action before yesterday
morning at the earliest."


70 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
Major Weir-Opie's face altered. It stiffened. He
gave Pointer a long steady look.
"You suggest that the rector's death wasn't an
accident?" he said slowly.
"Come back into the other room and look at
what's recorded on the door in there," was Pointer's
reply.
The Major watched while Pointer puffed some
fingerprint powder over the panels. He took the
little rubber puffer from his attache-case to do so.
For a moment the Major was puzzled at the semi-
circular marks that came up first. These weren't
prints of fingers at all. . . . Then he gave an
exclamation under his breath. He saw what they
were. The marks of where a man had pounded on
the door with the sides of his clenched hands. One
palm had a deep cicatrix in it. The right hand.
Just such a scar as showed on the right hand of the
dead man on the sofa.
Pointer was now busy around the doorknob.
Fingerprints innumerable showed there. Among
them were long, dragging prints as though hands
had groped and missed, had fumbled, and fallen
away.
"His ?" the Major asked with a backward sweep
of his head towards the couch.
"They are," was the reply. Pointer now was
working on the lower panels. He was puffing his
powder almost at the ground level. The Major
looked inquiringly at him.
"Sunk to the ground," was the reply, " on his knees
here, groping for the handle and not able to get it.
Then here, fallen full length—still trying to open
the door—which had been locked on the outside, I'll
swear."
The two looked at each other. Each tried to keep


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 71
an official mask of composure over his own private
feelings, each face was the face of a man who was
seeing red.
"But the bells rang in here "muttered the
Major thickly.
"I'm sure they didn't!" came from Pointer.
"Only, in their case, the murderer, male or female,
single or plural, remembered to take out the bits of
paper that they had slipped in. Though, even so,
they screwed the covers on only half, and that half
crooked. They didn't remember the ones in the
other room, the room that hasn't been searched.
Whatever they were after, they knew, or felt certain,
was in this room. For this room, sir, has been
hunted over until they had no time to tidy the
cupboards again, as I'll show you."
"But Avery! What on earth did he own that
could be worth a hunt, let alone a murder?" Weir-
Opie asked the question half of himself.
Pointer looked at his shoe-tips. He saw, not them,
but a man—John Avery—staring in horror at a
folded slip of paper that he had just taken from his
Bible.
"Did they get away with whatever they were
after?" the major asked.
"I don't think so, sir," Pointer said promptly.
"More and more desperate, as the time passed, less
and less careful. For instance, the rector's pockets
have all been searched."
Weir-Opie, who was no detective, looked his
question.
"He isn't lying on anything—keys, money, papers
pocket-knife, note-book," Pointer explained. "All
are free of the body."
"Which wasn't the case when he dropped down
on that couch," agreed Weir-Opie.


72 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Yet everything was replaced with the greatest
care so as to look natural, and, I fancy, into the
pockets from which they came. Time was taken to
do it all very neatly. After his body, the obvious
places in the room where papers would be kept were
taken next. That bureau—this writing-table. With
them, too, everything was taken out, even to the
lining paper of each drawer, and put back again very
much as it had been—only a lot tidier. But when
they got to those cupboards under the windows,"—
Pointer looked at the cupboards along the south,
the front wall of the room—" time was running
short, and more and more the contents were thrust
back'anyhow, in a desperate hurry—but everything
was taken out all the same, to the last corner. Which
is what makes me hope that they didn't find what
they wanted."
"I hope to God you're right, and that they
slipped up on it!" breathed the Major, and no
prayer was ever more fervent.
Pointer now stood looking down at the writing-
table. A fountain-pen lay there poised on a spectacle-
case.
"Anything here ?" asked Weir-Opie hopefully.
"That's just the trouble, I fancy. Nothing is
here now, but that fountain-pen looks to me as
though the rector had written something, some
accusation, some explanation, and left it here on the
table. When he was so ill—found himself locked in—
when no bell rang."
"Yes," Weir-Opie said at last, "certainly the
rector would keep his senses about him to the last,
if any man could. But of course if he did write
anything down, it's been taken and destroyed. Look
here, Pointer, I shall insist on the Yard letting you
take on this job. You must take it on! Shilling's a


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 73
good fellow, but he's not a trained detective, or he'd
have been wasted here all these years."
Pointer said promptly what was so ardently
expected of him, to wit that, if it was turned over to
him, he would certainly do his best.
"And damned good that best is!" replied the
Major, drawing a deep breath of relief. "My hat, to
think I saw nothing out of the way here; that
Shilling saw nothing out of the way! Any other
discoveries?"
"No, sir. But I can't properly search the room
till the fingerprints and photographs have been
taken."
They stepped into the fernery. Pointer puffed
some grey powder over its door also. Similar marks
to those on the door into the hall came up, but the
upper ones were smudged and blurred. Pointer
examined them through his magnifying glass.
"Some are the light smears made by contact with
the shoulders of any of us just now, but these marks
—I think Mr. Avery tried hard to burst this door
open with his shoulder after pounding on it." Pointer
looked slowly around him, and at the floor. "I
take it that the murderer—there may have been
more than one, and 'he' may have been ' she'—
didn't dare lock the door in between the study and
this, for fear of the rector noticing it, but relied on
what I think happened, that he wouldn't try this
outer one and notice that the key was gone from it,
until too late, or even if he did notice it, would think
that the chemist, Mr. Ireton, had taken it by mistake.
Mr. Avery hoped to break it .down and get out. I
wonder why he didn't succeed." Pointer opened the
door, hardly touching the knob, though he had his
gloves on.
"Nothing like locking the stable door"


74 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
murmured the Chief Constable. Both he and
Shilling had used that knob several times since they
had come, and neither of them wore gloves.
Pointer stepped outside. Three shallow steps led
down to the gravel path, on the other side of which
was a line of shrubbery hiding the east wall of the
garden. There was a small railing, too, for a hand-
hold in slippery weather. An ugly affair originally,
creepers twined around its close-set uprights had
turned it into a low and quite decorative green wall.
But Pointer was chiefly interested in the outer side
of the door itself.
"See those marks, sir?" he pointed to two
places, and then looked down at the base of the
creeper-clad railing. "And these two places where
the branches have been badly pinched? That door
was wedged with two planks of the kind gardeners
use when working on flower-beds, I fancy." He
stepped down on to the gravel and went round the
nearest corner. There leaning against the side of
the house he found what he was looking for. Carrying
the two boards, he and Weir-Opie tried them. They
fitted exactly. Pointer initialled them and leant
them against the railing.
"They can be taken away when the stretcher
comes." The Chief Inspector thought-that that was
the best chance of getting the boards away without
being noticed.
He closed the door again, he had scrutinised the
floor of the fernery before. There was some gravel
on it, which the rector himself might have brought
in yesterday during the morning or afternoon.
Speaking literally, the planks were of course
an outside job, and obviously done after dark.
That meant now, in early June, about ten at the
earliest.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 75
Doris Avery waked from a profound sleep with the
feeling that a hand had touched her face. With a
suppressed scream she sat up, and peered around her
room. No one was to be seen. A tea-tray stood on
the table beside her bed. The curtains were drawn
back. It was just past eight. It could not have been
the maid. Then who had been in the room? Why
had some one been so close to her? She was very
drowsy, but she forced herself out of bed. After
dipping her face in cold water she was able to look
about her carefully. Her things were still folded up
as neatly as when she had left them, and Doris was
exquisitely tidy, but they were not in the order she
liked to place them. Her keys lay on the dressing-
table, not exactly where she had left them. She
unlocked a Wellington in the window. Every
single drawer, she thought, had been searched, even
to under the white lining paper. She dressed quickly
and went downstairs. The morning-room looked at
sixes and sevens. The breakfast table was but half-
laid. She rang the bell peremptorily. There was no
such immediate answer as a ring in that well-
ordered house usually received. After a moment,
as she was about to ring again, Fraser came in. His
face as composed as he could make it.
"Madam, I've something dreadful to tell you," he
began, going across to her.
She interrupted him.
"Hampson's given notice? After having upset
all the rest of the staff," she suggested in a tone of
worried conviction.
"It's the rector, ma'am," he said in a low voice.
"The rector!" she repeated in a tone of in-
credulity, "how can it be the rector, Fraser? He
never interferes in the housekeeping"
"Stop, madam I" he almost shouted at her.


76 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"He's "—he choked—" had an accident "he
finished wildly.
Within two seconds she got it out of him. Rushing
to the study she burst in.
"Oh, no! NO !" she caught sight of the covered
body on the couch and put her hand to her mouth as
though to check a further cry. "Was it in his sleep?
Was it his heart.?"
"Yes, heart failure," said Weir-Opie promptly.
"As to seeing his face, I wouldn't, Mrs. Avery," he
counselled kindly. "He evidently died in great
agony. Evidently. The doctor wonders whether it's
possible that he made some mistake about that
toadstool extract of his."
She turned mutely and surveyed the table in the
window with a look of horror. "I told him it was
frightfully risky, but he was certain there could be no
danger since he was the only one to touch it. Is the
doctor still here? Is it certain?" she faltered,
her hand half outstretched towards the couch.
"Quite," said Weir-Opie sadly. "And I can't say
how sorry I am at this tragedy."
"And you think his heart may have been
affected?" she asked again.
"The doctor hasn't settled that for certain," the
Major said at once—and meaningly.
Ah!" Doris went pale. You couldn't look at
Doris's beautiful crescent of a forehead without
realising the logic that had shaped it so smooth and
so white. You could not look into her ardent eyes
without seeing that she had a character that could
withstand shocks. "Of course! The autopsy !" she
murmured under her breath. "And to-day of all
days I overslept!"
A bell could be heard pealing through the
house.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 77
"Will you let me have a word with you in another
room?" Weir-Opie asked.
Shilling coming up at that moment stayed in the
room.
Pointer caught sight of Fraser and spoke a word
aside to him in the lounge. As he did so, something
made Pointer look up. He saw a slender, dark-
haired girl looking down on them.
Now yesterday in church Pointer's attention had
been attracted by the faces of three women in the
congregation. All looked as though the sermon to
which they were listening held for them some special
and terrible meaning. This was one of the three.
He now guessed her, rightly, to be Olive Hill.
Quite a pretty little thing. Then he met her eyes.
For a long second they stared into his, and Pointer
realised that there was will-power in those eyes.
Something in their depths suggested—to him—
that there was very little their owner would shrink
from, once she had made up her mind to attain a
certain object or goal. There was a hard kernel to
this young woman. Cold, clever, hard.
Then she turned and, instead of coming on down,
disappeared with a noiselessness and a speed that
spoke of muscles in good training.
Pointer went into the room where Weir-Opie was
asking Mrs. Richard Avery about any visitors at the
rectory yesterday evening. He learnt that a young
couple quite well known locally had been in to
dinner and stayed till about ten o'clock or later.
No, the rector was not at dinner, he never was of a
Sunday night unless particular friends of his own
were in the house. He had had a tray sent in to his
study. Had any of the visitors of last night had a
talk with him? No, they had not asked for him.
In the afternoon the rector had had some parish calls


78 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
to make. On his return he had been in his study all
the time. Was that unusual? It would have been,
but for the fact that he was very keen indeed on
finishing his Life of Saint Paul as soon as possible;
it was very much overdue. She knew, they all knew,
that the church magazine in which it was being
published had begged him to let them have the next
part as soon as possible.
The bell rang again. A deafening peal this time.
Doris put her hand to her head, a very unusual
gesture with her, as Pointer rightly guessed, and said
she must now tell her sister-in-law the dreadful
news—" and there's Miss Hill, of course," she went
on. "And I must have a moment to myself to
realise—to grasp." Doris squared her shoulders
quite unconsciously, with the air of one girding
herself up for a piece of work, unpleasant but
necessary, and therefore to be done promptly.
But before she left them Weir-Opie asked her
when she had last seen Mr. Avery. She said that
she had stepped in after her visitors had left to read
him some bits out of a letter which she had received
from her husband. That was around a quarter-past
ten, but he had been deep in his writing, and after
staying perhaps a quarter of an hour helping him
with some references which he wanted looked up,
she had gone on up to bed. Before falling asleep—
about an hour later—she had heard his voice as
though talking to some one in the study which was
below her bedroom.
Again the bell rang. She moved to the door. "I
must let Miss Avery know "and this time she
left the room.
The ambulance came a few minutes later. The
stretcher was swiftly carried into the rectory and as
swiftly out again, this time covered, and the


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 79
ambulance drove off immediately with the two
planks inside as well. They were all glad to get that
part over without attracting notice. That horrible
part—Weir-Opie set his teeth as John Avery had to
be virtually smuggled out of the home which owed
everything to him—to his great heart, to his
scholar's brain.
Pointer went in search of Fraser, and found him as
requested in his pantry with the door shut, fairly
holding a tray in his arms, a tray on which stood a
silver coffee-pot, a milk jug, demerara and white
crystal sugar, and some half-dozen used coffee-cups
of different colours and patterns.
"Not washed yet? Good !" Pointer felt relieved.
"The rector didn't use these, sir," explained
Fraser needlessly, "he didn't have any coffee last
night. When I took in the supper tray he said as he
wouldn't be wanting it."
"Even if the rector didn't drink any of this, I
think the Major would like it saved," Pointer said,
and taking a cardboard box large enough to hold it
all, set the tray inside, and corded it, carrying it
himself into the study and writing on it that the
cups were to be especially analysed for any narcotic.
As he passed through the lounge he met Olive Hill
full on. Pointer could have sworn that she knew
what he was carrying so carefully, more, that she
knew why he was carrying it—to find out if any
coffee had been drugged last night. She had speaking
eyes, had Miss Hill.
In the study he found Shilling, who was listening
to what the Major had to tell him.
"Of course, it's unofficial yet," Weir-Opie was
saying, "but I think we can take it that the Yard
will let Pointer carry on what he has begun so
well"


80 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Begun so well!" Shilling gave Pointer a
congratulatory look. "Though I don't say that we
would have taken the death of the rector lying down.
I felt something was wrong, but I couldn't light on
what. To have let him die in here like a dog! But
what's to be done first, sir? Mr. Madden, of Madden
and Weybridge, claims that their shop was broken
into last night and then fired. Arson, they report.
Now shall I send Inspector Green"
The two were lost for a moment in names and
numbers.
"You'd better go yourself, Shilling," was the
final recommendation. "Send up a couple of men
here, one of them Tracy. Tell him to bring his
fingerprint powder, we'll wait for him. Who's to
analyse this stuff on the plate? Ireton, I suppose."
"Send it with the other things to be tested to
Hendon," Pointer said promptly. "One swab to
Mr. Ireton, if you think he's safe, but not more."
"Ireton had nothing to do with any hanky-panky
that's gone on here," Weir-Opie said firmly, "he
thought the rector a saint from heaven. But have it
as you think best, by all means."
A few minutes later first one policeman and then
another, and then another, slipped unobtrusively
into the rectory. One was to stay on duty in the
study itself. One was the photographer and one the
local fingerprint expert.
"Now that's all well under way," Weir-Opie went
on, "suppose you and I go back to my house for
breakfast. I can't get into touch with the Yard yet,
but I probably can before that's finished. I must
just look in on Madden with Shilling here"
Pointer wanted a word with the gardeners. He
found that there was only one, a youngish man with
a careworn honest face, of the name Higgins. After


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 81
expressing his sorrow at the dreadful news about the
rector, and his opinion that you couldn't be too
careful with a weak heart, he let Pointer lead the
talk to the planks. Evidently they had been
standing where the Chief Inspector found them, on
and off for the best part of a week, as Higgins had
been setting out some Canterbury bells to fill up a
few unexpected gaps in the borders.
Pointer asked Higgins where he lived, and learnt
that it was in the village; that being so, for the
moment he was of no further interest to Pointer,
for Higgins said he had not been near the rectory
since he stopped work on Saturday till he came this
morning at nine.
Shilling was to investigate the whereabouts of the
rectory servants last night, and look into their
characters. The superintendent had said that he was
sure that the latter would all prove to be of the best
if they had been engaged since Mrs. Richard Avery
had taken over the reins, a matter of four years now,
for she had promptly put an end to the rector's way
of helping down-and-outs to start afresh.
Pointer had finished at the rectory for the
moment, until he had a regular position in the
inquiry, and until the doctors were absolutely and
officially certain of the cause of the rector's death.
He walked on now to the Chief Constable's house, and
as he strode along, lithe and erect, he thought over
the case as a whole. Taking the doctor's certainty
as justified that the rector had been poisoned, then
he wondered if a clue to the crime might not lie
concealed in the sermon that he had heard yesterday
morning.
Mr. Avery had preached to Pointer's ears not so
much a sermon as an exordium to some member or
members of the congregation to realise that no


82 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
deception would avail them at the last, that they
might have hoodwinked men but not their own souls.
It went much further than that, it seemed to Pointer
to be a pleading to some one not to mind the judg-
ments of men, but to come forward at once, to
speak out now. And the night after preaching that
sermon the preacher was dead—poisoned. Shut
away in a locked study, where no bell would ring,
where no cry of his had brought help.
Pointer thought it very likely that Mrs. Richard
Avery, who had her rooms over the study and the
library, had had her coffee drugged, so as to ensure
her sleeping through any sounds from below; the
height of the rooms on the ground floor of the rectory
would also have helped to deaden the rector's moans,
but as she had recognised his voice she might other-
wise have heard them.
And that folded paper that had, Pointer believed,
caused the sermon to take that particular course,
was possibly, he thought, the object that had been
hunted for so desperately, and apparently so
fruitlessly. That folded paper! . . . Avery's almost
perfunctory glance at it had changed to a look
which Pointer had thought, even then, to be one of
sheer horror. But if that folded paper stood for the
centre of this puzzle, then it looked as though, even
so, Mr. Avery had not quite grasped its character,
nor the character of the persons whom he had tried to
reach in his sermon.
The rector, Pointer thought, had had in his mind
some one who had kept silence—who had concealed
—who had lied possibly, but Mr. Avery had not
realised that the paper which he had seen was
not so much a link as a proof. But if he, Pointer, was
right in his ideas, then whoever it was at whom the
sermon was especially directed had known better,


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 83
had known at once that both that paper, and the
rector because he had seen it, must cease to exist.
Pointer roused himself from his deep reverie as to
what that paper could have been. . . . Some
crime committed in the past for which the wrong
person had been punished? . . . Or some un-
guessed crime? . . .
He was on the steps of the Chief Constable's
house.
He shook himself, and rang the bell.


CHAPTER SEVEN
The breakfast was a silent meal. Weir-Opie was
beginning to feel the shock of his old friend's death
as a personal, not merely as a professional matter.
Pointer was secretly amused when, half-way
through, who should be shown in but Superintendent
Shilling.
"I've left Inspector Green to carry on, sir,"
he said with defensive speed as he came towards
the table. "Uncommonly good is Green. Deserves
a chance to work a thing out on his own!"
Weir-Opie looked at him in silence for a minute,
then with a twinkle in his eye, he invited him to
join them, and as Shilling had had but the merest
sketch of a breakfast, he was only too glad to
shove his long legs under the board.
"Do you think this affair at the rectory was an
inside affair, Pointer ?" asked Shilling.
Pointer thought that it was impossible to say so
far—with that door into the garden. The rector
might have given some one an invitation to come in
by it and see him last night.
"There was no second tray, so, if so, it would be
some one the rector wouldn't expect to have eat
with him?" queried Weir-Opie.
Pointer thought one could not tell. It might be a
member of his own household who had already dined,
or it might be a friend of whom the same was true.
"Now as to the women at the rectory, what did
you think of them?" asked the Chief Constable
with interest.
"Mrs. Richard Avery seemed a radiantly happy


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 85
woman, and that is not the description of a murderess
as a rule. Miss Avery—I took her to be a woman
hard to stir but capable of being as selfish and as
energetic, when really roused, as her sister-in-law,
which I fancy is saying a good deal. Who is Mr.
Richard Avery, by the way, sir?"
"He's an Assistant Commissioner in Nigeria who's
just struck something lucky, lef+ the service, and is
coming home to live. Mrs. Richard is in the seventh
heaven as you noticed, at the idea of his joining her
so soon. Nice chap Richard, rather like the rector."
"What did you think of Miss Hill?" asked
Shilling with interest. "Or haven't you come across
her yet?"
"Yes—from a distance. I thought her very keen
on seeing all there was to see this morning," Pointer
said. He did not add that he had a strong impression
of some purpose, some very absorbing purpose in
her; and Shilling, who had been about to tell him
of the tragic end to the man to whom she had been
engaged, forgot to pass on that piece of information
as his eyes followed the Chief Inspector's stare at
Weir-Opie's mantelshelf.
"I wonder if anything stood there," Pointer said
quickly. "I meant to ask before. In the rectory
study," he explained, " there are only two things on
the mantelshelf. The clock in the middle, and on
the left-hand end, a white jar of honesty. Did
anything usually stand on the right-hand end?"
Weir-Opie thought" back. "Yes. Bright orange
tobacco jar. Empty. I tried to dip into it once, and
the rector said it had too clumsy a lid for everyday
use, but he liked the colour and shape. The study
tobacco jar—a wooden barrel—stands on his
writing-table."
Pointer remembered it.


86 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Then where's the orange jar?" he asked. "I
didn't see it in either room.
"It had no real value," Weir-Opie said. "I take
it it's been put somewhere else."
He stopped at that, for just then the telephone bell
for which they were all waiting rang. The Major
had asked the Yard to let him know as soon as the
Assistant Commissioner should have arrived. A brisk
conversation now took place over the wire. Weir-
Opie found it none too easy to get his way, but in the
end the Assistant Commissioner promised him the
loan of the Chief Inspector, provided the latter could
make time to come up for a couple of important
meetings due this week. Pointer then received his
orders over the telephone which would be confirmed
later. He was to stay down, officially to advise the
local police, but in reality to take the real, if not
nominal, command of the case.
The little party broke up. Weir-Opie himself had
to drive off to a neighbouring town, as well as drop
in for a word with Inspector Green, and for the
moment Shilling had to accompany him, however
much the superintendent pleaded that it was only
fair to Green to leave him an absolutely free hand.
"What will be the first thing you do on returning
to the rectory ?" asked Shilling, as Pointer stood up
ready to go.
"Question the butler more closely about the tray,
about yesterday's visitors, and find out if anything
fresh has been shown by the photographing of the
fingerprints."
"What! Before you look for the missing tobacco
jar ?" chaffed Weir-Opie. Then he looked keenly at
the other. "I believe you've got some sort of an
idea in the back of your mind," he said at once. "I
mean, about the rector's death. You have an idea


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 87
what papers the murderers were looking for in his
study."
"I have just an idea," Pointer agreed.
"But what papers could the rector have that were
of any interest to any one but himself?" Shilling
asked of the world in general.
"Were you at morning service yesterday ?" was
Pointer's counter query.
The superintendent shook his head. "My wife
went. Never misses the rector's sermon, she doesn't,"
he said proudly.
"Did she say anything about the sermon?"
Pointer asked.
Shilling considered. He was a young man for his
post, with a fine crop of red hair, keen blue eyes, and
a tight-lipped mouth. He might be lacking in
imagination, but he would have great driving power,
and looked as keen as mustard.
"You mean about the rector's having brought the
wrong notes for it ?" he said shrewdly. "Yes, she
said he seemed to get a fearful jolt when he opened
his slip of paper and evidently found he'd brought
one that didn't fit his text, but she said he went on
from memory and did better than ever. She came
home quite full of it. As to the mistake, he was short-
sighted, and without his reading glasses couldn't tell
any one paper from any other."
Shilling broke off to stare at Pointer, as his
superior was doing.
"But surely you don't think the murderer was
after the original notes!" came in a tone of
stupefaction from the Chief Constable.
"Notes for a sermon?" Shilling echoed his
tone. "The rector was a wonderfully learned man,
we all know that, but surely a sermon can't be
valuable!"


