He pulled the halter off and sent the mare off with a clap on the shoulder.
‘It all looks so good,’ he mourned, ‘but it won’t work. It simply won’t work. You see the idea. Here’s Martin. He comes and camps here; evidently he knows all about this place beforehand, and knows that horses are kept out in this field in summer. He arranges for Alexis to be at the Flat-Iron at two o’clock – I don’t know how, but he works it somehow. At 1.30 he leaves the Feathers, comes down here, gets the mare and rides off along the shore. We see where he spilt the oats with which he got her to come to him and we see the gap he made getting her through the hedge. He rides along through the edge of the water, so as to leave no marks. He tethers the mare to the ring that he has driven into the rock; he kills Alexis and rides back in a deuce of a hurry. In crossing the rough pebbles below Pollock’s cottage, the mare casts a shoe. That doesn’t worry him, except that it lames the nag a bit and delays him. When he gets back, he doesn’t return the mare to the field, but lets her run. Like that, it will look as though she broke out of the field on her own, and will easily explain the gap, the lameness, and the shoe, if anybody finds it. Also, if the horse should be found still blown and sweaty, it will appear perfectly natural. He is back at three o’clock, in time to go round to the garage about his car, and at some subsequent period he burns the halter. It’s so convincing, so neat, and it’s all wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘The time’s too tight, for one thing. He left the inn at 1.30. After that, he had to come down here, catch the mare and ride four and a half miles. We can’t very well allow him to do more than eight miles an hour under the conditions of the problem, yet at two o’clock you heard the scream. Are you sure your watch was right?’
‘Positive. I compared it with the hotel clock when I got to Wilvercombe; it was dead right, and the hotel clock –’
‘Is set by wireless time, naturally. Everything always is.’
‘Worse than that; all the hotel clocks are controlled by a master-clock which is controlled directly from Greenwich. That was one of the first things I asked about.’
‘Competent woman.’
‘Suppose he had had the horse all ready before he went to the Feathers – tied up to the fence, or something?’
‘Yes; but if these Darley people are right, he didn’t go from here to the Feathers; he came by car from the Wilvercombe side. And even if we allow that, he’s still got to make rather over nine miles an hour to get to the Flat-Iron by two o’clock. I doubt if he could do it – though, of course, he might, if he leathered the poor beast like fury. That’s why I said I’d like to do the ride.’
‘And the scream I heard may not have been the scream. I thought it was a gull, you know – and perhaps it was. I took about five minutes to gather my stuff together and come out into view of the Flat-Iron. You might put the death at 2.5, I think, if you felt you had to.’
‘All right. But that still leaves it all quite impossible. You see, you were there at 2.10 at the very latest. Where was the murderer?’
‘In the cleft of the rock. Oh, ah – but not the horse. I see. There wouldn’t be room for a horse too. How exasperating! If we put the murder too early, he wouldn’t have time to get there, and if we put it too late, he wouldn’t have time to get away. It’s maddening.’
‘Yes, and we can’t really put the murder earlier than two o’clock because of the blood. Putting the horse’s speed and the condition of the blood and the scream all together, we get two o’clock as the earliest possible and on the whole the most probable time for the murder. Right. You come on the scene, at latest, at 2.5. Allow (which is very unlikely) that the murderer dashed up at full gallop, cut Alexis’ throat and dashed off again at full speed without wasting a second, and allow him (which is again most unlikely) to do as much as ten miles an hour through water. At 2.5 he will have done just under a mile on his way back. But we proved this afternoon that you have a clear view of over a mile and a half from the Flat-Iron in the direction of Darley. If he had been there, you couldn’t have failed to see him. Or could you? You didn’t start really looking till 2.10, when you found the body.’
‘No, I didn’t. But I’ve got all my faculties. If the murder was done at two o’clock, when the scream woke me, I couldn’t possibly not have heard a horse galloping hell-for-leather along the shore. It would make a pretty good row, wouldn’t it?’
