‘No, I needn’t. But I expect I shall. Murders go to my head like drink. I simply can’t keep off them.’
‘Not even now? They can’t expect you, surely! You’ve got a right to your own life sometimes. And it’s such a beastly little crime – sordid and horrible.’
‘That’s just it,’ he broke out, with unexpected passion. ‘That’s why I can’t leave it alone. It’s not picturesque. It’s not exciting. It’s no fun at all. Just dirty, brutal bashing, like a butcher with a pole-axe. It makes me sick. But who the hell am I, to pick and choose what I’ll meddle in?’
‘I see. But after all, this was just wished on us. It’s not as though you’d been called in to help.’
‘How often am I “called in”, I wonder,’ he demanded, rather bitterly. ‘I call myself in, half the time, out of sheer mischief and inquisitiveness. Lord Peter Wimsey the aristocratic sleuth – my God! The idle rich gentleman who dabbles in detection. That’s what they say – isn’t it?’
‘Sometimes. I lost my temper with somebody who said that, once. Before we were engaged. It made me wonder if I wasn’t getting rather fond of you.’
‘Did it? Then perhaps I’d better not justify that view of myself. What do such fellows as I, crawling between heaven and earth? I can’t wash my hands of a thing, merely because it’s inconvenient to my lordship, as Bunter says of the sweep. I hate violence! I loathe wars and slaughter, and men quarrelling and fighting like beasts! Don’t say it isn’t my business. It’s everybody’s business.’
‘Of course it is, Peter. Go ahead. I was just being feminine, or something. I thought you looked as if you’d be better for a little peace and quiet. But you don’t seem to shine as a lotos-eater.’
‘I can’t eat lotos, even with you,’ he said, pathetically, ‘with murdered bodies popping up all over the place.’
‘You shan’t, angel, you shan’t. Have a nice mouthful of prickly cactus instead. And don’t pay any attention to my imbecile efforts to strew your path with rose-leaves. It won’t be the first time we’ve followed the footprints together. Only’ – she faltered a moment, as another devastating matrimonial possibility loomed up like a nightmare – ‘whatever you do, you’ll let me take a hand, won’t you?’
To her relief, he laughed.
‘All right, Domina. I promise you that. Cactus for both or neither, and no lotos till we can share it. I won’t play the good British husband – in spite of your alarming plunge into wifeliness. The Ethiopian shall stay black and leave the leopardess her spots.’
He appeared satisfied, but Harriet cursed herself for a fool. This business of adjusting oneself was not so easy after all. Being preposterously fond of a person didn’t prevent one from hurting him unintentionally. She had an uncomfortable feeling that his confidence had been shaken and that this was not the end of the misunderstanding. He wasn’t the kind of man to whom you could say, ‘Darling, you’re wonderful, and whatever you do is right’ – whether you thought so or not. He would write you down a fool. Nor was he the sort who said, ‘I know what I’m doing and you must take my word for it.’ (Thank God for that, anyway!) He wanted you to agree with him intelligently or not at all. And her intelligence did agree with him. It was her own feelings that didn’t seem to be quite pulling in double harness with her intelligence. But whether it was her feeling for Peter or her feeling for the deceased Mr Noakes, butchered to make a busman’s honeymoon for them, or a merely selfish feeling that she didn’t want to be bothered at this moment with corpses and policemen, she was not sure.
‘Cheer up, sweetheart,’ said Peter. ‘They may not want my kind assistance. Kirk may cut the Gordian knot by booting me out.’
‘Well, he’d be an idiot!’ said Harriet, with prompt indignation.
Mr Puffett entered suddenly without knocking.
‘They’re takin’ Mr Noakes away. Shall I be gettin’ on with the kitchen chimney?’ He walked across to the fireplace. ‘Draws beautiful now, don’t she? I allus said there was nothing the matter with the flue. Ah! it’s a good thing Mr Noakes ain’t alive to see all that ’eap of coal. That’s a fire as does credit to any chimney.’
‘All right, Puffett,’ said Peter, absently. ‘Carry on.’
Steps on the path, and a dismal little procession passing the window: a sergeant of police and another uniformed man, carrying a stretcher between them.
‘Very good, me lord.’ Mr Puffett glanced from the window and removed his bowler hat. ‘And where’s all ’is cheeseparin’ brought ’im now?’ he demanded. ‘Nowhere.’