88 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
Pointer was amused at the way in which both had
gone off the rails.
"I don't think they were after notes for any
sermon," he explained, "but I think it's just
possible, barely possible, that they were after that
folded slip of paper which the rector had thrust
into his Bible in mistake for his notes, and which was
something quite different, as he knew the moment his
eyes fell on it in the pulpit. I thought at the time
that its contents stunned him."
"Gosh!" was Shilling's contribution to the
argument.
"By jove!" came in a breathless whisper from
the Chief Constable. "When you said last night that
you were thinking about his sermon did you expect
this?"
"Not murder, no, sir," was the instant and
truthful reply. "But I thought it suggested some
trouble in the place. I thought that that folded slip
of paper had been picked up by him, or handed him
by some mistake, and that it referred to, or meant,
something shady coming off in the future, or threw
some light on something in the past."
"And you think the rector's death ?" Weir-
Opie was groping his way.
"Looks to me, sir, as though the rector may have
been mistaken in thinking that whoever it was only
needed a little bracing up to speak out. That would
suggest that the whole affair was much more serious
than the rector guessed. And that the person con-
cerned, or persons, knew that he or she couldn't come
forward, and also realised that if that paper were to
be shown to some one else, or passed on, his or her
fate would be sealed. Irrevocably."
"And pass it on the rector would have," muttered
Weir-Opie, " if it was the right thing to do. Nothing


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 89
could have turned him from his duty. There was
steel under all his kindness. Finest character I ever
came across, or ever shall." Then the Chief Constable
heard a clock striking somewhere and grasped
Shilling as though he were a straw about to be
swept out of reach by his interest in what Pointer
was saying. "Later, Shilling, later !" commanded
his superior, but in a tone that suggested there
would be a hereafter for himself too, and with a wave
to Pointer they jumped into a waiting car and were
off.
At the rectory, Pointer found that the ladies were
upstairs in their own rooms, but on the ground floor
Tracy, the local fingerprint expert, was just finishing
his work. He was looking at a tumbler on the tray
which had held water and was quite empty.
"They're his, sir. Pretty well the last he made,
I fancy. The glass was slipping from his grasp as he
set it down. Poor Mr. Avery!" Tracy's voice shook
a little. "Very different prints from those on the
dessert knife, sir," he hurried on, " there the grip was
firm, however many times he handled it. But this
tumbler"
Pointer too saw the loose streaks half around the
sides of the glass that showed where it had almost
fallen out of the fingers so loosely holding it.
As for the bottle on the tray marked " Mushroom
Ketchup" which they thought had last night held
pure toadstool extract for a time, the marks were
very smudged, but many of them were undoubtedly
Mr. Avery's. The same was true of the bottle in the
fernery from which in all probability it had been
filled, one of the bottles with bells on it, a bottle
marked POISON which was almost empty.
"Tremendous number of prints on that," Tracy
said, following Pointer's eyes. "But the last were


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 91
thin, and apparently quite old. He and Tracy
hunted for others but found none.
He passed on to the window seat beside it.
Lifting the frill he saw something lying like a
glittering snake. It was a necklace of oxidised
silver with hand-cut beads of crystal. Fastened, it
would hang down to the waist of the wearer. The
catch itself opened easily, he saw, and was not strong
enough for anything so heavy as this necklace.
Two of the links were sharply bent almost at right
angles.
He now helped Tracy to pack up the " exhibits,"
not including the necklace, as such things should be
packed. Nothing amused Pointer, and incidentally
Tracy, more than the light-hearted way in which
amateur detectives in books stowed away, in pocket
or bag, articles with fingerprints on them. These
ones were each wrapped in special paper, slung in
special rubber slings and carried as though the cases
contained bombs.
Tracy finally got into a police-car, and the various
boxes were stacked around him. He was going
straight to Hendon with them. Just then, a short,
pleasant-faced, middle-aged man came up the drive.
He hurried up to Tracy. People were saying that the
rector had died in his sleep—heart failure—was
there any truth in the dreadful rumour? he asked
breathlessly.
"It's quite true, Mr. Ireton," Tracy said, and then
introduced him to Pointer.
Ireton was quite overcome, now that the report
was confirmed. Pointer could get little from him at
the moment, but that little bore out what he had
heard about the way in which the chemist obtained
fresh supplies of the boiled-down toadstool brew.
Mr. Ireton had been in only yesterday afternoon


92 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
around three o'clock for some. He had filled a small
bottle which he brought, and had left the bottle in
the "fernery" as he still called it, half full. The
bottle was undone for him to see, and he stared at it.
"Have you spilled some out, or what ?" he asked.
"We're wondering whether he took some to try,
trusting too much to your having found an antidote
or whatever you call it," Major Weir-Opie said from
the rear. He and Shilling had just got back.
As Ireton stared in horror, the Major continued:
"It's said that you told the rector you had found
something which would cancel out the poison in the
toadstools, if cooked with them."
"/ say such a thing? Never! I'm on the way—
yes. But I haven't got there yet—not yet! You see
it's a new line, quite different from Pasteur's
antiphallinic serum which they use in France."
"Could the rector have misunderstood you?"
"Impossible!" Ireton poured forth a flood of
details showing how impossible it would have been
for Mr. Avery, informed of every step in the search,
to have jumped to any such error.
Pointer asked if Mr. Avery was ever absent-
minded in handling the stuff.
Ireton said the rector was exceedingly careful. He
looked quite overcome at the turn the questions were
taking. How could there be any idea that the toad-
stools were responsible for Mr. Avery's death, he
asked, with tears on his cheeks which he was too
agitated to wipe away.
Weir-Opie reminded him that until the autopsy
brought more definite knowledge, every question
that could clear up such a death had to be at least
talked over.
They let him open the side door and go in as
usual. Nothing in the little room was altered, he


94 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"He climbed once for a week with Revell and
them," Weir-Opie said, " two years ago."
Fraser went on to say that the three visitors
had left together, after waiting only a very few
minutes.
"Mr. Gartside and his sister are staying at
Hamble's farm," the butler added. "I heard them
say as much as they went out. Come down here to
see about something that Mr. Revell had left them
in his will—like the car he left the master, which
the rector only got on Saturday, and only drove it
Saturday evening, and now won't want ever any
more!" At this point emotion overcame Fraser.
Pointer gave him a moment in which to recover
himself, then he asked for a list of all the people who
had visited the rectory yesterday. Fraser said that,
apart from Mrs. Richard's friends who had come in
to dinner, and stayed until a little after ten—he had
been back when they left—there were only the three
visitors of the afternoon, and Lady Revell, who came
about nine. She had telephoned in the afternoon
asking if she could have a word with the rector, who,
when at last he had got home about six, had told
Fraser to ring her up and ask her if nine o'clock
would be too late. Lady Revell had said that nine
would suit her perfectly. She had not yet arrived
when Fraser had brought in the tray, as he had
reminded Mr. Avery, who said that he was on no
account to wait in for her or hurry back, as he would
be on the lookout for her himself. Fraser did not
know when she had left, but she must have been
gone by ten, as he did not hear the front door open
after he shut it on Mrs. Richard's friends.
For the moment, Pointer asked no further ques-
tions about the standing of the visitors. Instead he
inquired as to what had happened to whatever it


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 95
was that stood on the end of the mantelshelf nearest
to the window.
Fraser looked at the mantel and then round the
room. "The orange tobacco jar with the stamps in
it?" he spoke as though greatly puzzled. "The
rector must have taken it into the library, though I
never knew him to do that before. . . ." They went
through into the inner room, but the jar for which
they were looking was not to be seen, as Pointer
knew.
"The rector liked a wooden one for tobacco,"
explained Fraser, " but he used to drop any stamps
he got into the china one, till he had time to put them
in his albums."
"Did he collect stamps ?" Pointer asked.
"Not himself, sir, but he had lots of boys at his
clubs who did. I'll see if I can find the jar."
"Don't worry any one with questions about it,"
Pointer said, "use your eyes, but don't ask about
it. Some people might think it heartless, under the
circumstances."
"Leave it to me, sir," Fraser said promptly, and
vanished.
Weir-Opie looked puzzled. Pointer showed him
the stamp that he had found, and where he had
picked it up. Weir-Opie and Shilling looked still
more puzzled.
As for the necklace, the Chief Constable felt pretty
sure that he had seen Lady Revell with just such
a thing hanging round her neck when he had
dropped in a week or so ago. "Lady Revell,"
he began, but stopped as Fraser came back to say
that he had looked everywhere for the jar without
seeing it, and adding that he knew it had been in its
customary place last night, as he had all but knocked
it off with the end of his tray.


g6 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"What stamps were kept in it, do you know at
all ?" asked the Major.
"Some Mr. Revell left for the master the very last
time I ever saw Mr. Revell, sir," the butler said
solemnly. "Some people would say ill-luck went
with that gift, wouldn't they?"
"Revell?" the Major repeated curiously, and
Pointer noticed the quick intake of Shilling's breath
beside him. "When was that? And how did Mr.
Revell come to be interested in stamps? I never
heard he was a collector."
"He wasn't, sir. I happened to be waiting at
table when he first spoke about the stamps. That
was the day before he went off for that climbing
holiday of his. He dined here. You remember at the
inquest that was spoken of, sir?"
Weir-Opie nodded.
At the inquest! Pointer's gaze flicked to Shilling's
face. It was very rigid. The Chief Constable, too,
was sitting far forward on his chair.
"Quite. But where did the stamps come in?"
asked Weir-Opie.
"Mr. Revell, sir, said he had come across some old
letters of his great-grandfather. Written while on a
tour of all the places that Garry "—Fraser hesitated
—" Garry Baldy, I thought he said, had been to."
Shilling looked puzzled, so did the Major for a
second, then he nodded understanding. "Revell's
great-grandmother was a Trevelyan, I remember.
Distant kinswoman of an aunt of mine. She would
be interested in anything to do with Garibaldi."
"Well, sir," relieved that the name seemed to
be accepted without more ado, Fraser went on,
"Mr. Revell asked the rector if he would like the
stamps off the envelopes. He said that there were
only about twenty and probably of no value. The


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 97
rector thanked him, and said he would be very glad
to have them, if Mr. Anthony didn't want to keep
them himself. And after Mr. Revell had left he
drove up again, on his way to town that was, and
handed me an envelope for the rector, saying that he
wouldn't come in again, but there were some stamps
inside, would I hand it to Mr. Avery in the morning.
Mr. Avery was still up, as it happened, so I took them
in to him at once. He was reading the newspaper in
that arm-chair there, sir." Fraser indicated the one.
"He opened the envelope, said that Mr. Revell had
been kind enough to make out a list, and dropped the
lot into the jar on the mantel. It was empty then."
"I wonder if they were of any value after all,"
the Chief Constable said in a casual tone.
"No, sir," was the prompt reply. "None what-
ever. Mr. Byrd was in only a few days afterwards
about some tithes protests which he is backing, and
the rector, who never bore no one any malice, had
tea brought in, and was showing Mr. Byrd the
stamps as I came in with the tray.
"' N.G. all of them,' Mr. Byrd said, hardly looking
at them. That's Mr. Byrd's way, that is. But he
knows about stamps all right. He's a fine collection,
he has, nearly as good as Sir Hubert's, some say it
is."
"What did the rector reply?"
"Oh, he didn't mind one way or another. He had
only shown the stamps so as to be polite. Same like
ordering tea. Mr. Byrd didn't take any interest in
either of 'em. Pearls before swine was the rector's
politeness to Mr. Byrd."
"What sort of paper was the list written on?"
Pointer asked, "did you notice?"
Fraser said that he had, for a very good reason.
Mr. Avery used a special linen letter-paper of a


98 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
peculiar off-grey colour. The list was made out on
the same paper. Mr. Revell had evidently torn off
the back page of a letter from the rector and used
that, as his things were more or less locked up by
Monday night."
"Same paper in fact as the rector makes out his
sermon notes on ?" Pointer asked, as though trying
to get the item clear.
"That's right, sir."
Pointer showed him the necklace that he had
found in the room when searching it just now.
Fraser recognised it instantly as belonging to Lady
Revell. "She must have worn it when she came to
see the rector last night, and it evidently dropped
off, as it did the night she wore it to dinner here—
just dining with the rector and the ladies. It
dropped off then. She said as how the catch was
weak and she would have it seen to." And with that
the bell rang, and Fraser had to go.


CHAPTER EIGHT
"And who was Revell and why was there an inquest
on him ?" Pointer asked as the door closed on the
butler.
The Major tossed a cigarette away. He glanced
at Superintendent Shilling.
"I don't mind owning it's queer," he said in the
tone of a man saying something very handsome.
"Stamps, eh? I don't believe objects can bring
bad luck."
"But they do bring criminals after them—if
they're valuable," finished Shilling, his eyes very
bright.
The Major pulled out his watch and said he would
have time to give Pointer a brief summary.
"It's quickly told. Anthony Revell was a young
man who lived at a house, not far from here, called
The Causeway. His grandfather's house it had been.
The Lady Revell we spoke of is his mother. His
father, a K.C.B., is dead. Anthony was at Eton and
Cambridge. Handsome as a film star. No end run
after by women. Lady Witson for one. She's the
wife of the man—Sir Hubert Witson—whom the
rector had been calling on when I last saw him alive
—Saturday evening. At one time it was supposed
that Anthony was going to marry Miss Avery. She
has a thousand a year of her own, and expectations
of more still when the rector should die, and she's
a handsome enough woman, though older than
Revell. Then instead of Miss Avery we hear that
it's definitely to be Miss Hill, Miss Avery's companion,
and that it's to be announced as soon as Revell comes
99


100 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
back from a fortnight's climbing holiday in Derby-
shire, which for years he has always taken with
a brother and sister called Gartside. Then three days
after he starts on his fortnight's holiday, Anthony is
found dead in his own drawing-room at The Cause-
way. Shot through the right ear. His revolver on
the floor by his foot, a cleaning rag on the table, a
box of cartridges beside the rag. The revolver had
been fully loaded, only one bullet had been fired, and
that was dug out of the depths of his head at the
autopsy. Now there had been a good many cases
of thefts from houses around. It was thought that
Revell, coming back for some reason or other—
toothache, said the Gartsides—heard some suspicious
sound, or saw some suspicious person loitering about,
got the revolver ready, and while doing so caught
the trigger in the cleaning cloth. He was quite
unaccustomed to revolvers, so said the gunsmith
from whom he had bought it in case of burglars.
But Shilling always has believed that there was more
in it than that—though what, he couldn't say.
Gartside had a note from Revell to show at the
inquest—all quite simple and clear—raging tooth-
ache—be away for two days and back on the third.
Plans for the climb on the third. And the dentist's
secretary '' The Maj or ran over the case. '' There
was some talk of giving the house to Miss Hill, but
apparently that was only talk," he added.
"And who inherited Mr. Revell's money and
estate ?" Pointer asked.
His brother Gilbert, bar a life-interest for Lady
Revell. "Nice boy, Gilbert," added Weir-Opie.
"Oddly enough he was by way of being a friend or
disciple of Byrd's, our local communist. But that's
sure to be off now—naturally! Nice woman, Lady
Revell, too, though she never tried to hide her


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 1O1
preference for her younger son as she should have
done. Now, mind you, Pointer, don't be misled by
the way that Revell died, though Shilling here didn't
like it."
"Well, no, sir, I can't say as I was over pleased
about that affair," Shilling said quaintly. "Couldn't
prove anything though. Nothing whatever to go on.
Nothing!"
"Ah, but that was only because you wanted
something to get your teeth into," said Weir-Opie.
"The feeling you had, Shilling, was that here was a
fine chance for a murder inquiry all lost in the dead
end of an accident."
"And what about these missing stamps, sir?
Don't they link the two deaths?" Shilling asked
almost exultantly. "The paper in Mr. Avery's
Bible could have been the list of stamps. The rector
wore what he called street-glasses, and as he had
to change them to read, half the time he would put
a paper away in his pocket without troubling to
make the exchange of spectacles."
"So that if the list of stamps had strayed out of
the jar, and been picked up by the rector Saturday
night or Sunday morning, and been thought by him
to be the jottings for his next sermon, he might
easily have folded the paper into four lengthways
and placed it in his Bible, to be opened out in the
pulpit and read with his reading-glasses—yes—that's
possible, Shilling. But to explain the shock Pointer
here thinks he got, and to explain the subsequent
sermon—as Pointer evidently thinks it should be
explained—there would have had to be on the list
one or more stamps of such value that it—or they—
had immediately shown the rector a dreadful
possibility about the death of young Revell." Weir-
Opie was quite pleased with his perspicacity.


102 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Would the rector recognise the value of any
rare stamp he found on the list?" Pointer asked
the question now. "And is there any stamp
of great value to be found among Italian
stamps?"
"I don't know," Weir-Opie said thoughtfully. "I
don't know—but I'll tell you who would have known
and been able to tell him, and that was Witson. And
don't forget that Avery was driving away from
Witson's house when last I saw him about ten on
Saturday night. Witson has a marvellous European
stamp collection. Best in England, bar the Royal
ones."
"But that visit would have been before Mr. Avery
opened out the list in church," Pointer reminded the
other, "and whatever he saw on that paper came
as a complete surprise to the rector, sir. I'm sure
of that."
"True "Weir-Opie frowned, " true! But I'll
tell you what. Witson never talks of anything but
his stamps. It's quite possible that he told Avery
about some exceedingly rare stamp, and, in that
mysterious way in which new names always turn
up after being heard for the first time, Avery saw
that very stamp on the list that he looked at in the
pulpit on Sunday. His logical brain would see at
once that here was a motive for Revell's so-called
accident. Yes, Shilling, I'm coming round to your
opinion. This stamp business—Pointer's way of
taking that sermon of the rector's—I do agree that
Revell's death may not have been an accident. May
not have been only, mind!"
"That's all I say, sir," Shilling said immediately.
"May not have been."
"I'll have a guarded word with Witson," went on
Weir-Opie.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 103
"What is his reputation in the neighbourhood,
sir ?" Pointer asked.
Weir-Opie made a face. "One of Carson's Dublin
knights. And not one of the pure patriots. That's
the trouble with his wife, they're not popular.
Certainly Sir Hubert isn't."
Pointer wanted to get to the police station
telephone at once. The three drove off in the Chief
Constable's car.
Over the station telephone Pointer had a talk
with one of the great philatelists' emporiums of
London. He learnt that the rarest European stamp
known was a five centisme grana cobalt stamp from
Sicily. "Few, even of the best collectors, have ever
seen an example. We bought one some years ago
from Count Spingardi, the purchaser of the famous
Ferrari collections. We sold it at once to a member
of the Royal family."
"May I ask what the value of another example
would be? At the present time?"
"If it's in perfect condition, I would be pleased to
take it off your hands for five thousand pounds,"
came the voice at once. "I'll make you the offer in
writing, if you like?"
"Please do," Pointer said. "But above all, will
will you let me know the instant such a
stamp should be offered?" And with that he hung
up.
'There we are !" said Shilling gleefully, when he
heard the result of Pointer's inquiry.
"I must say——" murmured Weir-Opie. "It all
fits together ... I'll see Witson at once."
The telephone bell rang. It was for the Chief
Constable. From Doctor Rigby. Mr. Avery had
died from a dose of almost pure toadstool juice—
cooked—and from nothing else.


104 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
So, now the death was officially labelled as due to
poison.
And a moment later there was another message—
in code—from Hendon—the fingerprints yielded
nothing unexpected. All the important ones were
made by the rector. As for the dark fluid over the
remains of cold beef on the tray, it was almost pure
toadstool juice such as was in the bottle marked
"poison," with a small amount of the genuine
Mushroom Extract, such as was in the bottle so
labelled, to give it a harmless flavour. The rest of
the food on the tray was quite as it should have been.
So were the coffee grounds in the cups.
"I thought, and still think, that Mrs. Richard
Avery's coffee may have been drugged," Pointer
explained.
"That would account for her saying that she had
overslept herself this morning," murmured Weir-
Opie.
"But it also would have stamped it as an inside
job," said Shilling. "Or partly inside. As it is,
we're left to find that out for ourselves."
A constable came in to say that Mr. Byrd would
like a word with the Chief Constable.
"Show him in," was the reply. Weir-Opie got up
and stooped to Pointer's ear.
"One of the people we would like to be sure was
in his bed all last night—and the Thursday night
that Revell died." Then he straightened to greet a
slim, trim, figure that was shown in.
"Captain Byrd, sir," said the constable.
"Plain Byrd, very plain Byrd," corrected the
visitor.
And very plain he was. But it was an interesting
face. Hawk-like nose, hawk-like eyes. Thin flexible
sardonic lips. Lantern jaws, blue shaven. Un-


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 105
expectedly thick curly hair which gave the lie to the
cold mouth, for it suggested hot blood and im-
petuosity. Around five feet six in height, Mr.
Byrd was an army man by the neatness of his
well-worn clothes, and by his straight back. There
were lines on his forehead and around his mouth
which suggested a man who had been through great
suffering, and something in the eyes hinted that they
had once looked on terrible things. Pointer put him
down, correctly, as about thirty-eight years old.
"I've come to ask you why my meeting to-night
is to be stopped," Byrd demanded of the Chief
Constable.
"Too red," was the laconic reply. "Why must
you rail at the Royal Family as you do? I think it's
deuced bad form in a man who's once worn the
King's uniform, and has a pension."
Byrd laughed, a real, but unpleasant laugh. "How
can you know the hue when it's still some hours off."
"From the tint of the last one."
"Well, you're wrong, Major. I was going to talk
about my island, instead."
"Umph," the Major grunted.
"Is it true that the rector's dead?" . Byrd
continued. "Poisoning, some are saying. This
gentleman here come down already about it?" He
looked at Pointer. "Oh, don't trouble to say that
he is a friend of the family. He's a man from Scotland
Yard or I'll eat my new hat, the one I wear in church
when the rector preaches."
Weir-Opie gave a vexed grin.
"Have I the mark of the beast on my forehead?"
Pointer inquired.
"You have the mark of brains on your forehead,"
was the retort.
"Supposing the rector has died from toadstool


106 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
poisoning. Can you help us clear up how it
happened ?" was Weir-Opie's question.
"So he's gone!" Byrd said under his breath.
His lips pinched together after the words.
"You were here yesterday afternoon?"
"Dropped in for a.moment. Found the Gartsides
here and we all walked back together as far as the
turning to my cottage."
"What did you talk about ?" asked Weir-Opie.
'' Politics?"
'' Religion," said Byrd blandly. "Chiefly. And a
word about the weather probably. And another
about Anthony Revell. Well, Major, I won't detain
the hounds straining on the leash." He turned to
the door.
"Can't you help us clear up the mystery—for
there is one—about how the rector met his end?"
persisted Weir-Opie.
"Haven't the time. Haven't the sources of
information that you can tap," was the rejoinder.
"Which ones would you tap if you had them?"
Pointer asked in his turn.
But Byrd took his leave without replying.
"That's Byrd all over," grumbled the Chief
Constable. "You can't pin him down to anything.
The regular demagogue. Though I will admit he
believes in sharing what he has, as well as in insisting
on his right to share in what others have. The rector
and he were at daggers drawn, as I told you, though
he never failed to turn up when Mr. Avery preached.
He appreciates a good thing, does Byrd, in men or
—according to Fraser—in stamps."
"Why do you want to know where he was on the
night that Mr. Revell was shot ?" Pointer asked.
"He's Gilbert Revell's great friend. Lady Revell
has no idea, as I happen to know, that the only son


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY IO7
now left her is one of Byrd's most fervent perverts.
And with Gilbert a wealthy man—Byrd's position
may have undergone a tremendous change. Shilling
would tell you, besides, that Byrd and Miss Hill were
supposed to be very interested in one another.
Personally I don't think that's a motive worth
considering. I watched the two more than once at
one of his meetings. She acts as secretary for The
Dawn, as he calls his society. She may have been
in love with Byrd. I thought she was. But not Byrd
with her, though he was doubtless quite willing to
use her. She put her name down as one of his island
refugees. Another name of his for any one willing
to plunk down a hundred pounds, and go out with
him to some island—latitude and longitude unknown
—where all are to live in complete idleness, and yet
in comfort. I forget how it is to be worked."
Weir-Opie gave an impatient snort.
"But that island has come a lot nearer now that
Anthony Revell's dead and Gilbert Revell reigns in
his stead?" Pointer queried, and got a nod for
assent.
There was a short silence.
Then Shilling had reluctantly, and very tem-
porarily, to remain at his station, but Weir-Opie and
Pointer drove back to the rectory where the Major
told Fraser that the rector's death was due to toad-
stool poisoning, and that since Chief Inspector
Pointer of New Scotland Yard happened to be
staying down here, he was taking charge of the
investigation into how the rector could have taken
the poison, or had it given to him. And with that
he too had to hurry off.
Fraser needed a second repetition before he under-
stood what was being said. He refused point-blank to
believe it at first, then he grew very pale and very


108 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
agitated indeed. He took him upstairs, opened the
door into Mrs. Avery's sitting-room and shoved the
Chief Inspector in as though he were a parcel, and
the room a post office counter, then he went slowly
downstairs, feeling numbed by the dreadful turn
that the tragedy had taken.
Both Doris and Grace were in the room, Grace had
evidently been crying.
On being shown the crystal necklace they
recognised it immediately as belonging to Lady
Revell. The finding of the necklace in the study did
not appear to have any significance, but as Pointer
went down to the lounge he almost ran into Olive
Hill. He introduced himself, explaining the reason
for his presence in general words. Then he showed
her the necklace. She looked at it with an apparently
indifferent glance, and said that she did not think
that she had ever seen it before, but then, she added,
she was dreadfully unobservant. If so, she did not
look it. She next said that she must have some
fresh air after the shock of the dreadful news about
the rector. Pointer had no right to stop her, even
had he wished to. Pulling on a beret with a careless
hand, she hurried on out, just as the Gartsides were
announced. Their greetings were of the coldest and
briefest, he saw. He was expecting the visitors,
for he had got Shilling to telephone to them as soon
as he, Pointer, had left with Weir-Opie, telling
them of the rector's death from toadstool poisoning,
and asking them to go up at once to the rectory for
a word with Chief Inspector Pointer.
The Gartsides explained that having been asked
by Revell's solicitor to come down and choose some
souvenirs left them in Anthony Revell's will, they
had arrived on Friday, taken rooms for the night
at a farmhouse which the solicitor had recommended,


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 109
collected the souvenirs on Saturday, and called at
the rectory on Sunday afternoon. After waiting in
vain for the rector's return, they had asked for a word
with Miss Hill. She, too., was out, and being at a
loose end, they had stayed on till to-day, Monday.
They wanted to meet Mr. Avery, of whom Revell had
often spoken—and above all, to meet Revell's
fiancee, Miss Hill.
Mary Gartside's jaw seemed to set as she said this.
She was a tall young woman. Big-boned—very thin
and very proud of her thinness—with a good
complexion, well-waved russet hair and a strident
voice.
She did not make a good impression. She looked
a thruster. Nor did he care for her brother's face
either. But liking or disliking meant nothing to
him. He told them that the doctor said that Mr.
Avery had died from the effects of toadstool
poisoning; there would be an inquest therefore
to-morrow—Tuesday afternoon, and would they
kindly stay for it?
They would stay for it and for the funeral on
Wednesday, of course, they said instantly.
Pointer led the talk to Mr. Revell, and asked about
his stamp collection. Had that been one of the
things left them? Gartside said that Revell had
left them any four souvenirs they liked to take. As
a matter of fact, among the things they had chosen,
such as a pair of field-glasses, and so on, he, Gartside
had added a stamp album which Revell had started,
or more likely had had started for him, when a boy.
It was the typical schoolboy's lot, of no value
whatever. But it was a jolly good album, and
Gartside's young brother would like it.
As to Byrd, they confirmed his account of the
short talk yesterday. It had turned chiefly—what


110 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
there was of it—on the rector's sermon which
seemed to have impressed Byrd. They themselves
never went to church.
Pointer finally had a few words about Anthony
Revell. The Gartsides were not over willing to talk
of him, but Pointer could be as dense as the next man
when he wished. After they had left, he went care-
fully over the rooms at the rectory. The books of
each inmate interested the Chief Inspector. A man's
friends are not always of his choosing, but his bedside
books are.
Grace's were chiefly scholarly works. Olive had
novels of a bitter tinge. The House of Mirth seemed
to be a prime favourite. Pointer did not think that
Olive Hill would fail through any of Lily's faults.
Did she keep it by her as a warning not to let
opportunity sUp? Mrs. Richard Avery had a few
books from the circulating library in the place of
honour. Chiefly travel or autobiography. Nothing
subtle for her. In a cupboard above her washstand
he found a nearly empty bottle marked " Sleeping
Mixture."
She was in her sitting-room as he went downstairs,
and he asked her about it. She explained that she
was always a poor sleeper and that every now and
then she took a dose to give her a good night, and
that, most unfortunately, last night had been one
of these. Indeed, as she had had a very hilarious
though small dinner party, she had felt so wide
awake on going up to bed that, to ensure a sound
sleep, she had taken an unusually full dose.
Was any one with her when she took it, he asked
as casually as he could make it sound, explaining that
had she, say, been talking she might have taken even
more of a dose than she had intended.
He was told that Miss Hill was in the bedroom at


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY III
the time. She chanced to come in to ask about some
library subscriptions which were overdue and
stepped in just as she, Doris, was pouring the stuff
out into a table spoon, but Doris scoffed at the idea
that that, or anything else, would make her overdo
a drug.
Pointer left her with the riddle of last night's
deafness explained. Given a strong sleeping draught
taken late, and Avery might indeed have called and
pounded in vain. That problem disposed of, he had
a talk with Fraser. He wanted, first of all, to know
the hour when he had last seen his master alive. It
was around half-past ten, Fraser could not give it
precisely, but it was when Mrs. Richard Avery left
the study after seeing her guests off. Mr. Avery was
holding the door open for her. Fraser thought that
the master had looked more cheerful than he had
earlier in the day. Fraser, who happened to be
passing, had wished him good-night, closed the
door for him, and gone on to his own room and to
bed.
As to the position of the tray, Fraser showed
exactly where he had stood, how wide open the
door between the two rooms had been—and other
details that must be entered among the facts of the
case, but which in Pointer's opinion had little real
bearing on this murder. For the two rooms were
thickly carpeted, the door between them was often
shut, and rarely wide open, and it was only when
open to its fullest extent that it was possible, from
where Mr. Avery sat writing, to see the table on
which the tray had been placed, the table between
the east window of the study and the fernery door.
It would have been quite possible for any one who
knew the place and knew that the rector was
busy in the library and who had the necessary cool-


112 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
ness and nerve, to have come in by the door into
the fernery, watched their time, stepped into the
'study, slipped the papers into the bell-pushes, lifted
off the bottle of mushroom Catchup from the tray,
all but emptied it in the fernery basin, filled it up
with toadstool extract from the bottle standing
there, and replaced the so-called ketchup on the
tray. After that there would be nothing to do but
to lock the study door on the outside after they heard
the rector busy at his supper, take the key and
quietly place the boards in position.
Then, when all was still inside that dreadful room,
they would unlock the door, make sure that their
victim really was dead, and start the search which
Pointer believed had lasted—unsuccessfully—until
close on the time for the servants to start Monday's
work.
He now had the housemaid in for a talk. Maggie,
as she preferred to be called, gave a rather hysterical
account of how she had gone in as usual and opened
the window and the shutters of the study.
Next Pointer had to run over the list of visitors
yesterday with the butler and try to find out if
there were any oddities about their stay in the house.
Weir-Opie had already vouched for the harmlessness
of the young couple who had dined at the rectory,
they were an army man and his young wife. Neither
of them likely to be the least interested in poisons.
Fraser seemed to have nothing to add to the few
details which he had already given.
Pointer next decided to have a word with the
Revells' solicitor about the Gartsides and their
recent legacies. An inquiry at the office told him
that the firm's junior partner, Mr. Merton, was at
the moment away at The Causeway seeing to some
details.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 113
Before setting out to walk the short distance,
Pointer stood a while looking at his shoe tips, as a
crystal reader might consult her crystal.
He thought over the sequence of events as so far
known to him. If such a stamp as that priced to
him could have lain unknown at The Causeway, and
if, in making the list for the rector, Revell had let
it be seen by some one who knew the value of stamps,
and who did not know that the stamps in question
were to be given away, that person might have come
to The Causeway to hunt for it. Come more than
once, because drawers and cupboards would be
locked. The thief might well have tried place after
place. That would explain the odd fact that it was
in his dining-room that Revell's dead body had been
found, with no sign of any effort having been made
to get a room ready for the night. Supposing, as the
jury at the trial had, that Revell at once, on entering
his home, had seen signs that the house had been
entered during his absence, and found those signs
most noticeable in the drawing-room. . . .
He walked up to The Causeway. It was only ten
minutes away.
As the front door was opened to him, Pointer saw
a young man with some papers under his arm just
ready to come out who stood aside for him to be
shown in. As he heard the name he wheeled.
"Chief Inspector Pointer? My name is Harry
Merton. I'm the junior partner of the Revells'
solicitors, and the Averys' too. I've just left the
senior partner—Mr. Smith—talking to Major Weir-
Opie about the rector's dreadful death."
He opened a door, motioned the detective officer
in and closed it. Harry Merton had a humorous
round face, covered with freckles, and an air of
being very much entertained by life, though his


114 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
mouth hinted that, if not entertained, he might get
bored. His way of greeting Pointer suggested that
he looked upon him as a short cut to a good deal
of interest.
"Want to look round here? Why here? I
understand that you're making sure there wasn't
anything funny about the rector's death. But what
brings you here?"
"I'd like to know what the Gartsides chose to
take," Pointer said without answering the question.
"They told me, but I would rather like to check it."
"They seemed to me reliable enough," Merton
said, "but of course you have to be suspicious, I
suppose ?" he added questioningly.
"Oh, very," was the reply.
"Here's the list of what they took," Merton began
to look bored. He held out a slip of signed paper
to the other. Pointer looked it over.
"Stamp album "he seemed to ponder the
choice.
Merton gave him a swift glance and nodded
meaningly. "Just so. Miss Hill thought it was to
go to her. She assured me that Revell had promised
it to her the last time he dined at the rectory, when
the talk happened to turn on stamps. But of course
—if the Gartsides wanted it—and as he hadn't made
a new will"
"Some Italian stamps she wanted, I believe?"
Merton looked as though he would stifle a yawn
in another minute. "I only know what she said
to me," he explained. "I'm not interested in
stamps myself."
"Unlike the rector, or as I understand, Mr.
Revell," threw in Pointer.
He was in the drawing-room and looking about
him as he spoke. On each side of the fireplace, arched


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 115
recesses had been turned into china cupboards as far
as the top halfs were concerned, but the lower halfs
were cupboards, and locked. Facing the fireplace
was a very handsome old chiffonier. Its three
divisions were locked. There was a smallish walnut
tallboy in one corner. Its drawers were all locked.
A bureau bookcase—also locked—was at one side of
the window. Pointer asked if these had all been
locked when Mr. Revell left for his climbing holiday.
Merton nodded. He looked quite sharply at the
detective officer, but there was something about
Pointer, for all his simple manner, that did not
encourage people to take liberties with him. Pointer
asked if he might have a glance round the other rooms
now he was here, but Saunders told him they were
all absolutely empty. The furniture had just been
removed to The Flagstaff, but nothing from this
room had been taken. Lady Revell and Gilbert were
agreed on that.
By this time the young man was talking quite
freely about Anthony Revell. "Handsomest chap I
have ever seen. Easily."
"The women knew it," was the reply. "How
they ran after him! Not Miss Hill though. I will
say that for her." Merton seemed to be able to
convey a whole sentence by what he did not say.
His last might have stated in so many words that
there was nothing else he could, or would, say for
Pointer saw that if any one had wanted to search
The Causeway's drawing-room for those stamps, it
would have taken a long time. He asked to have a
look at the fastenings of the back doors.
"Look here," Merton said, "you don't think—
you're not here to go into Revell's death, are you?

her.


