Busman’s Honeymoon (20 page)

  ‘It’s quite clean,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I always carry a spare.’

  (The devil you do, said Harriet to herself; you are too well trained by half.)

  Miss Twitterton buried her face in the silk and snuffled in a dismal manner, while Joe Sellon studiously consulted the back pages of his shorthand notes, the situation threatened to prolong itself.

  ‘Shall you want Miss Twitterton any more, Mr Kirk?’ Harriet ventured, at length. ‘Because I really think—’

  ‘Er—well,’ said the Superintendent. ‘If Miss Twitterton wouldn’t mind telling us—just as a matter of form, you understand—where she was last Wednesday evening.’

  Miss Twitterton came quite briskly out of the handkerchief. ‘But Wednesday is
always
choir practice,’ she announced, with an air of astonishment that anyone should ask so simple a question.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ agreed Kirk. ‘And I suppose you’d quite naturally pop in on your uncle when that was over?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘Indeed I didn’t. I went home to supper. Wednesday’s my busy night, you know.’

  ‘That so?’ said Kirk.

  ‘Yes, of course—because of market on Thursday. Why. I had half a dozen fowls to kill and pluck before I went to bed. It made me ever so late. Mr Goodacre—he’s always so kind—he’s often said he knew it was inconvenient having the practice on Wednesday, but it happens to suit some of the men better, and so you see—’

  ‘Six to kill and pluck,’ said Kirk, thoughtfully, as though estimating the time that this would take.

  Harriet looked at the meek Miss Twitterton in consternation. ‘You don’t mean to say you kill them yourself?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Twitterton, brightly. ‘It’s
so
much easier than you would think, when you’re used to it.’

  Kirk burst into a guffaw, and Peter—seeing that his wife was disposed to attach over much importance to the matter. said in an amused tone:

  ‘My dear girl, wringing necks is only a knack. It doesn’t need strength.’

  He twisted his hands in a quick pantomime, and Kirk, either genuinely forgetting the errand he was on, or of malice prepense, added:

  ‘That’s right.’ He tightened an imaginary noose about his own bull neck. ‘Wring ’em or string ’em up—it’s the sharp jerk that does it.’

  His head flopped sideways suddenly, sickeningly. Miss Twitterton gave a squeak of alarm; for the first time, perhaps, she realised where all this had to end. Harriet was angry, and her face showed it. Men; when they got together they were all alike—even Peter. For a moment he and Kirk stood together on the far side of a chasm, and she hated them both.

  ‘Steady on. Super,’ said Wimsey; ‘we’re alarming, the ladies.’

  ‘Dear, dear, that’ll never do.’ Kirk was jovial; but the brown ox-eyes were as watchful as the grey. ‘Well, thank you. Miss Twitterton. I think that’s all for the moment.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ Harriet got up. ‘It’s all over. Come along and see how Mr Puffett is getting on with the kitchen chimney.’ She pulled Miss Twitterton to her feet and steered her out of the room. As Peter opened the door for them, she darted a reproachful glance at him, but, as with Lancelot and Guinevere, their eyes met and hers fell.

  ‘Oh, and my lady!’ said the Superintendent, unmoved, ‘would you be so kind as to tell Mrs Ruddle she’s wanted? We must get those times straightened out a bit,’ he went on, addressing himself to Sellon, who grunted and took out a knife to sharpen his pencil.

  ‘Well,’ said Peter, in a tone almost of challenge, ‘she was quite frank about that.’

  Yes, my lord. She knew about it all right. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’

  ‘Not knowledge—learning!’ Peter corrected him peevishly. ‘A little
learning
—Alexander Pope.’

  ‘Is that so?’ replied Mr Kirk, not at all perturbed. ‘I must make a note of that. Ah! it don’t look as though anybody else could have got hold of the keys, but you never know.’

  ‘I think she was telling the truth.’

  ‘Reckon there’s several kinds of truth, my lord. There’s truth as far as you knows it; and there’s truth as far as you’re asked for it. But they don’t represent the whole truth—not necessarily. F’rinstance, I never asked that little lady if she locked up the house after someone else, did I? All I said was. When did you last see your fa—your uncle? See?’

  ‘Yes, I see. Personally, I always prefer
not
to have a key to the house in which they’ve discovered the body.’

  ‘There’s that about it,’ admitted Kirk. ‘But there’s circumstances in which you might rather it was you than somebody else, if you take my meaning. And there’s times when—What do you suppose she meant when she said, what had she done? Eh? Maybe it come to her then as she might have left them keys about, accidental on purpose. Or maybe—’

  ‘That was about the money.’