He marched out.
‘De mortuis,’ said Peter, ‘and then some.’
‘Yes, he seems to be getting a nice derangement of epitaphs, poor old creature.’
Corpses and policemen – there they were, not to be got rid of, whatever one’s feelings might be. Much better to accept the situation and do one’s best. Superintendent Kirk came in, followed by Joe Sellon.
‘Well, well,’ said Peter. ‘All ready for the third degree?’
‘ ’Tain’t likely to come to that, my lord,’ replied Mr Kirk, jovially. ‘You and your lady had something better to do last week than committing murders, I’ll be bound. That’s right, Joe, come along. Let’s see what you can do with a bit o’ shorthand. I’m sending my sergeant over to Broxford to pick up what he can there, so Joe can give me a hand with the statements. I’d like to use this room, if it’s not inconvenient.’
‘Not at all.’ Seeing the Superintendent’s eye fix modestly upon a spindly specimen of Edwardian craftsmanship, Peter promptly pushed forward a stout, high-backed chair with gouty arms and legs and an eruption of heavy scroll work about its head. ‘You’ll find this about up to your weight, I fancy.’
‘Nice and imposing,’ said Harriet.
The village constable added his comment:
‘That’s old Noakes’s chair, that was.’
‘So,’ said Peter, ‘Galahad will sit down in Merlin’s seat.’
Mr Kirk, on the point of lowering his solid fifteen stone into the chair, jerked up abruptly.
‘Alfred,’ said he, ‘Lord Tennyson.’
‘Got it in one,’ said Peter, mildly surprised. A glow of enthusiasm shone softly in the policeman’s ox-like eyes. ‘You’re a bit of a student, aren’t you, Superintendent?’
‘I like to do a bit o’ reading in my off-duty,’ admitted Mr Kirk, bashfully. ‘It mellows the mind.’ He sat down. ‘I often think as the rowtine of police dooty may tend to narrow a man and make him a bit hard, if you take my meaning. When I find that happening, I say to myself, what you need, Sam Kirk, is contact with a Great Mind or so, after supper. Reading maketh a full man—’
‘Conference a ready man,’ said Harriet.
‘And writing an exact man,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Mind that, Joe Sellon, and see you let me have them notes so as they can be read to make sense.’
‘Francis Bacon,’ said Peter, a trifle belatedly. ‘Mr Kirk, you’re a man after my own heart.’
‘Thank you, my lord. Bacon. You’d call him a Great Mind, wouldn’t you? And what’s more, he came to be Lord Chancellor of England, so he’s a bit in the legal way, too. Ah! well, I suppose we’ll have to get down to business.’
‘As another Great Mind so happily put it, “However entrancing it is to wander through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?” ’
‘What’s that?’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s a new one on me. “Garden of bright images,” eh? That’s pretty, that is.’
‘Kai-Lung,’ said Harriet.
‘Golden Hours of,’ said Peter. ‘Ernest Bramah.’
‘Make a note o’ that for me, will you, Joe? “Bright images” – that’s just what you get in poetry, isn’t it? Pictures, as you might say. And in a garden too – what you’d call flowers of fancy. I dessay. Well, now—’ He pulled himself together and turned to Peter. ‘As I was saying, we mustn’t waste time with the fancy-work. About
this money we found on the body. What did you say you paid him for the house?’
‘Six-fifty, altogether. Fifty at the beginning of the negotiations and the six hundred at quarter-day.’
‘That’s right. That accounts for the six hundred he had in his pocket. He’d just about have cashed it the day he was put away.’
‘The quarter-day was a Sunday. The cheque was actually dated and sent on the 28th. It would have reached him Monday.’
‘That’s right. We’ll check the payment at the bank, but it’s not really necessary. Wonder what they thought of him taking it away in cash instead of paying it in. H’m. It’s a pity it ain’t the bank’s business to give us the office when people do things that look like bolting. But it wouldn’t do, naturally.’
‘He must have had it in his pocket when he told poor Crutchley he’d no money to pay him his forty pounds. He could have given it him then.’
‘Course he could, my lady, if he’d wanted to. He was a proper old dodger, was Mr Noakes; a regular Artful Dodger.’