I16 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
His tone told the other that, if so, Merton would not
be absolutely surprised.
"Well," Pointer said, " I don't feel as certain as
the Coroner seems to have done that everything was
as he thought it."
"Oh, him !" was the disgusted one word which
spoke volumes. "He's my senior partner," he added
glumly. "My father died two years ago and I was
just down from Oxford. There was nothing for it
but to buckle into his old harness." Again a
volume was compressed of vain longings and dreams,
and straitened means. "Old Smith is all right,
Merton went on, "but he's slow and dense. And
never can see beyond the length of his nose." By
this time they were at the back door. It would have
been difficult to open from the outside, but Pointer
saw that it would be quite easy to slip back the
catch of the pantry window.
Pointer asked Merton what he thought of the
Gartsides.
Merton had not liked either of them. He thought
them too keen on getting the most expensive of the
objects from which they could, choose.
"Did they look for any length of time before
selecting their souvenirs ?" Pointer asked.
"They did!" Again Merton's tone spoke volumes.
"In fact I'm afraid I left them to make their own
choice at the end, they were so slow. Everything
of importance had been inventoried, you see.
Besides, they were chiefly interested in papers.
She wanted a chance to get back some of her letters,
two of his cupboards are chock-a-block with them,
and I didn't see why not. She did take them. All!"
"Was she, too, interested in Mr. Revell?"
Pointer asked.
"Very much so. Underneath. Tha t's why he


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 117
came home, in my opinion. Only in my opinion,
Chief Inspector. But she struck me as hot stuff—and
I never did believe in that about Leland—that's his
dentist, for Mr. Smith had a talk with him, and
learnt that Revell had had all his teeth put in
perfect order only a month before. But any port in
a storm! He fled—in my humble opinion."
"And you say she wanted all her letters? Well,
that's natural. I wonder if you have any specimen
you could let me have of her and her brother's
handwritings."
Putting his papers down, Merton obligingly
hunted until he found two short notes, one from the
brother, one from the sister, which he lent Pointer
against a receipt.
"By the way, did either of them ask specifically
for any of the things?"
They had not, he was told.
He next asked Merton if he had any idea how Mr.
Avery had left his money.
Merton knew all about the rector's will, and very
simple it was. Five thousand went to Miss Avery,
who was already amply provided for. Richard
Avery was left an equal amount, and for the same
reason. Mrs. Richard Avery, to whom the furniture
at the rectory went, also got five thousand—free of
death duties in each case. The bulk of the estate
went to charities.
Grace and Richard Avery shared the pictures, and
the silver, between them. The will was drawn up a
couple of years ago, and its contents were known to
all the household, said Merton.
Pointer thanked him and drove on to The
Flagstaff.


CHAPTER NINE
At The Flagstaff, Pointer was shown at once into a
room where a tall slender woman rose to meet him,
and he saw the second of the faces which had shown
such uneasiness during the sermon yesterday. Lady
Revell seemed to feel the rector's death very much,
quite apart from the manner of it. Pointer asked her
about her visit to him yesterday evening. There was
just an infinitesimal pause, then Lady Revell said
that she had not gone to the rectory last night. She
had intended to, but a headache had come on, and
she had countermanded the car almost as soon as
she had ordered it. She had meant to telephone as
much to the rector, but her headache had made her
forget that too. She was without a personal maid at
the moment, and such things were apt to slip her
mind, she said, with a very charming smile. Pointer
found her altogether charming, but she had, none
the less, he thought, the face of one who would not
care the snap of one of her manici red fingers for law
as law. It would simply not exist in any reckoning of
hers. He felt sure that Lady Revell considered her-
self as being outside it, not so much by birth, for it
was an attitude that Pointer had found equally in
the very lowly born, as from some attitude of mind
that made the person concerned only see what they
wanted to see, and as they wanted to see it. A
dangerous character to find on the scene of a crime,
or near it. He asked her about the necklace which
he drew out of an envelope. She opened her eyes
wide.
"Where did you find that? I could swear it was
lying upstairs in a little cabinet I keep for such
118


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY Iig
stones. Why, I showed it to Miss Hill not long ago,
and I haven't worn it since, I feel sure."
Pointer told her where he had picked it up. She
seemed puzzled.
"I know I wore it when I was there last. But
that's weeks ago. Surely it was after that that Miss
Hill called? I know it was. How odd! However, I
suppose I must have worn it and forgotten about it.
Thank you for finding it and returning it to me."
She extended her hand, for Pointer had the necklace
back in his own fingers by now. At her gesture he
said at once that unfortunately this must remain in
his custody until the inquiry was over, as it had
been found in the room where the rector died.
"As you like," she replied, with what seemed
indifference.
"For, forgive my bluntness, but the presence of
this necklace in the rectory study last night must be
explained. Had you been to see the rector at nine,
and had then been wearing it, there would, of course,
be no difficulty whatever."
Pointer now added that the police had to be
quite sure that the poison had not been given to
Mr. Avery deliberately—by another person.
Lady Revell looked incredulous horror.
"But who could have done such a thing? He
hadn't an enemy in the world! We all loved the
rector. We all set our moral clocks by him, as it
were. Oh, you can't really believe such a possibility."
"We do," Pointer assured her very gravely with
something very stern in his face. "We do. And so
everything in that room last night, Lady Revell,
must be accounted for."
She seemed unable to help about the necklace
which was by now back in an envelope in his pocket.
"I will have a word with the Chief Constable,"


120 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
Lady Revell said, a touch of hauteur in her tone.
"Major Weir-Opie knows me well—and may be less
keen on red tape."
Pointer bowed, apologised for troubling her, and
was shown out.
He was not happy as he drove away. Women were
the devil in a serious investigation, he thought.
So often their actions, which looked so suspicious,
were so innocent, or at least so trivial. But
here?
Pointer did not feel sure either that Lady Revell
was lying, or that she was telling the truth. But
of one thing he did feel confident, and that was that,
given provocation, the woman whom he had just seen
was capable of having flung that necklace to the floor
and of having left it there, damning the consequences.
She was the type to cut off her nose con brio to spite
her face, once she was really angry. But surely Mr.
Avery would not have put her, or any woman, into
a passion? But against that was the fact that three
faces that Pointer had noticed yesterday during the
sermon remained in his mind as having shown signs
of very intense emotion. Miss Hill, Lady Revell,
and a woman whom he had not yet identified. A
woman dressed in violet, with deep rings around her
eye's, and a general unkempt look. Not one of the
three had glanced at the other. On the contrary, he
believed from their expressions that each had felt
herself alone with the rector and with some terrifying
knowledge of his. He thought of Olive Hill hastening
to The Flagstaff. She had had the opportunity, he
felt sure, of taking a necklace off Lady Revell's
dressing-table had she wished to do so, and had such
a necklace lain there. . . . But why? Then she
too was put on one side, until further facts should
throw added light on her.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 121
Near the rectory gates he passed Dr. Rigby who
promptly stopped his car for a word.
"Yes, it was toadstool poisoning all right, to give
it its homely name, and in a concentrated form
which could only have come from that bottle of his
in the little fernery." He went on to give technical
details.
"How long would it have taken to kill him, do you
think ?" Pointer asked when these were over.
"An hour of agony would see the end, I think,"
the doctor said with a gruffness that hid real feeling.
"And his supper was eaten when?"
"We've worked everything out very carefully and
in detail, checking one thing with another. I don't
think I'm far out, if at all, in saying that he took that
hell-brew some time between ten and midnight, and
that everything was over in an hour. But why
didn't he call for help or ring a bell? Or stagger into
the hall? That's what beats me." And with a
groan the doctor drove on.
Pointer was met by Doris who was very pale and
looked very sad as he entered the rectory. There was
nothing of her old spring left in her step. "I wonder
if you have found a letter I left in the library," she
began, " a letter from my husband, stating when he
would be back and giving me all sorts of directions as
to what he wanted me to do meanwhile. It was the
one I wanted to read to the rector last night when I
stepped in after dinner."
Pointer said that he had not as yet seen it.
Would she care to come in and have a look for it?
She said that she would very much like to, as the
dreadful shock of the rector's death had driven all
remembrance out of her mind of what her husband
had asked her to do.
They went in together and she hunted for her


122 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
letter. It looked for a long time as though it were
lost. And it was Pointer who found it at last,
underneath a lining paper in the back of a drawer in
the library.
"The rector must have thrust it in here. I suppose
I left it on the table top, it was in his way, he
dropped it in here and then it got pushed to the back
of the drawer under the paper," she said as she took
it from him.
Pointer thought that the place where it had been
found was odd, seeing that all the rest of the drawers
and shelves in the room only held papers or notes
connected with the rector's religious writings. It
looked to him as though the letter had been
deliberately hidden.
"There are no directions in it, I suppose, that
any one would want postponed?" he said now
tentatively.
She looked startled. She hastily skimmed through
it again. Then she held it out. "You are quite at
liberty to read it," she said quietly, "though it's
very affectionate, for it's only meant for my own
eyes. But perhaps you had better read it through."
He apologised for the necessity and did so. It was
the letter of a man to a very dearly loved wife, one
moreover whose judgment the writer evidently
valued highly.
Richard explained that, owing to his hurry to get
home to her, he had omitted certain legal formalities
in the deed of sale of his West African property,
which must be put right at once or it would be
invalidated. It would be at least another month
before he could be in England. Most of the letter
referred to this. Finally came an allusion to Miss
Hill. Mrs. Richard had written that she wanted to
stay on with her, as her secretary. Richard Avery


124 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
But Doris knew no more than what she had said.
She was looking around the room as she talked. For
her husband, she said, had enclosed a message for
the rector about the kind of house which he hoped to
be able to find near the rectory. This was written
on a separate half sheet, on paper such as the
rector always used, and such as Richard Avery had
sent out to him regularly.
"It's so odd to lose it when the rest of the letter
is here. It must be close at hand," she insisted.
They both set to work to hunt for it.
"I had both letter and it in my hand," she went on,
"when I stepped in here."
Searching and talking, she explained that she had
gone to the library as soon as her visitors had left her
last night to hand it to the rector, but he had been
writing and was so busily engrossed in his work, that
she had put it off for a better time.' There was
nothing pressing in her husband's message. The
rector asked her to look up a reference for him, and
she must then have laid down her letter. The rector
was working against time, and she had stayed about
a quarter of an hour jotting down which editions he
had consulted, until she had finally gone to bed.
"I could have stayed much longer," she added in
a tone of deep grief, " and if I had known"
She turned away for a minute and tried des-
perately for composure. By this time they had
finished their search, and she sank into a chair, with
her face working as she covered it with her hands.
"I miss the rector so frightfully, and so will my
husband! He doesn't know yet—I don't want him
to know till he gets here." She jumped up after a
moment, realising, Pointer thought, that she would
be sobbing aloud in another minute, and fairly ran
from the library and up to her own room.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 125
Standing by the door as he closed it behind her, he
felt some one try it gently. Pointer opened it on the
instant. Miss Hill looked a little taken aback, he
thought.
"Mrs. Richard was looking for something, wasn't
she ?" she began rather breathlessly.
"How did you know that ?" Pointer asked with
a smile, holding the door wider open for her to come
in.
"I heard the unmistakable sounds of something
being hunted for," she said easily. "I was waiting
for her up in her bedroom," she continued in answer
to the question in his eyes, " and you hear everything
up there. That's what makes it so difficult to
understand that she didn't hear anything last night.
"I wish I could find whatever she has lost," Miss
Hill went on swiftly, " she's sobbing her heart out
in her bedroom. She says it does not matter, but
I would so like to find it for her. It must be some-
thing very important to upset her so. It's a letter,
isn't it?"
Pointer did not tell her what it was, he only said
that he, as well as Mrs. Avery, had searched the two
rooms carefully, but if Miss Hill thought she would
have better luck—he indicated that the room was
at her disposal.
A plain-clothes man entered and without a word
to Pointer went to a table in the window and sitting
facing the room began to fill a sheet of paper with
writing. As Pointer explained to Miss Hill, Jackson
would not be in the way, as there were no drawers
in the table at which he would be writing down some
facts for the Chief Constable. Nor would he be long,
he added.
"Oh, don't let him hurry away on my account,"
begged Miss Hill as Pointer left the room.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 127
room this morning before I was up ?" Mrs. Avery
asked coldly.
Olive said nothing. She had turned pale. "Come,
Olive," Mrs. Avery went on sharply, "be sensible,
and tell us what you are looking for? Then we could
help you. I'm sure it's for something of your own—
not mine."
Olive did not speak for a moment, she stood
staring down at the etching which lay on the table
now.
Christopher Byrd was shown in just then. Pointer
had given orders that whenever he or a constable
was inside the room, people could come and go in it
as they liked. The room was to seem unwatched.
Byrd had a few words to say to Mrs. Avery of
really very well expressed regret at her brother-in-
law's death. Then he turned.
"What's wrong with the etching ?" he inquired.
"Ask Miss Hill," came from Mrs. Avery. She's
hunting for something, and we want to help her."
Olive Hill turned a very inscrutable look on Byrd,
on Mrs. Avery, on Pointer. "It's something of Mr.
Revell's that I'm looking for," she said at last very
quietly.
Byrd gave an exclamation. It was under his
breath, but something in the quality of the voice
registered with the Chief Inspector as a man who had
had a most unexpected jolt, and one that went deep.
He said nothing, however. Only with narrowed
eyes he stared hard at the girl. Olive did not look at
him now.
She was very plain to-day. Her face was white.
There were circles around her eyes. And never had
the Chief Inspector looked into a face more im-
possible to read except that it was very agitated
under its composure.


128 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
She was trembling slightly as she stood there
before them. Doris saw it too.
"We can't talk in here. It's not decent somehow.
Come into the morning-room, Olive, and tell us what
you are really after."
They followed her out. Even Byrd, after a second's
hesitation, went too.
In the morning-room Grace was sitting with her
face white and drawn.
"Olive is looking for something," Doris said to
her, " and we all want to help her find it."
Grace hardly seemed to hear.
Olive, too, made no reply for a minute.
"Sit down," Doris ordered in her peremptory way.
Olive sank on to the arm of a chair but her face
was contracted and closed.
"I believe she's after the treasure !" Byrd put in
with a discordant half-laugh.
For a moment Olive did not answer, then she
looked at him.
"Yes," she said then, " or rather for an account of
where it is to be found."
"Oh, come !" he protested. "I was only joking.
Of course there's no treasure at The Causeway. If
you've mislaid some of his letters to you, if you wait
till things are straightened out they'll turn up of
themselves."
Olive did not condescend to look at him, she
stared dully in front of her. But she was not
apathetic, Pointer felt sure of that. Rather was she
in that wrought-up mood in which a man does not
care what happens, what dangers he is running into.
Though, ordinarily, he judged that this young woman
would be more than usually circumspect. She
looked to him the kind to weigh, as a rule, every word
she said before saying it, let alone every action.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 120.
She walked on out of the room, and as Byrd
opened the door for her, she said a quick word in his
ear. He followed her, and Jackson too found that he
had to fetch something from the hall at the same time.
Doris sat on in amazement. "So that was why she
wanted Dick to buy The Causeway," she finally said,
"but how silly! Hidden treasure! Grace, can you
believe it?"
Grace did not look up.
"About her searching your room this morning?"
Pointer asked.
Doris told him that that was only a chance shot,
and explained what had really happened. "Though
why she's started it all up just now—now—to-day,"
she said under her breath, and still looking as
though she had found a quite new side of Olive Hill
to study, went on up to her own room.
Grace rose and followed her.
The scene was very odd, but of one thing Pointer
was sure, and that was that though Olive Hill had
accepted the suggestion made half or wholly in
jest, by Christopher Burd, that she was interested
in hunting for a possible treasure at The Causeway,
it was not true. It was quite a plausible suggestion
for a girl without any money who might be presumed
to have heard Anthony Revell talk of it, but it was
not true. . . . She was after something else.
Stamps? But what most interested the astute
detective was that she had given him the im-
pression of being on the verge of burning her boats
when Christopher had interfered and suggested
something at which he himself scoffed a moment
later.
Olive had whispered to Byrd to come with her for
a moment. Her hand on his arm she pulled him
into the dining-room.


130 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Chris, I'm frightened," she murmured.
She laid her cheek suddenly against his. Her skin
was like satin, and smelt like a clove pink.
He pushed her away. "None of that," he
whispered roughly. "I don't trust you, darling.
I don't like you, love. You may have tricked poor
Revell, but you can't hoodwink Christopher Byrd.
What you got out of Revell that you've lost I
haven't an earthly. Something you've no right to.
Mr. Avery knew of it. I say he did !" for she opened
her lips to speak. She turned a livid white at his
words. He pushed her away. "Don't you suppose
I watched your face when that sermon of his got
under weigh ?" he went on ruthlessly. "You were
on hot coals. I think there was a moment when you
thought he was going to be plainer still. Pity he
wasn't, as things have turned out."
"He had learned that I didn't love Anthony,"
she said breathlessly. "Grace had told him," there
was fury in her low tone, in her eye.
Byrd stared at her in contemptuous silence for a
second. Then he gave his short, cutting laugh.
"And you think that explains his sermon." He
made for the door, but her next words stopped
him.
"I'm coming out with you to the Dutch Indies, to
Maboa. I've got my hundred pounds ready to pay
in, and I'm coming!"
"Your money will be returned to you," he said
sharply. "I told you that we take married couples,
and engaged couples, but not single women."
"Yes, and I was coming as your wife!" she
retorted.
"And two weeks after that was arranged, you
were engaged to Revell."
"I told you that I didn't love him 1 I only got


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 131
engaged because—because "her face worked
with some dark passion.
"Of the Fettiplaces' treasure?" he asked in
derision.
"I got engaged to Anthony to show that I could
have him if I wanted him. I never intended to
marry him. Never! I was going to marry you!'
Her face was suddenly beseeching—soft—alluring.
He refused to look at her, but stared at the carpet
as he had stared at the ground once when Mr. Avery
had seen them together in the woods.
"What was it that made the rector preach that
sermon?" he demanded.
Her face paled. She swallowed, tried to speak, and
before she got a word out, he was gone, and had
closed the door behind him with something of
finality in the very sound.


CHAPTER TEN
Pointer would have been very interested had he
been able to overhear the talk between Grace and
Doris after Byrd's suggestion of a motive for
Olive's search.
"I can't make Olive out," Doris said as the two
sisters-in-law reached her sitting-room. "In a way
I'm grateful to her for giving me something to think
about other than John's terrible end, and my
mother's illness. And she does puzzle me! What
she's after—I wonder if it is that quite incredible
tale of hidden treasure? You know," she motioned
Grace to sit beside her on the little couch, and spoke
very low, but with the unmistakable look of one
glad to talk, "she certainly hunted for something
at The Causeway too. I wondered what took her over
there so regularly, but one day when I went there
myself—Jack thought that Patricia Revell might
be there, and I wanted a word with her—I found
Olive buried head and shoulders in a boot cupboard.
And her face when I opened the door on her!
Consternation is too mild a word for it. Evidently
she is after that mythical treasure!"
"I wonder !" Grace said musingly. "For I learnt
yesterday that she's been in the habit of taking our
letters from the postman and bringing them herself
up to the house. That isn't explained by hunting
for treasure at The Causeway.
"I missed a postal order that should have arrived
a week ago," Grace continued. "No, it's quite all
right, as a matter of fact, the ' Brownie' in question
forgot to post it. But I met Bowles, one of our
132


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 133
postmen, as I walked back from evening service
last night—yes, I know you find it hard enough to go
in the mornings—Well, to go on, I asked Bowles
whether there was any chance of the letter I was
inquiring about having been overlooked. He got
very flustered and finally said that if one had
got lost, it was much more likely to be between the
rectory gate and its letter-box. But that he hadn't
liked to refuse when Olive offered to take them
herself to the house. He's getting old and it is a
bit of a walk up from the gates—at his age."
"But how? Where was she? When was this?"
Doris was all at sea.
"It seems that Olive was always gardening when
the postman arrived." Grace spoke with something
of Doris's own occasional pungency of tone.
"Gardening by the gates!"
"Those annuals !" breathed Doris. "She begged
to be let plant them herself, and look after them
herself."
Grace made an acquiescent gesture.
"John thought first she was getting in training for
The Causeway gardens, then that she was trying to
get over her grief at Anthony's loss," Doris said.
"He let her have that corner to play with. But
why? And she's neglected the place dreadfully just
of late, as I expected she would."
"' Why' is what I say," Grace repeated. "I
don't see how hunting for The Causeway's treasure—
even supposing she were so silly as to believe that tale
—would explain her taking our letters from the
postman for nearly a fortnight."
"When did she start doing this?" Then Doris
answered herself. "Let me see, she planted out that
bed in the last week of May. Just around the time
that Anthony died"


134 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Just so," agreed Grace. "And from that time on
she was always on hand to take any letters from
Bowles or Herrick—Bowles says Herrick, the second
postman, handed them to her too. And, a fortnight
ago, her interest in the flowers stopped. ..."
Doris sat silent, considering.
"I remembered the way that letter to you from
Dick had been mislaid a month ago," went on
Grace. "I had handed it to her at once on its
arrival, and she told me that she had given it to you
immediately. But you didn't get it till you found
it for yourself—next day."
"I can't see what interest Olive could have in
Dick's letters to me," Doris said slowly. "No,
I should be more inclined to think that she has got
in touch with some of these diviners—people who
claim to be able to locate treasure by a photograph
of the place."
There was a short silence.
"That's possible!" Grace spoke in the tone of
one who is shown the right word for the Crossword.
"I never thought of anything so simple! But
if so, then she was still interested in that immediately
after Anthony died! I always told you that she
didn't care for him, you know."
"Poor Anthony," Doris said with a gesture of
pity. "Your eyes were sharper than mine. He
loved her so much that I suppose I took it for
granted that she loved him too. He never had any
doubts about it."
"Possibly he had at the end," Grace said under
her breath. She broke off as Doris interrupted to ask
if she was sure that Olive's self-imposed duty as
postman to the rectory was now a thing of the past.
"Oh, absolutely." Grace spoke with certainty.
"And I let Bowles see that it must never happen


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 135
again. He assured me, and he's a truthful old
thing, that it hadn't happened for a fortnight
past."
There was silence in the room after that. Then
Grace rose.
"I'm glad I told you about it. I meant to at once
last night. And your idea of diviners really does
explain Olive's actions. But what a heart she must
have—apart from Anthony, here's poor John
hardly dead—to be able to go into his study and
hunt about in it—what was that for, do you
suppose?"
Doris made a weary gesture. "Notes on some of
his talks of Anthony's grandfather. Or, more likely,
plans of The Causeway foundations. John drew
some at the time he was interested in tracing the
old manor's outbuildings."
She stopped as Fraser came in.
The Chief Constable asked Pointer and Shilling
to dine with him that Monday night.
The talk turned exclusively on the rectory puzzle.
Ireton fortunately for himself had an unimpeachable
alibi for yesterday afternoon and evening. He and
his family had gone by train to some relatives at foui
o'clock, and had only returned at nine this morning.
He could not have tampered with the tray, for there
had been a Cinderella dance on that had lasted till
midnight, and Mr. Ireton had danced indefatigably.
That settled, Pointer told about the odd little affair
of the necklace that belonged to Lady Revell.
Weir-Opie held up a hand.
"I've had to spend a precious half-hour calming
her down," he said, " not that there was much that
I could do. Of course, Lady Revell is quite above
suspicion, I should say—quite! And her story of


136 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
having left it in the study on a previous visit
explains it, eh?"
Pointer had been talking to Fraser, and the
butler had scoffed at the idea that anything had
lain for over twenty-four hours undetected behind
the window-seat. And the lack of dust bore this out.
"Umph—odd," Weir-Opie allowed, when this was
explained, "but, as I say, I really can't see Lady
Revell murdering Avery, or having to. Her life is
too well known, even before her marriage, for her to
have any black secrets, I feel sure. That some one
else helped themselves to that necklace, and wore it
yesterday to the rectory is more likely"
"Jolly careless thing to do, sir," Shilling put in,
"with a striking thing like that."
"True, but one must account for its presence
somehow. . . . Odd . . ." and like good Catholics
at Meditation, the three sat silent for several
minutes considering the one necklace certainly
found, and the one necklace possibly missing.
"And what did you think of the Gartsides?"
Weir-Opie asked, coming up out of the deeps.
"They seemed to me rather uneasy, sir," Pointer
said, and proceeded to pass on what little he had
learnt from them, and from Merton, about the
articles which they had chosen for their legacy.
"But there's one thing they didn't tell me, of which I
feel as sure as Merton seems to, and that is that
neither brother nor sister believe for a moment that
Mr. Revell really went home because of a toothache,"
Pointer said with assurance.
"Do you think they knew the real reason then,
whatever it was?" Weir-Opie asked instantly.
"Or is Merton right—and did Anthony take to
flight?"
"There's one thing, sir. The post had evidently


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 137
reached them before Mr. Revell spoke to them on
Thursday morning, because Miss Gartside said that
she was reading a letter that had just come, when
Mr. Revell stepped into the sitting-room to say that
he must leave them till the following afternoon, so
that Mr. Revell could have received a letter that
morning."
"I asked them that very question before the
inquest, and both said they knew of none," Shilling
said instantly.
"Probably they didn't know," Pointer agreed.
"There may even have been none, if Merton is right
in thinking that it was something to do with Miss
Gartside. But Mr. Revell's going to his drawing-room
at that hour of night strongly suggests a ren-
dezvous."
"Yes, we got that far," Weir-Opie nodded, " but
we found no proofs. Whereas the probabilities are
that after killing Revell and finding that the stamps
they were after weren't at The Causeway—he hadn't
been searched as we told you—the murderer, or
murderers, knew about the list, and, recognising it in
the rector's hands in church on Sunday decided that
it must be secured and destroyed after silencing
him."
"In short, they murdered the rector, took the
stamps, and didn't get the list," summed up Shilling
who liked things put briefly, no matter what had to
be left out. "Did you hear anything about that
wonderful Sicilian stamp from Sir Hubert Witson,
sir?"
Weir-Opie looked at him. "Yes," he said finally.
"Oh, yes. I wish he had a better alibi for both the
times we're interested in, he talked so ravenously
about it. Said he had been allowed to see a specimen
once in his life in Berlin at the Postal Museum there.


