Note.—I was fortunate enough to induce Lord Peter Wimsey to add one or two footnotes to the narrative supplied by Mr. Anthony Berkeley.—M. K.
“WELL, the secretary, Mills, had orders not to disturb him, but—”
“My dear Charles,” interrupted the young1 man with the monocle peevishly, “I do wish you wouldn’t do this. I keep telling you it’s no good. Never tell thy love, but let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, feed on thy damask cheek. We are not interested.”
“I’ve never known you not interested in a case of murder before,” grumbled Detective Chief-Inspector Parker.
“But this isn’t murder. Dash it, Charles, you can’t look on the wiping out of a thing like Comstock as murder. If you really want to know, I’m jolly glad somebody’s shot him at last. It ought to have been done years ago. The man was a public nuisance. Well, requiescat, I suppose, in pace. Good-night, sweet merchant-prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. But here’s to the man who put you to sleep.” And the young2 man with the monocle drained his glass of Chevalier Montrachet 1915 in one regrettable gulp.
“Don’t you understand, Peter, that it’s your plain duty to take the case up?” pursued Parker doggedly.
“It isn’t your plain duty to eat caviare if you don’t really like it, you know,” said the young man with the monocle kindly.
“I don’t mind it,” said Detective Chief-Inspector Parker.
Lord Peter Wimsey looked pained, but heroically refrained from speech. He did, however, nod towards the waiter.
The waiter contrived to remove the Chief-Inspector’s caviare, and, almost in the same gesture, present for Lord Peter’s inspection a dish of sole bonne femme. Wimsey adjusted his monocle, but his examination was only perfunctory. At the Bon Bourgeois one can trust the sole bonne femme.
“Clear the old palate with an olive, Charles,” Wimsey suggested, pushing the little plate across to his companion as the waiter served the fish and took away the half-bottle of Montrachet. “Who knows? It might clear your mind as well of such distressin’ subjects as dead millionaires. Too many dead millionaires spoil a dinner, don’t you think? De mortuis nil nisi bonum, no doubt, but at a dinner-table to omit even the bonum is a sound working rule before the savoury. Oh no, we never mention them, their names are never heard. Do have an olive.”
“Why are you so anxious for me to have an olive?” asked Parker suspiciously.
“I’m only trying to do you a good turn, dear old thing,” said Lord Peter plaintively. “I want to get this morbid taste of corpses out of your mouth. We’re going on to something really rather special in the matter of hocks in a minute, and you can’t judge wine if your mind is on other flavours.”
Parker grunted.
Wimsey consumed a couple of mouthfuls of the sole with an air of close attention, before his expression relaxed.
“You know, Charles, just to show you what sort of a man Comstock was, I’ll tell you that with my own eyes I once saw him grab a piece of preserved ginger after dinner and shove it into his beastly mouth just before taking his first sip of a ’63 port. Preserved ginger! Did I say the man was a public nuisance? He was a private one, and that’s a whole lot worse. Shooting’s a jolly sight too peaceful an end for a man who could do a thing like that.”
“You knew Comstock, then?” Parker inquired.
“One meets all sorts nowadays,” said Lord Peter with resignation. “And that’s quite enough of Comstock for this evening. I don’t want to spoil my digestion entirely. Let Comstock and his kind take wing, ‘tis not of them I’m going to sing.”
“Don’t be an ass, Peter,” Parker said severely. “You know perfectly well you’re going to take this case up. Considering what the H.S. said, you can’t very well do anything else. Anyhow, I’ve been told off to give you the facts first and guide your faltering footsteps afterwards, and I’m jolly well going to do it. But I’ll hold up the facts till the savoury, if you like.”
“My lord, I will inflame thy noble liver,” groaned Wimsey. “Very well, have it your own way. But I warn you, there isn’t going to be a savoury, so I don’t quite know what you’ll do about that. No, don’t tell me. I prefer not to know.”
A dish of tripes à la mode de Caen succeeded the sole. The hock was good, and Wimsey found himself becoming mellowed. Parker strictly observed the ban against murder and sudden death, but Wimsey himself introduced a reference to the Little Cadbury case.
“The clue of that rusty file petered out this afternoon? Of course it did. I warned Churchill he was on the wrong lines with that ironmonger’s assistant. You tell him from me to look into the butcher’s alibi. It’s not nearly so cast-iron as you people think. Churchill will be making a mucker of the case if he isn’t careful. And has he asked the dustman yet what he found in the bin outside the cottage the next morning? Yes, offcourse he hedged, but Churchill could get it out of him if he threatened to apply to the council for a permit to search the refuse-dump. No, I know it wouldn’t be on the dump; but that would show the man that Churchill knows. Anyhow, he ought to try it.”
Over the dessert Parker was allowed at last to proceed with his exposition without interruption. It was the evening of Lord Comstock’s murder, and so far only a short account of the facts had been made public. Even the recital in the Clarion, though not lacking in length, had been more of a howl for vengeance than a statement of fact.
As the story went on, Wimsey threw off more and more of the pretence of indifference with which he had begun to listen. The fact that three such notable hounds on Comstock’s trail had been in at the death, struck him as particularly piquant. When Parker explained how the Archbishop had pushed his way out of the study, muttering frenziedly about “the wages of sin,” Wimsey grew quite excited.
