The Nine Tailors (38 page)

“He must have been pretty fed-up with things by that time.”

“Fed up? He was dead and cold.”

“Starved to death?”

“Not he. There was a big bit of cheese beside him and near half a loaf of bread and two bottles of beer, one empty and one full. And he hadn’t died of cold, neither, as you might expect. I’ve seen men that had died of exposure, and they died peaceful—curled up like kittens, mostly, as if they’d gone out in their sleep. No. He’d died on his feet, and whatever it was, he’d seen it coming to him. He’d struggled like a tiger against the ropes, working at them till he could get upright, and they had cut through the stuff of his jacket and through his socks. And his face! My God, sir, I’ve never seen anything like it. His eyes staring open and a look in them as if he’d looked down into hell. It fair shook me.

“I looked him over—and then I saw Will’s old coat lying on the floor, thrown off, it might be, in his struggles—and that didn’t look like dying of cold, neither. I couldn’t tell what to make of it, for I didn’t recognise him, you see. I had a look in his breast pocket, and found some papers. There was some made out in the name of Taylor and some in a French name that I’ve forgotten. I couldn’t make head or tail of it. And then I had a look at his hands.”

“Ah!” said Wimsey, “now we’re coming to it.”

“Yes, my lord. You must remember that I knew Deacon. Not very well, but I knew him. And he carried a big scar on one hand, where he’d fallen down one day, carrying a tray with a glass jug on it. I’d seen that scar, and I’d never forget it. When I saw that, my lord, and knew who ’twas—well, there! I hadn’t much doubt about what’d happened. Forgive me. Will—I thought you’d done him in, and as God’s my witness, I couldn’t blame you. Not that I hold with murder, and it came to me then that things could never be the same betwixt you and me—but I didn’t blame you. Only I wished it had happened in a fair fight.”

“If it had happened, Jim, it would a-been in a fair fight. I might a-killed him, but I wouldn’t a-killed him when he was tied up. You might a-known that.”

“Well, so I might. But it seemed to me at the time as there was no way out of it. I had to think quick what to do. I found some old boards and beams in a corner, and I stood them up in front of him, so as if anybody came in they might not notice him—not unless they were looking for something—and then I came away and thought hard. I kept the keys. I knew I’d be wanting them, and Rector is so absentminded, he’d probably think he’d mislaid them.

“I thought all that day—and then I remembered that Lady Thorpe’s funeral was fixed for the Saturday. It seemed to me that I might put him in her grave and that he need never be found, barring accidents. I was due to leave on Saturday morning, and I thought I could fix things so as to have an alibi.

“I had a bad moment on Friday. Jack Godfrey told me they were going to ring a muffled peal for Lady Thorpe, and I was all of a shake, thinking he’d see him when he went up to put the leathers on the bells. By a big stroke of luck, he didn’t go till after dark, and I suppose he never looked into that dark corner, or he’d have seen the planks had been moved.”

“We know what you did on Saturday,” said Parker. “You needn’t bother with that.”

“No, sir. I had an awful ride with that bike. The acetylene lamp worked none too well, and it was raining like the tropics. Still, I got there—much later than I meant, and I went to work. I cut him down—”

“You needn’t tell us that, either. There was a witness on the top of the bell-chamber ladder all the time.”

“A witness?”

“Yes—and lucky for you, my lad, he was a highly respectable and gentlemanly burglar with the heart of a rabbit and a wholesome fear of bloodshed—otherwise you might be paying blackmail through the nose. But I will say for Nobby,” added Parker reflectively, “that he would consider blackmail beneath him. You got the body down into the churchyard?”

“And glad I was to get it there. Rolling it down the ladders—it gave me the heebie-jeebies. And those bells! I was expecting all the time to hear them speak. I never have liked the sound of bells. There’s something—you’d think they were alive, sometimes, and could talk. When I was a boy, I read a story in an old magazine about a bell that called out after a murderer. You’ll think I’m soft, talking that way, but it made an impression on me and I can’t forget it.”

“
The Rosamonde
—I know the story,” said Wimsey, gently. “It called, ‘Help, Jehan! Help, Jehan!’ It gave me the grues, too.”

