Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (65 page)

It was then that
somebody, very grudgingly and haltingly, mentioned the horrid word “Police.” Sir
Septimus, naturally, was appalled by the idea. It was disgusting. He would not
allow it. The pearls must be somewhere. They must search the rooms again. Could
not Lord Peter Wimsey, with his experience of—er—mysterious happenings, do
something to assist them?

“Eh?” said his lordship. “Oh,
by Jove, yes—by all means, certainly. That is to say, provided nobody
supposes—eh, what? I mean to say, you don’t know that I’m a not a suspicious
character, do you, what?”

Lady Shale interposed
with authority.

“We don’t think
anybody
ought to be suspected,” she said, “but, if we did, we’d
know it couldn’t be you. You know
far
too much about crimes to want to commit one.”

“All right,” said Wimsey.
“But after the way the place has been gone over—” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, I’m afraid you won’t
be able to find any footprints,” said Margharita. “But we may have overlooked
something.”

Wimsey nodded.

“I’ll try. Do you all
mind sitting down on your chairs in the outer room and staying there. All
except one of you—I’d better have a witness to anything I do or find. Sir
Septimus—you’d be the best person, I think.”

He shepherded them to
their places and began a slow circuit of the two rooms, exploring every
surface, gazing up to the polished brazen ceiling, and crawling on hands and
knees in the approved fashion across the black and shining desert of the
floors. Sir Septimus followed, staring when Wimsey stared, bending with his
hands upon his knees when Wimsey crawled, and puffing at intervals with
astonishment and chagrin. Their progress rather resembled that of a man taking
out a very inquisitive puppy for a very leisurely constitutional. Fortunately,
Lady Shale’s taste in furnishing made investigation easier; there were scarcely
any nooks or corners where anything could be concealed.

They reached the inner
drawing-room, and here the dressing-up clothes were again minutely examined,
but without result. Finally, Wimsey lay down flat on his stomach to squint
under a steel cabinet which was one of the very few pieces of furniture which
possessed short legs. Something about it seemed to catch his attention. He
rolled up his sleeve and plunged his arm into the cavity, kicked convulsively
in the effort to reach farther than was humanly possible, pulled out from his
pocket and extended his folding foot-rule, fished with it under the cabinet,
and eventually succeeded in extracting what he sought.

It was a very minute
object—in fact, a pin. Not an ordinary pin, but one resembling those used by
entomologists to impale extremely small moths on the setting-board. It was
about three-quarters of an inch in length, as fine as a very fine needle, with
a sharp point and a particularly small head.

“Bless my soul!” said Sir
Septimus. “What’s that?”

“Does anybody here happen
to collect moths or beetles or anything?” asked Wimsey, squatting on his
haunches and examining the pin.

“I’m pretty sure they don’t,”
replied Sir Septimus. “I’ll ask them.”

“Don’t do that.” Wimsey
bent his head and stared at the floor, from which his own face stared
meditatively back at him.

“I see,” said Wimsey
presently. “That’s how it was done. All right, Sir Septimus. I know where the
pearls are, but I don’t know who took them. Perhaps it would be as well—for
everybody’s satisfaction—just to find out. In the meantime they are perfectly
safe. Don’t tell anyone that we’ve found this pin or that we’ve discovered
anything. Send all these people to bed. Lock the drawing-room door and keep the
key, and we’ll get our man—or woman—by breakfast-time.”

“God bless my soul,” said
Sir Septimus, very much puzzled.

* * *

Lord Peter Wimsey kept
careful watch that night upon the drawing-room door. Nobody, however, came near
it. Either the thief suspected a trap or he felt confident that any time would
do to recover the pearls. Wimsey, however, did not feel that he was wasting his
time. He was making a list of people who had been left alone in the back
drawing-room during the playing of “Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral.” The list
ran as follows:

Sir Septimus Shale

Lavinia Prescott

William Norgate

Joyce Trivett and Henry
Shale (together, because they had claimed to be incapable of guessing anything
unaided)

Mrs. Dennison

Betty Shale

George Comphrey

Richard Dennison

Miss Tomkins

Oswald Truegood

He also made out a list
of the persons to whom pearls might be useful or desirable. Unfortunately, this
list agreed in almost all respects with the first (always excepting Sir
Septimus) and so was not very helpful. The two secretaries had both come well
recommended, but that was exactly what they would have done had they come with
ulterior designs; the Dennisons were notorious livers from hand to mouth; Betty
Shale carried mysterious white powders in her handbag, and was known to be in
with a rather rapid set in town; Henry was a harmless dilettante, but Joyce
Trivett could twist him round her little finger and was what Jane Austen liked
to call “expensive and dissipated”; Comphrey speculated; Oswald Truegood was
rather frequently present at Epsom and Newmarket—the search for motives was
only too fatally easy.

When the second housemaid
and the under-footman appeared in the passage with household implements, Wimsey
abandoned his vigil, but he was down early to breakfast. Sir Septimus with his
wife and daughter were down before him, and a certain air of tension made
itself felt. Wimsey, standing on the hearth before the fire, made conversation
about the weather and politics.

The party assembled
gradually, but, as though by common consent, nothing was said about pearls
until after breakfast, when Oswald Truegood took the bull by the horns.