“Oh, bosh, the worthy bishop said, and bumped him off as in the picture. Only, unfortunately, in this case there isn’t a picture. Charles, this is beginning to grow on me. I hadn’t realized all the possibilities. I knew, of course, that those three were there, but I hadn’t gathered that it was probably one of them who did the ’orrible deed. Even the good old Clarion didn’t go so far as to hint that. At the moment my money’s on the Archbish.3 Very ominous, that line of patter of his; very ominous indeed. And why not? No doubt he looked on Comstock as a direct emissary of the Antichrist. And if good Bishop Odo could batter in the heads of the enemies of the Church with a thumping great club in 1066, why shouldn’t a modern prelate poop ’em off equally with a gent.’s natty racing pistol? Echo answers why? Tell me some more, Charles.”
Parker told him more.
“Do you know,” said Wimsey, when the story had at last been brought up to 2.30 p.m. that same afternoon, and a great many questions asked and answered, and more than one glass of a wholly admirable old brandy consumed—” do you know, Charles, I believe you were right all the time. I have that sensation of internal gloating which has never let me down yet. By the pricking of my thumbs, something jolly well worth investigation this way comes. The fever is upon me, said the Lady of Shalott.”
“Of course I knew you’d want to get your nose into it,” said Mr. Parker complacently.
“And you are right, and I am right, and all is right as right can be. Anyhow, I’ll take these notes of yours back with me now and study them till pearly dawn; and I must say it’s very nice and considerate of your people, Charles, to have got out such a full dossier already. Then to-morrow morning I’ll get busy. I think,” Wimsey said meditatively, “I’ll begin with the Archbishop. I don’t know why, but the Archbishop does attract me strangely. Do you really think he could have done it, Charles, at his time of life? Oh, wild Archbish, thou breath of autumn’s being! Anyhow, I believe my mother knows him pretty well, so I’ll see what can be done. And with Hope-Fairweather too, of course, for that matter.”
“Yes, and don’t forget the Major,” said Parker, in a voice of such concentrated sarcasm that a waiter came hurrying across in alarm, under the impression that there had been a mistake in the bill.
“No,” Wimsey said gravely. “No, I won’t forget Major Littleton.”
Parker raised his eyebrows, and then evidently thought better of what he had been going to say. Instead he asked, conventionally: “And how do you propose to tackle His Grace?”
Wimsey reflected.
“I will leer upon him as a’ comes by; and (if, Charles, you happen to be near) do but mark the countenance he will give me. Enough, said he, throwing back the ear-flaps of the deer-stalker and disclosing the well-known lantern jaws. I’m Hawkshaw, the detective, and I have my methods.”
Lord Peter emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in magenta silk, and called for Bunter.
“My lord?”
“Bunter, what do you advise in the matter of suitings for a call on an Archbishop whom one suspects of having committed a murder?”
“I regret, my lord, to have seen no recent fashions designed to impress homicidal Archbishops. I would suggest, my lord, any suit which your lordship considers might be said to combine an air of holiness with a certain flavour of the man of action.”
“I don’t fancy,” said Wimsey thoughtfully, “that I possess any suit that could be said to produce quite that effect.”
“Then may I advise, my lord, the pale grey willow-pussy with the mauye pin-stripe? That should convey a delicate hint of half-mourning which would not be out of place; and if worn with a subdued amethyst tie and socks, I think should convey to His Grace that note of cautious sympathy and understanding which I take it your lordship would wish to imply in view of the object of His Grace’s onslaught.”
“With a soft hat, of course.”
“A soft hat, my lord, undoubtedly. A bowler would introduce quite the wrong note.”
“And, I fancy, no stick.”
“Subject to your lordship’s better judgment, I should like to point out that by tensing the muscles of the hand on a stick, a highly eloquent whitening of the knuckles may be produced. This might perhaps serve your lordship more usefully at certain moments than words, which in the circumstances can hardly fail to be difficult.”
“Bunter,” said Wimsey, “you’re always right.”
“It is kind of your lordship to make the observation. Breakfast is ready at any moment your lordship pleases.”
“Early bacon, early bacon,” said Wimsey with enthusiasm.
An hour later, having breakfasted, dressed, and smoked a thoughtful cigarette, he summoned from her fastness in a neighbouring garage his Daimler Twin-Six (called “Mrs. Merdle” on account of that lady’s notable aversion from row) and turned her long black nose in the direction of the Dowager Duchess of Denver’s town house.
The Dowager Duchess greeted her son with her usual vague affection.
“How early you are, Peter! But then I suppose you’re working on this dreadful affair of the Comstock person. Such an odd title to choose, though really not so odd when one remembers what he looks like; but I don’t suppose he chose it for that, because people so seldom know what they look like, do they? I remember so well that your Uncle Adolphus always reminded me of a seal, even when he was quite young; but I don’t expect he ever knew he looked like one, because of course I never mentioned it to him, people are so touchy about that sort of thing.”
Lord Peter tucked his arm through that of the Duchess. “Well, what do I look like, Mater? It might be useful to know, in case I ever want a nice original disguise.”
“You, dear? I know when you were a baby I used to think you were rather like a dormouse; but now you’re much more like a crane, aren’t you? Or, aren’t you?” added the Duchess uneasily.
