Busman’s Honeymoon (39 page)

  ‘There’s a ledge, I suppose,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes. The gun dislodged the chain. If Noakes had kept his chimneys swept his murderer might have been safe. What’s that, padre, about doing evil that good may come?’

  Mr Goodacre was spared discussion of this doctrinal point by the arrival of Mr Puffett with Bunter at his elbow.

  ‘Did you want me, my lord?’

  ‘Yes, Puffett. When you were clearing up this room on Wednesday morning after we’d loosened the soot, do you remember picking up a bit of string from the floor?’

  ‘String?’ said Mr Puffett. ‘If it’s string you’re looking for, I reckon you’ve come to the right place for it. When I sees a bit o’ string, my lord, I picks it up and puts it away, ’andy when wanted.’ He pulled up his sweaters with a grunt and began to produce rolls of string from his pockets as a conjuror produces coloured paper. ‘There’s all sorts ’ere, you can take your choice. As I says to Frank Crutchley, safe bind, safe bind, I says....’

  ‘That was about a piece of string, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Puffett, extracting with some difficulty a thick piece of small-cord. ‘I picks up a piece of string off this very floor, and I says to him—alloodin’ to that there forty pound of his—I says to him—’

  ‘I thought I saw you pick some up. I suppose you can’t tell by this time
which
piece it was?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mr Puffett, enlightened. ‘I get you now, me lord. You was wantin’ that pertickler bit o’ string. Well, now, I dunno as I could rightly say which was that identical piece of string. Not the
string,
I couldn’t. Not but what it was a good bit of string, too—a good thick piece, reckon it might be a yard long without knots. But whether it was
this
piece now, or
that
piece I wouldn’t pretend to say.’

  ‘A yard long?’ said Peter. ‘It must have been more than that.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Puffett. ‘Not the string—well, it might a-been four foot, not more. There was a rare good bit o’ black fishin’-line, mebbe twenty feet or so—but it’s string you’re lookin’ for.’

  ‘I made a mistake.’ said Peter. ‘I ought, of course, to have said fishing-line. Naturally, it would be fishing-line. And black. It had to be. Have you got that on you?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mr Puffett, ‘if it’s fishin’-line you’re after, w’y didn’t you say so? Safe bind—’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter. He whipped the roll of black line deftly from the sweep’s slow fingers. ‘Yes. That’s it. That would hold a twenty-pound salmon. And I’ll bet you there’s a sinker at each end. I thought so—yes.’

  He threaded one end of the line through one of the rings at the lip of the pot brought the two ends with their sinkers together and handed them to Bunter, who took them without a word, mounted the steps and passed the double line over the hook in the ceiling.

  ‘Oh!’ said Harriet. ‘I see now. Peter, how horrible!’

  ‘Haul up,’ said Peter, unheeding. ‘Take care you don’t foul the line.’

  Bunter hauled on the line, grunting a little as it cut into his fingers. The pot steadied from below by Peter’s outstretched hand, stirred, lifted, moved up and away out of his reach, rising in a great semicircle at the end of the iron chain.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Peter. ‘The plant won’t fall out. It’s a dead tight fit, as
you
know. Haul steady.’

  He went to take the slack of the line as it came down over the hook. The pot now lay level, strung out flat below the rafters, the cactus emerging sideways, so that it looked in the dimness like a monstrous hermit crab clawing out greedily from its shell.

  The vicar, peering up at it, ventured a remonstrance.

  ‘Pray, be careful, my man. If that thing was to slip and come down it might easily kill somebody.’

  ‘Very easily,’ said Peter. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’ He walked backwards towards the radio cabinet, keeping the double string taut in his hand.

  ‘It must weigh getting on for fourteen pound,’ said Bunter.

  ‘I can feel it,’ said Peter, grimly. ‘How did you come not to notice its weight when you and Kirk were examining it? It’s been loaded with something—lead shot from the feel of it. This must have been planned some time ago.’

  ‘So that,’ said Harriet, ‘is how a woman could have broken a tall man’s head. A woman with strong hands.’

  ‘Or anybody,’ said Peter, ‘who didn’t happen to be there s at the time. Anyone with a cast-iron alibi. God makes power, padre, and man makes engines.’

