‘I got hold of Morris, the Bolshevik-wallah, this evening. He doesn’t know of any Communist or Russian agent who might be knocking about Wilvercombe at the present time and thinks you have got hold of a mare’s nest.
‘By the way, the Cambridge police, from whom I had to wangle the Martin dope by telephone, want to know what is up. First Wilvercombe, then me! Fortunately, knowing their Super pretty well, I was able to get him to put pressure on the bank. I fancy I left them with the impression that it had something to do with bigamy!
‘Talking of bigamy, Mary sends her love and wants to know whether you are any nearer committing monogamy yet. She says I am to recommend it to you out of my own experience, so I do so – acting strictly under orders.
‘Affectionately yours,
‘Charles.’
Thus armed, Wimsey descended on Henry Weldon, who greeted him with his usual offensive familiarity. Lord Peter bore with this as long as he thought advisable, and then said, carelessly:
‘By the way, Weldon – you gave Miss Vane quite a turn yesterday afternoon.’
Henry looked at him rather unpleasantly.
‘Oh! Did I? Well, I don’t see why you need to come butting in.’
‘I wasn’t referring to your manners,’ said Wimsey, ‘though I admit they are a bit startling. But why didn’t you mention that you and she had met before?’
‘Met before? For the very simple reason that we never have met before.’
‘Come, come, Weldon. How about last Thursday afternoon at the top of Hinks’s Lane?’
He turned an ugly colour.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t you? Well, it’s your own business, of course, but if you want to go about the country incognito, you ought to get rid of that pattern on your arm. I understand that these things can be removed. Re-tattooing in flesh-colour is the simplest method, I believe.’
‘Oh!’ Henry stared for a few moments; then a slow grin spread itself over his face.
‘So that’s what the little hussy meant when she said she’d seen a snake. Sharp girl, that, Wimsey. Fancy her spotting that.’
‘Manners, please!’ said Wimsey. ‘You will kindly refer to Miss Vane in a proper way and spare me the boring nuisance of pushing your teeth out at the back of your neck.’
‘Oh, all right, just as you like. But I’d like to see you try.’
‘You wouldn’t see it. It would happen, that’s all. But I’ve no time to waste in comparative physiology. I want to know what you were doing in Darley in disguise.’
‘What affair is it of yours?’
‘None; but the police might be interested. Anything that happened last Thursday interests them at the moment.’
‘Oh! I see. You want to fix something on me. Well, just as it so happens, you can’t, so you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. It’s a fact that I came down here in another name. Why shouldn’t I? I didn’t want my mother to know I was here.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you see, I didn’t like this Alexis business at all. There’s no harm in admitting that. I’ve said it already and I don’t mind saying it again. I wanted to find out what was happening. If this marriage was really going through, I wanted to stop it.’
‘But couldn’t you have done that openly, without blacking your hair and dressing yourself up in dark spectacles?’
‘Of course I could. I could have burst in on the lovebirds and made a hell of a row and frightened Alexis off, I dare say. And then what? Had a devil of a scene with my mother, and been cut off with a shilling, I suppose. No. My idea was to snoop around and see whether the job was really being put through, and, if it was, to get hold of the young blighter and buy him off privately.’
‘You’d have needed some cash to do that,’ said Wimsey, drily.
‘I don’t know about that. I’d heard some stories about a girl down here, don’t you see, and if my mother got to know about that –’
‘Ah, yes – a qualified form of blackmail. I begin to see the idea. You were going to pick up information in Wilvercombe about Alexis’ previous entanglements, and then present him with the choice between having Mrs Weldon told about it and possibly getting nothing out of it, and taking your cash in hand and letting his credit as a faithful lover go. Is that it?’
‘That’s it.’
‘And why Darley?’
‘Because I didn’t want to run into the old lady in Wilvercombe. A pair of specs and a bottle of hair-dye might be all right for the yokels, but to the sharp eye of mother-love, you understand, they might not be as impenetrable as a brick wall.’
‘Quite so. Do you mind my asking whether you made any progress with this delicate investigation?’