138 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
It isn't listed among the exhibits, but is kept in the
director's private room, and apparently, from the
way Witson went on, is chained to the director day
and night. I didn't mention it to him as any
motive for Avery's death, naturally"
Both his listeners nodded. It had been agreed
between them that, until they learnt that that
particular stamp had been located, there must be the
greatest secrecy observed about it.
"So Sir Hubert knew about such a stamp," said
Shilling, sticking to his point.
Weir-Opie nodded.
"Did he know about Mr. Revell's owning any
Sicilian stamps?" Pointer asked.
"He did. Moreover, Sir Hubert himself put for-
ward a chat on stamps as the reason for the rector's
late call on him day before yesterday—Saturday.
He said that Mr. Avery had rung him up on Saturday
afternoon and said that he had had a good many
small gifts of stamps made him lately which were
now growing quite bulky, and thought it might be as
well to consult such a well-known expert about their
value and classification. He wanted to start a boys'
stamp exchange and sale with a view to rendering
some of his clubs more nearly self-supporting.
Everybody around here knows it was one of the
rector's many dreams that in time his boys might
be able to run their clubs entirely unaided. Sir
Hubert asked him to drop in at five o'clock on
Monday afternoon, but had to phone up later,
about half-past eight, and ask him to come then,
as he feared trouble with his eyes which might
make it impossible for him to inspect the stamps on
the Monday. As a matter of fact his eyes are better
to-day, he told me," went on Weir-Opie, "but he
had had them bad once, and got nervous."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 139
"Did Mr. Avery bring the stamps?" Shilling
asked.
"Witson says not. Witson says he only wanted
some general information about how such a scheme
might be started. But he mentioned the Sicilian
stamps among many others, and Witson says he told
him about this particular stamp—Witson, by the
way, thinks a well-preserved one would be cheap at
six thousand. The rector, according to Witson, said
that he was afraid his Sicilian stamps contained
nothing so thrilling, but he would look at the list
which Revell had sent with them."
There was a short silence after the Chief Constable
had finished.
"So Sir Hubert Witson rang up the rector last
night around half-past eight. That much of course
will be on record," Pointer said.
"And where was Sir Hubert last night, sir?"
asked the superintendent.
"Again in his bed, Shilling," Weir-Opie said in his
dry tone. "You always seem to think it a most
suspicious place for people to be found, I know. But
I will remind you that I have exactly the same alibi
for last night. Presumably Pointer here has no
better. And what about yourself?"
Shilling laughed outright. Then his face sobered.
"So he knew there was a list of those stamps to be
seen," he muttered.
Pointer looked up. "The list which may have
contained the name of a very valuable stamp might
explain the rector's murder, and the search of his
study—the library wasn't searched at all"
"Because he wouldn't keep anything of a secular
kind in there," threw in Weir-Opie.
Pointer nodded. He understood as much.
"But," he went on slowly, " I think a message


140 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
must have accompanied it to cause the rector to
stare at it as he did on Sunday in the pulpit, and
above all to preach such a sermon as he did."
"Why, the sight of the stamp on the list was surely
sufficient?" replied Shilling, surprised.
"Why should a message have had to accompany
the list?" Weir-Opie said, passing the liqueur
brandy.
"Because on turning it over in my mind, sir,
I don't see how Mr. Avery could so instantly
appreciate the significance of that stamp on the list,
supposing it was there. I mean "—Pointer found it
hard to put his growing dissatisfaction into words—
"say I am the rector. I open my Bible, having
given out my text with my mind full of my sermon.
Opening out my notes, I see that, by mistake, I have
picked up a list of stamps instead. I doubt if I
would more than glance at the paper. I don't think
I would carefully read the list through to the end."
"Ah, but if the valuable one happened to be first
on the list!" Weir-Opie objected.
"Even so, sir, even if I saw on it one I knew to be
very valuable, I don't think I would connect that
stamp's presence with the month-old death of the
giver, a death moreover which was thought to be
accidental. I don't say that a detective who was
certain that Revell had been murdered might not
have seen it in that light. But Mr. Avery, with the
first sentence of his sermon already half spoken?"
"I see," said Weir-Opie, twirling his cigar round
and round like a screw.
And an answering " I see " came from Shilling who
laid down the matches. Both voices suggested the
opposite.
"Granted it was the list of stamps that he took out
of his Bible, and granted even that on it was the


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 141
name of a very valuable one indeed, there must have
been more than that, to have affected the rector as
it did. Must have been."
Pointer spoke with certainty. "Even assuming
both those first premises to be true, I feel more and
more sure that some message must have been
written as well."
"Such as 'Showed these stamps to Witson the
other day,' eh, sir?" Shilling cast a look at the
Chief Constable.
"Or 'Byrd doesn't think them valuable,'"
Weir-Opie lit his cigar. "You always tried to
connect Byrd with Revell's death, Shilling, only he
too claimed to have been in his bed that night."
Pointer did not appear struck with the two
suggestions.
"The rector hadn't time in the pulpit to think
things over, sir, and put two and two together."
"He stood a long minute with eyes shut after he
saw that paper," Weir-Opie reminded the Chief
Inspector. "I thought he was praying. He may
have been thinking back instead. He was a very
quick-witted man, remember, with a finely-trained,
really good brain. You think some incriminating
—for the murderer—message accompanied the list
. . . umph. . . ."
"I do, and yet again there are difficulties,"
Pointer said finally, lighting up, " about a message
accompanying the list."
"That's it!" Weir-Opie liked to chaff Pointer.
"That's it! First throw us a rope. Then chop it
in two. Then boggle about letting us have even
half of it!"
Pointer laughed.
"What difficulties are there about Mr. Revell
having written a very suggestive message on the


142 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
same page as the list?" Shilling wanted to
know.
"Why, the paper was kept in the open-topped
jar. Again, granted that the rector had never read
it, and that's a lot to grant seeing that he had had it
for nearly a month—What about Mr. Byrd? He saw
the list, so if there was a message he must have seen
it too. But he left it apparently."
w" True, there is that !" came in tones almost of
disappointment from the Chief Constable.
"The butler and other servants could have seen
it^ had they wanted to," Pointer continued, "so
that whatever it contained that so appalled the
rector on Sunday must have been very incon-
spicuous. Then why did it burst on him, when he
read it, like a horrible floodlight—for it did."
"Could he have learnt something on the way
to church which altered things ?" wondered Weir-
Opie, thoroughly roused. "But, no, Colonel Grenville
is one of his churchwardens, and I had a word with
him to-day. He walked into the vestry with him—
they were talking about some repairs, and he said
that the rector was more cheery than he had seen him
since Revell's death, which had been a frightful
shock to him, as to every one. Though not within
a thousand miles of the shock which his own death is
to all of us who ever met him," added Weir-Opie
under his breath, " for to know Avery was to love
him."
"I confess, sir," Pointer said after a silence, " that
I keep turning and twisting the possibilities of that
folded paper over and over, and so far quite fruit-
lessly." He did not add that he was not one of those
men who have to have things told to them before
i they "detect" them. Pointer could reason, and
very far indeed at times his reasoning had brought


144 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
there is in the story of her infatuation. His mother
believes it, I think, whereas the rector didn't. And
I'm bound to say that Mr. Avery was a very shrewd
man. Very hard to fob off with a lie. And there's
this on Mrs. Green's side, the servants at The
Causeway swear that there was nothing ' wrong '—
their word—between her and Revell. And if they
didn't think so, there wasn't. Trust house servants
to know."
Pointer did not stay late after dinner. Weir-Opie
and Shilling had many other things to discuss, and he
had brought away with him to read to-night the
unfinished chapters of the rector's Notes on Saint
Paul. He wanted to hear, as it were, the dead man
talking. It kept him awake. Here was detection at
its subtlest and best. Like a man bearing a strong
light, the rector had moved through his texts,
casting that light now forwards now backwards
along the path which he had marked out, and
Pointer thought that no Scotland Yard sleuth could
better him in his amazing skill in putting the hidden
two and two together into the right four. Logic and
reasoning this of the highest. Pointer turned out his
light with a sigh for the brain lost to the world.
He would very much have liked to hear Mr.
Avery's explanation of his own end. Which would
mean the truth about the missing stamps, the
necklace and, above all, the folded paper that he had
taken out of his Bible yesterday morning.


CHAPTER ELEVEN
The inquest on the rector was next morning. As he
was walking from the police station to it, Pointer
heard his name called. A smart car was stopping
beside him. A young woman jumped out, and
waved to the chauffeur to go on.
"You're the bogey man, aren't you," she said
with a display of white teeth. "The Major was
talking about you to me. I'm Lady Witson."
Pointer saw a young woman on the right side of
thirty, very tall, very thin, with a dress that fitted
her as its last leaf does a cigar. She was, if not
pretty, well made up, very up to date. He was
particularly interested in her. One of Shilling's men
had learnt last night that there had been a
tremendous quarrel between Sir Hubert and his
wife on Saturday, and that the servants all believed
the rector's call to have been made for the
purpose of reasoning with Lady Witson who,
according to them, had taken very ostentatiously
to drink since Anthony Revell's death, with whom
all the servants believed she had been carrying
on a wild flirtation. Both flirtation and drinking,
according to them, arose not so much from affection,
as from a hope that Sir Hubert if really alarmed
would leave The Towers and go back at once to
London where Eva-May Witson longed to be.
Pointer thought that Lady Witson looked
capable of anything that would further her own
plans. The servants had told Shilling's inquirer that
they had heard the name of Revell called out once
during the half an hour's talk that the rector had had
MS


146 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
with husband and wife. It had been apparently
screamed at her husband by Lady Witson. The
maid who had passed on most of this information,
if it could be called that, had heard the rector call
her firmly to order, as though she had said something
that was unpardonable, but the girl claimed that she
had shrilled the name again and again before
rushing in hysterics—" put-on ones," in her opinion
—from the room.
"I hear that Miss Hill has not been called as a
witness by the Coroner," Lady Witson said now in
a very sharp nasal voice.
"I suppose the Coroner thought that this second
death coming so soon after her own personal loss
would have been a great shock to her," Pointer
suggested.
Lady Witson gave the little screech that she
considered a laugh. "A great personal loss it was
indeed!" There was mockery in her tone. "If
he hadn't had that accident she would have lost him
just the same. Anthony Revell never really intended
to marry Olive Hill! What happened was that she
misunderstood, or pretended to misunderstand,
something pretty he said to her, and the rector came
in, and Olive asked for his blessing, and there was
poor Anthony in the net! And all for the sake of one
of his pretty speeches. Once in, he was making the
best of it, but that was really why he went rock-
climbing for a fortnight. He intended, he told me
himself, to write her a most regretful letter, and an
explanatory one to the rector, and be off—free—
unfettered. That was why she hasn't a ring. He was
going to get free—from a distance. He would have
been quite ready to flirt with her, of course, but
she wanted marriage, equally of course. Poor
thing!"


148 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
or coming—one whisper has it one way, one another
—from The Causeway the night Revell returned
home. This would explain his return with never a
word to his servant or any of his old friends, we all
know. But she didn't shoot him!" and the Chief
Constable laughed. "She can't shoot, to begin with.
Shilling found that out at once. And neither was
there any reason for it. She's not the intense kind.
I think she's quite fond of her husband really, but
thinks he needs a little rousing now and then. I
don't say she's wrong. Certainly he never neglects
her as he did his first wife. Some men have to feel
insecure before they value anything."
"Do you think the rector could have got to hear of
the gossip about Lady Witson being there that
night ?" Pointer asked.
"The last man to learn of it, I should say," was
the opinion of the Chief Constable. "And it's only
just beginning to spread. No one knows where from,
of course."
Pointer was thinking.
"Well?" asked the other as he said nothing.
"What do you think of her as the writer of a possible
letter giving Revell a rendezvous?"
"I'm wondering how Lady Witson could have
induced Mr. Revell to give up two whole days out of
a fortnight's climbing. He lost Thursday getting
back here, he would have had to lose Friday
returning to Derbyshire."
"Yes, and the Gartsides could only stay the two
weeks. Saturday—Saturday—Saturday," Shilling
threw in. "He's a very junior clerk at Lloyds, and
couldn't possibly get his holiday extended."
"And generally one chooses some extra good
climb to end with "—Pointer was a great climber—
"something to stretch to the last possible minute.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 149
By leaving on Thursday, Revell practically closed
the expedition. Possibly there was bad feeling
between him and the Gartsides"
"We could learn of none. Shilling here was very
keen on finding that out at once," said Weir-Opie.
"Certainly unless there was trouble between them,
or unless Miss Gartside frightened him home,
if Lady Witson could get him to so cut short the
trip, she must have had a very strong reason to
give him. Something very compelling—Would Sir
Hubert be likely to start divorce proceedings
easily?"
"Ah! He's as jealous as a Turk. But as to
divorce—I dunno."
"One would have expected that only Miss Hill
would have had the power to get him to come back
like that," Pointer was eyeing his polished shoe
tips.
"Lady Witson is quite capable of suggesting that
she was in a fearful hole if by saying so she could stir
up Revell or her husband." Weir-Opie's tone did not
suggest any great amount of affection for the lady.
"She's a curious type. Must have things swirling
around her. Seems to be meat and drink to
her."
"Let's hope that the rector wasn't poisoned for
want of a thrill," Pointer said dryly, and the other
agreed. They were by now at the schoolhouse where
the inquest was to be held. Weir-Opie promptly
went on ahead for a word with the Coroner.
The inquest was crowded. Pointer himself was
present throughout, for there was the one obvious
point connected with the missing yellow jar which
still puzzled him extremely, and which he hoped
might be cleared up at it.
Also, in a murder case, the faces of the people


150 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
listening to the evidence always interested him. The
first person at which he glanced held his eye for a
woman whom on Sunday in church the rector's
sermon had so shaken. A question to Shilling nearby,
and he learnt that, as he thought, she was Mrs.
Green. An interesting but ravaged face, Pointer
had thought it in church the day before yesterday,
now it bore still more marks of grief, yet he had been
given to understand that the rector was practically
a stranger to her. Queer.
The inquest began.
The Coroner, who had been told that the police
wanted all possible information, did his best to
ferret out any shreds.
Sir Hubert Witson, a large fat man with sleepy
eyes, was called first after the police and medical
evidence. He said that the rector called to see him
on Saturday evening. Their talk had only to do with
a stamps " sale and exchange " for some boys' clubs.
The rector had seemed quite his usual self.
Witson had a ruthless and mean face, Pointer
thought. Superficially good-natured up to a point,
but capable of being a very nasty customer once that
point were passed. Pointer thought he was telling
the truth, as far as it went, but he thought him very
determined that it should not go far.
The Coroner next called Lady Witson for a
moment. She entirely supported her husband's
statement that the rector had merely looked in for a
word about his clubs, and bore out unhesitatingly
his account of the short chat on stamps that had
followed.
Mrs. Richard Avery was called, and described the
tray that had been sent in as so often before to the
rector on Sunday night. As to the toadstools,
different reason. It was


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 151
she went into that point very carefully and clearly.
The rector, she said, was extremely careful about
the extract. She went on to repeat what she had
already told the police about having gone into the
library after her friends had left the house on
Sunday evening, and the help in looking up some
references that her brother-in-law had asked of her.
She had heard his voice in the study, the room below
her bedroom, much later—around half-past eleven—
when she put out her reading-lamp and fell asleep.
She had thought at the time that he was reading a
sentence aloud to himself. His voice had sounded
quite calm, but she had herself been very sleepy
at the time.
Lady Revell, when called, said that owing to her
headache she had not walked over to the rectory on
Sunday evening as she had at first intended, but had
taken a headache powder and gone to bed instead.
As to her necklace found under the window seat, she
gave the same explanation to the Coroner as to
Pointer. The lighter necklace had not been found.
Possibly indeed she had lost it on Sunday coming
back from church. She had stayed in her room
Sunday afternoon writing letters and feeling very
much under the weather, and it now looked to her as
though she had only taken it for granted that she had
laid it on her dressing-table that night.
The inquest went on. Fraser, Mr. Ireton, servants,
no one seemed to have anything new to say.
The Coroner finally adjourned for a fortnight, after
stressing the fact that owing to the door that led
out from the fernery into the garden, any outsider
could have been admitted, or for that matter could,
theoretically at least, have slipped in on Sunday
evening after the tray was brought into the study,
and have transferred some of the poisonous toadstool


152 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
extract to the mushroom ketchup bottle. This
could have been done, even with the rector sitting
writing in the inner room, for the door between was
generally shut, and when deep in his work, he was
deaf to what went on around him.
Pointer went for a walk when the proceedings were
over. Why had the orange jar been taken away from
the rectory study? The inquest had not in the least
solved that question. The chief objection to its
disappearance did not seem to have occurred to the
Major or to Shilling. But Pointer placed himself in
the position of the criminal. Granted that he was
after the stamps, that he had missed them before
when he shot Revell, that he would therefore be all
out not to go away empty-handed after a second
murder, why should he take away the china jar as
well as the stamps? It was roughly a hand high
and a span across the top. The lid was china too.
The jar had every fault from the criminal's point of
view. It was heavy. It was awkward to carry
safely. It was extremely smooth. It was noisy to
put down anywhere. It was difficult to hide,
impossibly so on the person. It was breakable, and
an accident might happen at some most incon-
venient time and place. It was most easily identifi-
able, even at a glance. So much so, that Pointer had
at first expected to find it " planted" somewhere.
But so far it had not turned up. It seemed to have
genuinely accompanied the stamps, and Pointer
could not understand why. The thing had no
especially valuable qualities of air or watertightness
to compensate for its many disadvantages. The
stamps were easily taken out. Then why want the
cumbersome china jar? What reason had con-
strained the murderer, the quite averagely clever
murderer, to put up with all its drawbacks? Pointer


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 153
worried at the reason, which eluded him as much
now, as on the first moment of learning of the jar's
disappearance. It did not make sense. The stamps—
yes. But the jar—no! A dozen times over, no!
He went to his bed still trying in his mind every
possible combination of circumstances which would
explain the taking of that jar. The strangest small
incident—to his mind—which the case presented,
became the most incomprehensible. It was devoid
of all reason, as far as he could see, and Chief
Inspector Pointer saw further than most men,
as well as more quickly and more clearly. For an
hour he lay awake thinking, and at last he became
convinced that there was no reason behind its
absence from the study mantel. That meant that
its taking was accidental, caused by some unplanned
incident. Had it fallen and been broken in taking
it hurriedly off the mantel when the stamps had been
stolen after the death of the rector? Not a speck of
broken china remained. Under the circumstances
it must have taken nerve to have so picked up every
particle in that room. . . . Could there be any
reason for so carefully hiding the jar if it had been
broken? Suddenly he saw one.
The rector lay on his couch which faced obliquely
towards fireplace and window. That necklace was
found under the window-sill! What if the rector,
discovering that no bell rang, that his door was
locked, knowing that the windows were too stiff
for him to open, had made a last effort to summon
help by flinging the necklace at the window to
break it? And suppose the necklace to have been
lying on the small occasional table that stood near
him? In his weakness, lying on his side, he might
easily have hit the china jar instead . . . and the
murderer, wanting to conceal the fact that the bells


154 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
were put out of order, that the doors had been locked,
would feel that broken jar to be far too much of a
clue to leave it lying in bits on the floor. The
necklace had dropped out of sight, but the jar would
be buried as near as possible to the garden door—
a trowel and small hand-rake lay on the mushroom
table.
He walked swiftly to the rectory, and would have
made for the strip of garden outside the fernery door,
but for Grace Avery, who, a pile of correspondence
beside her on the lawn, sat near it behind a spur
of rhododendrons, busily reading, and tearing up
papers.
These are some old papers of last year from my
brother's attic store-room," she explained. "They
must be gone through, of course. So far I have come
on nothing in the least interesting, only old receipts
and so on, appeals for help, club reports—that sort
of thing. But they must be attended to. There's
another couple of hours' work in this lot alone. Tell
me, Mr. Pointer, you don't really think that any one
intended to poison my brother, do you? It's
incredible that any one could want to harm him!
. Some accident—yes. Though that's hard enough to
explain, but not intention?"
So long as it seemed as though the sister had
nothing to do with the brother's death, Major Weir-
Opie thought that there was no reason to tell her
of the police certainty of foul play. She, supposedly
innocent, would help them as much as she could,
without that dreadful knowledge to grieve her still
deeper. Yet there was the question of danger. The
very grave question. A poisoner undetected is like
a deadly snake lying hidden in the grass. One
incautious step, and another death may be the
result. Pointer therefore contented himself with


156 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
said grimly. "What I mind is the thought of any one
murdering the rector and getting away with it.
Well, look here, Mr. Chief Inspector, what about—
for one trifle—asking Miss Olive what made her
listen at the study door twice over on Sunday night
as she did. Opened it twice noiselessly as a fly, put
a foot in, heard something, and closed it just as
silently. Mrs. Richard had just gone to bed, it was
gone half-past ten by then. I asked her whether
she wanted anything; I thought perhaps she didn't
like to disturb the master in the library, and was
listening to hear if he was still in there. She jumped
as though I had pinched her, and fairly scuttled up
the stairs saying something about a book she had
wanted but which didn't matter and thanking me for
my offer. And Miss Olive isn't one of your thanking
sort! Her face, too, looked as though I had given
her a rare fright. Funny little trifle that, ain't it,
sir? I went off to bed then, but I've wondered—
since—what she really was after."
"Did you hear anything from inside the room?"
Pointer asked.
"Just the rector walking up and down his study
very slowly as though deep in thought."
"I suppose he would often do that?"
"Never knew him to do it before, sir. In the
library, yes, now and then. But I never heard him
do it before in the study—when alone. No, I never
heard him do it there."
'' And you think that Miss Olive?"
"I don't know what to think, sir, and that's a
fact. It was her air—her manner—that was so odd.
Keyed-up and—well—I should call it desperate."
Further questions added nothing to this account.
"And then, there's one more trifle, sir, about another
lady altogether. The gardener says that he saw Mrs.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 157
Green closing our main gate very carefully behind
her latish on Sunday night. About eleven he puts
the time at. Mrs. Green has never called here. If
she came to the house it was the first time. Higgins
always goes home past the front gate."
Fraser was wanted and Pointer stood reflecting
on what he had just heard. Miss Hill at the study
door . . . Mrs. Green seen leaving the rectory
garden ... Any collusion between the two women
seemed unlikely. But you never knew ... He
turned.
Olive Hill was coming down the stairs with some
letters in her hand.
He had his note-book out, and seemed to be
entering some detail.
"Oh, Miss Hill," he turned as though glad to see
her. "I'm filling in Sunday night's time-table. Mrs.
Richard Avery left the study around half-past ten,
you were seen at the study door afterwards going
"No," she said instantly, "certainly not! Or I
would have told you. I wanted a book from the
shelves. But the rector was there, and I didn't like
to disturb him. So after I tried twice and heard him
moving about each time, I gave it up as a bad
job."
Pointer thanked her, wrote in the details as given
by her, and went on out again. Round by the side
door Grace still sat in front of a garden table. But she
was not looking at papers. Her head leaning on one
hand, a characteristic pose, she was idly rolling a
pencil along the table edge.
She looked up. "About trifles "—she began—
"you ought to ask Mrs. Richard, when she comes
back, whose voice it was that she heard speaking to
the rector close on midnight."


I58 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
Mrs. Richard Avery was out at the moment.
Pointer did not remind her that Doris had said
that she had heard no voice but the rector's own.
"You think she recognised the voice?"
"I do," Grace said firmly. "But I think she
counted on the person she heard coming forward
and telling you about it herself."