  He brought the two ends of the line to the edge of the cabinet, to which they reached exactly. He lifted the lid and slipped them under; then brought the lid down upon them. The spring catch stood up to the strain, and the sinkers held firm against the flange, though Harriet noticed that the pull of the heavy pot had raised the near side of the cabinet slightly from the ground. But it could not lift far; since its feet were jammed close against the end of the settle, over which the thin black line stretched taut and nearly invisible to the hook in the beam.

  A sharp knock on the window made them all start. Kirk and Sellon stood outside, beckoning excitedly. Peter walked quickly across and opened the lattice, while Bunter came down from the steps, folded them and set them quietly back against the wall.

  ‘Yes?’ said Peter.

  ‘My lord!’ Sellon’s voice was quick and eager. ‘My lord, I never told you no lie. You
can
see the clock from the window. Mr Kirk. he’s just told me—’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Kirk. ‘Half-past twelve, plain as a pike-staff.... Hullo!’ he added, able to see better now that the window was open. ‘They’ve took the cactus down.’

  ‘No, they haven’t,’ said Peter. ‘The cactus is still there. You’d better come along in. The front door’s locked. Take the keys and lock it again behind you.... It’s all right.’ he added, speaking into Kirk’s ear. ‘But come in quietly—you may have to make an arrest.’

  The two policemen vanished with surprising speed.

  Mr Puffett, who had been scratching his head in a contemplative manner, accosted Peter.

  ‘That’s an orkerd-looking arrangement of yours, me lord. Are you dead sure it won’t come down?’

  As some safeguard against this possibility, he clapped on his bowler.

  ‘Not unless somebody opens the cabinet for the 12.30 gramophone orgy.... For God’s sake, padre, stand away from that lid!’

  The vicar, who had advanced towards the cabinet, started away guiltily at the peremptory tone.

  ‘I was only looking more closely at the string,’ he explained. ‘You can’t see it at all against the panelling, you know. Most remarkable. It’s being so black and so fine, I suppose.’

  ‘That.’ said Peter, ‘is the idea of fishing-line. I’m sorry I shouted, but do keep back in case of accident. Do you realise you’re the one person in this room who isn’t safe?’

  The vicar retired into a corner to work this out. The door was flung open, and Mrs Ruddle, uncalled and unwanted, announced in loud tones:

  ‘’Ere’s the p’leece!’

  ‘There!’ said Mr Puffett. He tried to urge her out, but Mrs Ruddle was determined to know what all this long conference was about. She planted herself firmly beside the door with arms akimbo.

  Kirk’s ox-like eyes went to Peter and then followed his glance up to the ceiling, where they encountered the astonishing phenomenon of the cactus, floating Houdini-fashion, without visible means of support.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter. ‘That’s where it is. But don’t touch that cabinet, or I won’t answer for the consequences. I fancy that’s where that cactus was at 9.5 p.m. last Wednesday week, and that’s why Sellon was able to see the clock. This is what’s called reconstructing the crime.’

  ‘The crime, eh?’ said Kirk.

  ‘You wanted a blunt instrument that could strike a tall man from behind and above. There it is. That would break the skull of an ox—with the power we’ve put behind it.’

  Kirk looked at the pot again. ‘H’m,’ he said slowly. ‘Pretty—but I’d like a bit o’ proof. There weren’t no blood nor ’air on that there pot w’en last see it.’

  ‘Of course not!’ cried Harriet. ‘It was wiped.’

  ‘When and how?’ said Peter, slewing round on her sharply.

  ‘Why, not till last Wednesday morning. The day before yesterday. You reminded us only just now. On Wednesday morning, under our very eyes, while we all sat round and watched. That’s How, Peter, that’s How!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, smiling at her excitement. ‘That’s How. And now we know How, we know Who.’

  ‘Thank God, we know something at last,’ said Harriet. At the moment she cared little for How or Who. Her jubilee was for the alert cock of Peter’s head, as he stood and smiled at her, balancing himself lightly and swaying a little on his toes. A job finished—and, after all, no failure—no more frustrated dreams about chained and defeated men seeking a lost memory among hot deserts horrid with prickly cactus.

  But the vicar, not being Peter’s wife, took the thing otherwise.

  ‘You mean,’ he said, in a shocked voice, ‘that when Frank Crutchley watered the cactus and wiped the pot—oh! but that is a dreadful conclusion to come to! Frank Crutchley one of my own choirmen!’

  Kirk was better satisfied.