“I expect I am, if you say so,” Wimsey laughed. “Anyhow, Mater, you’re perfectly right. I am working on the Comstock case, and I want you to give me a line to the Archbishop, or ring him up and tell him I’m coming. I don’t know him, you see, and what with Convocation and this and that, there might be some difficulty in getting admitted to the presence. I just want to ask him a question or two.”
“Yes, dear, of course I will,” agreed the Duchess, sitting down at once at her writing-table. “But don’t ask him why he did it, because he’ll feel bound to deny it, and then, of course, his conscience will worry him afterwards. So inconvenient, I always think, being a clergyman and unable to tell lies; I suppose they have to be at home to every caller. Dear me, poor Willy (the Archbishop, you know, dear, though I never can get used to the idea of Willy being an Archbishop, he used to use hair-oil so very freely when he was a boy), one can’t help sympathizing with him, I feel, remembering the Comstock person, though I suppose murder always is murder really, even when done with a very small pistol, and after all so medieval for a bishop, though I remember now Willy always was old-fashioned. Do you think they’ll hang him, dear? I do hope not, because really I don’t think one should hang Archbishops, almost sacrilegious in a way, and in any case most disrespectful to the Church; but then I suppose he’d be a martyr, and we haven’t had a martyr for a very long time now. Here’s your note, dear. Must you go already? Well, do be as nice as you can to poor Willy, and don’t accuse him of anything too plainly, because he certainly wouldn’t like that at all, having been a headmaster and all that kind of thing before they made him a bishop, and you know how headmasters get. Good-bye, dear. Come and see me again soon.”
Wimsey kissed his mother affectionately, and turned Mrs. Merdle’s rakish black lines and polished copper twin-exhausts towards Lambeth Palace.
“And except for the fact that he thinks he may have bumped into something on his way out of the study,” said Lord Peter resentfully, “I got nothing out of the old sharpshooter that we don’t know already.”
“That would account for the overturned chair by the door, of course,” nodded Parker.
“And the first crash,” Wimsey said sharply.
“Yes, perhaps.”
“Yes, certainly. My dear Charles, you haven’t seriously been considering those two crashes as anything but mere crashes, have you? You haven’t been thinking that anyone could possibly describe the tiny little crack of a pistol like that as a ‘crash’? Charles Parker and Scotland Yard, lend me your ears; I come to poop off Cæsar, not to bomb him.”
“His Grace didn’t by any chance admit to you that he’d done it, I suppose?” asked Parker, disregarding this side issue.
“His Grace did not. And I omitted to ask him. To tell the truth, Charles, I realized as soon as I saw the old boy that the good old tradition of militant Bishops isn’t by any means extinct. I had the dickens of a job to find a plausible excuse for asking him questions; I simply hadn’t got the nerve to say I was working for the police—quite officially and all that, for once. I can tell you, when he shot his eyes out at me from under their thickets I wobbled in front of him like any mere prebendary. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised at any minute if he’d picked me up by the scruff of the neck, put me across his knee, and given me six of the juiciest—and I believe I should have let him! I wonder,” said Wimsey,” if that’s just what happened to Comstock, and Comstock shot himself after it in sheer shame. Oh, death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling now, you know. Have some more spuds. Bunter chips rather a marvellous spud, doesn’t he?”
Parker helped himself, and agreed that Bunter chipped an impeccable potato.
“I must say,” remarked Wimsey, doing the same, “that a proper bloody steak is a relief now and then. One does get a bit tired of restaurant meals.”
“Yes,” said Parker, who had no chance of doing so. “Well, failing the Archbishop, what are you going to do this afternoon, Peter? You’ve only got till to-morrow evening, you know.”
“By to-morrow evening Brackenthorpe shall have the miscreant, manacled and fettered; I swear it on my honour as a sleuth, This afternoon? Well, I thought we might run down and visit what the newspapers call the scene of the crime. But before we go, I’d like you to throw your eye over a few notes I made last night. You may find something illuminatin’ in ’em, for I’m blessed if I can.”
When lunch was over, the two men moved into the adjoining room. The day was warm and sunny, and the deep windows stood open to Piccadilly. Streaming in, the sun lit up with a mellow glow the rich old calf bindings of the books which lined the walls, and danced on the rosewood case of the grand piano that stood open on one side of the room. Two or three bowls of vivid crimson roses added a brighter note in shaded corners. Wimsey waved his guest into one of the two deep armchairs, and himself perched on an arm of the enormous Chesterfield, loaded with cushions. Bunter put down the coffee-tray on an exquisite little Sheraton table near the Chesterfield, and retired with the noiseless, gliding tread of the man-servant who really knows his job.
Wimsey poured out the coffee, and then dropped a little sheaf of papers on Parker’s knee.
“I fancy those make things a bit dearer,” he said, “but otherwise I don’t seem to have done much good. The most interesting thing’s the time-table. It shows something that I hadn’t realized before I made it out, and that is, that there were no less than seven minutes between the Archbishop’s exit and Littleton’s discovery of the body. That is, if we can rely on Littleton’s account; there’s corroborative evidence for the Archbishop. So there is quite a chance, you see, that somebody else did it and not the old boy at all.”