“That’s the one, my lord. Anyhow, I got the body down, as I said. I opened the grave and was just going to put him in—”

“You used the sexton’s spade, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir. The key of the crypt was on Rector’s bunch. As I was saying, I was going to put it in, when I remembered that the grave might be opened and the body recognised. So I gave it some good, hard blows with the spade across the face—”

He shuddered. “That was a bad bit, sir. And the hands. I’d recognised them, and so might other people. I got out my jack-knife, and I—well, there!”

“‘With the big sugar-nippers they nipped off his flippers,’” quoted Wimsey, flippantly.

“Yes, my lord. I made them into a parcel with his papers and slipped it all in my pocket. But I put the ropes and his hat down the old well. Then I filled up the grave and put the wreaths back as tidily as I could, and cleaned the tools. But I can tell you, I didn’t care about taking them back into the church. All those gold angels with their eyes open in the darkness—and old Abbot Thomas lying there on his tomb. When my foot crunched on a bit of coke behind the screen, my heart was in my mouth.”

“Harry Gotobed really ought to be more careful with the coke,” said Wimsey. “It’s not for want of telling.”

“That damned parcel of stuff was burning my pocket, too. I went up and had a look at the stoves, but they were all stoked up for the night, and the top nowhere near burnt through. I didn’t dare put anything in there. Then I had to go up and clean down the belfry. There’d been beer spilt on the floor. Fortunately, Harry Gotobed had left a bucket of water in the coke-house, so I didn’t have to draw any from the well, though I’ve often wondered if he noticed next day that the water was gone. I made everything as clean as I could, and stacked the planks up where I’d found them, and I took away the beer-bottles—”

“Two of them,” said Wimsey. “There were three.”

“Were there? I couldn’t see but the two. I locked up everything tight, and then I wondered what I’d better do with the keys. Finally, I thought I’d best leave them in the vestry, as though Rector had forgotten them—all but the key of the porch, and I left that in the lock. It was the best I could think of.”

“And the parcel?”

“Ah! that. I kept the papers and a lot of money that was with them, but the—those other things—I threw into the Thirty-Foot, twelve miles off from Fenchurch, and the bottles with them. The papers and notes I burnt when I—I got back to London. There was a good fire—for a wonder—in the waiting-room at King’s Cross and nobody much about. I didn’t think anybody would look for them there. I didn’t quite know what to do with Will’s coat, but in the end I posted it back to him with a note. I just said, ‘many thanks for loan. I’ve put away what you left in the belfry.’ I couldn’t be more open you see, for fear Mary might undo the parcel and read the letter.”

“I couldn’t write much to you, for same reason,” said Will. “I thought, you see, you had somehow got Deacon away. It never entered my head that he was dead. And Mary usually reads my letters through before they go, sometimes adding a bit of her own. So I just said: ‘Many thanks for all you’ve done for me’—which might a-been took to refer to you nursing me when I was ill. I see you hadn’t took the £200, but I supposed you’d managed some fashion, so I just put that back in the bank where it came from. It was a queer thing to me that your letters had grown so short all of a sudden, but I understand it now.”

“I couldn’t just feel the same, Will,” said Jim. “I didn’t blame you, mind—but that rope stuck in my gullet. When did you find out what had happened?”

“Why, when the corpse came up. And—you’ll have to forgive me, Jim—but, naturally, I fancied you’d done the job yourself, and—why, there! I didn’t rightly feel the same, neither. Only I kept on hoping, maybe he’d died natural.”

“He didn’t do that,” said Parker, thoughtfully.

“Then who killed him?” demanded Jim.

“I’m sure you didn’t, for one,” replied the detective. “If you had, you’d have accepted the suggestion that he died of exposure. And somehow I’m inclined to believe your brother didn’t do it either—though you’re both accessories after the fact to Deacon’s crimes, and you aren’t clear of the other thing yet; don’t think it. You’d have an awkward time with a prosecuting counsel, both of you. But personally, I’m inclined to believe you both.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“How about Mrs. Thoday? The truth, mind.”

