The Nine Tailors (25 page)

“Bless my heart,” said Superintendent Blundell. “And what do you suppose we’re to make of that?”

Wimsey shook his head. “I think he saw something—or how did he know that the rope was gone from the cope-chest? But as for hanging, no! He’s crazed about hanging. Got a hanging complex, or whatever they call it. The man wasn’t hanged. Which Monday night do you suppose Potty meant?”

“Can’t be January 6th, can it?” said the Superintendent. “The body was buried on the 4th, as far as we can make out. And it can’t very well be December 30th, because Legros only got here on January 1st—if that was Legros you saw. And besides, I can’t make out whether he means Sunday or Monday, with his boiled pork.”

“I can,” said Wimsey. “He had boiled pork and greens on Sunday, and Parson told him to be thankful and so he was. And on Monday, he had the pork cold with beans—probably the tinned variety if I know the modern countrywoman—and he felt thankful again. So he went down to the church to be thankful in the proper place. It would be some time in the evening, as there was a light in the vestry.”

“That’s right. Potty lives with an aunt of his—a decent old soul, but not very sharp. He’s always slipping out at night. They’re cunning as the devil, these naturals. But which evening was it?”

“The day after Parson had preached on thankfulness,” said Wimsey. “Thankfulness for Christmas. That looks like December 30th. Why not? You don’t know that Legros didn’t get here before January 1st. That’s when Cranton got here.”

“But I thought we’d washed Cranton out of it,” objected Mr. Blundell, “and put Will Thoday in his place.”

“Then who was it I met on the road over the bridge?”

“That must have been Legros.”

“Well, it may be—though I still think it was Cranton, or his twin-brother. But if I met Legros on January 1st, he can’t have been hanged by Will Thoday on December 30th. And in any case, he wasn’t hanged. And,” said Wimsey, triumphantly, “we still don’t know how he did die!”

The Superintendent groaned. “What I say is, we’ve got to find Cranton, anyhow. And as for December 30th, how are you going to be sure of that, anyway?”

“I shall ask the Rector which day he preached about thankfulness. Or Mrs. Venables. She’s more likely to know.”

“And I’d better see Thoday again. Not that I believe a single word Potty says. And how about Jim Thoday? How does he come into it now?”

“I don’t know. But one thing I’m sure of. Super. It was no sailor put those knots into Gaude’s rope. I’ll take my oath on that.”

“Oh, well!” said the Superintendent.

* * *

Wimsey went back to the house and found the Rector in his study, busily writing out a touch of Treble Bob Major.

“One moment, my dear boy,” he said, pushing the tobacco-jar towards his guest, “one moment. I am just pricking this little touch to show Wally Pratt how to do it. He has got himself ‘imbrangled’ as they call it—fine old English word, that. Now what has the foolish lad done here? The ninth lead should bring Queen’s change—let me see, let me see—51732468, 15734286—that’s the first thirds and fourths all right—51372468, 15374286—and that’s the first fourths and thirds—13547826—Ah! here is the trouble! The eighth should be at home. What has happened?—To be sure! What a beetle-headed cuckoo I am! He has forgotten to make the bob. She can’t come home till she’s called.” He ran a red-ink line down the page and started to write figures furiously. “There! 51372468, 15374286 and
now
she comes home like a bird!—13572468. That’s better. Now it should come round at the second repeat. I will just check it. Second to fifth, third to second—yes, yes—that brings 15263748, with Tittums at the end of the second course, and repeated once again brings it round. I will just jot down the lead-ends for him to check it by. Second to third, third to fifth, fourth to second, fifth to seventh, sixth to fourth, seventh to eighth, eighth to sixth for the plain lead. Then the bob. Plain, bob, bob, three plain and a bob. I cannot understand why red ink should distribute itself so lavishly over one’s person. There! I have a large smear on my cuff! Call her in the middle, in and out and home. Repeat twice. A lovely little touch.” He pushed aside several sheets of paper covered with figures, and transferred a quantity of red ink from his fingers to his trouser-legs. “And now, how are you getting along? Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Yes, padre. You can tell me on which Sunday this winter you preached about thankfulness.”