“We hadn’t made up our minds about His Grace,” said Parker, studying the time-table in question. “Yes, this seems pretty accurate.”
“Of course it’s accurate,” said Wimsey, with some indignation. “Dash it all, Charles, you ought to know me better than that by now. I only wish you were always equally so. Accuracy! The very word is like a bell, to toll me back from thee to my sole self, Charles.”
The time-table was as follows:
| 11.35 a.m. | Comstock interviews Archbishop. |
| 11.50 a.m. | Farrant announces Hope-Fairweather. |
| 11.55 a.m. | Mills finds Hope-Fairweather in hall. |
| 11.58 a.m. | Littleton arrives. |
| 12 noon. | Littleton in drawing-room, looking out of window on to lawn. |
| 12 noon. | Hope-Fairweather in waiting-room. |
| 12 noon. | Archbishop in study with Comstock. |
| 12 noon. | Mills in office. |
| 12 noon. | Comstock undoubtedly alive. |
| 12.8 p.m. | First crash, in study. |
| 12.9 p.m. | Archbishop comes out. |
| 12.12 p.m. | Mills opens drawing-room door. |
| 12.13 p.m. | Second crash. |
| 12.13 p.m. | Mills runs into office and finds H.-F. |
| 12.16 p.m. | Littleton goes into study. Comstock dead. |
| 12.17 p.m. | Mills escorts H.-F. to front door. |
| 12.18 p.m. | Mills says drawing-room empty, door into study shut. |
| 12.19 p.m. | Hope-Fairweather starts up his car. |
| 12.19 p.m. | Littleton still in study. |
| 12.20 p.m. | Hope-Fairweather’s car disappears. |
| 12.20 p.m. | Littleton running across lawn. |
| 12.22 p.m. | Mills resumes work. |
“All that is assumin’ that each of those four is telling the truth, of course,” said Wimsey, flicking through the pages of the official police report. “One of them probably isn’t, so we’ve got to allow for that. But it’s interestin’, that interval of seven minutes, isn’t it? And possibly illuminatin’.”
“Yes,” Parker agreed. “I’ll admit I hadn’t realized it was so long.”
Wimsey was still turning carelessly through the police dossier of the case. Suddenly he stiffened.
“Hullo! what’s this? Ha! do mine eyes deceive me, or is this Banquo’s ghost? Funny, isn’t it, Charles, how one can look and look at a thing and never see it at all?”
“What have you seen now?”
“Why, that we’ve been wasting our time on the Archbish. He was a phantom of delight when first he gleamed upon my sight, Charles, but unfortunately he was only a lovely apparition sent to be a moment’s ornament. In other words, Innocence hath privilege in him to dignify Archbishop’s laughing eyes. Those seven minutes let him out. Litteton says that when he found the body, the wound was still bleeding. No wound of that nature would be bleedin’ at least seven whole minutes after it had been inflicted.”
“Well, that’s one of our four out of the way,” Wimsey resumed. “I wonder if we can eliminate any of the others? Turn, Charles, to the page headed ‘Corroborations.’ That’s rather illuminatin’, too, don’t you think?”
Parker nodded.
“Take Mills, for instance. At 12.10 p.m. he was still with the Archbish; from 12.13–12.16 p.m. he was with Hope-Fairweather. That only leaves him two minutes, 12.11–12.12 p.m., without an alibi. Hope-Fairweather similarly gets his alibi from Mills for 12.13–12.16 p.m.; he’s got only the three minutes 12.10–12.12 p.m. uncorroborated. Well, I suppose either of them could have put his head round the study door and had a pot at Comstock in those times, but the trouble is that in either case that puts Comstock’s death at not later than 12.12 p.m. Would the wound have been bleedin’ when Littleton found him at 12.16 p.m.? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t. And since the butler, you tell me, gets an alibi for all that time from the cook. …” Wimsey paused.
“Yes?” said Parker.
“Well, it’s pretty beastly, but you see what I mean.”
“Major Littleton?” said Parker, without expression.
Wimsey nodded. “There’s no gettin’ away from it, he’s the most likely. He’s the only one, you see, whose statement isn’t corroborated by anyone else at all. And there was always that convenient door between him and the study. Mind you, I don’t think we need give too much importance to Mills’ statement about opening the drawing-room door at 12.12 p.m. and fancying afterwards that the room was empty. If Littleton had been in the study then, Mills would certainly have heard the voices; because it’s pretty well out of the question that Littleton would have walked into the study and taken a pot at Comstock without saying a single word. And in any case, if Littleton’s speaking the truth that the wound was bleeding at 12.16 p.m., it’s almost certain that the shot must have been fired not much before 12.14 p.m. Deuced fine margins we’ve got to work in. But you see the trouble, Charles, and we can’t shut our eyes to it. If Comstock was killed between 12.14 p.m. and 12.16 p.m., as it seems most likely that he was, neither Mills nor Hope-Fairweather could have done it. And what’s more, they were probably too occupied with each other just then to hear anything that might have been goin’ on in the study.”
“I’d as soon believe I’d done it myself,” said Parker, unconvinced.
“No doubt,” Wimsey said bitterly. “Nevertheless, that’s what we’re up against.”
There was a silence, full of things unsaid.
Then Parker said slowly: “If Major Littleton had shot Comstock, the markings on the bullet would correspond with those of the pistol which he handed over yesterday to Easton. They don’t.”