‘Charles Dickens!’
‘That’s right. There’s an author what knew a bit about crooks, didn’t he? A pretty rough place London must have been in those days, if you go by what he says. Fagin and all. But we wouldn’t hang a man for being a pickpocket, not now. Well – and having sent the cheque, you just came on here the next week and left it to him?’
‘Yes. Here’s his letter, you see, saying he’d have everything ready. It’s addressed to my agent. We really ought to have sent someone ahead to see to things, but the fact is, as I told you before, what with newspaper reporters and one thing and another—’
‘They give us a lot of trouble, them fellows,’ said Mr Kirk, sympathetically.
‘When,’ said Harriet, ‘they gate-crash your flat and try to bribe your servants—’
‘Fortunately, Bunter is sea-green incorruptible—’
‘Carlyle,’ said Mr Kirk, with approval. ‘French Revolution. Seems a good man, that Bunter. Head screwed on the right way.’
‘But we needn’t have troubled,’ said Harriet. ‘We’ll have them all on our backs now.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Kirk. ‘That’s what comes of being a public character. You can’t escape the fierce light that beats upon—’
‘Here!’ said Peter, ‘that’s not fair. You can’t have Tennyson twice. Anyway, there it is and what’s done – no, I may want Shakespeare later on. The ironical part of it is that we expressly told Mr Noakes we were coming for peace and quiet and didn’t want the whole thing broadcast about the neighbourhood.’
‘Well, he saw to that all right,’ said the Superintendent. ‘By George, you were making it easy for him, weren’t you? Easy as pie. Off he could go, and no inquiry. Don’t suppose he meant to go quite so far as he did go, all the same.’
‘Meaning, there’s no chance of its being suicide?’
‘Not likely, is it, with all that money on him? Besides, the doctor says there’s not a chance of it. We’ll come to that later. About them doors, now. You’re sure they were both locked when you arrived?’
‘Absolutely. The front we opened ourselves with the latch-key, and the back – let me see—’
‘Bunter opened that, I think,’ said Harriet.
‘Better have Bunter in,’ said Peter. ‘He’ll know. He never forgets anything.’ He called Bunter, adding, ‘What we want here is a bell.’
‘And you saw no disturbance, except what you’ve mentioned. Egg-shells and such. No marks? No weapon? Nothing out of its place?’
‘I’m sure I didn’t notice anything,’ said Harriet. ‘But there wasn’t much light, and, of course, we weren’t looking for anything. We didn’t know there was anything to look for.’
‘Wait a bit,’ said Peter. ‘Wasn’t there something struck me this morning? I – no, I don’t know. It was all upset for the sweep, you see. I don’t know what I thought I – If there was anything, it’s gone now . . . Oh, Bunter! Superintendent Kirk wants to know was the back door locked when we arrived last night.’
‘Locked and bolted, my lord, top and bottom.’
‘Did you notice anything funny about the place at all?’
‘Apart,’ said Mr Bunter, warmly, ‘from the absence of those conveniences that we were led to expect, such as lamps and coal and food and the key of the house and the beds made up and the chimneys swept, and allowing further for the soiled crockery in the kitchen and the presence of Mr Noakes’s personal impedimenta in the bedroom, no, my lord. The house presented no anomalies nor incongruities of any kind that I was able to observe. Except—’
‘Yes?’ said Mr Kirk, hopefully.
‘I attached no significance to it at the time,’ said Bunter, slowly, as though he were admitting to a slight defection from duty, ‘but there were two candlesticks in this room, upon the sideboard. Both candles were burnt down to the socket. Burnt out.’
‘So they were,’ said Peter. ‘I remember seeing you clean out the wax with a pen-knife. Night’s candles are burnt out.’
The Superintendent, absorbed in the implications of Bunter’s statement, neglected the challenge till Peter poked him in the ribs and repeated it, adding, ‘I knew I should want Shakespeare again!’
‘Eh?’ said the Superintendent. ‘Night’s candles? Romeo and Juliet – not much o’ that about this here. Burnt out? Yes. They must a-been alight when he was killed. After dark, that means.’
‘He died by candle-light. Sounds like the title of a high-brow thriller. One of yours, Harriet. When found, make a note of.’