‘It certainly would. Tramp, tramp along the land they rode, Splash, splash along the sea. It won’t do, my girl, it won’t do. And yet, that mare went along that bit of beach not so very long ago, or I’ll eat my hat. Eh? Oh, thanks, Bunter.’
He took the hat which Bunter gravely proffered him.
‘And there’s the ring-bolt in the rock. That didn’t come there by chance. The horse was taken there, but when and why is a puzzle. Never mind. Let’s check up on our facts, just as though the thing were coming out all right.’
They left the field and walked up Hinks’s Lane.
‘We won’t take the car,’ said Wimsey. ‘We’ll just wander along chewing straws and looking idle. Yonder is the village green, I fancy, where, as you once informed us, under a spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands. Let us hope the smith is at work. Smiths, like electric drills, are made to be stared at.’
The smith was at work. The cheerful clink of his hammer fell cheerily on their ears as they crossed the green, and the huge dappled quarters of a cart-horse gleamed in the shaft of sunlight that fell across the open door.
Harriet and Wimsey lounged up, Wimsey dangling the horse-shoe in his hand.
‘Afternoon, zur,’ said the yokel in charge of the cart-horse, civilly.
‘ ’Noon,’ replied Wimsey.
‘Fine day, zur.’
‘Ah!’ said Wimsey.
The yokel looked Wimsey over thoroughly, and decided that he was a knowledgeable person and no foolish chatterer. He hitched his shoulder a little more comfortably against the door-post and fell into a reverie.
After about five minutes, Wimsey judged that the time had come when a further observation might be well received. He said, jerking his head in the direction of the anvil:
‘Not so much of that as there used to be.’
‘Ah!’ said the man.
The smith, who had removed the dull shoe from the anvil and replaced it in the forge for re-heating, must have caught the remark, for he glanced towards the door. He said nothing, however, but put all his energy into working his bellows.
Presently, the shoe being once more on the anvil, the man with the horse shifted his shoulders again, pushed his cap back, scratched his head, replaced the cap, spat (but with perfect politeness), thrust his hand deep into the right-hand pocket of his breeches and addressed a brief word of encouragement to the horse.
Silence, punctuated only by the clink of the hammer, followed, till Wimsey remarked:
‘You’ll get the hay in all right, if this lasts.’
‘Ah!’ said the man, with satisfaction.
The smith, raising the shoe in the tongs and again returning it to the fire, wiped his brow with his leather apron and broke into the conversation. He followed Humpty-Dumpty’s method of going back to the last remark but one.
‘I recollect,’ he said, ‘when thur warn’t none of these motor-cars, only the one Squire Goodrich had – what year would that be now, Jem?’
‘Mafeking year, that wur.’
‘Ah! zo it wur.’
Silence, while all meditated.
Then Wimsey said:
‘I can remember when my father kept twenty-three horses, not counting the farm stock, of course.’
‘Ah!’ said the blacksmith. ‘That ’ud be a big place, zur?’
‘Yes; it was a big place. It was a treat for us kids to go down to the smithy and see them shod.’
‘Ah!’
‘I still know a good bit of work when I see one. This young lady and I picked up a cast shoe just now on the beach – you don’t get as much of tha
t sort of luck these days as you used to.’
He dangled the shoe on his fingers.
‘Off-fore,’ he added, casually; ‘nice little well-bred cob about fourteen hands; kicks her shoes off, and pecks a bit on this foot – is that right?’
The smith extended a large hand, courteously wiping it first upon his apron.
‘Ay,’ he said. ‘That’s right enough. Bay cob – belongs to Mr Newcombe – I zhuld know it.’
‘Your work?’
‘Zartain zhure.’
‘Ah!’
‘Not been lying about very long, either.’
‘No.’ The smith licked his finger and rubbed the iron lovingly. ‘What day wur that Mr Newcombe found the mare loose, Jem?’
Jem appeared to do a complicated arithmetical calculation, and replied:
‘Vriday, ay, it did be Vriday morning. That’s when it wur. Vriday.’