“No. And they don’t correspond with Comstock’s own pistol either. I think we can take it that Comstock was not shot with either of those pistols. Outside a detective-story, there’s not much chance of faking a bullet’s markings. No, there’s a third pistol, which isn’t in the local police-station at this moment. And Charles, I don’t want to over-emphasize, but who really is the most likely person to have that third specimen of a rather rare type of pistol in his possession, just in the ordinary course of routine?”
“There’s no evidence at all that the Major had two of those pistols,” Parker said quickly.
“No,” Wimsey agreed. “That’s about the one bright spot on an uncommonly murky horizon.”
“After all, you haven’t proved anything more than opportunity, and we knew all about that.”
“Opportunity, and motive; and a nasty powerful combination they are. Dash it all, Charles, you needn’t glower at me like that. I don’t want to prove that Littleton shot Comstock. I hope to goodness he didn’t. But at present you must admit that he’s the likeliest of the four.”
“Hope-Fairweather kept his gloves on all the time he was in the house,” Parker said sullenly. “Why the hell did he want to do that?”
“Perhaps his hands were cold,” Wimsey said flippantly.
“He hadn’t even taken them off when Mills found him picking up the papers in the office.”
“That cock won’t fight. If he had his gloves on, as you’re implyin’, for the purpose of leaving no finger-prints on the pistol, he’d naturally slip them off the moment they’d served their purpose. He wouldn’t want to call attention to them, you see. The fact that he didn’t strikes me as a pretty big point in his favour.”
“There was a discharged shell in the pistol on Comstock’s desk.”
“Yes, and the barrel was clean. If you’re suggesting that Hope-Fairweather had time to shoot Comstock, and search that drawer, and clean the barrel of the pistol all in those three minutes, then I tell you straight, Charles, the thing’s an impossibility. And the same for Mills. Besides, in any case it doesn’t apply, because Comstock wasn’t shot with that pistol. We don’t know how that shell got discharged, but I’ll lay you a pony to a dollar that it wasn’t done by Comstock’s murderer. No, if we want to clear Littleton we’ve got to look a bit farther afield. For instance, didn’t it strike you how very pat that chauffeur came out with the number of Hope-Fairweather’s car? A most observant bloke, that chauffeur, don’t you think?”
“Why shouldn’t he? It was in his own line.”
“You think he not only notices but remembers afterwards the number of every car that comes up his employer’s drive? Well, perhaps he does. All I can say is that in his place I shouldn’t, and my eyes work pretty well automatically.”
“We’re not overlooking the chauffeur,” said Parker.
“I should jolly well hope you’re not. If you want to get Littleton out of this mess you can’t afford to overlook anyone. But Mills and Hope-Fairweather. … Well, I don’t know, but I’ve got a sort of feelin’ that they’re out of the case now. One can’t get round those alibis, you know, unless the two of them are accomplices, and I don’t quite see that. No, exeunt Mills and Hope-Fairweather, I rather fancy, through gap in time-table, all talking, all singing, all dancing, laughing ha-ha, chaffing ha-ha, nectar quaffing ha-ha-ha. Anyhow, I’m sick of personalities. Let’s take one long last fond look at the facts. No harm in getting things as clear as we can before we pop down there. Find the page headed ‘Facts’ in that little lot. I pulled ’em out like plums from the duff of your people’s report. (What is duff, by the way? It sounds quite disgustin’.) With infinite tact he pulled out each fact, and said what a good boy am I. These are the real bones of the case, and any merry little theory we produce has to cover all of them. Read ’em out, Charles, there’s a good chap.”
Parker began to read:
“FACTS
“Body between desk and window; chair half on top of it.
“Bullet wound in left temple.
“No powder marks round wound.
“Wound still bleeding at 12.16 p.m.
“Pistol, one chamber discharged but barrel clean, lying on desk, far side from chair and window.
“No finger-marks on pistol.
“Pistol of uncommon type; not many in this country.
“Pistol was in study previous evening. (But where? Ask butler.)
“Study windows all open.
“Overturned chair by door into hall. (Probably by Archbish.)
“One drawer of desk pulled nearly right out; documents in disorder; Mills thinks one or more missing.
“Way on to lawn from kitchen-garden almost impossible.
“Lady stopped and watched gardener, sauntered on to lawn, and then came back ‘quicker than she went.’”
“Thank you, Charles,” Wimsey said politely. “The tuneful voice was heard from high, arise, ye more than dead I It’s funny about that lady, by the way, isn’t it?”
Parker looked up sharply. “It was Easton’s very first idea that Comstock had been shot by someone outside the house.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant that although Littleton says in his report that he stood by the drawing-room window looking out into the garden, he apparently never saw the lady at all; and yet she must have been in full sight of the drawing-room windows for at least two or three minutes. I wonder how it was Littleton never saw her.”
“He saw the gardener.”
“Yes, but he could have seen him from the drive, couldn’t he? Well, well, there seem to be a good many questions in this case that want answering. I wonder, for instance, where Comstock dined the previous evening. Nobody seems to know that.”
“The chauffeur might, if you think it’s important.”