‘Captain Cuttle,’ said Mr Kirk, not to be caught napping again. ‘October 2nd – sun would be setting about half-past five. No, it was Summer Time. Say half-past six. I dunno as that gets us much further. You didn’t see nothing lying about as might have been used for a weapon? No mallet or bludgeon, eh? Nothing in the way of a—’
‘He’s going to say it!’ said Peter to Harriet, in a whisper.
‘– in the way of a blunt instrument?’
‘He’s said it!’
‘I’ve never really believed they did say it.’
‘Well, now you know.’
‘No,’ said Bunter, after a short meditation. ‘Nothing of that description. Nothing beyond the customary household utensils in their appropriate situations.’
‘Have we any idea,’ inquired his lordship, ‘what kind of a jolly old blunt instrument we are looking for? How big? What shape?’
‘Pretty heavy, my lord, that’s all I can say. With a smooth, blunt head. Meaning, the skull was cracked like an egg-shell, but the skin hardly broken. So there’s no blood to help us, and the worst of it is, we don’t know, no more than Adam, whereabouts it all ’appened. You see, Dr Craven says deceased – Here, Joe, where’s that letter Doctor wrote out for me to send to the coroner? Read it out to his lordship. Maybe he’ll be able to make it out, seein’ he’s had a bit of experience and more eddication than you or me. Beats me what doctors want to use them long words for. Mind you, it’s educational; I don’t say it isn’t. I’ll have a go at it with the dictionary afore I goes to bed and I’ll know I’m learning something. But to tell you the truth, we don’t have many murders and violent deaths hereabouts, so I don’t get much practice in the technical part, as you might say.’
‘All right, Bunter,’ said Peter, seeing that the Superintendent had finished with him. ‘You can go.’
Harriet thought Bunter seemed a little disappointed. He would doubtless have appreciated the doctor’s educational vocabulary.
P.C. Sellon cleared his throat and began: ‘ “Dear Sir – It is my duty to notify—” ’
‘Not there,’ interrupted Kirk. ‘Where it begins about deceased.’
P.C. Sellon found the place and cleared his throat again:
‘ “I may state, as the result of a superficial examination” – is that it, sir?’
‘That’s it.’
‘ “That deceased appears to ’ave been struck with a ’eavy blunt instrument of some c
onsiderable superficies—” ’
‘Meaning, he said, by that,’ explained the Superintendent, ‘as it wasn’t a little fiddlin’ thing like the beak of a ’ammer.’
‘ “On the posterior part of the” – I can’t rightly make this out, sir. Looks to me like “onion”, and that makes sense all right, only it don’t sound like doctor’s language.’
‘It couldn’t be that, Joe.’
‘Nor it ain’t “geranium” neither – leastways, there’s no tail to the G.’
‘ “Cranium,” perhaps,’ suggested Peter. ‘The back of the skull.’
‘That’ll be it,’ said Kirk. ‘That’s where it is, anyhow, never mind what the doctor calls it.’
‘Yes, sir. “A little above and behind the left ear, the apparent direction of the blow being from behind downwards. An extensive fracture—” ’
‘Hullo!’ said Peter. ‘On the left, from behind downwards. That looks like another of our old friends.’
‘The left-handed criminal,’ said Harriet.
‘Yes. It’s surprising how often you get them in detective fiction. A sort of sinister twist running right through the character.’
‘It might be a back-handed blow.’
‘Not likely. Who goes about swotting people left-handed? Unless the local tennis-champion wanted to show off. Or a navvy mistook old Noakes for a pile that needed driving.’
‘A navvy’d have hit him plumb centre. They always do. You think they’re going to brain the man who holds the thing up, but it never happens. I’ve noticed that. But there’s another thing. My recollection of Noakes is that he was awfully tall.’
‘Quite right,’ said Kirk, ‘so he was. Six foot four, only he stooped a bit. Call it six foot two or three.’
‘You’ll want a pretty tall murderer,’ said Peter.
‘Wouldn’t a long-handled weapon do? Like a croquetmallet? or a golf club?’
‘Yes, or a cricket-bat. Or a beetle, of course—’
‘Or a spade – the flat side—’
‘Or a gun-stock. Possibly even a poker—’
‘It’d have to be a long, heavy one with a thick knob. I think there’s one in the kitchen. Or even a broom, I suppose—’