Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

discretion were not overstepped a little publicity never did a police officer any harm, and it has frequently done him a great deal of good.
    “Well, without saying too much, I don’t mind telling you that there are one or two suspicious circumstances, Mr Sheringham,” he admitted at length. “You see, the lady was supposed to have been alone at the time when she fell over here.”
    “At this very spot, I take it?” Roger put in.
    “At this very spot. But I’m not at all sure – not at all sure! – that she was alone. And that’s really all I can say at present.”
    “Why do you think she wasn’t?”
    “Ah!” The inspector looked exceedingly mysterious. “I can’t go so far as to tell you that, but I think you can let your readers know that I’m not speaking altogether at random.”
    ‘ “Inspector Moresby, who has the matter in hand, intimated that he has discovered an important clue. While not at liberty to disclose the precise nature of this, he assured me that important developments may be expected shortly,’” Roger intoned solemnly.
    “Something like that,” the inspector laughed. “And of course I needn’t point out to a gentleman like you how improbable it would be for anyone to fall over accidentally just here where this ledge is so deep.”
    Roger nodded. “Suicide, by any chance?”
    “May have been,” agreed the inspector in a perfectly expressionless voice.
    “But you’re quite sure it wasn’t!” Roger smiled. “Eh?”
    The inspector laughed again. “I’ll be able to let you know a bit more later on, no doubt, sir. In the meantime –” He paused significantly.
    “In the meantime you’d be very much obliged if I’d stop these awkward questions and leave you in peace again? I get you, Inspector. Very well. But you don’t mind if I just have a look round here before I go, do you?”
    “Of course not, Mr Sheringham,” said the inspector heartily. “By all means.”
    It was with a mild feeling of resentment, however, in spite of the inspector’s friendly reception of him, that Roger embarked upon a cursory examination of the ledge on which they were standing. It was more in the nature of a demonstration than anything else, for he knew perfectly well that there would be nothing for him to find; Inspector Moresby would have seen to that. No doubt it was perfectly right and proper to withhold from him the clues which he had most certainly discovered – no doubt at all. But Roger did think the man might have treated him somewhat differently from an ordinary reporter, especially after his reference to Wychford. It was annoying in a way; decidedly annoying. And still more annoying was the fact that he had nothing whatever to be annoyed about. In the inspector’s eyes he was a reporter, and that was all there was to it; he had come down here as a reporter, he was acting as a reporter, he was a reporter. Hell!
    As he had expected, the ledge yielded nothing at all.
    “Humph!” he observed, straightening up from a boulder behind which he had been peering. “Nothing much here. And no signs of a struggle either.”
    “There wouldn’t be, on this rocky surface,” the inspector pointed out kindly. “Too hard to take impressions, you see.”
    “Yes, that idea occurred to me,” Roger remarked a trifle coldly. He walked over to the western end of the ledge, where it narrowed down rapidly into a pathway not more than four or five feet wide, and began to stroll along it.
    He had scarcely covered half a dozen paces before the inspector’s voice pulled him up with a jerk. “Not that way, if you want to get back, sir. I shouldn’t go that way if I were you; it’s very much longer. You’ll find the way you came a good deal shorter.”
    Roger started slightly. “Oho, old warhorse!” he murmured to himself. “So the ears are pricking, are they?” He turned about and scrutinised the inspector with interest. “Now I wonder just exactly why you don’t want me to go this