“It’s my belief that chauffeur knows a whole lot of things, but whether he’ll part with them or not is another matter. Well, shall we be moving? Mrs. Merdle’s all ready and waiting.”
Parker groaned apprehensively, but rose.
“There’s one thing,” said Wimsey, as they went downstairs, “that I should very much like to ask Hope-Fairweather, but I’m afraid it would only be waste of time.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing,’ said Wimsey.
Parker, however, recognized the tune the other was humming. It was “Who’s Your Lady Friend?”
Mrs. Merdle covered the eighteen miles to Hursley Lodge in twenty-nine minutes, which, allowing for the traffic in London, as Wimsey pointed out, was not bad. From Parker’s comments as he clambered out, it might have been gathered that he did not agree. Parker seemed to think it had been nothing but bad.
Wimsey rang the door-bell with a hurt expression.
“My dear Charles, I am not a bad driver, as you seem to think. On the contrary, I’m an astonishingly good one. We’re still alive, aren’t we? What more do you want?”
The door was opened by Farrant, the butler. Parker asked for Mills, and the two were shown into the drawing-room, a long, low room with pleasantly big windows overlooking the garden on one side of the house and the drive in front. Wimsey drifted from one to the other, and then shook his head.
“It’s a pity that Littleton didn’t notice the lady, you know, Charles. Who knows? He might have seen something quite interesting. It’s a pity he overlooked her, don’t you think?”
Parker grunted. He might have added something more, but the possibility of further retort was cut short by the secretary’s entrance.
Wimsey recognized Mills instantly from the police description. The plump hands, the too-great readiness to smile, the general air of complacent toadyism, at once indicated his type. Parker, who had not seen him before, displayed his credentials and asked to see Farrant.
“Not a very nice young man,” Wimsey said, when Mills had smiled himself away in search of the butler. “And capable, I rather fancy, under provocation, of turning quite a nasty young man. I wouldn’t put it past him for a moment of inserting a piece of lead in his employer’s anatomy. And yet I don’t think he did.”
“I’m not so sure. By the way, is there anyone else you want to see besides Farrant?”
“Not a soul,” Wimsey said blithely. “I don’t think we’re likely to learn anything more from the gardener; and as for Mills, the only way to get things out of that young man is to frighten them out, and unfortunately we haven’t got anything yet to frighten him with. No, so far as I’m concerned, Farrant—Farrant is the boy. In fact, and not to put too fine a point on it, he is my sunshine and only joy. I’ve got the glimmering of an idea about Farrant.”
Before Parker could ask what the idea might be, Farrant anounced himself.
Parker addressed him more peremptorily than usual.
“Now, Farrant, I’m from Scotland Yard, as you know, and this is Lord Peter Wimsey. We want to ask you a few questions about this business.”
Farrant bowed sombrely.
Parker began to put him through an examination on the points already covered in the police report, filling in the time till Wimsey should indicate the direction of his own idea regarding the butler.
Wimsey, however, seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings. Indeed he was becoming rather patently bored. He lounged by the window with his hands in his pockets, and did not even trouble to stifle a slight yawn. The butler’s practised glance had already wandered from Parker’s blue-serge suit, cut rather for utility than elegance, to Wimsey’s Savile Row figure, but his expression had not shown what he thought of the contrast. It was, however, noticeable that whereas only Parker was putting the questions, Farrant’s answers appeared to be directed rather to the Savile Row silhouette than to Oxford Street’s serge.
At last Wimsey took his hands out of his pockets, and stretched slightly.
“I say, Charles,” he said peevishly, ‘can’t we throw an eye over the jolly old study? Eh? That’s what you promised me, you know. You said we could have a look at the study.”
Parker took his cue promptly. “Yes, of course,” he said, in a humouring kind of voice. “Farrant, take us to the study.”
Farrant swung back a section of the bookcase and stood aside for the others to precede him.
“Ah,” said Wimsey, in a pleased voice, “the concealed doorway, eh? Jolly ingenious. All right, carry on, Charles.”
Parker and Farrant passed through into the study. Wimsey, however, did not follow immediately, and when Parker looked round the concealed door was again closed. He resumed his questioning of Farrant, and in a minute or two Wimsey appeared.
“The jolly old door swung to,” he said, “and I couldn’t find the catch. So this is the scene of the ’orrible crime, is it? Chair still reversed, as on discovery of body. Well, well, gives you quite a nasty feeling, doesn’t it, Charles? But I suppose you’re used to all this kind of thing. Well, well.” He teetered round the room with an air of well-bred vacuity.
“Carry on, Charles,” he added. “Don’t mind me, if you want to get on with your questions, you know. By Jove, I suppose this is the very desk where the revolver was found, what? Most excitin’.”
The slight wink which accompanied these words showed Parker what was wanted of him. He began to question Farrant about the pistol and his discovery of it the previous evening.
Farrant could not undertake to say how the pistol had come into Lord Comstock’s possession; no doubt Mr. Mills might have information on that point. Yes, the evening before the crime was the first time he had seen it. Yes, it had been lying on the desk then.
“On the desk?” said Parker sharply. “What was it doing on the desk?”
“I couldn’t say, sir, I’m sure.”
“You’re certain you didn’t see it in one of the drawers?”
“Quite certain, sir,” Farrant replied imperturbably.
“Um,” said Parker. “And what did you do with it?”