CHAPTER TWELVE
Pointer decided to try that night for the pieces of
the orange china jar which he thought might have
been broken by the dying rector, and buried by his
murderer. Meanwhile, he lit a pipe and went for a
brisk walk. That an extremely valuable stamp
was in the envelope given by Revell to the rector,
was of course possible, and if so, could not be
disregarded as a possible motive for Revell's, and for
the rector's murder. He ran again over the names of
those who had, according to Fraser, seen the stamps
and the list. He had had a word with Byrd about
them, and the man had seemed quite at his ease as
he said that, even if missing, they were of no value
except to some one beginning a collection.
But Pointer was not satisfied with the stamp
theory, though it could not be disregarded. He
wanted something that would explain the return of
Revell to his home, and his own death that night,
and then another murder—that of the rector after
an interval of four weeks. And which would explain
also the folded paper, or rather, the sermon which
Mr. Avery had preached after seeing the paper.
Leaving stamps entirely alone for the moment,
what other line of reasoning was there that might
lead to the right answer?
Jealousy? Was that the answer to the death of
Revell and was some discovery of the identity of
the murderer the reason for the rector's death and
the accompanying oddities? Sir Hubert Witson
was a jealous man from the look of him . . . there
was gossip about his wife and Revell . . . she had
159


160 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
called out Revell's name during the quarrel which
was apparently the real cause of the rector's visit
to The Towers last Saturday night. . . .
Something like a cold flame was burning in
Pointer's mind. Clear and shining it illuminated
whatever he placed before it. A jealous man—but
would a jealous man summon Revell home, back to
his own neighbourhood? Hardly. But the woman
might. If frightened. Or if desirous of a last exercise
of power. Certainly a summons from her—a letter
from her—something made the flame leap a little
higher. A letter written to Revell and found by the
rector? But after four weeks? And then the flame
played on Revell's car used by the rector for the
first time late on Saturday. What about a letter
written to Revell summoning him home most
urgently, dropped by him in the car, no, rather,
folded by him, which had inadvertently slipped
down between two cushions? Pointer saw the
rector dropping his matches—or spectacles—groping
for them—picking them up, and the folded paper as
well, putting the latter in the pocket out of which he
thought that it had fallen, the pocket where he
carried his notes for his sermon. He saw Mr. Avery
when he got home, laying the folded paper in his
Bible, opening it out next morning in the pulpit,
recognising the writing, reading some damnable
words which would be to him like a flash of lightning
showing a terrible landscape. Yes, a letter then—
written by a woman, not by a man. But not
necessarily by Lady Witson. There were other
women whose names had been linked with Revell's,
and if it was true that Revell had not let Olive
know of his return, was it not likely that her name
had been used as a bait? The flame was shining
very clearly now. Or was it Olive herself? A


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 161
dreadful sequence would follow this, if a fact. . . .
And it was possible, except that she seemed to
gain nothing but, on the contrary, to lose so
immensely by Revell's death. But Shilling's man
had heard her say to Byrd in a frantic whisper that
she had never intended to marry Revell. The man
had missed much of the talk between the two, but,
those words had reached him. If that were really so
then Olive might not have lost anything she valued.
. . . But to commit a murder there must be a
tremendous incentive, an overwhelming gratification
of some passion of hate or jealousy or revenge or
greed. The flame failed to light on any such motive in
Olive Hill, according to the facts as known so far.
But it was just after her engagement to Revell that
he died—just when, in other words, another woman
would have learnt that he was lost to her. Fury and
revenge.... And what if that other woman had
used Olive as a screen? Here the flame played on the
sermon as though it were print, and certain passages
stood out clearer than others. Some one was to
come forward—some one was to speak up—the
rector would not, Pointer thought, have the criminal
in his mind's eye, but an appeal to the writer of a
letter summoning Revell to a midnight meeting
would fit the sermon. A letter in which, moreover,
it had been made to appear without giving any
name, as though some one, other than the writer
wanted to speak to Revell.
Yes, that would fit. And Olive, as that "some
one " would fit too, for Revell would have hastened
back for her—to her. She had not lunched or dined
at the rectory on Sunday, but gone for a long walk
immediately after church, doing without lunch,
according to her own statement, and taking tea
at a verified place quite four hours' walk away.


162 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
She had come back about a quarter to nine, and had
refused any dinner. Had Olive been named directly
in the letter. Pointer believed that the rector would
have wanted to see her at once. Apparently he had
not done so. From all his actions on Sunday it looked
to Pointer as though Mr. Avery had received some
message from the writer of the letter putting off the
crucial moment of discussion very likely till the
next day—Monday. Of the three women in the
household, any of them could have stepped in for
long enough to do this. Outside of the rectory, of
the women who interested Pointer, Lady Witson,
Mrs. Green and Miss Gartside could all have had
the opportunity, for the rector was out all afternoon.
When it was dusk, Pointer had a careful look at
the little stretch of shrubs and periwinkle in question,
and when it was quite dark he strapped his torch on
his head and began to use the little garden fork lying
on the table near the gas-ring. He found what he
was after almost at once. Piece by piece he laid the
orange tinted china fragments out on to his newspaper.
He dug on with added care, for there was the possi-
bility of finding a buried envelope of stamps. For
if jealousy was the motive that had killed Revell,
and the rector had died lest he should give the
murderer up, and if Avery had smashed the jar in an
effort to break the window, then the stamps, like the
jar, might stand for absolutely nothing in the
puzzle, and might really have been, as Byrd had
declared them to be, absolutely valueless.
He found no stamps. He was not to learn so soon
and so easily whether they stood for anything in
the affair or not. Levelling, and lightly smoothing
over the soil, replacing the leaves and twigs as he


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 163
had found them, Pointer slipped out of the
garden with a package of broken china under his
arm.
Back in his room, he lit his pipe, and gazed out at
the stars. There was one person . . . but he stopped
himself, and instead of indulging in sheer imagination
went back in his mind to what he knew about the
death of Anthony Revell. He wished he had been
able to see the drawing-room and the body at the
time. He decided to go quickly over all the rooms
at The Causeway to-morrow morning so as to have
a clear idea of the house in his mind, and of what the
cellars were like, for though the possibility of hidden
treasure was, he thought, very remote, yet it did
exist.
The Causeway in conjunction with Anthony Revell
led him to think of Mrs. Green. He saw again her
face as the rector preached. As with Olive, so with
her, he had noted its growing pallor—the look of
something like fear in the eyes that never left Mr.
Avery's face. Had she gone to the rectory on Sunday
night? And if so, more than once?
Immediately after his breakfast, he interviewed
Higgins, the gardener, who was quite certain that
the lady whom he had seen closing the rectory gate
was the artist. Pointer now learned that Higgins had
been the gardener at The Flagstaff and had only lost
that place when Anthony Revell died.
"The rector's gardener had left to join his son in
South Africa," Higgins continued—" and many's
the time he'll wish himself back, in my opinion—
But it left the place open. And so Mr. Avery, when
he heard that I had just got married on the strength
of my good wages with Mr. Revell, he offered me the
place, and didn't I jump at it too! There's a cottage
as goes with it, and the rector he looked after his


166 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
One would say that a merry heart lived here. But
when Mrs. Green opened the door to him, she looked
as though the garden and everything in it were but
dust and ashes. If a criminal, she was already
beginning to reap the first fruits of the punishment
which none escapes.
She showed no surprise at seeing him, but asked
him in as though he were a regular visitor. He
mentioned that he had just been to the churchyard
and seen the tombstone put up to the memory of
Mr. Anthony Revell. A very striking work of art he
thought it. But he owned, he said, that the text
chosen by the family puzzled him.
"J chose it," she replied negligently. "I wanted
something short and not too smug. I thought it
sounded comforting."
Pointer permitted himself to look surprised.
"Don't you think that a cup of good red wine is
comforting ?" she asked and she showed her teeth
in a smile that was like a menace.
"But the text doesn't say that it is a cup of good
wine," he replied stolidly, " and the context hardly
suggests comfort."
A Bible reader?" she asked, with what he felt
to be an effort at levity.
Pointer somewhat stiffly said that he was.
"Really? I'm not. I just opened a Bible at a
venture, and my eye fell on a sentence that would do.
The Revells haven't complained. It'll pass muster."
There was a short silence. Pointer wondered, as
he had when he first caught sight of it, whether the
text referred to Anthony Revell himself, which would
mean that the fate that had befallen him was the
red wine in the cup. Or whether the text was to be
read as a warning to the undiscovered murderer.
Either reading might be right. And her way of


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 167
answering, would do equally for either. For that the
words had been chosen with a fierce exactitude to
meet some as yet unrevealed position, he was
certain.
He next asked her for what purpose she had called
on the rector yesterday, mentioning that she had
been seen and recognised, when leaving the garden.
She fingered a light net curtain.
"I had got as far as the front steps—nearly—
she said now soberly, "when I decided to think it
over. You see, I had been told that you can always
say to-morrow what you haven't said to-day, but
that you can never unsay to-morrow, what you
have said to-day. It's not true. For I can never tell
him now."
"Tell him what, Mrs. Green?" Pointer asked
bluntly.
"That Anthony Revell came back late that
Thursday night because of a message from Olive
Hill asking him to meet her there on a very urgent
matter." Mrs. Green went on to explain that,
thinking The Causeway to be shut up, she had
yielded to a sudden whim on that same evening to
paint it by the moonlight which chanced to be
amazingly bright. She was making a swift sketch
when she heard steps on the gravel and saw Anthony
coming quickly up to the front door. On her calling
to him, and suggesting that she come in with him
and that they have supper together before she should
return to The Flagstaff, he had told her that that
would be quite impossible as he had hurried back in
order to have a very private and urgent word with
some one. She had instantly named Olive Hill, and
he had not denied it, though he had insisted on her
keeping what she had stumbled on to herself. She
had left on that.


168 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"And why did you not tell the police of this
when they were inquiring into Mr. Revell's death?"
he asked her gravely.
"It wasn't a real inquiry," she said evasively.
"They were certain that it was an accident."
"And you're not?"
"No. Not at all certain," she said in a curiously
strangled voice. Looking at her he saw the tremen-
dous effort it was costing her to say as much. It was
disturbing. The Chief Inspector was rarely wrong
in his mental labels, and he did not think that it was
love that was the reason for the strain under which
she was labouring. It was rather that of an accom-
plice who had keyed himself up to tell a part of some
crime which, if fully known, would be his own ruin
too. He waited, not daring to speak. One in-
cautious word on his part might seal up lips that
were half hesitant, half determined to speak. He
would not even look at her, but played with his
gloves, he who never fidgeted.
But when she kept silence he said very quietly,
"And why did you intend to tell the rector?"
Her eyes leapt for a flash to his, and then fell away
abruptly. He felt the struggle in her. And knew
it as fear for herself pulling against a desire to let
herself go, let out something bitter, vengeful, or
perhaps merely just. Again he waited in a tense
silence, his eyes on his shoes.
"I'll tell you," came in a sort of croak from her
as she swung far forward in her chair. "Yes, I'll
tell you." There was once more that note of caution
struggling with deep passion. "The rector preached
a sermon yesterday. It showed—" She stopped.
He had to fairly hold himself in his seat in an
attitude of polite interest. "It showed that in some
way he knew that Olive Hill had been to The


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 169
Causeway. How I can't imagine, but he knew!
He knew too that some one else in the congregation
was aware of this. He was right. I was. His
sermon was spoken to me. To me!" Quite un-
consciously she rose and stood, one hand pressed
to her breast, one clenching and unclenching at
her side in a very extremity of fear. Something
long pent-up was rushing to get out, but her instinct
of self-preservation was holding it back. Why?
It was a most important query. "That was why I
went to the rectory yesterday evening," she said,
now drawing a deep breath.
And Pointer did not believe her. She had gone—
yes—perhaps in response to the sermon—perhaps
stirred by it in quite another way than she was
representing. It might be true that she had not
gone into the house, but if so that was because the
same fear of consequences to herself that was in her
at this moment had last night stopped her feet when
nearly on the threshold of the rectory, had turned
them round, and led them away. From danger?
"I meant to tell him that he was right, that I had
known about Olive's letter to Anthony. But I
decided to wait—and now I can't ask him what he
knew, and what I had better do, so I have decided
to be frank with you."
Pointer thanked her without irony.
"We are very interested in Mr. Revell's death,"
he went on slowly with an apparently casual glance,
"because, for certain reasons we are inclined to link
up his death with the rector's."
"Ah !" she said in a quick gasp, " I was afraid
of that—that—dreadful possibility! You think he
taxed her with it—to her face—and that "She
stopped as though there were no need to finish. As
indeed there was not.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 171
which Mr. Revell spoke of having heard from Miss
Hill"
Pointer was not satisfied with the result of his
questions. It panned out to a very indefinite mass
of what she understood Anthony Revell to have
said, rather than what she could repeat clearly and
definitely. His way—the police way—of leaving a
subject and then returning to it under another guise,
tripped her up constantly. She did not twice repeat
Revell's words alike. He asked her finally why this
was, and she said, with an effect of frankness, that
she herself had been under a good deal of emotion
at the unexpected meeting. She had parted from
Anthony Revell in some heat when she had left The
Causeway, and in the unexpected pleasure of seeing
him so soon again, she had not remembered their talk
word for word.
It was a very possible explanation, but it
hampered him none the less. It reduced her
certainty that Olive Hill came to The Causeway to
a belief—possibly—that she was coming, and that
she was the reason for Anthony's return.
Pointer drew out his pocket diary and turned its
leaves for a moment.
"The trouble is," he now said gravely, "that
your whole evidence is of no value, because of one
initial misstatement. A fundamental one."
Her face, against her will, against her best efforts
to the contrary, turned a livid white. "What do
you mean?" she asked haughtily with lips that
were stiff.
"You say the moonlight was so bright that you
decided to sketch the house, and that that was why
you were still there at midnight. But there was
no moon whatever on the Thursday night in
question."


172 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
She stared out of the window at the garden which
she had made such a mockery of brightness and
gaiety.
Then she sighed wearily, and it was a curious
sigh. It was quite unconscious, he believed, and it
was—unexpectedly—that of a woman putting on a
cloak of which she was heartily weary, or taking up
again a burden which she thought that she had laid
down for good. It interested the Chief Inspector.
"I see," she said dully. "I wouldn't make a good
criminal, I'm too careless. Well, the truth is that I
went to The Causeway for sentimental reasons—
entirely. I thought I should have it all to myself."
"So you were in the house when you met Mr.
Revell? Not outside in the garden?"
"I was on my way home when I met Mr. Revell."
"A very lonely road for a lady to be out in at
midnight," Pointer said to that. And a sudden
spark seemed to leap up in his mind. That revolver
taken by Anthony Revell from his bedroom drawer
—Pointer had already thought it possible that
Revell had fetched it to lend to some one—a lady
probably—who was nervous, or who had said that
she was—of walking a very lonely stretch alone.
And there was another small point that did not
disagree with this idea. Pointer knew the full height
of Revell, and his sitting height to an inch. He was
a little too tall for a woman to have fixed the shot
in any usual position. But the flight of the bullet
had been too level to have been fired even by a
woman if she had been standing, and Revell sitting.
Shilling had thought that Revell might have been
bending down over something on the table—and if his
murderer were a good shot, used to quick revolver
shooting, that was possible. But if a lady—if the
weapon had been brought out for her to take with


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 173
her in her return walk . . . Pointer wondered if
Revell had been doing something for her—tying her
shoe-string—for instance? That would have brought
his head to just the right height, and would have given
a woman time to lift the revolver, put it to his ear,
and pull the trigger. For Revell's eyes and hands
would—in such a case—have been occupied with his
task. Mrs. Green wore very smart little tie shoes he
noticed, so did most of the other women around.
But Olive Hill, so far as Pointer had seen her, only
wore court shoes.
"Did Mr. Revell offer to let you have his revolver
for the way back?" he asked her next.
"I never thought of that !" she said with dilated
pupils, and seemed to shrivel where she sat in her
chair. Then she looked up.
"I've wondered how it happened. He never kept
the revolver downstairs. And it's quite unlike him
to have lain in wait for a housebreaker with a
revolver. Even to threaten him. His way would
have been to lock everything up carefully and then
go to bed. I never thought of his lending it to—the
person who shot him."
Pointer said nothing for a moment. The person
who had shot Anthony Revell might be talking to
him. For that she was on very thin ice and knew it
was still apparent to him. She now showed so white
and weak, so drained by the emotions that warred in
her, that he had to leave. She could barely open the
door for him, and as he turned round at the gate, he
saw her holding on to the lintel. He thought that
she made a half-start after him, but if so, she checked
herself and managed to turn her movement into a
faint wave of her hand.


CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pointer walked away through a very pretty wood-
side, and for once he, who knew the sound of every
bird in every season, heard nothing of the thrush in
the thicket, nor the skylark far overhead. All that
he had been told by Mrs. Green suggested a murder
in which valuable stamps had no part. A murder
caused by passions that have swept the world long
before stamps were in use, passions that had raged
in the caves of the troglodytes.
It rather looked as though Mrs. Green had been
the murderer. There was a woman—not the artist
—one of whose actions had seemed to Pointer to
indicate her as very possibly the double murderess,
but he never let a mere opinion influence his judg-
ment. From what he had heard of her infatuation
for Anthony Revell, from what she had now told him,
Mrs. Green must be very suspect.
Whether guilty or not, she was trying to throw
suspicion on Olive Hill. Not very cleverly. But then
Pointer did not consider Mrs. Green a clever woman.
She had not even made out a case for the visit of
Olive Hill to The Causeway on that fatal Thursday
night. He said as much to the Chief Constable and
Shilling at the police station.
"If Byrd were the murderer," Weir-Opie com-
mented, then Miss Hill was there, and Mrs. Green
was only the first of three visitors that Revell had
that night."
"And of course Miss Hill herself is out of the
running, because of what she stood to lose." Shilling
was glad that she was out of it. He was a romantic
174


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 175
soul. "Even if stamps were at the bottom of the
two murders—and I still think them a very promising
trail—even so, Revell's fortune was eighty thousand
pounds, not to speak of The Causeway. No stamps
would bring her in that much."
"Of course if it were Byrd," went on Weir-Opie,
who was just getting under way—"say the revolver
was taken for the reason that Shilling first maintained
at the inquest, but no housebreaker shows up, and
Miss Hill arrives. The revolver lies forgotten on a
side-table. Byrd comes in—she would have had to
pass his cottage to go from the rectory to The
Causeway"
"Which means pass under his bedroom window,"
Shilling threw in.
Weir-Opie nodded. "Just so. He follows her.
She gets away. Byrd shoots Revell in a passion of
fury. Humph." The Major seemed to hold his sketch
up at arm's length and look at it, with growing
doubts. "Don't think much of that idea," he
said at last.
"Byrd has never lost his head, his long narrow
head, over Miss Hill, in my opinion. He isn't the
type," muttered Shilling.
"What do you say, Pointer?" asked Weir-Opie.
"One of my objections to him is that he seemed
to like the rector's sermon," was the quaint reply.
"He looked for all the world like the chairman of a
debating society listening to a really good piece of
special pleading—when he wasn't staring at Miss
Hill, and with anything but a lover's eye."
"Do you think Olive Hill turned up at The
Causeway, found Revell dead and didn't dare give
the alarm because of not wanting it to be known
that she was there at that hour of the night?"
asked the Major.


176 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"I doubt it," Pointer said slowly. "A genuine
appointment would have very much cramped
the real murderer, who, according to Mrs. Green,
would have been told by Revell that his fiancee was
coming. And a murderer likes to have plenty of
time for unforeseen emergencies."
"Unless he has an elaborate alibi and is working
to schedule," put in Shilling.
"But if it had been intended to ask for the loan
of a revolver, ample time would have been a
necessity," the Chief Inspector pointed out. "The
murderer could not time the offer and the production
of the weapon to a minute."
"True. If Miss Hill were expected, minutes would
count." Weir-Opie lit his pipe. "She might have
arrived before her time. As you say, a thought to
rattle the best of murderers! So you think?"
"On the whole it looks to me, sir, as though Revell
had been summoned home by a spurious message,
a false appointment with Miss Hill. And if, as it
seems likely, the trap had been baited by the
murderer with her name, he, or she, would have
known that they had the rest of the night before
them."
"He or she," repeated Weir-Opie, "which, I
wonder?"
"If a man," Shilling put in, " it would boil down
to two, wouldn't it—Byrd, and Sir Hubert Witson."
"You're forgetting Gilbert Revell, aren't you?"
Pointer asked. "I grant he's in a place apart,
because, though he stands to benefit most by
Anthony Revell's death, men rarely murder their
elder brothers, however much to their financial
advantage it may be."
"Nor does he look the part?" Weir-Opie said.
"You saw him on Sunday."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 177
"I grant you he doesn't, sir."
"Which theoretically means nothing at all, as we
all know," Weir-Opie said sarcastically, " but which,
in point of fact, means a lot more than opportunity
and profit and all the rest of it."
They then passed on to Byrd and Sir Hubert with
the stamps as a motive, or with jealousy as a second
possible motive.
Mrs. Green sat awhile at the open window trying
to steady her nerves after Pointer had left her. She
had not blundered, she felt sure. She had not let slip
any word which might have been fatal. But the effort
at caution which he had discerned had left her spent,
and after a little she put on her hat and walked
down to Anthony's grave. She stood looking at her
own design for a full minute, murmuring under her
breath between her clenched teeth: " And the wine
is poured out and has to be drunk." For a second she
bent lower, as though she would have liked to throw
herself down full length on that narrow stretch
of earth. But she straightened up, and turning
away with a look in her eyes that made the sexton
say to a young gravedigger with him, "The right
flower for that grave would be Love lies bleeding.
Why, these days, with her grieving, she looks older
than her ladyship."
Mrs. Green walked on aimlessly for a while.
Then at a cross-road, she turned and looked over at
the chimneys of The Causeway.
She had decided to buy the place if only to have the
right to keep Olive Hill from wandering over it at
will. She walked on. Ahead of her, she caught sight
of a tall graceful figure. Only one woman around
here moved with that mixture of ease and vigour.


178 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
She quickened her steps. In a way, she could have
wished it had been any one but Mrs. Avery, for the
happiness that had radiated from Doris of late was
hard to bear, when you knew that never would that
look shine in your own eyes again, or flush your
cheek any more. Otherwise, besides being attracted
by her beauty, Mrs. Green liked Doris, her wide,
intelligent brow, her calm dignified air, and if her
manner was a shade overbearing, her infrequent smile
was enchanting. Doris Avery, Mrs. Green thought,
was a woman born to make herself felt—unlike
Grace Avery. Given a wider sphere, as now seemed
likely from the tales about her husband's altered
fortunes, and Doris might make a name for herself.
As she hurried forward to catch her up, Mrs.
Green saw Grace Avery also turning into the lane.
Mrs. Green decided to give the two sisters-in-law
time to exchange their own private news, and then
she would have a word with them both, for what she
wanted to say was for the two of them. As she
watched them walking on ahead, she thought how
little she knew the dead rector's sister. As a rule,
Mrs. Green summed people up very quickly and, if
not always accurately, at least clearly. But she
felt by no means certain that she had yet met the
real Grace Avery. The very pleasant, quiet, well-
read, well-bred outside might extend all the way,
or it might not. She could not tell.
She had heard that at one time Anthony was
supposed to have been very much attracted to
Grace, but personally she had never heard him
mention her. Grace, she noticed, had a slower step
than Doris, but she covered the ground as quickly.
Her fair head with its closely trimmed hair was held
as erect as her sister-in-law's. Some people com-
plained of her unresponsiveness, but she had


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 179
intelligent eyes, grey and clear, and very firm lips.
Even her brother's death seemed to have left no
trace on her composed, fair face as she turned it now
and then to Doris. Mrs. Green thought that in looks
she was very like the rector, but that she lacked his
charm.
She called to the two women and, turning, they
waited for her to come up.
She wasted no time in greetings or small talk.
"The police now believe that Anthony was
murdered, and that there is a connection between his
death and that of the rector," she blurted out in a
fierce voice.
Doris and Grace stared at her appalled.
"Connection? Anthony and the rector? What
in the world has happened?" Doris demanded, as
Grace looked too horrified to speak.
"Mr. Pointer thinks that the rector learnt of
something about Anthony's death, and that that
was why he was poisoned."
There followed a pause of absolute consternation.
All three women were very pale.
"Was that what he meant by Sunday's sermon?"
Grace asked under her breath. "That splendid but
very searching sermon?"
The last vestiges of colour faded from Mrs. Green's
face. She looked suddenly old and broken, and
something of the fear which Pointer had read into
her gaze came back to her eyes. It was as though,
defenceless, she looked at some danger coming
towards her.
"John's sermon ?" Doris asked now in an utterly
bewildered tone. "What on earth have sermons to
do with this? This is awful!"
"So was John's sermon—to the guilty," Grace
said with conviction.


180 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"It's nothing to do with any sermon," Mrs. Green
said shortly. "There's something I told the police
that I must tell you both. That's why I caught up
with you. Anthony came back to The Causeway
that Thursday because of a letter from Olive Hill.
She had written him that she had something very
urgent to say to him. She had an interview with
him there—that night."
Grace jumped. Doris looked as though the fence
beside them had hit her in the eye. Then she slowly
turned to Mrs. Green with a very critical look on her
face. "Forgive my plain speaking, but is this
your imagination? You're a bitter enemy of Olive's,
we all know. Or have you some private informa-
tion?"
Mrs. Green told her what she had told the Chief
Inspector, and Doris's questions were almost as much
to the point as those of the Chief Inspector had been.
Mrs. Green answered them as fully.
"I've said nothing about it except to Mr.
Pointer," she added, "and I shan't speak of it to
any one else. But as things are, you and Miss Avery
ought to know—what the police think—where they
are looking for the criminal—the double criminal.
For they think Mr. Avery found Miss Hill's letter,
and because he found it"
"Oh, impossible !" came from both her hearers
in tones of sheer horror.
"He may have learned what I have all along
thought was possible, that Olive had a talk with
Anthony that night," Grace suggested. Slow in
action, she was often far too impulsive in her
speech. The opposite of Doris, who could be
impulsive enough in action, yet who rarely spoke
without due thought. "And that she told Anthony
that she didn't love him. Anthony, in the shock of


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 181
learning that, might have shot himself. But that's
a very different notion from this ghastly idea of the
police."
"Your idea is nonsense," Mrs. Green spoke quite
vehemently. "She ran after him. She stalked him
as though she were a hunter, and he a chamois."
"That's quite a mistaken notion of yours,"
Doris now said coldly, "as I happen to know.
Anthony was desperately in love with Olive. Long
before she would look at him, he used to rave about
her to me. Not a word of these ideas about Olive
must get about, Mrs. Green, as you yourself realise.
She may have gone to see Anthony that Thursday
night, and been foolish enough to say nothing about
it, but as for her having shot him—or having
harmed my brother-in-law. That's absolutely and
utterly out of the question! It really sounds—mad
—to me."
Doris's eye was a very clear warning to the artist
as to what position she, Mrs. Richard Avery, and
Miss Avery would take in the matter. And with
that, they took a very frigid leave of Mrs. Green.
"That's a very dangerous woman," Doris said
slowly, as the sisters-in-law walked on together.
"She means mischief. She's out for Olive's blood.
Mark my words."
Grace hardly heard her. White-faced, she was
almost stumbling. Doris noticing this, drew her to
a stile near them, and the two sat down for a
moment.
"What awful thing has come to us?" Grace
asked, her eyes wild. "I could have married, more
than once, Doris, and I wouldn't, because I hate
emotion. I hate to be stirred to the depths. And
now here is this awful thing that has us in its grip.
Anthony supposed to have been murdered 1 And


182 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
John, dearest John, to have been murdered because
of it! And we in the midst of it"
There fell a short silence.
"You know," Doris said suddenly, "the idea
that Olive shot Anthony is ridiculous. I don't
believe the police think that for a moment. Mrs.
Green would like them to, no doubt. Anthony was a
windfall for Olive such as she could never hope for
again. Of course she didn't kill him—and of course
he wasn't shot—except accidentally by himself—
poor man."
"If they don't think she shot him and, as you say,
she had no motive whatever to, then—according
to this awful idea Mrs. Green told us about, of their
believing that there is a link between his death and
John's—they can't suspect her of killing John
either." Grace was groping from impossible night-
mare horrors to the comparatively bearable.
"Of course they don't," Doris said in a tone of
finality. "Though between ourselves, Grace, I
think she may have written to Anthony to meet her
on Thursday for a private talk. That much of Mrs.
Green's tale I believe. Chiefly because of something
John said to me while I was looking up those
references for him. Something about a letter he had
found and burnt—and about Olive, and Anthony,
and The Causeway. He said he wanted a talk with
her the first thing Monday morning. He asked
whether I thought her, as he did, the kind to do
better when given ample time for reflection. I
agreed with him, though at the time I hadn't an idea
what it was all about. I can't give you the exact
words that he said, partly I was busy hunting for a
footnote, partly I had come in with a letter from
Dick that I wanted to show him, partly too, I think
that Jack was rather obscure himself."


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 183
"Do you think it was her to whom he talked later
that night, for I've always had an idea you recog-
nised two voices? Not just his alone." Grace
looked apologetically at Doris. "As a matter of
fact, I as good as told Mr. Pointer that you might
add something to what you had told him about that,
when he pressed me for further details."
Doris looked anything but pleased at having her
hand forced.
"Yes, I did hear some one besides John," she
finally said. "Don't ask me whom just yet. I'll
tell you later. Now about Olive. I don't think she
ought to leave the rectory as things are. Not at
once."
"But—do you really want her as your secretary?"
asked Grace.
"Richard doesn't," Doris confessed under her
breath, "but having taken Olive on, it would be
brutal—just now, to send her away. It would mean
throwing her to the dogs. As long as we stand by her,
people won't readily believe anything dreadful. But
I think we must know more. I'm going to have a
talk with her as soon as I see her."
"Perhaps you're right," Grace said after a pause,
"you often are."
"Not about her engagement to Anthony meaning
happiness for them both," Doris spoke sombrely.
"Oh, Grace, if only the calendar could be put back
by two months or so! But now, about Olive's
leaving the rectory—we know that she didn't have
anything to do with either death, no matter what
Mrs. Green says. And we agree that the police can't
suspect Olive of doing away with a marvellous parti.
It's very possible that she had nothing to do with
Anthony's return to The Causeway. Shall we walk
on now?"