‘Not much. I only got to the place on Tuesday evening, and I spent most of Wednesday tinkering with the car. Those fools at the garage sent it out –’
‘Ah, yes! One moment. Was it really necessary to hire a car with all that parade of secrecy?’
‘It was, rather, because my mother would have recognised my own bus. It’s rather an unusual colour.’
‘You seem to have thought it all out very well. Did you have no difficulty about hiring it? – oh, no, how stupid of me! You could give your own name to the garage, naturally.’
‘I could, but I didn’t. To be perfectly frank – well! I don’t mind saying that I had another name and address all ready to slip into. Sometimes I slip off to Cambridge on the quiet, see! To visit a lady there. You get me. Nice little woman – devoted and all that. Husband in the background somewhere. He won’t divorce her, and I’m not worrying. Suits me all right as it is. Only there again, if my mother got to hear about it – there’s been trouble, one way and another, and I didn’t want to start it again. We’re right as rain in Cambridge – Mr and Mrs Haviland Martin – all perfectly respectable, and all that, and it’s easy enough to slip over when one wants a spot of domestic bliss and so on. You get me?’
‘I get you. Do you also perambulate Cambridge in disguise?’
‘I stick on the specs when I go to the bank. Some of my good neighbours keep an account there.’
‘So you had this handy little disguise ready to slip into. I do congratulate you on the convenience of your arrangements. They really fill me with admiration, and I’m sure Mrs Martin must be a very happy woman. It really-surprises me that you should be so anxious to pursue Miss Vane with your attentions.’
‘Ah! But when a young lady asks for it – besides, I rather wanted to find out what the girl – the lady, that is, was after. When your mother’s pretty well off, don’t you see, you rather get the idea that people are looking out to make a bit out of her.’
Wimsey laughed.
‘So you thought you’d vamp Miss Vane and find out. How great minds do think alike! She had rather the same idea about you. Wondered why you were so damned anxious to push her and me out of the place. I’m not surprised you each found the other so easy to talk to. Miss Vane said she was afraid you had seen through our little plot and were pulling her leg. Well, well! So now we can come out into the open and be perfectly frank with one another. So much jollier and all that, what?’
Henry Weldon looked at Wimsey suspiciously. He had a dim notion that he had somehow been jockeyed into an absurd position. It was all very well – that damned girl and this chattering lunatic of an amateur detective seemed to be working hand in glove. But it did cross his mind that all this talk about frankness was a little one-sided.
‘Oh yes, rather!’ he replied, vaguely; adding rather anxiously: ‘No need to tell my mother all about this, eh? She wouldn’t like it.’
‘Possibly not,’ said Wimsey. ‘But you see – the police, what? I don’t quite see – British justice – duties of a citizen and all that, don’t you know. I can’t prevent Miss Vane from going to Inspector Umpelty, can I? Free agent and so on – and she’s not over and above pleased with you, from what I can make out.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind the police.??
? Henry’s face cleared. ‘I’ve nothing to hide from them, you know. Not a bit. Rather not. Look here, old man – if I tell you all about it, couldn’t you just tip them off and get ’em to leave me alone. You’re damned thick with that Inspector fellow – if you tell him I’m all right he’ll take it from you.’
‘Oh, yes! Good fellow, the Inspector. Not his business to betray confidences. There’s no reason whatever, so far as I can see, that Mrs Weldon should know anything about it. We men must stick together.’
‘That’s right!’ Undeterred by experience, Mr Weldon instantly entered into another alliance, offensive and defensive. ‘Well, look here. I came along to Darley on Tuesday evening and got permission to camp in Hinks’s Lane.’
‘You knew the place pretty well, I gather.’
‘Never been there in my life; why?’
‘Sorry – I thought you meant you knew about Hinks’s Lane before you got there.’
‘Eh? Oh! Oh, I see what you mean. I got it from some chap I met in a pub in Heathbury. Don’t know his name.’
‘Oh, quite!’