‘Ah! to be zhure. So t’wur.’
The smith leaned on his hammer and considered the matter. By slow degrees he brought out the rest of the story. It was not much, but it confirmed Wimsey’s deductions.
Farmer Newcombe always kept horses in that field during the summer months. No, he never mowed that meadow on account of the (agricultural and botanical detail of which Harriet did not grasp the significance). No, Mr Newcombe wouldn’t be about in that meadow much, no, nor yet the men, on account of it’s lying a long way from the rest of his land (interminable historical detail dealing with the distribution of tenancies and glebe round about that district, in which Harriet became completely lost), nor they wouldn’t need to, not to water the horses, on account of the stream (lengthy and rather disputatious account, to which Jem contributed, of the original course of the stream in Jem’s grandfather’s time, before Mr Grenfell made the pond over to Drake’s Spinney), and it wasn’t Mr Newcombe neither that see the mare running wild Friday morning, but Bessie Turvey’s youngest, and he came and told Jem’s uncle George and him and another of them got her in and terrible lame she were, but Mr Newcombe, he did ought to have mended that gap before (prolonged recital of humorous anecdote, ending ‘and lord! how Old Parson did laugh, to be zhure!’).
After which, the explorers drove back in state to Wilvercombe, to hear that the body had not turned up yet, but that Inspector Umpelty had a pretty good idea where it might be. And dinner. And dancing. And so to bed.
XVII
THE EVIDENCE OF THE MONEY
‘O ho! here’s royal booty, on my soul:
A draught of ducats!’
Fragment
Wednesday, 24 June
Faithful to her self-imposed duty, Harriet next morning sought out Mrs Weldon. It was not altogether easy to get rid of Henry, whose filial affection seemed positively to tie him to his mother’s apron-strings. A happy thought made Harriet suggest that she and Mrs Weldon might go and see what the Resplendent could do for them in the way of a Turkish bath. This was check-mate for Henry. He took himself off, murmuring that he would go and have a haircut.
In the mood of relaxation and confidence that follows on being parboiled, it was easy enough to pump Mrs Weldon. A little diplomacy was needed, so as not to betray the ulterior object of the inquiry, but no detective could have had a more unsuspecting victim. The matter proved to be very much as Harriet had supposed.
Mrs Weldon was the only daughter of a wealthy brewer, who had left her a very considerable fortune in her own right. Her parents having died when she was a child, she had been brought up by a strict Noncomformist aunt in the little town of St Ives in Huntingdonshire. She had been courted by a certain George Weldon, a prosperous farmer owning a considerable property at Leamhurst in the Isle of Ely, and had married him at eighteen, chiefly in order to get away from the aunt. That rigid lady had not altogether opposed the marriage, which was reasonably suitable, though not brilliant; but she had shown sufficient business ability to insist that her niece’s money should be tied up in such a manner that Weldon could not touch the capital. Weldon, to do him justice, had made no objection to this. He seemed to have been a perfectly honest, sober and industrious man, farming his land thriftily and well and having, so far as Harriet could make out, no drawbacks beyond a certain lack of imagination in matrimonial matters.
Henry was the only child of the marriage, and had been brought up from the beginning with the idea that he was to follow in his father’s footsteps, and here again, Weldon senior took a very proper view of the matter. He would not have the boy brought up in idleness, or to ideas beyond his proper station in life. He was a farmer’s son, and a farmer he should be, though Mrs Weldon herself had often pleaded that the boy should be brought up to one of the professions. But old Weldon was adamant, and indeed Mrs Weldon was obliged to admit that he had very likely been right after all. Henry showed no special aptitude for anything but the open-air life of the farm; the trouble was that he did not apply himself even to that as well as he should have done, and was inclined to run after girls and race-meetings, leaving his work to be done by his father and the farmhands. Already, before the elder Weldon’s death, there had been a good deal of antagonism between Henry and his mother, and this became intensified later on.