184 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"A very dreadful thought has struck me "—Grace
rose slowly—" but first, I must tell you something
about Olive which I kept back." She went on to
speak of the losses which she was certain had been
connected with the girl.
Doris stiffened. "And you let me take her on?"
Her tone spoke volumes.
"It was a frightfully awkward position," Grace
said apologetically. "What could I do? Just then,
when she had had such a frightful shock? I had no
proofs, as the police would say. I could trust you to
notice at once if—well—if her pilfering started again.
John thought she ought to be given a chance. But
what I want to say now is this: If Anthony had ever
learnt of her dreadful failing "she stopped, and
looked in what seemed dismay at her companion.
"He couldn't have learnt about it, surely, and have
shot himself on that account? Or "—she grasped
Doris's arm convulsively, her usually calm eyes
distended with excitement—" or, it's not possible,
is it "—her voice shook—" that Olive thought he
was going to let Mr. Byrd know about it and—and"
—she paused—" I think Olive would be capable of
anything to keep Mr. Byrd from ever learning"
"You think?" Doris asked in a low voice, as
Grace stopped abruptly.
"The awful thought which has just come to me, is
whether Olive, who knew nothing of firearms, might
not have, in a fury if she thought there was a
possibility of Anthony giving her away to Byrd,
picked up the revolver, and had an accident
with it."
"And what about John?" Doris asked in her
cool, incisive tones. "The police think the two
deaths were linked. Do you think Olive had an
accident with the toadstool extract, too?"


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 185
As Grace looked too appalled to speak, Doris
continued:
"I feel sure that there was no connection between
the two deaths. All the same, you've suggested the
one and only possible reason which might have
accounted for Olive, if beside herself "she did
not finish the sentence, and they turned in at the
rectory gate.
Doris found Olive in her sitting-room busy
replying to letters of condolence. Doris did not
glance at them.
"Look here, Olive, my rooms have had every-
thing in the way of get-at-able papers shifted. Now,
don't say it's the police, they put them back better.
What are you hunting for all over the house?"
There was a fiery and determined look in Doris's
eye that matched the tone in her voice.
Olive drew a deep breath. Just then Grace opened
the door, saw the two together, and made as though
to step out again, but Doris asked her to come in and
sit down.
"Well?" She turned to Olive peremptorily.
"The hidden treasure," Olive said at last. "You
both laugh at it, and I didn't mean to pry among
your papers, but I'm sure it's in existence in The
Causeway, or rather under The Causeway. I once
saw a plan the rector had, showing how the
foundations ran. And then, in an old book of his,
I found some drawings belonging to Anthony's
grandfather, giving as nearly as possible the position
of the treasure. And his drawings fitted the real
foundations marvellously. I told Mr. Avery about
it, and he agreed with me that it was odd. He added
that he had another old paper somewhere, one which
Anthony's grandfather had found, a copy of a really
old paper dated around the middle of the fifteenth


186 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
century, and said he would look for it and show it me,
since I was interested."
"But you've only been hunting for papers in the
library since John's death," Grace said thoughtfully.
"Because Mr. Avery had promised to look for
that particular paper and show it me."
Grace said nothing, but she gave Olive a very
long look.
"And why should I have the paper, or papers?"
Doris asked crisply.
"You and Grace, both of you, took a lot of the
rector's papers to look through," Olive explained.
Doris looked less resentful, she even nodded, as
though acknowledging that as a fair explanation.
Grace slipped away. Doris waited till the door
was shut again.
"I have a very difficult thing to say to you," she
said then. "Mrs. Green tells me that the police are
dissatisfied with the finding about Anthony's death.
They think he was shot intentionally, and she has
told them that you were at The Causeway the night
that Anthony died."
"It's not true !" came in a loud, firm voice from
Olive. "She would like to say I shot him, I know.
I've known from the first that she has only stayed on
in the neighbourhood for some such reason. But
I wasn't there that night. I knew nothing about
his coming to The Causeway!"
"And you didn't write to him to meet you there?"
"Certainly not. As I say, I knew nothing what-
ever about his coming home that night."
"Then I must believe you. Well, there's nothing
for it but to be patient, and endure."
Doris gave a sigh, and went in search of Grace.
"Olive denies absolutely that she was at The
Causeway the night that Anthony was shot," she


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 187
said. "I think she's telling the truth. John must
have been mistaken, but it looks as though Mrs.
Green had been talking to him that night."
"It does," Grace said. "And now, what do we
do?"
"Nothing." Doris spoke firmly. "The thing is too
big for me—for us—to meddle with. If Dick were
here, I should be guided entirely by what he would
wish, but he can't get here for another month at the
earliest. I'm afraid of blundering again." Grace
had never heard proud, confident Doris avow as
much. "I've warned Olive what to expect, and the
thing must run its course, but I'm afraid of Mrs.
Green. I hope Olive will be careful of herself. The
person who killed Anthony is, according to the
police, the person who poisoned John. And strictly
between ourselves, Grace, I think it looks as though
it must have been Mrs. Green herself, for it was her
voice that I heard in the study."


CHAPTER FOURTEEN
An hour later Pointer, who was at the rectory in
order to look through some papers, was able to ask
Doris about the voice heard by her in the rectory
study last Sunday. She said at once that it had been
that of Mrs. Green. He asked her why she had not
told him sooner. Doris explained that she was not
sure herself until Mrs. Green had stopped and
talked to them to-day. Certain intonations were so
unmistakable that she was now prepared to swear
to her certainty that Mrs. Green had been in the
room beneath her own, talking to her brother-
in-law.
"And there's another thing, Mr. Pointer. That
letter of mine from my husband that you found
hidden away under the lining-paper of one of the
drawers in the library, do you remember?"
Pointer said that he did.
"Any one but Mrs. Green would have known it
was mine, they would have recognised the hand-
writing. But Mrs. Green wouldn't know it. Nor
know that the rector never kept anything but
religious papers in there."
"By ' any one' you mean Miss Hill?" Pointer
asked.
"Well—yes. Miss Hill or any other intimate of
the family."
Pointer too thought, as Doris insisted, that it was
far more logical to suspect Mrs. Green than Miss
Hill, Anthony Revell's fiancee. He did not tell her
that Lady Witson had just startled Shilling by
asserting that if the two deaths were linked, the
188


I90 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
on account of wanting no dust made by people
moving about."
Pointer walked up to The Causeway which had
already acquired the forlorn look of an unoccupied
house. Jamieson was polishing the brasses on the
door. Pointer had already had several talks with
him, none of which had thrown any light on Revell's
death. As for the existence of hidden treasure,
Jamieson could only say that certainly Mr. Revell
had never talked of it, and no unauthorised person
had tried to gain an entrance to the house since his
death. While of those who had a right to enter, only
Miss Hill had asked to be left alone to go where she
pleased.
"Had her pleasure ever taken her into the
smoking-room where the painted panels are?"
Pointer asked.
No, he was told that Miss Hill had never asked
him for that particular key. When she had finished
the varnishing which had brought her to The
Causeway, Mrs. Green had handed the key to
Jamieson and asked him to keep the room locked
until the varnish should be bone dry.
Pointer had it unlocked now. He looked with
interest at the room as he stepped in. It was a
large one and quite empty, bare even of a carpet.
A shoulder-high panelling ran around it, broken
only by the three windows and the big fireplace.
Over the latter, an oval painting was inset in the
wood. Other paintings were similarly set into all the
top panels on the three walls. Each picture only
separated from its neighbour by the upright of
wood.
"There's work for you!" said Jamieson with
respect, " but, of course, she thought it was her own
house she was painting. That's sure. Though as I


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY igi
told the Major, there was no goings-on here. She
worshipped the ground he walked on, right enough,
and she hated Miss Hill worse than cold boiled veal.
And fine rows she and the master had over her, but
that was all. And if you had seen as much of Mrs.
Green as I did, why, you wouldn't expect anything
else."
Pointer nodded. He was examining the paintings
one by one, taking his time over each. Yes, as he
thought. Not one of them had been varnished.
Not one!
"Did it take Mrs. Green long to varnish these?"
he asked casually.
"All of two hours," Jamieson said. "Which
shows that she hadn't lost her head over him as some
try to make out. He was lying dead in the drawing-
room at the very time."
"Had you seen the paintings before they were
varnished?"
Jamieson had not. Mrs. Green kept the door
locked when away from the house. "It's my belief
that that's why she's buying the house," Jamieson
went on, glad to have some one to talk to. "She
always steps in for a glance at them whenever she
comes. Or rather she did, until she decided to
buy the place. Since then, she's just told me to
keep the room locked, which I have. Yes," he
rambled on, "I've had a word on the quiet that
the house is as good as sold to her." Though what
a widow lady wanted such an inconvenient barn
of a place for, puzzled him. Pointer and he
agreed that when it came to sentiment, however,
women lost their heads. "Why, even her lady-
ship won't ever come into the house, Jamieson
added, " and to one who knew on what bad terms
she and the master were it does seem funny. But


192 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
she told me herself that she couldn't bear to set
foot in it."
Pointer said that he had been told that there had
been a talk of offering the place to Miss Hill.
Jamieson sagely said that talk was easy, but when
it came to actually signing things people felt
differently.
Pointer agreed, and asked if he could keep the key
for a little while. Jamieson had no objection, and
after half an hour spent in the room by himself, the
Chief Inspector locked the door and took the next
train up to town.
He had telephoned to a Mr. Joyce before he went.
Mr. Joyce was an artist who owed Pointer more
than he could ever repay, and who assured him that
he would gladly spare the time for a run down to
The Causeway and for a look at some paintings
there.
"It's this way, sir," Pointer explained, as he
drove him from his home in Richmond, "these
paintings were finished, and then put into their
places in the wainscoting. Well, I believe that
some one, apparently the artist herself, has painted
other scenes over them. Here and there she has
smeared the woodwork with brush marks. The
central painting at the moment represents a break
in the clouds and shows a group of pines with
heather hills in the background."
"Bonny Scotland?"
"The pines are Arolla pines," Pointer said
dubiously.
Each basied himself with his papers until The
Causeway was reached. There Pointer led the other
at once to the study and unlocking the door, locked
it again after them. He had brought some clean
rags, and a bottle of spirit and white turps with him.


194 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
swear, and why such an artist should have left her
foregrounds, and backgrounds, and middle distances
like that, is a puzzle. They're not pictures at all!
Just magnificently reproduced, unselected masses
of objects. And now what?"
Now entered Weston, a local constable, and a very
good photographer. He had, at Pointer's request,
been at work, taking photographs of each picture
on the walls, and had brought them with him
enlarged and numbered. Pointer asked him to take
most careful pictures of the paintings as they now
were—the under paintings, the real pictures. He
hoped by studying them to understand the sig-
nificance of their presence in the study here.
The photographs as a whole, and in detail, taken,
Weston hurried away to develop and enlarge the
results of his Leica, and Pointer, thanking Mr.
Joyce, saw him off back to town. Then he walked
over to The Flagstaff with the key of The Causeway
smoking-room in his pocket. He asked for Gilbert
Revell. Gilbert was not under suspicion at all. He
had two authentic alibis for the nights which inter-
ested the police, at places far removed from the
neighbourhood. He had been away a great deal
lately and Pointer had only seen him a couple of
times. He had found him as he looked, and as was
his reputation—a very simple, unpretentious, rather
indolent young man who was retiring from a First
Division Clerkship at the Admiralty as soon as it
could be arranged.
He wanted to see the world, he said, and was deep
in yacht designs when Pointer was shown in.
Pointer asked if he might be allowed one room at
The Causeway for the present, in which to keep
records of the evidence taken at the time of Anthony
Revell's death. If Mr. Revell would allow him the


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 195
use of, say, the smoking-room and let him keep the
key for the present, he, Pointer, would be much
obliged.
Gilbert came out instantly from the merits of
auxiliary steam engines versus oil engines, and
blinked at him.
"I don't understand," he said sharply.
"I can't explain more fully," Pointer said
regretfully, "and even this much is in absolute
confidence. We're not satisfied about Mr. Avery's
death, and some inquiries made at the time of your
brother's death look as though they might turn out
to be of use to us. If we could keep some of our
notes at The Causeway, it would save a great deal
of going to and fro."
"Really? Oh, in that case, certainly use the
smoking-room for the time being, though I don't
know how long the permission can stand, for Mrs.
Green is thinking of buying the house—at a ridicu-
lous price it's true, but it's none so easy to sell those
sized houses nowadays, so Mr. Smith tells us."
Pointer agreed that it wasn't.
"You don't think "Gilbert hesitated for a
second, then pushed on. "Take one of these cigars,
Chief Inspector, I'm awfully glad you've called."
"I hoped to find Mrs. Green here," Pointer said as
he thanked his host and took a cigar.
"Mrs. Green? She hasn't been near us for weeks,"
Gilbert said easily, following suit.
Pointer knew as much, and it had puzzled him.
By all accounts Mrs. Green and Lady Revell had
been good friends—until the death of Anthony
Revell. Though no one but Pointer appeared to
have noticed the time when the two women seemed
to part, and its possible significance.
"I wanted to ask you if there's any truth in the


196 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
latest rumour," Gilbert went on, "that you're
looking into my brother's death? My mother is
quite upset."
"Frankly, Mr. Revell," Pointer said with genuine
regret, meeting the young's man's distressed eyes,
"we are."
"Good God!" Gilbert's tanned face paled a
little. "You don't think—you haven't found
anything—I mean, why do you think his death had
anything to do with the rector's? They say you do."
"The other way round. We are wondering
whether the rector hadn't come on something, a
letter we imagine, which threw a new light on Mr.
Anthony Revell's death."
"A new light," repeated Gilbert in an appalled
voice, " what sort of a new light .'
"We rather think that possibly Mr. Revell
returned in answer to a letter," Pointer said, " and
was shot, either by the writer or by some one who
knew that Mr. Revell would be at his home that
night. And we think the rector may have stumbled
on the letter itself, or on some piece of writing,
which made him think that Mr. Revell had been
deliberately killed. We think he showed his know-
ledge, and was poisoned to prevent his coming
to us with the information, possibly with the letter
which we think he had found."
Gilbert had let his cigar go out, his face was dead
white now.
"What a "he stopped. "How awful! Good
God! And what have you to go on?"
"Precious little," Pointer could have said,
"chiefly Mr. Avery's sermon." But he only shook
his head and looked very wise.
Gilbert had jumped to his feet, and, his hands
thrust deep in the pockets of his plus-fours was


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 197
walking up and down the rug, keeping to it as though
it were bounded by precipices.
"Who told you that we were linking the two
deaths?" Pointer asked.
"It's all over the place. But Byrd was the one
who actually told me. We were going off on an
expedition together. Of course this knocks it on the
head."
"Mr. Byrd will have to sail without you?"
Pointer suggested easily.
"He won't hear of it. Till this dreadful business
is cleared up. My mother has gone to her room. I
blurted it out rather too bluntly. She swears you're
all wrong. That my brother's death was sheerest
accident, as it surely must have been!" But he
looked interrogatively at the detective officer who
said nothing.
Gilbert again swerved on his rug to avoid the
parquet.
"You think it was jealousy ?" he asked in a low
voice. "Some woman who didn't want him to
marry Miss Hill?"
"On the whole we do, but there are alternatives,"
Pointer said. He did not mind how many people
knew about the letter which he believed had decoyed
Anthony Revell to his death. A letter which was
either still at the rectory, or not in existence any
more.
In the former case, except in their own respective
rooms, no search went on without an unobtrusive but
keen eye being kept on the searcher and the article
searched. As for the rest, Pointer wanted all the
help that he could get. Anthony Revell might have
stopped for petrol nearby, might have let drop a
word at the pump which might be of use. Nothing
was of greater help in big inquiries than the small


198 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
items brought in singly and diffidently, which added
up to unexpected totals. In Latin countries the
police were often misled by imagination playing the
part of memory, but not with the English country-
side. What they said they had seen or heard, they
had. But the stamps which still might be the
explanation of the two deaths were quite another
matter. Absolute silence about them was still
Pointer's order. If a valuable stamp or stamps had
played a part in the double tragedy, there would be
no chance whatever of finding it or them if the
police were even suspected of an interest in philately.
Gilbert stumped up and down his little island, now
raging at the credulity of the police who could not
bear to have a simple but intelligible accident
remain a pure mischance, but must needs see it
through official eyes as a horrible crime. After all,
he claimed, men threw over girls, even fiancees,
every day of the year without being shot for it.
"You know what Mrs. Green is saying?" he
stopped his short walk to ask. "That Anthony had
thought better of his engagement, and wrote and
tried to get out of it. Came back on the Thursday
to see Miss Hill on the Friday, and was shot. She
doesn't say by whom. No need to. Lady Witson
said it first, I believe, but Mrs. Green had adopted
it this morning as her idea too, so I'm told."
"What does Mr. Byrd say about that idea?"
Pointer asked with real interest.
Gilbert looked surprised at the question.
"Byrd? I don't think he's commented on it.
He's the sort who likes to listen more than to take
the floor. But as Miss Hill wants to come with us
and try for a fresh life under fairer opportunities,
it seems beastly unfair on her, to me. She's a gentle
sort of little thing who'd be grieved no end if she had


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY I99
an idea of how poisonous some tongues are. She
was crying the other day when I overtook her near
The Causeway. Her life's blighted enough as it is,
without this cruelty shown to her. I think people
ought to try and make it up to her."
Gilbert spoke warmly, with a flash of honest anger
in his blue eyes.
Pointer nodded with a speculative look at him.
Had Miss Hill cared for the younger brother,
rather than for Byrd, as Shilling thought? It
would alter a good deal, if so. In that case, she
would have lost nothing by the death of the elder
brother. Nothing at all. On the contrary. Some-
thing about Gilbert's face suggested that she would
have an unusually generous young man to deal with.
The photographs of Anthony, which was all that
Pointer had to go by, showed a man who might, he
thought, in time have grown to be somewhat of a
domestic tyrant. Possibly his early possession of
wealth had done it, but there were lines around
mouth and eyes that spoke of great self-will, and a
disposition to take sacrifices on the part of those
near him for granted, if not to expect them. Pointer
did not think that Anthony Revell would have made
ultra-generous settlements on any dowerless girl;
or indeed have been generous at all in money
matters.
"What we can't find out," he now said con-
fidentially, "is where the rector spent the most of
Sunday afternoon. At the rectory they seem to
think he spent the time at some almshouses to which
he went as usual. But he shortened his customary
saying that he would spend an hour on Monday with
the old folk to make up for it. It's not the first
time he had had to alter his hours, but it was
two hours' stay there


200 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
unusual. And as I say, we can't trace the next four
hours. He left the rectory at two. He was at the
almshouses by a quarter to three, and left there at a
quarter past. He got back to the rectory by a
quarter past seven. But where he went to in the
meanwhile ''
"That's very important, surely ?" Gilbert said.
Pointer replied that it might turn out to be so. It
would all depend. If he spent it with a brother
clergyman, or at the Bishop's Palace, for instance,
it might not have much significance.
Gilbert grinned an agreement, and then, thanking
him for letting him keep the key of The Causeway
smoking-room, Pointer rose to go. But at the door
he turned with another question.
"Is Mrs. Green paying the whole purchase price
of The Causeway in cash?"
"Yes. That's why we're letting it go for a song.
Why?"
"Just wanted to get an idea of her financial
standing," he said vaguely, but he drove on to the
solicitor's office and was franker.
"There may be nothing in it, but we've struck
something rather odd connected with Mrs. Green,"
he said to old Mr. Smith. "I can't be more explicit
till I know more, but I should mark time about
the deeds of the house, if I were you."
"Umph," said Mr. Smith dubiously, "I don't
know about that, Chief Inspector. Hurry them up,
more likely. She hasn't put down any deposit yet.
What's sold is sold. 'Money has no smell,'" he
quoted. "You're trying to prove that she murdered
Anthony Revell, I suppose. Well, Chief Inspector, as
the Coroner who sat on the inquest on young Revell,
I should think you're wrong, but for your record.
What have you got to go on, eh?"


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 201
"You'll hear it all in good time, sir. But don't
say I didn't warn you off Mrs. Green. You looked up
her financial standing, I suppose?"
Mr. Smith shook his polished head on which his
hair grew like close-clipped grass on the slopes of a
glacis. "Nothing to look up. She's paying in cash—
bankers' draft. Good enough, eh?"
"to stop all questions? Quite," Pointer said
dryly and hurried away.
Curious how lacking in background Mrs. Green
seemed to be. She claimed to be the only child of a
Dublin doctor whose wife had died when she was
born. She was absolutely without relatives, she
said, even her husband's people had quite died out.
He was a London solicitor who had died thirty
years ago, one year after their marriage. Left a very
young widow, she had spent her life chiefly abroad,
except for this last year when she had tried to stop
in North Ireland, but found the climate too harsh for
her.
None of her statements could be proved or dis-
proved. And she was paying cash down for The
Causeway, so that that transaction too was of no
help in finding out her past.
"Well," Weir-Opie said in some surprise, "it's
interesting—very. But what does it prove?
Eh?"
"That's the riddle, sir," Pointer said, while
Shilling looked very profound.
"Why did she paint all those pictures in the first
place, if she was going to paint them all out ?" the
superintendent asked finally.
"Exactly," Pointer spoke crisply. "Apparently
Revell's death turned things that before it had been
harmless, into dangerous things, things that must be


202 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
hidden. Or else the idea was that the police mustn't
see the paintings."
"Bad as that?" Shilling asked with a look of
shocked interest.
Pointer had to laugh. "Not for any ordinary
reason, Shilling. That's the puzzle."
"You think that was why she locked herself into
that room at once?" the Major asked.
"I can't read the overpainting in any other
way, sir, but that the originals must not be
seen."
"But they had been seen." Shilling saw that this
was just what the Chief Inspector was maintaining,
and stopped himself.
"Exactly, by Mr. Revell's friends. Apparently
only the police was the danger."
"She nattered us !" Weir-Opie said sardonically,
"Look here," Shilling's tone was quite excited,
they were all dining again with the Chief Constable,
and the coffee was on the table, " were the original
pictures signs to a gang? A sort of painted cipher?
Did they conceal a secret?"
"Clues to The Causeway treasure?" Weir-Opie
asked with a smile. "I never heard of its existence
before these last days, but every one is asking me
about it now, as though its existence were an
established fact. Smith rang me up just before
dinner to know if that was why you wanted him
to go slow over the sale to Mrs. Green. Was that
really why?"
"No, sir. Only I thought that in a general way
he might find it better to go slow until the facts about
the lady were clearer. But if he thinks there's a
question of letting a treasure go cheap, he won't need
any more warnings."
But were the pictures clues, do you think?"


204 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
at the pictures. "Another funny thing is, that she
claims never to have been in Switzerland. I asked
her about each country in turn when she said that
she had lived on the continent a great deal."
"Well? Why should she have been to Switzer-
land?" asked Superintendent Shilling, but the
Chief Constable's eyes told Pointer that he under-
stood.
"Revell didn't know it," Weir-Opie said now.
"He always went to Norway and Sweden for skiing
and tobogganing, and to Holland for skating.
But I can see why you wondered that Mrs. Green
didn't own to knowing Switzerland well. These
here "—he pointed with his pipe stem—" are
certainly Swiss."
"Just so, sir. Unmistakable Swiss chalets,
aren't they. And besides"—Pointer knew the
country well. He was a great climber.—" these are
Gentians. And here are St. Bruno lilies, and
mountain roses and the little wild violas you find
everywhere in the summer. And that's glacier
water in those brooks. That snow too on the one
white-capped mountain is what people call' eternal,'
or I've never trodden it."
"Switzerland," murmured Shilling, eyeing the
pictures again. "All of them?"
"Every one."
"If you know the country, can't you make a
guess as to the place ?" Shilling asked hopefully.
'It ought to be easy," Pointer agreed, "though
as a matter of fact I've never seen these particular
scenes. Have you, sir?"
Weir-Opie had not.
Pointer said he would take the photographs back
with him and study them a bit. Then the talk
drifted to other points of this most perplexing case.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 205
Pointer learnt that Mrs. Richard Avery had just had
a sudden summons to her mother in Tunbridge
Wells, who again was reported to be dying.
"Apart from affection, the old lady's said to be
quite well off, and not to have made a will yet. So
I suppose none of her children care to be away when
she asks for them," suggested the Chief Constable.
Doris had notified him of her departure, since she
had not been able to get into touch with Pointer.
Then the talk turned to other local matters, and
Pointer went back to the rooms that he had at the
police station. Seating himself at the table there, he
spread out the photographs of the under-paintings
and looked carefully at them. He hoped to be able
to locate some of the places that they represented.
At any rate that of the central panel should be easy
to find.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The belfry in it rose from what was clearly part of a
cathedral. A quaint red spire rose to one side. Old
tiled roofs, showing among green trees, sloped un-
evenly down to a great blue lake far below, a vast
lake that spread beyond the picture's limits, with a
range of mountains on the other side. Where in
Switzerland was there a cathedral town perched high
above a big lake with such a range of mountains
beyond it?
Geneva was too flat. Besides, in the painting
there was only one far-off, tiny, snow-covered tip
to be seen, not the whole Mont-Blanc range. Basle
has no such lake. Neither has Berne. Zurich runs
up to no such heights, has no such mountains facing
it. Then he thought of Lausanne. A town where he
had never been. A large town—on a lake, the Lake
of Geneva—with a cathedral. If so, that one snow
mountain could be the extreme tip of Mont Blanc.
Early next morning, he dropped in at the offices of
the Swiss Federal Railways in town, and satisfied
himself that he was right, that that central painting
could only stand for the capital of Canton Vaud.
From the railway's guide-books and folders, he
even recognised the belfry and the quaint red spire
standing to one side on a lower level as that of the
Church of Saint Francois.
Why was Lausanne chosen for the largest painting?
Why had it and, according to Joyce, all the other
paintings too been done with such meticulous
accuracy? Why did all the pictures have to be
obliterated? That was the crux to which he always
206


208 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
that of his elder brother, his father and uncles devoted
themselves more to the make and sale of photo-
graphic appliances. Pointer then showed him the
photographs of the under-paintings at The Cause-
way, explaining that the pictures had been found
painted on the walls of a country house in England,
and that he had come to Lausanne for the express
purpose of finding out what places they represented.
The first one which the young Swiss picked up, was
the central view. "That's our cathedral and that's
the spire of St. Francois Church, but it was painted
at least twenty years ago. That view is now spoiled
by the big Federal Bank put up at that time. And I
know where this one was painted from—the exact
spot. It's a view of the town from the Square
de VUniversity, as it was at least twenty years ago."
"You can't date it nearer than that?"
"I'll ask Gustav."
A moment later his elder brother came in and bent
over the photograph. "Parbleu, Henri, here's a bit
of the Academie, as it was before the roof was
altered, and that was done years ago."
The two brothers bent over the photographs.
No one else was in the shop and all the world loves
to solve a puzzle. In the end they were able to date
the central picture for Pointer with certainty as
"painted thirty years ago."
Their father came in and added his confirmatory
vote. Then the rest of the photographs were studied
one by one, located, and dated. There were only
four of which they were not sure, beyond the
certainty that they were painted somewhere in the
Canton Vaud, as was shown by the cattle and by the
shape of the cow-bells. None of them were of the
k French side of the Lake.
The curious thing was that all the dates of the