“Well now!” said he. “How’s
the detective getting along? Got your man, Wimsey?”

“Not yet,” said Wimsey
easily.

Sir Septimus, looking at
Wimsey as though for his cue, cleared his throat and dashed into speech.

“All very tiresome,” he
said, “all very unpleasant. Hr’rm. Nothing for it but the police, I’m afraid.
Just at Christmas, too. Hr’rm. Spoilt the party. Can’t stand seeing all this
stuff about the place.” He waved his hand towards the festoons of evergreens
and coloured paper that adorned the walls. “Take it all down, eh, what? No
heart in it. Hr’rm. Burn the lot.”

“What a pity, when we
worked so hard over it,” said Joyce.

“Oh, leave it, Uncle,” said
Henry Shale. “You’re bothering too much about the pearls. They’re sure to turn
up.”

“Shall I ring for James?”
suggested William Norgate.

“No,” interrupted
Comphrey, “let’s do it ourselves. It’ll give us something to do and take our
minds off our troubles.”

“That’s right,” said Sir
Septimus. “Start right away. Hate the sight of it.”

He savagely hauled a
great branch of holly down from the mantelpiece and flung it, crackling, into the
fire.

“That’s the stuff,” said
Richard Dennison. “Make a good old blaze!” He leapt up from the table and
snatched the mistletoe from the chandelier. “Here goes! One more kiss for
somebody before it’s too late.”

“Isn’t it unlucky to take
it down before the New Year?” suggested Miss Tomkins.

“Unlucky be hanged. We’ll
have it all down. Off the stairs and out of the drawing-room too. Somebody go
and collect it.”

“Isn’t the drawing-room
locked?” asked Oswald.

“No. Lord Peter says the
pearls aren’t there, wherever else they are, so it’s unlocked. That’s right,
isn’t it, Wimsey?”

“Quite right. The pearls
were taken out of these rooms. I can’t tell yet how, but I’m positive of it. In
fact, I’ll pledge my reputation that wherever they are, they’re not up there.”

“Oh, well,” said
Comphrey, “in that case, have at it! Come along, Lavinia—you and Dennison do
the drawing-room and I’ll do the back room. We’ll save a race.”

“But if the police are
coming in,” said Dennison, “oughtn’t everything to be left just as it is?”

“Damn the police!”
shouted Sir Septimus. “They don’t want evergreens.”

Oswald and Margharita
were already pulling the holly and ivy from the staircase, amid peals of
laughter. The party dispersed. Wimsey went quietly upstairs and into the
drawing-room, where the work of demolition was taking place at a great rate,
George having bet the other two ten shillings to a tanner that they would not
finish their part of the job before he finished his.

“You mustn’t help,” said
Lavinia, laughing to Wimsey. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

Wimsey said nothing, but
waited till the room was clear. Then he followed them down again to the hall,
spluttering, suggestive of Guy Fawkes’ night. He whispered to Sir Septimus, who
went forward and touched George Comphrey on the shoulder.

“Lord Peter wants to say
something to you, my boy,” he said.

Comphrey started and went
with him a little reluctantly, as it seemed. He was not looking very well.

“Mr. Comphrey,” said
Wimsey, “I fancy these are some of your property.” He held out the palm of his
hand, in which rested twenty-two fine, small-headed pins.

* *
*

“Ingenious,” said Wimsey,
“but something less ingenious would have served his turn better. It was very
unlucky, Sir Septimus, that you should have mentioned the pearls when you did. Of
course, he hoped that the loss wouldn’t be discovered till we’d chucked
guessing games and taken to ‘Hide-and-Seek.’ The pearls might have been
anywhere in the house, we shouldn’t have locked the drawing-room door, and he
could have recovered them at his leisure. He had had this possibility in mind
when he came here, obviously, and that was why he brought the pins, and Miss
Shale’s taking off the necklace to play ‘Dumb Crambo’ gave him his opportunity.”

“He had spent Christmas
here before, and knew perfectly well that ‘Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral’
would form part of the entertainment. He had only to gather up the necklace
from the table when it came to his turn to retire, and he knew he could count
on at least five minutes by himself while we were all arguing about the choice
of a word. He had only to snip the pearls from the string with his
pocket-scissors, burn the string in the grate, fasten the pearls to the
mistletoe with the fine pins. The mistletoe was hung on the chandelier, pretty
high—it’s a lofty room—but he could easily reach it by standing on the glass
table, which wouldn’t show footmarks, and it was almost certain that nobody
would think of examining the mistletoe for extra berries. I shouldn’t have
thought of it myself if I hadn’t found that pin which he had dropped. That gave
me the idea that the pearls had been separated and the rest was easy. I took
the pearls off the mistletoe last night—the clasp was there, too, pinned among
the holly-leaves. Here they are. Comphrey must have got a nasty shock this
morning. I knew he was our man when he suggested that the guests should tackle
the decorations themselves and that he should do the back drawing-room—but I
wish I had seen his face when he came to the mistletoe and found the pearls
gone.”

“And you worked it all
out when you found the pin?” said Sir Septimus.

“Yes; I knew then where
the pearls had gone to.”

“But you never even
looked at the mistletoe.”

“I saw it reflected in
the black glass floor, and it struck me then how much mistletoe berries looked
like pearls.”