The Nine Tailors (31 page)

“I’m afraid so.”

“And where are they now? Has this man Cranton got them? Why hasn’t somebody found them by now? I can’t think what the police are doing.”

* * *

Sunday seemed an unusually long day. On the Monday morning, a great many things happened at once. The first thing was the arrival of Superintendent Blundell, in great excitement.

“We’ve got that letter from Maidstone,” he announced, “and whose do you suppose the writing is?”

“I’ve been thinking it over,” said Wimsey. “I think it must have been Deacon’s.”

“There!” said Mr. Blundell, disappointed. “Well, you’re quite right, my lord; it is.”

“It must be the original cipher,” said Wimsey. “When we found out that it had to do with bell-ringing, I realised that Deacon must be the author. To have two bell-ringing convicts in Maidstone Gaol at once seemed rather too much of a coincidence. And then, when I showed the paper to Mrs. Thoday, I felt sure that she recognised the writing. It might have meant that Legros had written to her, but it was still more likely that she knew it to be her husband’s.”

“Well, then, how did it come to be written on that foreign paper?”

“Foreign paper is much of a muchness,” said Wimsey. “Did Lady Thorpe ever have a foreign maid? Old Lady Thorpe, I mean.”

“Sir Charles had a French cook,” said the Superintendent.

“At the time of the theft?”

“Yes. She left them when the War broke out, I remember. She wanted to get back to her family, and they scraped her across on one of the last boats.”

“Then that’s clear enough. Deacon invented his cryptogram before he actually hid the emeralds. He couldn’t have taken it into prison with him. He must have handed it to somebody—”

“Mary,” said the Superintendent, with a grim smile.

“Perhaps. And she must have sent it to Legros. It’s all rather obscure.”

“Not so obscure as that, my lord.” Mr. Blundell’s face grew still grimmer. “I thought it was a bit reckless, if you’ll excuse me, showing that paper to Mary Thoday. She’s skipped.”

“Skipped?”

“First train to town this morning. And Will Thoday with her. A precious pair.”

“Good God!”

“You may say so, my lord. Oh, we’ll have them, don’t you fear. Gone off, that’s what they’ve done, and the emeralds with them.”

“I admit,” said Wimsey, “I didn’t expect that.”

“Didn’t you?” said Mr. Blundell. “Well, I didn’t either, or I’d have kept a sharper eye on them. And by the way, we know now who that Legros fellow was.”

“You’re a perfect budget of news to-day, Super.”

“Ah! well—we’ve had a letter from your friend M. Rozier. He had that woman’s house searched, and what do you think they found? Legros’ identification disc—no less. Any more guesses coming, my lord?”

“I might make a guess, but I won’t. I’ll buy it. What was the name?”

“Name of Arthur Cobbleigh.”

“And who’s Arthur Cobbleigh when he’s at home?”

“You hadn’t guessed that, then?”

“No—my guess was quite different. Go on. Super. Spill the beans.”

“Well, now. Arthur Cobbleigh—seems he was just a bloke. But can you guess where he came from?”

“I’ve given up guessing.”

“He came from a little place near Dartford—only about half a mile from the wood where Deacon’s body was found.”

“Oho! now we’re coming to it.”

“I got on the ’phone straight away as soon as this letter came. Cobbleigh was a chap aged somewhere about twenty-five in 1914. Not a good record. Labourer. Been in trouble once or twice with the police for petty thieving and assault. Joined up in the first year of the War and considered rather a good riddance. Last seen on the last day of his leave in 1918, and that day was just two days after Deacon’s escape from prison. Left his home to rejoin his unit. Never seen again. Last news of him, ‘Missing believed killed’ in the retreat over the Marne. Officially, that is. Last actual news of him—over there!”

The Superintendent jerked his thumb in the general direction of the churchyard.

Wimsey groaned.

“It makes no sense. Super, it makes no sense! If this man Cobbleigh joins up in the first year of the War, how, on earth could he have been elaborately in league with Deacon, who went to Maidstone in 1914? There was no time. Damn it! You don’t get a man out of quod in a few spare hours spent on leave. If Cobbleigh had been a warder—if he’d been a fellow-convict—if he’d been anything to do with the prison, I could understand it. Had he a relation in the gaol or anything of that sort? There must have been something more to it than that.”