‘I got in some stores and so on and settled in. Then, next day – that was Wednesday – I thought I’d better make a start on my inquiries. Stop a bit. That wasn’t till the afternoon. I just loafed round in the morning – it was a grand day, and I was tired with trekking across country, especially as the car hadn’t been going any too well. After lunch I had a go at it. It took me a devil of a time to start the bus, but I got her to go at last, and ran over to Wilvercombe. I went first of all to the registrar’s and found that there was no marriage-notice put up there, so I followed that up by a round of the churches. There was nothing there either, but of course that proved nothing very much, because they might be going to get married in London or somewhere by licence or even by special licence.
‘The next thing I did was to get the address of this chap Alexis from the people at the Resplendent. I took good care to dodge the old lady. I rang up the management with a story about a parcel that had gone to the wrong address, and got it out of them. Then I went round to the address they gave me, and tried to pump the old woman there, but she wasn’t having any. However, she said I might find Alexis in a restaurant she told me about. I went round; he wasn’t there, but I got talking with a fellow who dropped in – some dago, I don’t know his name, and he said something which made me think I could find out what I wanted at the Winter Gardens.’
Henry paused.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘this must look pretty fishy to you – me hanging round there asking about Alexis, and then all this business happening next day, but that was exactly what I did. Well, I went back to where I’d left the car, and had more trouble with it than ever – I began to curse the fool who’d hired it out to me, and I thought I’d better take it to a garage. Well, naturally, having once been started and warmed up, it went all right, and the garage people couldn’t find anything wrong with it. They undid a few things and tightened a few things and charged me half a crown and that was all. By the time they’d finished, I was getting fed up, and thought I’d better take the beastly thing home while she was running. So I went back to Darley, with the engine missing all the way. After that, I went for a walk and that was the end of that day, except that I dropped in a bit later for a pint at the Feathers.’
‘Which way did you walk?’
‘Oh, along the beach for a bit. Why?’
‘I just wondered if you’d rambled as far as the Flat-Iron?’
‘Four and a half miles? Not likely. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen the place yet and I don’t want to. Anyway, Thursday’s the day you want to know about. All the details, as they say in the ’tec stories, eh? I had breakfast about nine o’clock – eggs and bacon, if you want to be particular – and then I thought I’d better see about getting along to Wilvercombe. So I went down to the village and flagged a passing car. That was – let me see – just after ten o’clock.’
‘Whereabouts was this?’
‘Where the main road enters Darley – the Wilvercombe side.’
‘Why didn’t you hire a car in the village?’
‘Have you seen the cars you can hire in the village? If you had, you wouldn’t ask.’
‘Couldn’t you have phoned up a Wilvercombe garage and got them to come out and pick you and the Morgan up?’
‘I could have, but I didn’t. The only garage I knew at Wilvercombe was the place I’d tried the night before, and I knew they weren’t any good. Besides, what’s wrong about taking a lift?’
‘Nothing, if the driver isn’t afraid about his insurance.’
‘Oh! Well, this one wasn’t. A very decent sort of woman she seemed to be. Drove a big red open Bentley. Made no bones about it at all.’
‘You don’t know her name, I suppose?’
‘I never thought to ask. But I do remember the number of the car – it was a comic one: OI0101 – sort of thing you couldn’t help remembering – Oi-oi-oi! I said to this woman what a funny one it was and we laughed about it a good bit.’
‘Ha ha!’ said Wimsey, ‘that’s a good one. Oi-oi-oi!’
‘Yes – it made us both laugh. I remember saying it was a bit unfortunate having a number like that, because it ’ud stick in a bobby’s mind. Oi-oi-oi!’ Mr Weldon yodelled gleefully.
‘So you got to Wilvercombe?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did you do there?’
‘The good lady put me down in the Market Square and asked me if I would like to be taken back. So I said that was very kind of her and when would she be leaving. She said she had to go just before one o’clock because she had an appointment in Heathbury, so I said that would do me all right, and she arranged to meet me in the Market Square again. So then I had a wander round and went down to the Winter Gardens. The chap I’d talked to said that this girl of Alexis’ had something to do with the Winter Gardens – sang, or something.’