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 200,
paintings ran from between thirty years ago to the
present time, and that the paintings ran con-
secutively along the walls, the oldest to the left
of the centre painting, the most recent being the
painting of Place St. Frangois that joined it on the
right of the fireplace.
The oldest of the little paintings, which dated back
to the same time as the central painting, was not of
Lausanne, but of a little place near it on the lake
called Morgen, where there was now a large
horticultural college. The parish church of Morgen
figured four times in all among the paintings, each
at an interval of ten years. Thirty years ago—
twenty years ago—ten years ago—and present
time. Of the cathedral there was only the large
centre one and a small one done about ten years
later. The photographers were enchanted with the
paintings, father and sons vieing with each other
to point out this or that now vanished landmark.
But as to who could have executed the work, none
of them could give a guess. Pointer found to his
surprise that it was going to be very difficult to
find out anything about a Mrs. Green. For two
days, he visited the heads of the various art schools
without learning of any artist who could possibly
be her. As for the name itself dropped casually, it
meant nothing to these good Lausannois. On the
fourth day, Pointer decided to try Morgen. He had
been told that another of the landscapes was of the
mountains as seen from there, a view that was now
blocked by the college, and had certainly been
painted, so the elder Carrard maintained, from the
parsonage garden itself.
Pointer had a private investigator, well known for
his work at Geneva, look up the question of the
parsons of Morgen while he was trying to find out


210 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
about Mrs. Green. He learnt that the present
incumbent, Doctor Desvernois, was eighty-three
years old, a fine scholar and a great authority on
Swiss dialects. His wife, a Swiss lady, was still living.
The only son of the marriage had been professor of
phonetics at the Lausanne University. He had
married a Miss Walker while very young. She was
entered in the records as of Birmingham, England,
and at the time of the marriage had been a student
at Lausanne too. Her present age was fifty-three.
Pointer asked for all possible information about this
younger Madame Desvernois. There did not seem
much to learn. She had had six children. Two girls,
now grown up, had married very well indeed. One
son had been killed with his father some twenty
years ago while mountain climbing. The bodies had
both been recovered and were buried at Morgen.
An earlier son had been still-born. The two younger
children had died, and been buried, in Zurich.
More than this, the town records could not tell.
Pointer felt that he must continue the search
himself. The first step was to go out to Morgen, a
pretty place, and send in his card to the lady of the
house asking permission to sketch the mountains as
seen from the garden.
Out came Madame Desvernois herself, a charming
old lady who deplored the shrinkage of what had
once been a lovely view. "In the old days, my
daughter-in-law painted it many a time," she added.
Pointer started his pencil sketch. He was an
extremely accurate draughtsman, though no artist.
Pointer was always shocked at the liberties that real
artists took with views, moving trees, and changing
river banks, with incredible casualness.
Madame Desvernois sat down and named some of
the mountains before them. Pointer brought the


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 211
talk around to her daughter-in-law's work. Would
she allow him to see, from it, what the view had
once been?
The old lady promptly took him in and showed
him, in the main hall, a length of framed water-
colours. Two of them were identical with two views
that Pointer had seen done in oils at The Causeway,
and of which he had the photographs in his pocket.
He asked if he might be allowed to ask the artist a
question about the way in which she secured a
certain afterglow effect? He was told that young
Madame Desvernois was in England at the moment.
"She is English. This is her picture," she added in
a rush of smiling indiscretion, pointing to a framed
photograph near the staircase.
Pointer looked at the face of Mrs. Green, but
young—and gay. "A very young lady "he
murmured.
Madame laughed. "Would one not say so? Yet
she is already a grandmother. There might be ways
of explaining that, but not in her case. She never
has, and I think she will never look anywhere near
her real age."
The woman whom Pointer had seen had looked
every day of fifty-three.
And then Madame led Pointer out again and
begged him to draw or paint from any part of the
garden or orchard that he liked. Could he draw the
parsonage itself, he asked. It was old and very
picturesque. Certainly he could, and with that
Pointer had to set to work.
As Pointer sharpened his pencils he wished that he
could sharpen his wits at the same time and as
easily. What was the link between this little place
on the Lake of Geneva and The Causeway? Why
did it figure in four paintings at intervals of ten


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 213
him out of the fog. Only one reply interested him,
though he could not see that it had any significance.
Lady Revell had had three children. The first, a
girl, had been prematurely born in Paris at Neuilly,
after a motor accident, and had only lived a few
hours. Lady Revell's life had been despaired of, but
she had finally, though very slowly recovered. Then
came the information that so interested Pointer.
That was that Anthony, the second child, had been
born at Evian les Bains. Now Evian is a smart
French watering-place on the Lake of Geneva,
exactly opposite from Lausanne, and steamers ply
all afternoon long in summer between the two. So
Anthony had been born on the lake that figured so
often in the pictures. Yet not one of them was of
Evian or its surroundings. Pointer established
that fact from direct questions to the Lausanne
photographers who had a branch at Evian to which
they went in August.
He returned to the parsonage garden of Morgen.
Madame Desvernois, who had taKen a fancy to him,
came out again and told him little facts about the
scene before him which would have interested him
greatly at any other time, but which he now looked
on merely as possible stepping-stones to inquiries
about her English daughter-in-law. He was able to
inspect her paintings in the hall a second time. He
lingered over them, and finally said that he hoped
that if she had any children, they had inherited their
mother's great gift, for he considered these paintings
the work of a very remarkable artist, he said.
Madame Desvernois's worn, but still pretty, face
lightened. "She is indeed," she said warmly, " and
very different would have been the lot of her
children but for that gift. She had no idea of it when
she married my son. She painted for pleasure to be


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 215
Pointer held out the photograph of Anthony
Revell, which had originally had beside it a portrait
of Mrs. Green. It was taken from a snapshot
procured for him by Major Weir-Opie before he left
England. Madame Desvernois looked at it with
interest.
"He is very like the portrait, isn't he ?" Pointer
said lightly.
"Like?" Madame Desvernois was not sure.
"Like? Yes—perhaps—a little—a very little.
Yes—there is a distinct resemblance. Yes. I see
what you mean. Yes, he is like Francois's son—
the one who was killed in that accident. My daughter-
in-law had only the one son. Another younger one
was stillborn. I never saw him." The old lady
liked to talk of her family. "He was born in
Lausanne before they had to leave the University.
My son had to give up his work," she went on,
"that was the black year as we always call it,
though my daughter-in-law will never refer to it.
The bank failed with all our savings in it, so that
we had nothing to help the children when they
needed it so badly! That was why the baby was
born dead—his mother was in such grief. They came
here to us afterwards heart-broken. But heaven
helped. Her grandmother left her some money
which let them all go to Leysin for two years, where
my son was quite, quite cured. Then the Lausanne
University asked him to come back to a better post—
as Professor of Phonetics, which was his ambition.
Oh, yes, the bad year was made good, though Eva—
my daughter-in-law will never agree that that was
so."
Pointer took his leave saying that he was going on
to Zurich and should certainly do himself the
pleasure of calling at the Ateliers but for the fact


216 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
that Madame Francois Desvernois would not be
there. They parted quite regretfully, did Pointer
and the old lady, after he had been allowed to take
some photographs of a couple of the sketches in the
hall. They happened to hang on either side of
Madame Francois Desvernois's portrait, so that her
likeness was taken, too.
Back in Lausanne, he tried to find out who was
the doctor or the nurse who had attended Madame
Desvernois thirty years ago when her first son
had been born. Apparently there had been no
doctor. The nurse, a registered midwife, had died
some years ago. But her address was entered as of
Evian-les-Bains as well as of Lausanne. And,
moreover, she had come from Neuilly-sur-Seine—
Neuilly, the suburb of Paris, where Lady Revell's
little girl had been born. An inquiry of the Neuilly
town records, and Pointer learnt that the same
woman had nursed Lady Revell then too. Possibly
Lady Revell had come to Evian because of her.
Here at last was a demonstrable link between Mrs.
Green and Lady Revell. It was a vital one, Pointer
thought, for he felt certain that Anthony Revell
was the son of Professor Francois Desvernois. The
professor's young wife, faced with the prospect of
still another child to bring up at a time when there
must have already been the greatest difficulty about
bringing up the two they already had, and faced too
with the very sick husband to whom she longed to
give a chance of regaining his health in a sanatorium,
had, he believed, agreed to sell her baby to Lady
Revell if it should be a boy. "the midwife, appealed
to by the latter, would be the carrier-out of all the
necessary formalities. The trail, it was true, ended in
the death of the nurse, but from the locality where
she had died, and from the grave where she lay, it


218 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
good excuse at what she would think was her son's
home. She had loved him when she saw him, but she
had kept to her bargain, and indeed any revealing
of herself was impossible for Anthony Revell's sake.
She had evidently determined though that he should
have some reminder of his birthplace. Putting
her soul into her work, she had reproduced on his
walls, not fairy tales, but the scenes with which he
would have been familiar had he lived in his real
home. There were some little figures introduced
every now and then. Pointer recognised old Madame
Desvernois in one. The others, he thought, were
probably those of the father, grandfather, and the
brother and sisters.
Yes, the paintings were explained, and that
exactness in them which Mr. Joyce deplored. What
Mrs. Green wanted and had secured, was as close a
reproduction as possible to what Anthony would
have seen had he remained the little Desvernois of
Lausanne.
And explained, too, was her desire to cover them
up, when the police were investigating the strange
death of the young man. She had feared that they
might do just what they had done, and lead the
police on to the trail of who Anthony was, or rather
who he was not.
He flew home next morning, and in the late
afternoon motored out to see the Major.
Weir-Opie listened very silently to what Pointer
had to say.
"Well played, Pointer!" he said heartily, when
the former had finished. There had been a time when
that had been an often-heard shout on the football
ground. "To think we had the same chance of
noticing that those paintings hadn't been varnished
as you had, and didn't realise what it meant I This


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 2IO,
explains Lady Revell's growing dislike of Anthony,
when Gilbert was born twelve years later. She had
herself put the cuckoo in the nest and could not
now disown it. And now, what of her new position,
eh ?" Major Weir-Opie said slowly and meaningly.
"Anthony Revell found dead at The Causeway
just a few weeks before a wedding would have
meant a will cutting out Lady Revelland Gilbert
from any likelihood of sharing in a large fortune.
No wonder that Lady Revell was quite indifferent
as to whom Anthony intended to marry. . . .
"It's hard lines on Gilbert Revell," Weir-Opie said
finally as Superintendent Shilling hurried in. The
Chief Constable had sent a word over the telephone
to him. He heard in a silence that was eloquent
what Pointer had learnt at Lausanne.
"Then Gilbert Revell was done out of his grand-
father's money by the so-called Anthony! And now
Olive Hill has been done out of it—but no, she hasn't
been done out of anything but her young man—for
the money never was Anthony's by rights."
As far as Anthony and the fortune left him were
concerned, Pointer did not think that the position
was so simple. For the money left to the so-called
Anthony Revell by his equally so-called grandfather
had been left him because of the old man's affection
for the boy of ten.
Pointer had read the letter that had accompanied
the will, a letter kept by Anthony and found docketed
by Major Weir-Opie, and knew that between the boy
and old Sir Henry Revell had been a strong, deep,
affection. True, Sir Henry had thought that he was
leaving his money to his only grandson, but it was
chiefly because of his love for Anthony that he had
left it to him. That was what made the problem
so difficult.


220 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Like you, Pointer, I don't believe Lady Revell
knows who Mrs. Green is," Weir-Opie said suddenly
out of a cloud of smoke, "for she really believes
that she was in love with Anthony. We know now
why Mrs. Green hung around the lad as she did.
Poor soul! Especially as you say he was very like
her husband in looks."
"I shouldn't wonder, sir, if that was why she
hasn't let any one see of late the portrait of Anthony
Revell which she painted. It may have been much
more like his father than like him."
"Yes, but does the real mother suspect the sham
mother, and is that why she hangs around the
place?" Shilling asked curiously. "Is all her talk
against Miss Hill just camouflage? The necklace you
found, the one with which you believe that Mr.
Avery smashed the jar with stamps in it, becomes
immensely important now. Lady Revell denies that
she went to the rectory at any time that last
Sunday," Pointer said slowly.
It was now Saturday.
"Fraser and the maids deny the possibility that
the necklace was left behind on any earlier visit,"
he continued, "and the dust-free condition of the
room supports them. I'd like to have a talk to Mrs.
Green first of all. She may know something which
she didn't dare tell us, for fear of coming too far
forward into the limelight. That fear of hers—that
restraining fear—we know now that it was terror of
our finding out about her relationship to Anthony
Revell—not terror of our learning fresh facts about
how he died. I believe no one wants that cleared
up more than she does."
"' For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup ; and
the wine is red,' " quoted Weir-Opie dreamily.
"Red for whom? I don't think she suspects


224 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"Yes, we had them cleaned," he said quietly,
"but let me get you a chair." He went to the door
to return a moment later with a chair of Jamieson's
which he placed for Mrs. Green at the farther
extremity of the room. "Yes, Madame Desvernois,"
he went on gently, " I've just got back from Lausanne
and Morgen. I know now who Anthony Revell really
was. When and where he was born."
"So the rector left a message behind !" she said
in a sort of gasp.
"Not at all. The pictures told me. I saw your
paintings in your home at Morgen—I was shown
your portrait. Then, too, the dates tallied. Lady
Revell in Evian, you just across the lake. The same
midwife—who had previously been with Lady ReveH
when her child was born in Paris. Your own very
great trouble—Lady Revell's doubtless most
tempting offer coming just then through the
nurse"
Mrs. Green put out her hand to stop him. "It's
true," she said under her breath. "And true also
that had my son borne his own name he would be
alive to-day." She covered her face, all broken up,
with her hands. "Nothing you can say can hurt me
like that knowledge."
"How do you mean ?" Pointer asked, as though
surprised.
What else did Olive Hill want but the position?
The money?"
There was a short silence.
"And now are you going to prove that she shot
my boy ?" she said in a voice that trembled with
excitement. "I will stand whatever comes out
about me, if you can prove that."
"Are you sure that it wasn't an accident ?" he
countered.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 225
Mrs. Green gave a laugh in which there was no
merriment.
She sprang to her feet.
"It was all a mistake—my trying to get to know
him without his knowing who I was. I thought I
had managed it so cleverly coming as Mrs. Green—
Lady Revell had never seen me. I am a painter of
some merit—she had pictures worth copying. It
would rouse no suspicions in her if a Mrs. Green
called at The Flagstaff when she happened to be in
the village, and asked if she could copy them. I
could meet Anthony there—as I did. When I found
that he had his own home, and I got him to let me
paint some panels for his smoking-room, and stay
there while I worked, I thought I was in heaven.
As I was at first. Though "—a flush rose and faded
in her worn face—" I had purposely made myself
look as young as possible—on account of not arousing
any suspicions in Lady Revell. And so people—she
among others—misunderstood. Even Anthony did,
when I warned him against that odious girl. A
horrible position," her eyes grew sombre. "Horrible
position!" she repeated under her breath. "I
never did anything harder than when I let him think
me just a jealous middle-aged woman who had fallen
in love with him, and didn't want to see another,
younger, woman win him away from me. And
worse was to come when he got engaged to Olive
Hill, and I knew what the future would hold for
him, married to her. I realised that I had sold
him into bondage." She paused for a moment, her
face very white.
Pointer said nothing. He was intensely sorry for
her.
"He was a Swiss boy," she went on passionately
in French, " a Lausannois boy. He had a right to the


226 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
simple happy life that our other children had. And
because of what I did, he had to live here in another
country, with a so-called mother who hated him, and
grudged him every piece of luck that came his way.
And that girl—How could he but take sham for
real affection, he, who had never had any true love
that he could remember? I couldn't even put his
own name on his grave. He lies there under a false
one."
"And the text you chose?" he asked
gently.
"The vengeance of God," she said swiftly. There
was more in the same strain. Pointer did not try
to stop her. He let her breaking heart pour itself
out, she, who for so many weeks had had to suffer
in silence.
"But the rector learnt the truth about Anthony's
birth, and, I feel sure, about his death too," she said
finally in a shaken whisper. "How he learnt it I
have no idea. He preached that sermon straight at
Olive Hill—and at me. He wanted me to tell—
however late, the truth which would let justice be
done. And now—whatever he knew has been buried
with him !" she said almost fiercely.
"Why didn't you immediately on hearing his
sermon go and tell him all the truth, and let him use
that knowledge as he wanted to?" Pointer asked.
"Since you think he had you in his mind when he
preached his last sermon?"
Mrs. Green looked at him in pallid shame.
"What of my daughters? What of my
father and mother? I can't let them know the
truth."
She set her jaw firmly. "Think of the deception of
all these years! My people would never under-
stand—never forgive what I did. I've always


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 220,
own, and her supposed child. And if Mr.
Anthony should marry, her son—and also she
herself—would have probably no chance whatever
of inheriting."
"Not Olive Hill!" It was characteristic of her
dislike of the girl that it was the possibility of her
innocence and not the possible guilt of Lady
Revell which was the first thing to strike Mrs.
Green. "You think she's not the one?" she
repeated. And then, as he did not answer, her
mind at last turned to consideration of the one
whom he had suggested as being guilty. For a
long minute she sat quite still. Then he saw her
face turn pale again, as pale as it had when he first
spoke her own name.
"If you're right, then it was I who really murdered
my son," she said finally in a voice of horror. "As I
have felt from the first that I had. Antoine Desver-
nois didn't stand between any one and a fortune,
between any woman's real son and the inheritance
which rightly belonged to him. But poor Anthony
Revell did."
There followed another pause.
"Olive Hill wrote to him asking him to come back
at once and meet her in The Causeway drawing-room
at midnight precisely on that dreadful Thursday
night." So far she still spoke with certainty. "But
you think?"
"I think that Miss Hill's name may have only
been used as a decoy," Pointer said. "As yet I can
see no reason for thinking that she knew of, let alone
had any hand in, his death."
Again there was a silence, then Mrs. Green spoke
again, in a tone of stifled horror.
"After she left, you think that Lady Revell came
and killed my son? And he's buried in that name—


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 233
would be impossible since the police knew her story,
even though she had intended but to live there for
six months of the year, and in Zurich six months.
She was very shaken by the interview which she had
just had. Thankful in a way that the clever Chief
Inspector—whose personality had impressed her at
her first glance—had discovered the truth. And yet
deeply disturbed at the price that she might yet
have to pay for that thirty-year old transaction which
at the time had seemed so providential. But she
had never known a happy day since, or at least, not
a happy week. Anthony had been a lovely baby.
He had been born at dawn, and for one hour he
had lain in the hollow of her arm. Then she had
let the nurse take him away in return for what
seemed salvation in English bank-notes counted out
on her bed. And in the cot where her other
children had lain, the cot made ready for the
third child—was laid the waxen little form of a
still-born infant, born during the night to a washer-
woman in Ouchy. The nurse had promised to lay
it in the coffin of an old lady who would be buried
to-day. Instead, she had had the little body with
her when she came to Madame Francois Desvernois,
just as she had had the money ready. And it had
sometimes seemed to the young wife that of all
her children none was more constantly with her
than little Antoine. She had got the name of the
new " mother" from the French woman, and had
verified it by a telephone inquiry an hour after
the nurse would have reached Evian. More than
the name she did not know until she came to
England this year, a well-to-do woman, able to
take as long a holiday as she wished. At the
Revells' town house, located by means of the tele-
phone directory, it was easy to learn the whereabouts


234 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
of their country house in Surrey. And the rest was
as Pointer knew.
Now she asked herself bitterly why she had come.
True, she had talked to Anthony, had even kissed
him once good-bye, but what little pleasure she had
had was woven and striped with bitterness and
painful misunderstanding. Regret, unavailing and
futile, rent her.


CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pointer walked back the short distance to the
rectory, and asked for Miss Avery. She was engaged
for the moment, and he went on into the study. It
was his conviction that Mr. Avery when he felt
himself ill, when he found the door locked, when no
bell rang, had left some writing for the police. But
so far not the most diligent search had found
anything of the sort. So there were possibly two
missing papers—the folded paper opened by the
rector in the pulpit, and a posthumous message left
by the dying man for the police. But though he
looked for the latter he had not much hope of ever
coming on it. Finally, after another intensive search
of the wallpaper behind a bookshelf, he stood
looking at his shoes, lost in reverie.
Pointer thought that the shooting of Revell had
not been a prepared crime. It had been a very
dangerous one. It had, to his mind, every mark of
some swift decision, some sudden urgency. Lady
Revell would have had time to plan something much
safer. Yet it was possible that reflection had shown
her no better way to get rid of Anthony than
the one taken. After all, even if a criminal, she
was not a practised criminal.
He had spoken to Mrs. Green as though Olive Hill
were out of the range of suspicion, but that was not
really the case. Mrs. Green herself—yes. In her case
Pointer did not think that she need any longer be
considered suspect. She had nothing to gain by the
murder of her son, a son whom she evidently had
loved very dearly. But the motive of jealousy still
235


236 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
existed as one of the most likely reasons for Anthony
Revell's death, though Mrs. Green no longer fitted in.
Lady Revell logically took Mrs. Green's place. But
both women, and if another suspect, Lady Witson
were included—all three women had shown them-
selves as absolutely unconcerned about any papers
at the rectory.
Yet Pointer felt that he was not doing the
murdered rector justice if he had not tried in his
last hour to find some really safe hiding-place for
the paper that he had opened in the pulpit. Unlike
any statement of Mr. Avery's own, it—Pointer
believed—was tantamount to proof of the wilful
murder of Anthony—in the eyes of the criminal.
Would the poisoner, flustered, hurried, terrified of
detection, have been able to find what a really
clever man had hidden? Pointer felt that he could
trust Mr. Avery to have set the searcher a stiff
proposition. There was a safe in the rector's bed-
room, but Avery had not been able to get to it
after his supper. Though Pointer was beginning
to think that the new rector might have put the
paper into safety before that. The bedroom, too,
like the attic, had been hunted as for an indispensable
needle . . . From the way in which the study had
been searched by the criminal, Pointer was sure that
Mr. Avery had shown—or read—the folded paper
to him or her, who had promptly, Pointer believed,
given some specious explanation which would not
hold water if tested, but which had apparently
allayed Mr. Avery's doubts for the moment. The
calmness of the writing on St. Paul left by the dead
rector, and the hearty supper taken, made Pointer
sure that an explanation, rather than a confession,
had taken place.
Mrs. Green still believed that Olive Hill had been


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 237
the writer of the note bringing Anthony back. From
what Anthony appeared to have said to Mrs. Green,
he had expected to meet his fiancee in the drawing-
room. But Pointer thought that Mrs. Green might
have quite misunderstood the hurried, and doubtless
irritable, words spoken by the surprised Anthony,
when he found her hovering around his front door
that Thursday night. Pointer saw no reason to think
that Miss Hill had been near The Causeway on the
night in question, but as he thought it very likely
that some veiled reference to her had been used to
get Anthony back so swiftly, therefore any specious
explanation made to Mr. Avery on Sunday night
would probably have been a shelving of all
responsibility on to her. A responsibility which she
would certainly repudiate at the first question put
to her by the rector.
Miss Avery came in at that moment, and, looking
very troubled, asked Pointer to sit down, as she had
a very painful thing to say to him.
Grace prefaced the talk by saying that she had
no idea how it could interest the police, but she had
decided at the funeral of her brother to do as
Pointer had asked her, and pass on any information
in her possession, however far-fetched it might seem,
and with that, she told him about her doubts of
Miss Hill's honesty. He listened very attentively.
He knew what apparently Miss Avery did not, that
Miss Hill wanted to join Mr. Byrd's band of pioneers,
and that in order to do so, she would have to pay into
a common fund a hundred pounds. Money which Mr.
Byrd gave a guarantee to repay should the expedition
not start within three months of the time set.
In the questions that followed, he learnt from
Grace of her own wild idea as to what might have
really happened at The Causeway.