“Thankfulness? Well, now, that’s rather a favourite subject of mine. Do you know, I find people very much disposed to grumble—I do indeed—and when you come to think of it, they might all be very much worse off. Even the farmers. As I said to them last Harvest Festival—Oh! you were asking about my Thankfulness sermon—well, I nearly always preach about it at Harvest Festival.... Not so long ago as that? ... Let me think. My memory is getting very unreliable, I fear...” He made a dive for the door. “Agnes, my dear! Agnes! Can you spare us a moment? ... My wife is sure to remember.... My dear, I am so sorry to interrupt you, but can you recollect when I last preached about Thankfulness? I touched on the subject in my Tithe sermon, I remember—would you be thinking of that? Not that we have had any trouble about tithe in this parish. Our farmers are very sensible. A man from St. Peter came to talk to me about it, but I pointed out to him that the 1918 adjustment was made in the farmers’ interests and that if they thought they had reason to complain of the 1925 Act, then they should see about getting a fresh adjustment made. But the law, I said, is the law. Oh, on the matter of tithe I assure you I am adamant. Adamant.”

“Yes, Theodore,” said Mrs. Venables, with rather a wry smile, “but if you didn’t so often advance people money to pay the tithe with, they mightn’t be as reasonable as they are.”

“That’s different,” said the Rector, hurriedly, “quite different. It’s a matter of principle, and any small personal loan has nothing to do with it. Even the best of women don’t always grasp the importance of a legal principle, do they, Lord Peter? My sermon dealt with the principle. The text was: ‘Render unto Caesar.’ Though whether Queen Anne’s Bounty is to be regarded as Caesar or as God—and sometimes, I admit, I feel that it is a little unfortunate that the Church should appear to be on Caesar’s side, and that disestablishment and disendowment—”

“A Caesarean operation is indicated, so to speak?” suggested Wimsey.

“A—? Oh, yes! Very good,” said the Rector. “My dear, that is very good, don’t you think? I must tell the Bishop—no, perhaps not. He is just a leetle bit strait-laced. But it is true—if only one could separate the two things, the temporal and the spiritual—but the question I ask myself is always, the churches themselves—the buildings—our own beautiful church—what would become of it in such a case?”

“My dear, said Mrs. Venables, “Lord Peter was asking about your sermons on Thankfulness. Didn’t you preach one on the Sunday after Christmas? About thankfulness for the Christmas message? Surely you remember. The text was taken from the Epistle for the day: ‘Thou art no more a servant, but a son.’ It was about how happy we ought to be as God’s children and about making a habit of saying ‘Thank-you Father’ for all the pleasant things of life, and being as pleasant-tempered as we should wish our own children to be. I remember it so well, because Jackie and Fred Holliday got quarrelling in church over those prayer-books we gave them and had to be sent out.”

“Quite right, my dear. You always remember everything. That was it, Lord Peter. The Sunday after Christmas. It comes back to me very clearly now. Old Mrs. Giddings stopped me in the porch afterwards to complain that there weren’t enough plums in her Christmas plum-pudding.”

“Mrs. Giddings is an ungrateful old wretch,” said his wife.

“Then the next day was the 30th December,” said Wimsey. “Thanks, Padre, that’s very helpful. Do you recollect Will Thoday coming round to see you on the Monday evening, by any chance?”

The Rector looked helplessly at his wife, who replied readily enough:

“Of course he did Theodore. He came to ask you something about the New Year’s peal. Don’t you remember saying how queer and ill he looked? Of course, he must have been working up for that attack of ’flu, poor man. He came late—about 9 o’clock—and you said you couldn’t understand why he shouldn’t have waited till the morning.”

“True, true,” said the Rector. “Yes, Thoday came round to me on the Monday night. I hope you are not—well! I mustn’t ask indiscreet questions, must I?”

“Not when I don’t know the answers,” said Wimsey, with a smile and a shake of the head. “About Potty Peake, now. Just how potty is he? Can one place any sort of reliance on his account of anything?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Venables, “sometimes one can and sometimes one can’t. He gets mixed up, you know. He’s quite truthful, as far as his understanding goes, but he gets fancies and then tells them as if they were facts. You can’t trust anything he says about ropes or hanging—that’s his little peculiarity. Otherwise—if it was a question of pigs, for instance, or the church organ—he’s quite good and reliable.”

“I see,” said Wimsey, “Well, he has been talking a good bit about ropes and hanging.”

“Then don’t believe a word of it,” replied Mrs. Venables, robustly. “Dear me! here’s that Superintendent coming up the drive. I suppose he wants you.”

Wimsey caught Mr. Blundell in the garden and headed him away from the house. “I’ve seen Thoday,” said the Superintendent. “Of course he denies the whole story. Says Potty was dreaming.”