  ‘So it was. And maybe she thought of something else she’d done as wasn’t much use to her nor anybody, as it turned out. Something she was hiding there, if you ask me. If she’d been a man, I’d a-got it out of her fast enough—but women! They get howling and sniffing and you can’t do nothing with them.’

  ‘True,’ said Peter; and felt in his turn a momentary resentment against the whole sex, including his wife. After all, hadn’t she, more or less, ticked him off in the matter of neck-wringing? And the lady who now entered rubbing her hands on her apron and crying in self-important tones, ‘Did you want me, mister?’—there was nothing in
her
to thrill to music the silent string of chivalry. Kirk. however, knew where he was with the Mrs Ruddles of this life and attacked the position confidently.

  ‘Yes. We wanted to fix up a bit more exactly about the time of this murder. Now, Crutchley says he saw Mr Noakes alive and well on Wednesday evening about twenty-past six. You’d gone home by then, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, I had. I only came to Mr Noakes mornings. I wasn’t in the ’ouse after dinnertime.’

  ‘And you came up next morning and found the place shut up?’

  That’s right. I knocks ’ard on both doors—’im being’ a bit deaf I allus knocks ’ard, and then I gives a shout, like, under ’is bedroom winder, and then I knocks again and nothing come of it, and I says. Drat the man, I says, ’e’s gone off to Broxford. Thinkin’ he’d took the 10 o’clock ’bus the night before. There! I says, ’e might a-told me, and me not paid for last week, neither,’

  ‘What else did you do?’

  ‘Nothing. There wasn’t nothing to do. Only tell the baker and milkman not to call. And the noospaper. And leave word at the post-office to bring ’is letters down to me. Only there wasn’t no letters, only two, and they was bills, so I didn’t send ’em on.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Peter. ‘That’s the right way with bills. There, as the poet ungrammatically observes, there let them lay, like the goose with the golden eggs.’

  Mr Kirk found this quotation confusing and refused to pursue it

  ‘Didn’t you think of sending over to Miss Twitterton? She usually came down when Mr Noakes was away. You must have been surprised not to see her.’

  ‘It ain’t my place to go sendin’ for people if they don’t choose to come,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘If Mr Noakes ’ad wanted Aggie Twitterton, he could a-told her. Leastways, that’s how I thought about it. ’Im being’ dead, I see now, o’ course, he couldn’t, but I wasn’t to know that, was I? And I was inconvenienced enough not ’avin’ ’ad me money—you don’t expect me to go sendin’ two miles for people, as if I ’adn’t enough to do without that. Nor wasting good stamps on ’em, neither. And what’s more,’ said Mrs Ruddle, with some energy, ‘I says to meself. if ’e ain’t said nothing to me about goin’, maybe ’e ain’t told Aggie Twitterton, neither—and I ain’t one to interfere in other folks’ business, and don’t you think it.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Kirk. ‘Mean to say you thought he might have had some reason for wanting to leave the place quiet like?’

  ‘Well, he might and he mightn’t. That’s the way I looked at it. See? Of course, there was my week’s money—but there wasn’t no ’urry for that. Aggie Twitterton ’ud a-paid me if I arst ’er.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kirk. ‘I suppose you didn’t think of asking her on Sunday when she came over to play the organ in church?’

  ‘Me?’ said Mrs Ruddle, quite affronted. ‘I’m chapel. They’re out and gone by the time we finish. Not but what I ’
ave
been to church now and again, but there ain’t nothing to show for it. Up and down, up and down, as if one’s knees wasn’t wore out with scrubbing on week-days and a pore little bit of a sermon with no ’eart in it. Mr Goodacre’s a very kind gentleman and friendly to all, I ain’t sayin’ a word agin’ ’im, but I’m chapel and always was, and that’s the other end of the village, which by the time I was back here, they’ve all gone ’ome and Aggie Twitterton on ’er bicycle. So you see I couldn’t ketch ’er, not if I wanted ever so.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t.’ said Kirk. ‘All right. Well, you didn’t try to let Miss Twitterton know. I suppose you mentioned in the village that Mr Noakes was away?’

  ‘I dare say I did,’ admitted Mrs Ruddle. ‘It wasn’t nothing out o’ the way.’

  You told us,’ put in Peter, ‘that he’d gone by the ’bus at 10 o’clock.’

  ‘So I thought ’e ’ad.’ said Mrs Ruddle.

  ‘And that would seem natural, so there would be no inquiries. Did anybody call for Mr Noakes during the week?’

  ‘Only Mr Goodacre. I see him on Thursday morning, poking about the place, and he sees me and hollers out, “Is Mr Noakes away?” “That’s right,” I says, “gone over to Broxford,” I says. And he says, “I’ll call another day,” he says. I don’t remember as nobody come after him.’