“Must there? Look here, my lord, how’s this? I’ve been working this thing out coming over, and this is what I make out of it. Deacon bust away from a working-party, didn’t he? He was found still wearing his prison dress, wasn’t he? Doesn’t that show his escape wasn’t planned out elaborately beforehand? They’d have found him fast enough, if he hadn’t gone and pitched down that dene-hole, wouldn’t they? Now, you listen to this, and see if it don’t hold water. I can see it plain as a pike-staff. Here’s this Cobbleigh—a hard nut, by all accounts. He’s walking through the wood on the way from his mother’s cottage, to take the train at Dartford for wherever he might be going to join up with the troops going back to France. Somewhere on that moor he finds a chap lurking about. He collars him, and finds he’s pinched the escaped convict that everybody’s looking for. The convict says, ‘Let me go, and I’ll make you a rich man,’ see? Cobbleigh’s got no objection to that. He says, ‘Lead me to it. What is it?’ The convict says ‘The Wilbraham emeralds, that’s what it is.’ Cobbleigh says, ‘Coo! tell us some more about that. How’m I to know you ain’t kidding me? You tell us where they are and we’ll see about it.’ Deacon says, ‘No fear—catch me telling you, without you helps me first.’ Cobbleigh says, ‘You can’t help yourself,’ he says, ‘I only got to give you up and then where’ll you be?’ Deacon says, ‘You won’t get much out o’ that. You stick by me and I’ll put hundreds of thousands of pounds in your hands.’ They go on talking, and Deacon, like a fool, lets out that he’s made a note of the hiding-place and has it on him. ‘Oh, have you?’ says Cobbleigh, ‘then you damn well take that.’ And lams him over the head. Then he goes over him and finds the paper, which he’s upset to find he can’t make head or tail of. Then he has another look at Deacon and sees he’s done him in good and proper. ‘Oh, hell!’ says he, ‘that’s torn it. I better shove him out of the way and clear off.’ So he pops him down the hole and makes tracks for France. How’s that, so far?”

“Fine, full-blooded stuff,” said Wimsey. “But why should Deacon be carrying a note of the hiding-place about with him? And how did it come to be written on foreign paper?”

“I don’t know. Well, say it was like you said before. Say he’d given the paper to his wife. He spills his wife’s address, like a fool, and then it all happens the way I said. Cobbleigh goes back to France, deserts, and gets taken care of by Suzanne. He keeps quiet about who he is, because he don’t know whether Deacon’s body’s been found or not and he’s afraid of being had up for murder if he goes home. Meanwhile, he’s stuck to the paper—no, that’s wrong. He writes to Mrs. Deacon and gets the paper out of her.”

“Why should she give it up?”

“That’s a puzzler. Oh, I know! I’ve got it this time. He tells her he’s got the key to it. That’s right. Deacon told him, ‘My wife’s got the cipher, but she’s a babbling fool and I ain’t trusted her with the key. I’ll give you the key and that’ll show you I know what I’m talking about.’ Then Cobbleigh kills him, and when he thinks it’s safe he writes over to Mary and she sends him the paper.”

“The original paper?”

“Why, yes.”

“You’d think she’d keep that and send him a copy.”

“No. She sends the original, so that he can see it’s in Deacon’s writing.”

“But he wouldn’t necessarily know Deacon’s writing.”

“How’s she to know that? Cobbleigh works out the cipher and they help him to get across.”

“But we’ve been into all that and decided the Thodays couldn’t do it.”

“All right, then. The Thodays bring Cranton into it. Cobbleigh comes over, anyhow, under the name of Paul Taylor, and he comes along to Fenchurch and they get the emeralds. Then Thoday kills him, and he takes the emeralds. Meanwhile, along comes Cranton to see what’s happening and finds they’ve been ahead of him. He clears off and the Thodays go about looking innocent till they see we’re getting a bit close on their trail. Then
they
clear.”

“Who did the killing, then?”

“Any one of them, I should say.”

“And who did the burying?”

“Not Will, anyhow.”

“And how was it done? And why did they want to tie Cobbleigh up? Why not kill him straight off and with a bang on the head? Why did Thoday take £200 out of the bank and put it back again? When did it all happen? Who was the man Potty Peake saw in the church on the night of the 30th? And, above all, why was the cipher found in the belfry, of all places?”

“I can’t answer everything at once, can I? That’s the way it was done between ’em, you can take it from me. And now I’m going to have Cranton charged, and get hold of those precious Thodays, and if I don’t put my hand on the emeralds among them, I’ll eat my hat.”

“Oh!” said Wimsey, “that reminds me. Before you came, we were just going to look at the place where Deacon hid those jolly old emeralds. The Rector solved the cipher—”

“Him?”