  ‘Crutchley?’ said he. ‘Ah!
now
we’re getting at it. He had his grudge about the forty pound—and ’e thought he’d get even with the old man and marry the heiress—two birds with one blunt instrument, eh?’

  ‘The heiress?’ exclaimed the vicar, in fresh bewilderment. ‘But he’s marrying Polly Mason—he came round about the banns this morning.’

  ‘That’s rather a sad story, Mr Goodacre,’ said Harriet. ‘He was secretly engaged to Miss Twitterton and he—hush!’

  ‘D’you think they were in it together?’ began Kirk—and then suddenly woke up to the fact that Miss Twitterton was in the room with them.

  ‘I couldn’t find your fountain-pen
anywhere,
’ said Miss Twitterton, earnest and apologetic. ‘I do hope—’ She became aware of something odd and strained in the atmosphere, and of Joe Sellon, who was stupidly gaping in the one direction that everybody else was avoiding.

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘
What
an extraordinary thing! How ever did Uncle’s cactus get up there?’

  She made a bee-line for the cabinet. Peter caught her and pulled her back.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, cryptically, to Kirk over his shoulder; and led Miss Twitterton away to where the vicar still stood petrified with astonishment.

  ‘Now,’ said Kirk, ‘let’s get this clear. How exactly do you make out he worked it?’

  ‘If that trap was set like that on the night of the murder when Crutchley left at 6.20,’ (Miss Twitterton uttered a faint squeak) ‘then, when Noakes came in, as he always did at half-past nine, to turn on the wireless for the news-bulletin—’

  ‘Which he did,’ said Mrs Ruddle, ‘reg’lar as clockwork—’

  ‘Why then—’

  But Harriet had thought of an objection, and whatever Peter thought of her she must put it.

  ‘But Peter—could anybody—even by candlelight walk a right up to that cabinet without noticing that the cactus wasn’t there?’

  ‘I think—’ said Peter.

  The door opened so quickly that it caught Mrs Ruddle sharply on the elbow—and Crutchley walked in. In one hand he carried the standard lamp, and had, apparently, come in to fetch something on his way to the van outside, for he called back to some invisible person behind him.

  All right—I’ll get it and lock it up for you.’

  He was abreast of the cabinet before Peter could say:

  ‘What do you want, Crutchley?’

  His tone made Crutchley turn his head.

  ‘Key o’ the radio, my lord,’ he said briefly and, still looking at Peter, lifted the lid.

  For the millionth part of a second, the world stood still. Then the heavy pot threshed down like a flail. It flashed as it came. It skimmed within an inch over Crutchley’s head, striking white terror into his face with its passing, and shattered the globe of the lamp into a thousand tinkling fragments.

  Then, and only then, Harriet realised that they had all cried out, and she among them. And, after that, there was silence for several seconds, while the great pendulum swung over them in a gleaming arc.

  Peter spoke, warningly:

  ‘Stand back, padre.’

  His voice broke the tension. Crutchley turned on him with a face like the face of a beast.

  ‘You devil! You damned cunning devil! How did you know? Curse you—how did you know I done it? I’ll have the throat out of you!’

  He leapt, and Harriet saw Peter brace himself; but Kirk and Sellon caught him as he sprang from under the death-swing of the pot. He wrestled with them, panting and snarling.

  ‘Let me go, blast you! Let me get at him! So you set a trap for me, did you? Well, I killed him. The old brute cheated me. So did you, Aggie Twitterton, blast you! I been done out o’ my rights. I killed him, I tell you, and all for nothing.’

  Bunter went quietly up, caught the pot as it swung and brought it to a standstill.

  Kirk was saying:

  ‘Frank Crutchley, I arrest you ...’

  The rest of the words were lost in the prisoner’s frenzied shouting. Harriet went over and stood by the window. Peter had not moved. He left Bunter and Puffett to help the police. Even with this assistance, they had their work cut out to drag Crutchley from the room.

  ‘Dear me!’ said Mr Goodacre. ‘This is a most shocking thing!’ He picked up his surplice and stole.

  ‘Keep him off!’ shrieked Miss Twitterton, as the struggling group surged past her. ‘How horrible! Keep him off! To think that I ever let him come near me!’ Her small face was distorted with fury. She ran after them, shaking her clenched fists and crying out grotesquely: ‘Beast! beast! how can you kill poor Uncle!’

  The vicar turned to Harriet.