The farmer had died when Henry was twenty-five. He had left the farm and all his own savings to his son, knowing that his wife was well provided for. Under Henry’s management the farm had begun to go down. Times had grown harder for farmers. More and more personal supervision was needed to make farming pay; Henry gave it less and less. There were experiments in horse-breeding, which had not turned out well, owing to lack of judgement in buying and handling the stock. Mrs Weldon had by this time left the farm, which she had always disliked, and was living a nomad life in spas and watering-places. Henry had several times come to her for loans, and had received them; but Mrs Weldon had steadily refused to make over any of her capital to him, although she might have done so, her trustees being now dead and the trust wound up. She had, after all, learnt something from the Noncomformist aunt. Finally, when she found out that Henry had got himself into rather disgraceful trouble with an innkeeper’s wife in a neighbouring village, she quarrelled with Henry, loudly and finally. Since then, she had heard little from him. She understood, however, that the intrigue with the innkeeper’s wife had come to an end, and in February of the current year she had told him about her forthcoming marriage to Alexis. Henry had come down to Wilvercombe, stayed for the weekend, met Alexis and expressed his disapproval of the whole business. This did not mend matters, and relations had been strained until the death of Alexis had urged the lonely woman to seek comfort in the ties of blood. Henry had come, expressed contrition for his former waywardness, received forgiveness and shown that he was, after all, her loving son.
Harriet mentioned Mrs Lefranc’s theory that Alexis had committed suicide owing to the failure of unknown and important ‘speculations’. Mrs Weldon scouted the theory.
‘What could it matter to him, my dear? Paul knew perfectly well that when we were married I should settle my money on him – with the exception, of course, of a little provision for Henry. Of course, in the ordinary way, Henry would get everything, and I am afraid he was a little upset when he heard that I was going to get married, but, you know, it was not right that he should feel like that. His father left him very well off and always impressed upon him that he ought not to look for anything from me. After all, I was still quite a young woman when my husband died, and George – he was a very fair-minded man, I will say that for him – always said that I should be quite within my rights in spending my own father’s money as I liked and marrying again if I chose. And I have lent Henry a great deal of money, which he has never repaid. I told Henry, when I got engaged to Alexis, that I should make him a free gift of everything that I had lent him, and make a will, giving him the life-interest in £30,000, the capital of which was to go to Henry’s children, if he had any. If he hadn’t any, then the money was to come back to Paul, if Paul outlived Henry, because, of course, Paul was the young
er man.’
‘Were you going to settle all the rest on Mr Alexis?’
‘Why not, my dear? It was not as though I could have had any more children. But Paul didn’t like that idea – he used to say, so charmingly and absurdly, that if I did that what would happen to me if he ran away and left me? No, what I was going to do was this. I was going to settle £30,000 on Paul when we were married. It would have been his, absolutely, of course – I shouldn’t like my husband to have to come and ask me for permission if he wanted to alter the investments or anything. Then, at my death, Henry would have had the income from the other £30,000 and his debts washed out, and Paul would have had all the rest, which would have been about £100,000 altogether, including his own £30,000. Because, you see, Paul might have married again and had a family, and then he would need the money. I don’t see that there was anything unfair about that, do you?’
Harriet felt that a great deal might be said about an arrangement which cut off the only son with the life-interest on £30,000, with reversion to a young step-father, and left full control of over three times that sum to the step-father; and which also placed the hypothetical family of the son in a vastly inferior position to the equally hypothetical children of the step-father by a hypothetical new wife. Still, Mrs Weldon’s money was her own, and Alexis had at least stood between her and the major folly of stripping herself of every farthing in his favour. One expression had caught her attention, and she returned to it.
‘I think you showed considerable judgement,’ she said – not specifying whether the judgement was good or bad – ‘it would be much better for your son, if he is inclined to squander his money, only to have the life-interest in his share. Then he would always have something to fall back upon. I suppose that arrangement still holds good under your present will.’