“I gave it a bit of a wipe over, sir, and left it where it was.”
“You left it—”
“Did it make much of a noise when you pooped it off, Farrant?” inquired Wimsey pleasantly.
Farrant looked a little shaken. “S—sir?” he stammered.
“When you pooped it off that evening and chipped the picture rail over there,” Wimsey said, in a voice of amiable interest. “Did it make much of a row?”
“N—no, my lord.” Farrant was still showing signs of distress, but he had recovered himself sufficiently to give the other his correct rank. “Hardly any, my lord,” he added, with the air of one who, having taken the plunge, does not find the water quite so cold as he had expected.
“Just a sort of sharp crack, not much louder than a dry twig snapping?”
“Very little louder, my lord.”
Wimsey turned to Parker with a look of childish triumph. “There you are, Charles, you see. I told you the noise of that pistol couldn’t possibly be described as a crash. That’s a jolly interestin’ bit of evidence, Farrant. Thanks frightfully for tellin’ me.”
Parker turned a sternly official countenance upon the butler. “Why have you said nothing of this before?”
“I don’t expect anyone asked him,” Wimsey chipped in. “Did they, Farrant? No, I thought not. Well, suppose you tell us now what happened and how you came to poop the thing off. Did a corner of the duster catch in the trigger?”
“That is precisely what happened, my lord,” Farrant said, with a look of relief. “The pistol was lying on the desk, and I picked it up to slip it into the top drawer, not thinking that a thing like that ought to be left about, when I noticed there was some oil on it. I just went to give it a rub over with the duster, and the next thing I knew was that it had gone off and there was plaster flying in that corner over there. It was careless of me, my lord, because I know how to handle a pistol. Anyhow, I cleaned the fouling out of the barrel to stop it sweating, but I couldn’t reload it because there didn’t seem to be any ammunition; so I just left it as it was, with the empty shell in.”
“Of course you did,” Wimsey nodded approval. “And jolly sensible too. There you are, you see, Charles; nothing of the least importance after all. By the way, Farrant, can’t you tell us something about this paper that’s supposed to have disappeared out of the drawer you found open? I know, of course, that you would never have opened any of Lord Comstock’s private drawers, but you might have seen at some time quite by accident what was in ’em. I expect you’ve got some kind of an idea what paper it is that’s missing, eh?”
Farrant’s face had, however, taken on its usual morose expression. “I fancy, my lord,” he said, smoothly enough, “that there is no paper missing.”
“What? But Mills said there was.”
“Mr. Mills thought at one time that there might be,” Farrant corrected respectfully, “but I fancy that he thinks now that he was mistaken.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” said Wimsey thoughtfully. “Well, in that case there doesn’t appear to be much more that you can tell us?”
Farrant performed a slight bow. “I have already informed the police of all I know in connection with the crime.”
“I see. Then we needn’t keep you any longer. Nothing else you want to ask Farrant, Charles? All right then, Farrant.”
Farrant withdrew.
“That was clever of you, Peter,” said Parker.
“Oh, I don’t know. I just had a hunch that that chap was keeping something up his sleeve, and it struck me there might have been some funny business about the pistol. It was a shot in the dark, of course, but it came off. So now we know how the shell of that pistol came to be empty, why there were no finger-prints, and that Comstock’s edition of the pistol had nothing to do with his death. What we don’t know is the part that Farrant took in the Mystery of the Missing Document.”
“You think he knows something about that?”
“He’s certainly got ideas. Didn’t you see how his eyes veiled over like a snake’s as soon as I introduced the topic? That’s a slippery customer, Charles, and I advise you to keep tabs on him.” Wimsey was standing in the bow-window, facing the room. He turned round and looked out into the garden, and then began twisting his head and body at different angles.
“Some new kind of physical jerks?” asked Parker.
“If you were anything of a sleuth at all, Charles, you’d see that I’m trying to work out the angle from which the shot was fired. It was the left temple, you see, which complicates matters. Curse this window! Why couldn’t it have been a nice flat one, instead of this three-sided affair. It gives us too many angles altogether.”
“You think the shot was fired from outside, then?”
“I do. I’ve already proved to you, if only you’d been listening, that it’s extremely unlikely that any of the people inside the house fired it. Remains, the outside. And the windows were all open, don’t forget. I wish to goodness they hadn’t been. Let’s see now. He must have been standing up, mustn’t he? If he’d been sitting down, he’d just have slumped back in his chair, not tumbled on to the ground and brought the chair on top of him. So I should say he was standing with his body towards the window, or more or less towards the window, and his head turned to the right. Or he might have been standing like this, looking out of the right of the window and presenting his other temple to an assassin firing through the left of the window. Does that give us anything? Nothing at all, so far as I can see. Oh, hollow, hollow, all delight. Well, I’m going to have a nice quiet stroll round the garden while you get hold of Mills and ask him why the blazes he’s changed his mind about the missing document. He won’t tell you, but ask him.”
In the garden Wimsey sauntered round with apparent aimlessness. He paced across the lawn, had a look at the wall which divided the grounds from the road, examined the wall that separated the lawn from the kitchen garden and rattled the locked gate in it, strolled round the drive, and finally made his way to the garage.