238 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
He asked if he could see Miss Hill, but learnt that
she had been fetched by Gilbert Revell for a drive
as he thought that she looked ill. "That's why I
let you drag out of me my horrible nightmare fear
of how Anthony may have died," she added
meaningly. Then she had to leave him. But
first she asked him whether he could wait for Doris,
who would be in almost at once, and who also very
much wanted a word with the Chief Inspector.
Pointer decided to wait. A last question of Grace
brought the answer that she still had no faintest
idea of where her brother had spent the hours, yet
unaccounted for on last Saturday and Sunday
afternoon. After hearing which, Pointer put in some
work on the library floor. As he searched for every
loose board and cranny, he thought over what he had
just learnt about Miss Hill. It might explain a small
puzzle within the infinitely larger one.
On the table on which the rector's supper-tray had
stood last Sunday, the police had found a small
carved wooden box about the length and depth of a
middle finger, and the breadth of three. It had a
hinged top and was quite empty. One corner had
been deeply and recently dented, and there was a
newly made mark on the woodwork at the side of
the window which seemed to fit the dented corner.
Fraser said that he had first noticed the box when
he brought in the supper tray. It was then on the
table at the head of the couch, and therefore close
to the door leading into the hall. No one seemed to
have ever seen it until Miss Hill, on being shown it,
immediately claimed it as hers. She said that she
must have left it by accident in the study when she
stepped in during the afternoon. She had not missed
it, she said, as it was just an empty little box which
she had at some time or other taken down to the


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 241
Pointer surmised, had come reaction. She had wanted
to get the box back, but each time that Fraser
had seen her hovering round the study door and
trying to slip in unnoticed, the rector had made some
movement that had told her that the room was not
empty, and finally she had gone to bed, sure that she
could get it back in the morning. He might be wrong,
of course, but the mere fact that he might be right,
altered Lady Revell's position. The necklace had
seemed a most damning piece of circumstantial
evidence against her. It was quite valueless now.
Fraser came in with a telephone message. Mrs.
Richard Avery would not be able to get back under
an hour. Pointer decided not to wait. Shilling hoped
to have something of interest to tell him by that
time, and Pointer wanted to hear it. It concerned
Sir Hubert Witson.
As he walked to the police station, there to get
to work on some papers, Pointer met Byrd and
stopped for a word with him. Byrd, to the surprise
of the village, had attended the rector's funeral. He
was looking very grave, Pointer thought, and at a
word from himself, Byrd fell into step beside him,
as the two turned towards the open country.
Byrd seemed in a softened mood for once.
"A good man gone," he said tersely.
"Yes. Thanks to a poisoner," the detective
officer agreed.
"It still seems incredible—that—to me," Byrd
said.
"Why so?" Pointer wanted to know. "He had
stumbled on some truth about Anthony Revell's
death, we think. That being so, no high character
would save him. You heard him preach last Sunday,
didn't you?"
Byrd seemed to stiffen. "Yes," he said curtly.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 247
"Yes," she said with a genuine little gasp. "And
yet when I stepped in after dinner to tell him,
explain, he wouldn't hear a word. Told me to come
to him next day, fairly shut me up as though it
didn't matter. Looked at me as though he didn't
know what I meant when I asked him how he
knew "She paused for a moment then went on
fiercely. "It was your own words I followed. I
needed it to make up the hundred. I want to go
and find the island!" Her face began to break I
up. "I never took anything really valuable,
anything they prized. And as soon as I got the
hundred together I was going to stop. Even so, I
was going to return that necklace at the first
opportunity, as I wanted to tell Mr. Avery. What
Mrs. Green says doesn't matter—but this—is this
going to part us ?" she asked.
"Doesn't matter what Mrs. Green says!" He
preferred to keep to the first part of the sentence.
"My dear girl, you may be able to keep the necklace
part dark, but Anthony's and the rector's murder?
Good God! If you can sit down under an accusation
like that!"
"You wait!" she retorted. "I have one piece of
proof—of part of what happened. And in time I'll
nave the full proof. You wait!" With that she
turned, and left him standing there.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 249
"Well, Pointer, Shilling and I will occupy ourselves
with the difficulties of our arson case, and leave
simple matters like the rectory mystery to you.
Another ten minutes is sure to solve it."
Pointer smiled a trifle wryly. "I wish the rector
had helped us a bit more," he said. "I think he
tried to . . ."
"You know, we never had anything but their own
word for where the Gartsides were all day and night
on Thursday and Friday," Shilling struck in.
"They claim they were walking and sleeping out
under their tent, and so on. They had their tinned
food with them, biscuits, bully beef, milk, tea, and
so on. They say they bought bread and fruit from
farmers, but we couldn't prove whether they did
or not. It looks to me as though they might have
followed Revell back to The Causeway."
"We always did know that was a possibility,"
Weir-Opie was balancing a pencil on his fore-
finger.
"But we couldn't prove it!" ended Shilling.
"No more than we can now."
Pointer was only listening with half his mind.
Weir-Opie looked at him questioningly.
"You've had an idea from the first," he said as he
had said once before.
Pointer only discussed the stamp theory a little
longer, and then left them. He had to go up to town
that evening to be present at a discussion of a case
with which he had previously had some connection.
The discussion prolonged itself over the Sunday, and
it was not till Monday noon that he was free to return
to his rooms near the rectory. Before he left, he
asked Superintendent Shilling to have his men on
duty redouble their vigilance. He was worried about
Olive Hill. If he were wrong, and she was guilty


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 251
her. That done, she pasted them on a sheet of cheap-
looking paper torn out of a copy book. They made
a paragraph which ran: "I have found a letter
which may interest you among the effects of a late
client who died from an accident with his revolver.
The letter is one summoning him back to his home.
The price for it will be a thousand pounds in one
pound notes. If you insert in the Morning Wire's
Personal column on Monday ' By Promise Bound,' I
will write and suggest a place in town for the trans-
action." Any words which could not be found in
their entirety she built up of separate letters.
The task done, she washed her hands, carefully
addressed the envelope, an affair which seemed to
take her a long time, and then, folding up the paper,
took it out with her, and slipped the letter into her
bag. She posted it at the nearest pillar-box to
Mr. Smith's office, then she walked back through
the woods. In one open glade she seemed to have an
accident while lighting a cigarette, and set the
paper she had with her on fire. Gilbert came on it
while she was beating out the flames. He told her
how thoughtful she was not to let it lie smouldering,
a menace to the underwood. Olive explained that she
hated thoughtlessness of any kind, which was but a
form of selfishness, and asked him if it were true that
he had really given up his idea of going with Byrd.
Gilbert had, very much to his regret, he said, but
his new duties would not let him absent himself for
an indeterminate time just now. Olive agreed that
one's duty must come first. He was still hoping that
Byrd could put his ideas into execution, he said.
He still intended to pay one thousand towards the
expedition's expenses; unfortunately, death duties
would not let him pay Byrd the other thousand that
he had promised, and which would have let the


252 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
little expedition start with sufficient funds to buy
an island site when found. But as she also knew
Byrd was advertising for a chairman, and would
doubtless find some one to come forward and
advance the money, especially as the chairman
would have very much of a say about the place
when selected.
Olive asked some very intelligent questions as to
just what the donor of the second thousand could
expect in the way of directing the expedition.
Gilbert explained Byrd's views as to what would
be the fair thing to offer, and Olive seemed quite
interested in them too. But then, Olive was a girl
who was interested in so many things, Gilbert
thought. He was very chagrined that his mother no
longer seemed to feel the affection for her that she
had shown on her engagement to Anthony. Just
lately he had found it better not to talk of her much,
not to press for the offer to her of a yearly allowance.
That was that pestilential Mrs. Green's doing, he
knew. She had talked his mother quite out of her
earlier and more generous mood. But he himself, as
soon as the estate was settled up, would have a
word with his solicitors and see what could be
done. An annuity of three hundred would not
cripple him, but, if the veriest trifle to what she
would have had, would at least keep her from
poverty.
Olive and he had a delightful talk. He thought
what a pleasure it was nowadays to meet a girl so
simple, so straightforward, so friendly. And she had
charm, a charm which wound itself around your
heart. He was not sure whether it came from
the glance, timid and yet interested, of those large
dark eyes, or whether it lay in her shy smile. No
wonder Anthony had fallen in love with her. Olive


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 253
had confessed that Mrs. Green was right in thinking
that she had never really loved Anthony. She knew
that now, but she had thought that she had at the
time. After all, Gilbert reflected, a little country
mouse like Olive would not at first be able to tell
the difference between love and mere friendship.
She had never told him what had made her realise
this, only giving him one of her heart-stirring smiles
and changing the subject with a little, very fetching
sigh.
He walked back with her to the rectory and Grace,
who met them on the steps, looked perturbed, he
thought, even through the marks of grief that her
face had shown at the funeral.
On Monday morning, Olive was down early, and
had a look at the Morning Wire. She found By
Promise Bound almost at once, but there was a
message following it which ran " Cannot get to town
this week. Suggest painter's cottage at three to-day.
Telephone or telegraph 'yes' if you can meet me
there."
Olive thought this over. She knew what cottage
was meant. It was shut up at the moment. Mrs.
Green was up in town arranging an exhibition of
her paintings. After careful thought, Olive went out
for her usual walk. She stepped into a telephone-box
and rang up the apartment house in Mayfair where
Mrs. Green had taken rooms. Grace Avery had the
number and the key of the cottage in her room, as
the artist was not sure whether she would not want
to send back some of the pictures which she had
taken with her, and if so, Grace had promised to see
to their safe disposal..
Mrs. Green was in, and told her that she would not
be back till the end of next week. She said that she
was glad that Grace had telephoned to ask how she


254 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
was getting on, as she was leaving her rooms at
once and going to a hotel. She did not care for the
service where she was. She gave her new number to
what she believed was Grace, who hung up at once.
Olive's interest was over. She would not be dis-
turbed at the cottage, which was all that she cared to
know. It was a good hour's drive to London.
Stepping to the letter-box, she now dropped in an
envelope exactly like the one that had contained the
printed message. Inside was another cut-out message
which ran: "I shall send an old nurse with the
letter to the cottage at three sharp. Hand her the
money but, as she is deaf, please do not speak to her.
She has been given a false, but quite satisfactory,
explanation of what she is to do. You will let her
count the money, and she will then hand you the
letter. Should she not be back by three-thirty,
something very unpleasant would result. I have
taken every precaution."
After Olive's return to the rectory, she ate a good
breakfast, then she caught the nine-thirty train up
to town and with a small blouse-case—empty
apparently—went by bus to Swan and Edgar's at
Piccadilly Circus.
At half-past two, a stout, handsome, black-
haired, very much painted-up lady who looked like
a foreigner with her thick eyebrows meeting over her
rather humped, thickly-powdered nose came up the
garden path of Mrs. Green's cottage. She stopped at
sight of the gardener who was at work on a flower-
bed.
"Alio!" called the foreign-looking lady. Then
as he paused in his work, she beckoned to him.
"Madame Gr-r-reen she is away, I know, but I am
old fr-r-iend. I stay here. She have give me her key.
She returning this evening. My luggage it should


256 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
therefore buried. The stamps had either been
destroyed in some way, or saved and sold. He
stopped a long moment here, but finally he felt sure
that he had missed nothing about the jar. Then he
passed on to the bookcase where he had found the
single, valueless, Italian stamp. The window-seat
under which he had found the necklace—the
necklace—and so he came to the table with the
supper-tray. Item by item he reviewed the things
on the tray. And suddenly he jumped up. The
dessert-knife—covered with Mr. Avery's finger-
prints. Firm and bold prints. Yet the blade showed
that the knife had not been used. That at least had
been what had been thought up to now.
When the train got in, Pointer went at once to the
police station and unlocked the safe. The Superin-
tendent was absent, but the inspector on duty took
out for Pointer the box containing the fingerprint
photographs; and then the box of "exhibits"
themselves. Pointer again had a look at the polished
silver blade with its pointed end. Very carefully he
ran a finger along the edge. It was no sharper than
dessert-knives usually are. He put away the
exhibits and studied the photographs of the rector's
fingerprints on the handle. It was a heavy handle
with a slightly bulbous end. Pointer finally decided
that it had been used by Mr. Avery, first for cutting
and then for boring into something fairly firm. He
memorised the position of the fingerprints, and then
replaced the photographs also in the safe. There had
been a Stilton cheese on the tray, but it had been
crumbled by himself until nothing remained.
Everything on the tray had been tested for that
paper. Yet the knife had been wiped after use,
and by Mr. Avery, as the fingerprints showed.
Pointer's pulses quickened, impassive though his


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 257
face remained, as he set off for the rectory. He was
all out to find where Mr. Avery had hidden the
precious, all-important paper which the rector had
unfolded in the pulpit, and he believed that at last
he had a clue.
Mr. Avery—a clever man—who knew that he had
been poisoned—could be trusted to have guessed the
reason. He had put his wits to their last earthly task
of foiling his poisoners. He had used the knife, and
then, lest the marks give the hiding-place away, had
wiped the blade.
As he strode along, Pointer again ran over item by
item everything in the room and in the library.
There was nothing for which such a knife could have
been used bar the plaster ceiling, and that was
unusually high in both rooms. Nothing . . .
nothing ... so whatever it was on which it had
been used must have been taken out of the room.
Or had the rector's efforts at a hiding-place failed?
Had the poisoner triumphed? He would soon
know. But he had a hope that Mr. Avery's brains
had been too much for the murderer.


260 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
when Pointer now slit it, was a sheet of paper
which had once been folded in four, though now it
had been compressed into as small a space as
possible. Pointer replaced the wedge of apple back
in its place, and spreading out the paper with
considerable emotion, read the few lines written
on it. It was the paper which Mr. Avery had
unfolded in the pulpit. As he read he saw that his
first guess at the criminal had been right, slight
though the fact was on which it had rested. Copying
the lines swiftly in his note-book, he slipped envelope
and paper into another envelope, closed it, laid it in
a book, unlocked the door and sent for Weston, one
of his own men who had been left on duty, and
whom he had not yet seen since his return from
town. To him was given the precious book with an
apparently casual word as to whom to hand it to
at the police station, but in reality it was a code
word which meant that what he carried was much
more important than his own life. That he was to
see it at once locked into the safe, and then return
here with Superintendent Shilling.
Before he hurried off on his motor-cycle, Pointer
asked briefly, " Everything here as usual?"
"Yes, sir, except that Miss Hill went up to town by
an early train and hasn't got back yet. I telephoned
Carter to be on the look-out for her at Paddington.
He followed her to Swan and Edgar's in Piccadilly
Circus, but she hadn't come out when he phoned
me. He didn't see her in the luncheon-room, but he
hadn't time to look long, he was afraid of missing
her at one of the doors. He's still watching them."
Pointer sent him off, and rang for Fraser. "Did
you say Miss Hill is house-hunting?"
"My mistake, sir. I thought the ladies went off
together. But Mrs. Richard—Mrs. Avery, I should


262 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
Pointer stepped in one stride to the telephone.
A moment later and he was speaking to Shilling.
"Weston is on his way to you with a book.
Please wait for him and then come on at once to
Mrs. Green's cottage, where Mrs. Avery and I shall
wait for you. And "Here in a rather casual
voice came some words in code which petrified the
Superintendent.
"Impossible!" Shilling's voice was really
appalled. "I mean—well—see about it at once,
and come at once, too. It won't take a minute.
The Chief's here, by good luck."
Pointer hung up and, after a word with Fraser,
ran to his car. Doris hurried after him.
"What makes you ask about Mrs. Green?" She
spoke in a low voice. "Miss Hill wouldn't go to her.
The two, as one would expect, are at daggers drawn.
Besides, Mrs. Green is away."
"I think she may have gone to Mrs. Green's
cottage," Pointer said. "Coming? I'll leave word
where we have gone in case she comes back here."
"Yes, I'll come. I'm worried. If there is any
fresh trouble between them?"
Again he did not reply.
They were off. Both were silent. Doris looked
very worried.
You don't think she's in any sort of danger,
do you ?" she asked suddenly.
Pointer did not reply, but he gave the tap on
the arm of the chauffeur which meant " still faster."
The cottage looked quite deserted when they
reached it. Pointer called out Miss Hill's name as he
ran up the little path to the grey door. His chauffeur
followed with Mrs. Avery.
"She's not here! It's shut up 1 " Doris said in a
disappointed voice. "We've wasted our time!"


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 263
Pointer had the door open on the instant with a
key that did not look at all like a key. Inside the
hall he called again. There was no answer. He tried
a door beside him. He opened it in a trice. The room
was empty. He tried the door on the other side. It
was locked, but he opened it. There was a curious,
acrid smell in the room. By the table Olive Hill
had been sitting. She was now slumped far forward
on it. The man with Pointer held Mrs. Avery
back. "Don't go in farther, ma'am. She's dead!
Shot. Head wound"
"Let the lady come in, Hogarth," Pointer said.
"We need her to identify the body."
Doris, with a chalk-white face, was staring at
Olive's dead body, which, all things considered, did
not look too dreadful. She had been shot from ear to
ear, they found out afterwards.
Pointer told Hogarth the chauffeur to telephone at
once for the doctor. "We must know the hour when
it happened," he explained to Mrs. Avery. "Sorry to
ask you to stay, you mustn't touch anything"
"Of course I'll stay," she said. "I don't think I
would like to leave her—now—like this—alone.
But where is Mrs. Green? Oh!" The last was an
exclamation, as her glance fell on something on the
floor. It was a revolver.
Pointer marked the place on the carpet with a
very casual stroke of chalk. The position of the
revolver did not matter in the least to him. Then he
lifted it and wrapped it in transparent paper, so as
to preserve the fingerprints.
"Though they'll be those of Miss Hill, to a
certainty," he said to Mrs. Avery as he did so.
"But that's Anthony's revolver!" she gasped,
swallowing hard. "Anthony's initials are on it.
See! Mrs. Green was allowed to keep it after the


268 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
so that we could marry. It's also a letter for which
I paid Olive Hill a thousand pounds half an hour
ago, at four o'clock. It was all in one-pound notes.
She insisted on my handing over the money first.
She had a package all done up—I saw my own
writing—and she ' did ' me brown!" There was no
mistaking the rage in Mrs. Avery's voice. "I had
to let her hold on to it. She had a revolver with her.
That revolver there. But she swore I should have
the letter to-night. I told you, Mr. Pointer, that I
had no idea where she was—that I was uneasy,
because I wanted you to find her with the money on
her, of course! I couldn't tell you what had just hap-
pened. I couldn't confess my madness. I could only
hope that you might yet get the letter back for me."
Major Weir-Opie looked at her with no softening
of his face.
"It won't do, Mrs. Avery. There's more than
that. We have also in our possession the letter which
you wrote to Mr. Anthony and which brought him
back to The Causeway. The letter for which you
poisoned Mr. Avery—and which you did not find,
for all your searching."
"What letters are these ?" asked Mr. Smith, who
felt as though the world as he knew it was crashing
about him. Mrs. Richard Avery had figured in it
as Caesar's wife—only a beautiful one—above and
immune from gossip.
"The letter sent to you to forward to the police
was one I wrote to my husband just before Anthony
got engaged to Olive Hill." Doris made a curious
gesture of defeat and weariness. "I wrote in it that
he and I had been lovers for over a year. Of course
that wasn't true. I had quite misunderstood just
ordinary civility, and lost my head. It was Olive
Hill he was in love with. I made the mistake other


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 269
women have made before, and will make again, of
thinking that I was the attraction. But, as soon as I
had posted it, I learnt the truth, and incidentally the
truth about whom I really loved after all—my own
husband, not Anthony. When I came home and
learnt of the engagement between Olive and Anthony
it cured me as though by magic. I thought I would
go out of my mind, when I reflected on what I had
written. You know Richard, Mr. Smith. You
know how he would never forgive or forget such a
letter. He would hold it as true, no matter what proof
to the contrary he had. I nearly went mad, I think.
The news that Anthony had shot himself didn't
help me. That letter was on its way. That mad,
lying letter. But I was saved after all. I got a
cable from Richard showing that he had already
started for home before I had posted it. Oh, the
relief!" For a second her face mirrored it. "The
relief! I wrote to Freddy Anstruther, his secretary
out there, told him that I had just posted a letter
to my husband which I now wanted not forwarded
to him but returned to me unopened. I didn't
care what Freddy thought. I knew he would do as I
asked. He's an old friend. He did. I got it—as I
thought—and destroyed it. But I begin to see now
that I was 'done' there, too, by dear little Mousie.
Let me look at that letter you have, Mr. Pointer,"
she urged. "The letter supposed to be mine, enclosed
by Miss Hill in her envelope to Mr. Smith?"
Pointer handed the pages to Major Weir-Opie.
He would have nothing to do with this scene. Doris
studied it very attentively, also the covering
letter from young Freddy Anstruther. Then she
turned away. She was proud of her brains, but she
had been tricked by Olive Hill. That was, Pointer
thought, the sharpest sting for a moment.


270 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
"But—but she left it with me with instructions
to hand it to the Chief Inspector here—or failing him
to the police should she not herself ask for it back by
four o'clock." Mr. Smith's brain was beginning to
function again. "That showed that she was afraid—
of just what has apparently happened." He ended
up, and he looked very hard at Mrs. Avery.
"Evidently," Doris agreed, "but not from me.
She had asked me to meet her here at four precisely
and hand over a thousand pounds in return for that
letter. Some one else, probably a confederate, was
in the plot with her, and shot her, getting away with
the money. It's nowhere to be seen and it certainly
isn't on her. It was a bulky wad of notes. I'm
perfectly willing to be searched, and have my
rooms at the rectory searched." She turned to
Pointer, who did not accept the challenge until the
Chief Constable turned to him. And then he
answered him and him alone.
"They're probably ' planted ' somewhere in this
house. That's why the Cottage was chosen, I
fancy. It's no use Mrs. Avery assuring us that Olive
Hill chose this place for the meeting. She did that.
Because it was Mrs. Green's. So that when Miss
Hill was found dead, it would look like her work,
like the crime of a woman who hated Miss Hill.
And the letter she came to sell Mrs. Avery wasn't
this one. Nor a copy of this one. This was her
anchor to windward, she thought. The letter she
offered to sell was the letter that brought Mr.
Anthony back to The Causeway, and so to his
death."
Doris gave a contemptuous laugh.
"That's about as true as the other things that you
have been saying!"
"Look here," said Weir-Opie, " this painful scene


CHAPTER TWENTY
As for Mr. Avery," Doris's even voice con-
tinued, "No one poisoned him. What must have
happened was that the little that I had to tell him
about Olive's trouble so bothered him that he
himself made a mistake and filled one of the bottles
standing on the shelf—one without a label and
without a bell on it, then, still thinking deeply,
he must have carried it into his study—and got it
mixed with the mushroom ketchup on his tray. No
one can say just what happened. But I feel sure, I
always have felt sure, that no one poisoned him.
It was an accident, pure and simple."
Mr. Smith was looking at her very attentively.
Perhaps this was the truth. But he was shaken—
badly shaken. . . .
Pointer looked at Doris with his clear passionless
gaze. At last he spoke to her.
"There are bloodstains on the soles of your shoes,
yet when we got here the blood in the other room
was quite dry. Besides, you were not allowed to
walk about at all."
Doris's face sagged as she tucked her feet under
her chair. She had been sitting with her knees
crossed.
Mr. Smith's face was eloquent. One horrified
glance before she altered her position, and he had
seen the stains of which Pointer spoke. He stood
back with a gesture that spoke for itself.
Superintendent Shilling took his place. The two
men at the door came forward. A moment
more, and Doris Avery was seated between the
272


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 273
Superintendent and one of his constables in
the car.
Each had an arm linked through one of hers. All
three sat in a dreadful silence as the car rushed by
a back street to the police station.
In the room at the cottage Mr. Smith passed a
hand over his face.
"I cannot undertake her defence," he said in a
low voice, as he reached for his hat and, without
another word, made for his car. Weir-Opie waited
till it had driven off, then he turned to Pointer.
"You must tell me later how you arrived at the
incredible truth in this affair. Shilling nearly
fainted from shock. So the motive had nothing to
do with the stamps, nor with the question of
Anthony's identity?"
"No, sir. Jealousy. Clear enough," Pointer
said. "Mad infatuation for Mr. Anthony.
There was a love affair between them which had
lasted over a year, according to this letter to her
husband."
He stopped. Another police car had arrived, of
an odd, covered shape. There was a stretcher inside.
Four men with it got out, and two of them, quickly
lifting Olive's body on to it, drove off by the way
they had come. The other two were to stay behind
in the cottage.
Weston came down the short stairs. "The
money is there", sir, a thousand pounds in one-pound
notes, planted in Mrs. Green's bedroom, as you
suggested. Stuffed into the back of the drawer
under some clothes. And, as you thought there
would be, I found bloodstains on 'em."
Pointer and the Major went up to the room
which Mrs. Green used as a bedroom. They took the
notes away with them in their own car.


276 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
waited with him for a while probably in the drawing-
room, got him, I think, to lend her his revolver under
plea of not being able to wait longer for Miss Hill,
and not liking to go home unprotected. He would
want to wait on for Miss Hill who knew nothing of
the affair."
"Mrs. Avery, too, was most likely a capital shot
with a revolver," Weir-Opie said. "She had
spent two years on the Gold Coast when she was
first married to Richard Avery."
"I think it possible that she got him to tie her
shoe-lace for her, and shot him straight through
the head as he did so. As she didn't ask Mr. Anthony
to burn this letter to him, nor look for it apparently
at his house, and as none from her were found after
his death, I take it for granted that he always
destroyed her letters."
"And this one, this all-important one he dropped
in the car driving back home," Shilling said, con-
tinuing the tale. "It must have got between the
cushions, and Mr. Avery found it on Saturday night,
as you guessed and, as you thought, mistook it
for his sermon notes, and only opened it out in
church."
"Odd that Mrs. Avery didn't feel that sermon
as a warning," mused Weir-Opie aloud in some
surprise.
I don't think she heard one word of it, sir."
Pointer explained where he believed her thoughts
to have been.
"She was very happy just then, as we both
noticed that Saturday at dinner. I think she
thought that all was going right, when she got
the chance to get back—unopened—what she
believed was her letter to her husband, but which
was evidently a clever copy made by Miss Hill.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 277
Then came the thunderbolt of Sunday night when she
probably stepped into the study for a casual good-
night, and the rector handed her her letter to Mr.
Anthony and asked her to explain what was, she
hoped, a dead and buried subject."
"Literally dead and buried !" threw in Shilling,
drawing in his breath.
"She had to improvise something instant and
efficacious. We know what she did. All but
emptied the mushroom ketchup bottle which was on
the tray and filled it with the toadstool extract.
By the way, I think she had been able to give Mr.
Avery a more cheerful suggestion about Miss Hill
than the one she made to me. I think it much more
likely that she put it on some disinclination of Miss
Hill's to be married in such a rush. Then came the
dreadful attacks of pain from which he died in at
most an hour, the doctor thinks. He knew the
truth then, and hid the all-important letter so
successfully."
There was a profound silence.
"But Miss Hill—where does she come in?"
Weir-Opie asked at last. "Why would she know
enough to keep this letter of Mrs. Richard Avery's
to her husband, and fob her off with a copy?"
"I think Miss Hill suspected Mrs. Avery of having »
shot Mr. Anthony from the first. She knew, I am
certain, that she was in love with him. She realised,
I feel sure, that she was only to be used as a shield
later. She guessed after a little what it was that
Mrs. Avery was hunting for, and hunted for it too.
But meanwhile, she evidently got hold of that letter
to Mr. Richard Avery, which his secretary had
returned unopened to the wife. Miss Hill evidently
got that from the post-bag, and enclosed instead in
the original envelopes two forgeries. Mrs. Avery


278 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
was naturally easily deceived as to the genuineness
of the letters inside. Probably she barely glanced
at them. It would never occur to Mrs. Avery that
Olive Hill could outwit her."
"She wouldn't easily suspect what was being
done. Who would ?" said Weir-Opie.
"Miss Hill kept the original as her safety line,
I suppose," Shilling suggested.
"If so, she relied on it too much. Something made
her decide to get away. I think Mr. Byrd's expedi-
tion. He needs money for that. I fancy she hoped
to lend it him and force him to take her along.
Anyway, she bluffed a thousand out of Mrs. Avery,
pretending that she had found what the other had for
a time hunted for so carefully—her letter to Mr.
Anthony."
The telephone rang. It was a constable speaking
from the rectory, where he had been sent to lock
up Mrs. Avery's rooms and stand by the telephone.
Mrs. Green had just rung up Miss Hill. Acting on
instructions, the constable had explained that she
was out at the moment, but he could take the
message. Mrs. Green evidently thought it was
Fraser speaking, and went on to say that she had
tried to rush back to the cottage by a quarter to
four, since Miss Hill told her she had some most
important news for her. But a serious accident to
the motor-bus she was in had prevented it, and
she could not possibly be at the cottage before half-
past six. Mrs. Green had hung up on that, and the
constable had passed on her message—not to the
dead girl, but to the police.
"The message was sent in the name of Olive Hill,
of course, but here again she was only used as a
decoy," said Pointer. "Criminals repeating them-
selves," murmured Shilling sagely.


MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY 279
"Lucky accident," said Weir-Opie. "Not that it
would have mattered in the end. Not when we had
these letters in our possession."
"When did you suspect Mrs. Richard Avery?"
"When she only searched the library, sir, the one
room which I was certain that the murderer hadn't
had time to hunt through the night before. And
there were so many things that fitted. Her great good
looks. Her apparent eagerness to have Mr. Anthony
be thought in love with Miss Hill, which would
explain—and excuse—his constant visits to the
rectory. Also, if the letter to Mr. Anthony came from
her, it was easy to understand that he would not
write separately to Miss Hill, in the same house.
What more natural than her spokeswoman should
be Mrs. Avery, the headstrong, violent-passioned
woman who shot Mr. Anthony in a fit of fury, and
found that-it wasn't to stop there?"
"You foresaw Miss Hill's danger when you left
us on Saturday, I understand?"
"Yes, sir. You see, Mrs. Avery wanted Olive
Hill out of the way. For many reasons. Hatred
of her because she had taken Anthony away. Fear
of what she suspected. Fear of her determined
hunting at the rectory. But she had to wait for a
safe opportunity. Mrs. Green's unconcealed hatred
of the young woman was that opportunity. Let
Olive Hill be killed somewhere where it looked as
though Mrs. Green had done it—and all would
be well"
"She thought!" threw in the Chief Constable.
"Just so, sir, 'she thought!' And Miss Hill
was mad enough to disregard your warning. Did
she forget it, I wonder?"
"I think she fancied herself clever enough to
outwit Mrs. Avery, sir. She had scored a great


282 MYSTERY AT THE RECTORY
in the rooms of the Chief Inspector at New
Scotland Yard.
Doris Avery had just been found guilty on all
three counts, and the jury had only taken a quarter
of an hour to bring in their unanimous verdict.
"You've heard about Byrd?" asked Weir-Opie
finally. "No? He's joined the Salvation Army.
The rector has made a sort of posthumous convert
there."
Another ^hort silence followed, it lasted till he
broke it to say:
"The ' wine in the cup—was red ' enough in all
conscience! Is that text on Anthony's grave to
stand?"
"Miss Avery, sir, -suggests a plain R.I.P. as on
Miss Hill's grave. And I understand that Mrs. Green
is having these three letters carved on Mr. Revell's
monument instead of the text that she had chosen."
There was another silence.
"And of all those who heard the sermon, the one
for whom it was really meant didn't pay any
attention to it. That's life!" Pointer was thinking
aloud.
"But you did," the Chief Constable said promptly.
"But for the chance that you heard it, and went
over to see the room where the rector died—well,
a ruthless criminal would have got off scot free."
"To try her hand at something else of the same
kind, most likely," suggested Superintendent Shilling.
THE END