“That’s all right, sir. She was uneasy in her mind—I won’t say she wasn’t, seeing me so queer, especially after the body was found. But it was only when she saw Deacon’s handwriting on that paper that the meaning of it all come to her. Then she asked me, and I told her part of the truth. I said I’d found out that the dead man was Deacon and that somebody—not me—must have killed him. And she guessed that Jim was mixed up in it. So I said, maybe, but we must stand together and not make trouble for Jim. And she agreed, only she said we must get married again, because we were living in sin. She’s a good woman, and I couldn’t reason her out of it, so I gave in about that, and we’d fixed to get it all done quiet-like in London—only you found us out, sir.”

“Yes,” said Blundell, “you’ve got to thank his lordship here for that. He seemed to know all about it, and very sorry he was to have to stop you, I must say. Seemed to think whoever put Deacon away ought to get the Wedding March out of Lohengrin and flowers all down the aisle.”

“Is there any reason why they shouldn’t go on and get married now, Superintendent?”

“I don’t know as there is,” grunted Mr. Blundell. “Not if these two are telling the truth. Proceedings there may be—you two ain’t out of the wood yet, but as to getting married, I don’t see no great harm in it. We’ve got their story, and I don’t know as poor Mary can add very much to it.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Will again.

“But as to who did kill Deacon,” went on the Superintendent, “we don’t seem very much forrarder. Unless it was Potty or Cranton, after all. I don’t know as I ever heard anything queerer than this business. All these three, a-dodging in and out of that old belfry, one up t’other come on—there’s something behind it yet that we don’t understand. And you two—” he turned fiercely on the brothers—“you keep your mouths shut about this. It’ll have to come out some time, that’s a certainty, but if you get talking and obstruct us in our duty of laying hands on the rightful murderer, you’re
for
it. Understand?”

He ruminated, sucking his walrus moustache between his large yellow teeth. “I’d better go down home and grill Potty, I suppose,” he muttered, discontentedly. “But if he done it, how did he do it? That’s what beats me.”

A FULL PEAL OF KENT TREBLE BOB MAJOR

THE WATERS ARE CALLED OUT

Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark.

GENESIS vii. 8, 9.

The public memory is a short one. The affair of the Corpse in Country Churchyard was succeeded, as the weeks rolled on, by so many Bodies in Blazing Garages, Man-Hunts for Missing Murderers, Tragedies in West-End Flats, Suicide-Pacts in Lonely Woods, Nude Corpses in Caves and Midnight Shots in Fashionable Road-Houses, that nobody gave it another thought, except Superintendent Blundell and the obscure villagers of Fenchurch St. Paul. Even the discovery of the emeralds and the identity of the dead man had been successfully kept out of the papers, and the secret of the Thoday remarriage lay buried in the discreet breasts of the police, Lord Peter Wimsey and Mr. Venables, none of whom had any inducement to make these matters known.

Potty Peake had been interrogated, but without much success. He was not good at remembering dates, and his conversation, while full of strange hints and prophecies, had a way of escaping from the restraints of logic and playing gruesomely among the dangling bell-ropes. His aunt gave him an alibi, for what her memory and observation were worth, which was not a great deal. Nor did Mr. Blundell feel any great enthusiasm about putting Potty Peake in the dock. It was a hundred to one that he would be pronounced unfit to plead, and the result, in any case, might be to lock him up in an institution. “And you know, old lady,” said Mr. Blundell to Mrs. Blundell, “I can’t see Potty doing such a thing, poor chap.” Mrs. Blundell agreed with him.

As regards the Thodays, the position was highly unsatisfactory. If either were charged separately, there would always be sufficient doubt about the other to secure an acquittal, while, if they were charged together, their joint story might well have the same effect upon the jury that it had already had upon the police. They would be acquitted and left under suspicion in the minds of their neighbours, and that would be unsatisfactory too. Or they might, of course, both be hanged—“and between you and me, sir,” said Mr. Blundell to the Chief Constable, “I’d never be easy in my mind if they were.”

The Chief Constable was uneasy too. “You see, Blundell,” he observed, “our difficulty is that we’ve no real proof of the murder. If you could only be sure what the fellow died of—”