  ‘Then last night,’ resumed Kirk, ‘when you let this lady and gentleman in, did you find everything as usual?’

  ‘That’s right. Exceptin’ ’is dirty supper things on the table where ’e’d left them. ’e allus ’ad ’is supper at ’ar-par’-seven reg’lar. Then ’e’d set in the kitchen with the paper till ’e came in ’ere for the noos at 9.30. Very reg’lar ’e was, a very reg’lar sort of man.’

  Kirk beamed. This was the kind of information he was looking for.

  ‘So he’d had his supper. But his bed hadn’t been slept in?’

  ‘No, it ’adn’t. But of course I put on clean sheets for the lady and gentleman. I ’ope I knows what’s proper. Them,’ explained Mrs Ruddle, anxious to make things clear, ‘wos the week-before’s sheets, wot wos all dried and ready Wednesday, but I couldn’t take ’em in, along of the ’ouse being’ shet up. So I ’ad them all put aside neat in me kitchen, and I didn’t ’ave to do more than put them to the fire a minnit and there they wos, all aired and fit for the King and Queen of England.’

  ‘That helps us a lot,’ said Kirk. ‘Mr Noakes ate his supper at 7.30, so presumably he was alive then.’ He glanced at Peter, but Peter was offering no further embarrassing suggestions about murderers who ate their victims’ suppers, and the Superintendent was encouraged to proceed. ‘He didn’t go to bed, so that gives us—When did he usually go to bed, Mrs Ruddle, do you know?’

  ‘Eleven o’clock, Mr Kirk, reg’lar as clockwork, ’e’d switch off the wireless and I’d see ’is candle go upstairs to bed. I can see ’is bedroom from my back winder, plain enough.’

  ‘Ah! now, Mrs Ruddle, just you cast your mind back to Wednesday night. Do you recollect seeing his candle go upstairs to bed?’

  ‘Well, there!’ exclaimed Mrs Ruddle, ‘now you comes to mention of it, Mr Kirk, I did not. Which I remember saying to my Bert only the next day, “There,” I says, “if I’d only kep’ awake, I mighter known ’e’d gone off, alonger seein’ ’is bedroom winder dark. But there!” I says, “I was that wore out, I dropped off the moment me ’ead was on the piller.”’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Kirk, disappointed, ‘it don’t really matter. Seeing as his bed wasn’t slept in, it’s likely he was downstairs when—’

  (Thank God! thought Peter. Not in my lady’s chamber.)

  Mrs Ruddle interrupted with a sharp screech.

  ‘Oh. lor, Mr Kirk! There now!’

  ‘Have you thought of something?’

  Mrs Ruddle had, and her expression, as her eyes wandered from Kirk to Sellon and then to Peter, indicated that it was not only important but alarming.

  ‘Why, of course. I dunno how it didn’t come into me ’ead before, but I been that moithered with all these dretful things a-’appenin’. ’Course, come to think of it if ’e wasn’t off by the ’bus, then ’e must a-been dead afore ’ar-pas’-nine.’

  The constable’s hand paused in its note-taking. Kirk said sharply:

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘W’y, ’is wireless wasn’t a-workin’, and I says to Bert—’

  ‘Just a minute. What’s all this about the wireless?’

  ‘W’y, Mr Kirk, if Mr Noakes ’ad been ’ere alive, ’e wouldn’t a-missed the 9.30 noos, not if it was ever so. ’E set great store by the last noos, pore soul—though wot good it done ’im I
don’t
know. And I recollects sayin’ to Bert last Wednesday night as ever was, “Funny thing,” I says, “Mr Noakes ain’t got ’is wireless goin’ tonight. That ain’t like ’im,” I says.’

  ‘But you couldn’t hear his wireless from your cottage with all these doors and windows shut?’

  Mrs Ruddle licked her lips.

  ‘Well, I won’t deceive you, Mr Kirk.’ She swallowed, and then went on as volubly as ever; her eye avoided the Superintendent’s and fixed itself on Joe Sellon’s pencil. ‘I did jest run over ’ere a few minutes arter the ’arf-hour to borrer a drop of paraffin from ’is shed. And if the wireless ’ad bin on then I couldn’t a ’elped ’earin’ of it, for them walls at the back ain’t only plaster, and ’e allus ’ad it a-roarin’ powerful ’ard on account of being’ ’ard of ’earin’.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Kirk.

  ‘No ’arm,’ said Mrs Ruddle, backing away from the table, ‘no ’arm in borrowin’ a drop o’ paraffin.’

  ‘Well,’ replied Kirk, cautiously, ‘that’s neither here nor there. Nine-thirty news. That’s on the National.’

  ‘That’s right. He never troubled with the 5 o’clock.’