‘She doesn’t, as a matter of fact. Her present young man plays in the orchestra there.’
‘Yes; I know that now. He’d got it all wrong. Anyhow, that’s where I went, and I wasted a good bit of time listening to a tom-fool classical concert – my God! Bach and stuff at eleven in the morning! – and wondering when the real show began.’
‘Were there many people there?’
‘Lord, yes – packed with tabbies and invalids! I soon got fed-up and went round to the Resplendent. I wanted to get hold of the people there, only of course I had the luck to run slap-bang into my mother. She was just going out, and I dodged behind one of these silly palm-trees they have there so that she couldn’t see me, and then I thought she might be going off to meet Alexis, so I padded after her.’
‘And did she meet Alexis?’
‘No; she went to some damned milliner’s place.’
‘How provoking!’
‘I believe you. I waited a bit, and she came out and went to the Winter Gardens. “Hullo!” I said to myself, “what’s all this? Is she on the same tack as I am?” So away I toddled again, and dash it! If it wasn’t the same infernal concert, and if she didn’t sit through it all by herself! I can tell you what they played, too. A thing called the Eroica Symphony. Such stuff!’
‘Tut-tut! How wearisome.’
‘Yes, I was wild, I can tell you. And the funny thing was, Mother looked as if she was waiting for somebody because she kept looking round and fidgeting. She sat on right through the programme, but when it came to God Save the King, she chucked it and went back to the Resplendent, looking as sick as a cat when you’ve taken its mouse away. Well, then I looked at my watch, and dashed if it wasn’t twenty to one!’
‘A sad waste of time! So I suppose you had to give up your drive home with the kindly lady in the Bentley?’
‘What, me? Not a bit of it. She was a dashed fine woman. There wasn’t such a devil of a hurry about Alexis. I went back to the Market Square, and there she was and we went home. I think that was all. No, it wasn’t. I bought some collars at a
shop near the War Memorial, and I believe I’ve got the bill about me somewhere, if that’s evidence. Yes, here we are. One stuffs these things into one’s pocket, you know. I’ve got one of the collars on now, if you’d like to look at it.’
‘Oh, no – I believe you.’
‘Good! Well, that’s all, except that I went along and had some lunch at the Feathers. My good lady dropped me there and I think she went off up the Heathbury Road. After lunch, that is, at about 1.45, I went and had another go at the car, but couldn’t get the slightest sign of a spark. So I thought I’d see if the local man could make anything of it. I went and got him and he came, and after a time they traced the trouble to a fault in the H.T. lead and put it right.’
‘Well, that seems pretty clear. What time did you and the lady in the Bentley get to the Feathers?’
‘Just on one o’clock. I remember hearing the church-clock strike and saying I hoped she wouldn’t be late for her tennis-party.’
‘And what time did you go to the garage?’
‘Blest if I know. About three or half-past I should think. But they could probably tell you.’
‘Oh, yes, they’ll be able to check that up all right. It’s very lucky you’ve got so many witnesses to your alibi, isn’t it? Otherwise, as you say, it might have looked fishy. Now, here’s another thing. While you were in Hinks’s Lane on Thursday, did you happen to notice anybody or anything going along the shore?’
‘Not a soul. But, as I’ve been trying to explain, I was only there up to ten o’clock and after 1.45, so it wasn’t very likely I should see anything.’
‘Nobody passed between 1.45 and three o’clock?’
‘Oh! between 1.45 and three o’clock? I thought you meant earlier. Yes, there was a chap – a little pip-squeak of a fellow, in shorts, with horn-rimmed goggles on. He came down Hinks’s Lane just after I got back – at 1.55, to be exact – and asked the time.’
‘Did he? Where did he come from?’
‘From the village. I mean, from the direction of the village; he seemed to be a stranger. I told him the time, and he went down to the shore and had his lunch on the beach. He cleared off later – at least, he wasn’t there after I came back from the garage, and I think he went earlier than that. I didn’t have much conversation with him. In fact, he wasn’t keen for any, after I’d booted him one in the behind.’