“But how about the rope?”

“There you are! But that Potty was hiding behind the churchyard wall when you and I found the rope in the well, and how much he may have heard, I don’t know. Anyway, Thoday denies it, and short of charging him with the murder, I’ve got to take his word for it. You know these dratted regulations. No bullying of witnesses. That’s what they say. And whatever Thoday did or didn’t do, he couldn’t have buried the body, so where are you? Do you think any jury is going to convict on the word of a village idiot like Potty Peake? No. Our job’s clear. We’ve got to find Cranton.”

* * *

That afternoon. Lord Peter received a letter.

“DEAR LORD PETER,—I have just thought of something funny you ought to know about, though I don’t see how it can have anything to do with the murder. But in detective stories the detective always wants to know about anything funny, so I am sending you the paper. Uncle Edward wouldn’t like me writing to you, because he says you encourage me about wanting to be a writer and mixing myself up in police work—he is a silly old stick-in-the-mud! So I don’t suppose Miss Garstairs—that’s our H.M.—would let me send you a letter, but I’m putting this into one to Penelope Dwight and I do hope she sends it on all right.

“I found the paper lying in the belfry on the Saturday before Easter Day and I meant to show it to Mrs. Venables because it was so funny, but Dad dying made me forget all about it. I thought it must be some rubbish of Potty Peake’s, but Jack Godfrey says it isn’t Potty’s writing, but it’s quite mad enough to be him, isn’t it? Anyway, I thought you might like to have it. I don’t see how Potty could have got hold of that foreign paper, do you?

“I hope you are getting on well with the investigations. Are you still at Fenchurch St. Paul? I am writing a poem about the founding of Tailor Paul. Miss Bowler says it is quite good and I expect they will put it in the School Magazine. That will be one in the eye for Uncle Edward, anyhow. He can’t stop me being printed in the School Mag. Please write if you have time and tell me if you find out anything about the paper.

“Yours sincerely,

“HILARY THORPE.”

“A colleague, as Sherlock Holmes would say, after my own heart,” said Wimsey, as he unfolded the thin enclosure. “Oh, lord! ‘I thought to see the fairies in the fields’—a lost work by Sir James Barrie, no doubt! Literary sensation of the year. ‘But I saw only the evil elephants with their black backs.’ This is neither rhyme nor reason. Hum! there is a certain dismal flavour about it suggestive of Potty, but no reference to hanging, so I conclude that it is not his—he surely couldn’t keep King Charles’ Head out of it so long. Foreign paper—wait a minute! I seem to know the look of that paper. By God, yes! Susanne Legros’ letter! If the paper isn’t the dead spit of this, I’m a Dutchman. Let me think. Suppose this was the paper Jean Legros sent to Cranton, or Will Thoday, or whoever it was? Blundell had better have a look at it. Bunter, get the car out. And what do you make of this?”

“Of this, my lord? I should say that it was written by a person of no inconsiderable literary ability, who had studied the works of Sheridan Lefanu and was, if I may be permitted the expression, bats in the belfry, my lord.”

“It strikes you that way? It does not look to you like a cipher message, or anything of that kind?”

“It had not occurred to me to regard it in that light, my lord. The style is cramped, certainly, but it is cramped in what I should call a consistent manner, suggestive of—ah!—literary rather than mechanical effort.”

“True, Bunter, true. It certainly isn’t anything simple and bucolic of the every-third-word type. And it doesn’t look as if it was meant to be read with a grid, because, with the possible exception of ‘gold,’ there isn’t a single word in it that’s significant—or could be significant of anything but moonshine. That bit about the moon is rather good, of its kind. Mannered, but imaginative. ‘Frail and faint as a sickle of straw.’ Alliteration’s artful aid, what? ‘So then came minstrels, having gold trumpets, harps and drums. These played very loudly beside me, breaking that spell.’ Whoever wrote that had an ear for a cadence. Lefanu, did you say? That’s not a bad shot, Bunter. It reminds me a little of that amazing passage in
Wylder’s Hand
about Uncle Lorne’s dream.”

“That was the passage I had in mind, my lord.”

“Yes. Well—in that case the victim was due to ‘be sent up again, at last, a thousand, a hundred, ten and one, black marble steps, and then it will be the other one’s turn.’ He was sent up again, Bunter, wasn’t he?”

“From the grave, my lord? I believe that was so. Like the present unknown individual.”