“He. So, just for fun, and by way of shutting the stable door after the steed was stolen, we’re going to climb up aloft and have a hunt among the cherubims. In fact, the Rector is down at the church, champing his bit at this very moment. Shall we go?”

“Sure—though I haven’t a lot of time to waste.”

“I don’t suppose it will take long.”

The Rector had procured the sexton’s ladder and was already up in the south aisle roof, covering himself with cobwebs as he poked about vaguely among the ancient oak.

“The servants sat just about here,” he said, as Wimsey came in with the Superintendent. “But now I come to think of it, we had the painters up here last year, and they ought to have found anything there was to be found.”

“Perhaps they did,” said Wimsey; and Mr. Blundell uttered a low moan.

“Oh, I hope not. I really think not. They are most honest men.” Mr. Venables came down from the ladder. “Perhaps you had better try. I am not clever about these things.”

“Beautiful old work this is,” said his lordship. “All pegged together. There’s a lot of this old rafter work down at Duke’s Denver, and when I was a kid I made rather a pretty cache for myself in a corner of the attic. Used to keep tiddly-winks counters in it and pretend it was a pirate’s hoard. Only it was a dickens of a job getting them out again. I say! Blundell! do you remember that wire hook you found in the corpse’s pocket?”

“Yes, my lord. We never made out what that was for.”

“I ought to have known,” said Wimsey. “I made a thing very like it for the pirate’s hoard.” His long fingers were working over the beams, gently pulling at the thick wooden pegs which held them together. “He must have been able to reach it from where he sat. Aha! what did I tell you? This is the one. Wriggle her gently and out she comes. Look!”

He wrenched at one of the pegs, and it came out in his hand. Originally, it had passed right through the beam and must have been over a foot in length, tapering from the size of a penny-piece at one end to something over half-an-inch at the other. But at some time it had been sawn off about three inches from the thick end.

“There you are,” said Wimsey. “An old schoolboy cache originally, I expect. Some kid got pushing it from the other end and found it was loose. Probably shoved it clean out. At least, that’s what I did, up in the attic. Then he took it home and sawed six inches or so out of the middle of it. Next time he comes to church he brings a short rod with him. He pushes the thin end back again into place’ with the rod, so that the hole doesn’t show from the other side. Then he drops in his marbles or whatever he wanted to hide, and plugs up the big end again with this. And there he is, with a nice little six-inch hidey-hole where nobody would ever dream of looking for it. Or so he thinks. Then—perhaps years afterwards—along comes friend Deacon. He’s sitting up here one day, possibly a little bored with the sermon (sorry, padre!). He starts fidgeting with the peg, and out it comes—only three inches of it. Hullo, says he, here’s a game! Handy place if you wanted to pop any little thing away in a hurry. Later on, when he does want to pop his little shiners away in a hurry, he thinks of it again. Easy enough. Sits here all quiet and pious, listening to the First Lesson. Puts his hand down at his side, slips out the plug, slides the emeralds out of his pocket, slips them into the hole, pops back the plug. All over before his reverence says ‘Here endeth.’ Out into the sunshine and slap into the arms of our friend the Super here and his merry men. ‘Where are the emeralds?’ they say. ‘You can search me,’ says he. And they do, and they’ve been searching ever since.”

“Amazing!” said the Rector. Mr. Blundell uttered a regrettable expression, remembered his surroundings and coughed loudly.

“So now we see what the hook was for,” said Wimsey. “When Legros, or Cobbleigh, whichever you like to call him, came for the loot—”

“Stop a minute,” objected the Superintendent. “That cipher didn’t mention anything about a hole, did it? It only mentioned cherubims. How did he know he needed a hook to get necklaces out of cherubims?”

“Perhaps he’d had a look at the place first. But of course, we know he did. That must have been what he was doing when Potty Peake saw him and Thoday in the church. He spotted the place then, and came back later. Though why he should have waited five days I couldn’t tell you. Possibly something went wrong. Anyway, back he came, armed with his hook, and hitched the necklace out. Then, just as he was coming down the ladder, the accomplice took him from behind, tied him up, and—and then—and then did away with him by some means we can’t account for.”

The Superintendent scratched his head.

“You’d think he might have waited for a better place to do it in, wouldn’t you, my lord? Putting him out here in the church, and all that bother of burying him and what not. Why didn’t he go while the going was good, and shove Cobbleigh into the dyke or something on the way home?”