The chauffeur was there, washing the car, and appropriate reflections occurred to Wimsey regarding the unimportance of human life and the immutability of small jobs.
“That a nice-looking bus,” he remarked, glancing over the Phantom Rolls with an expert eye.
The chauffeur, a tall man in dark green breeches and gaiters, straightened himself and passed his forearm over his face to wipe the perspiration away. Evidently he was too used now to being interviewed by complete strangers even to start when one addressed him unexpectedly from behind.
“Ah,” he agreed. “Beauty, eh? Never given a minute’s trouble since we got her.”
For a few minutes they discussed the more notable points of the car’s excellence. Then Wimsey gently drew the conversation on to Comstock’s death. Chatting easily, he took care to win the other’s friendliness before he put the question for which he had sought him out. At last he began to lead up to it.
“By the way, Scotney, I expect the police have asked you where you drove Lord Comstock the evening before, I suppose for dinner?”
“No, sir; not the police. They haven’t asked me anything, not since yesterday afternoon. Another gentleman did, though, this morning.”
Wimsey wondered which of his fellow-sleuths had forestalled him. “Yes, and you said …?”
“I drove Lord Comstock to Maggioli’s restaurant, in Dean Street. He told me to come back at eleven, and I drove him home.”
“I see.” Wimsey knew Maggioli’s quite well. The food there is famous. So are its private rooms. “Oh, and one other thing, Scotney.” As if casually he brought out his important question. “Major Littleton, the Assistant Commissioner, you know, told me how bright you’d been over the number of that car that was waiting in the drive. Deuced smart piece of work. You’re evidently an observant fellow. You’d recognize the lady in it if you saw her again, I expect?” At the last moment Wimsey had framed his question differently, and not asked merely if the chauffeur had seen the lady at all. One never knows, and a chauffeur may be chivalrous; the amended wording would not put so great a strain on any possible chivalry accruing to Scotney.
Possibly Wimsey’s caution had been unnecessary, for the chauffeur replied without hesitation. “I’d know her all right. A chap doesn’t forget a proper good-looker like her in a hurry.”
To pass on to the lady’s description was easy.
She was exceptionally tall, it seemed, and slim, and not so much pretty as real handsome; no, not so young; about thirty-five, Scotney opined, but it was a job to tell nowadays, and that was a fact. What was she wearing? Well, she had a red hat on, of that Scotney was sure, and some sort of a dress—might have been blue or might have been black. Was she dark or fair? Well, there you had Scotney, but probably darkish, well, not fair, anyway; but they don’t show much hair under their hats nowadays, do they? And reely, Scotney wouldn’t like to say one way or the other.
“Thanks very much,” said Wimsey, and rewarded Mr. Scotney in the recognized manner.
As he was turning away, he put one more question. “By the way, how did you come to remember the car’s number? You must see a lot of cars in a day.”
“I make a habit of it,” returned Mr. Scotney with pride. “Lord Comstock didn’t like me driving too fast, and when a fellow overtakes you at a corner or does the dirty on you some other way, Lord Comstock always liked to report him to the next A.A. man, and he used to blow hell out of me if I hadn’t got his number pat; so I made the habit of remembering the number of any car I notice. It comes easy after a bit, quite automatic.”
“Ah,” said Wimsey, as if a doubt had been resolved, and took his departure.
Parker was waiting for him on the steps of the house.
“Finished here? “he asked gloomily.
Wimsey nodded. “Why weep ye by the tide, laddie, why weep ye by the tide? I told you Mr. Mills would defeat you. It doesn’t matter. The important thing was that Mr. Mills should be made just a little worried by being asked that particular question.”
“If he was,” said Parker, shoe-homing himself into Mrs. Merdle, “he certainly didn’t show it. Mills, Farrant, Hope-Fairweather—we seem to be going round in circles.”
Wimsey pressed the self-starter. “Meaning that the murderer isn’t among them? Nay, my fair coz, oh, wish not one man more. For she was there. …”
“Who was there?”
“My hope, my joy, my own dear Genevieve. Which way do we go for Winborough, right or left?”
“Right. What are we going to Winborough for?”
“To visit a sick. I thought it would be a nice friendly act to ask after that constable whom Littleton ran down so brutally. It was just about here that the deed was done, wasn’t it?”
They had turned out of the drive gates, and Wimsey brought Mrs. Merdle to a halt at the side of the road, while he looked carefully up and down the road.
“What are you looking for here?” Parker asked.
“He hunted high, he hunted low, he also hunted round about him. Gore, Charles. Spot where the body was found marked by gore. But there’s no gore, so that doesn’t help us.” Wimsey got out of the car and walked slowly up the road and back again.
“Are you seriously looking for blood?” asked Parker, as he climbed back again into the driving-seat.
“Well, not seriously, perhaps. But I should have liked to see where the accident happened. I’m blest if I can understand, you see, why that bobby was on his wrong side of the road.”
“These country police,” said Parker, with correct scorn.
Wimsey drove on.
In Winborough it was learnt that the unfortunate constable was still unconscious. Wimsey asked to be notified as soon as the man was fit to be interviewed.
Superintendent Easton was not at the station. A by-election was in progress, and he was busy with the Chief Constable. The two examined the pistols and the other exhibits with a proper show of interest, but seemed to learn nothing from them.
“I suppose, though,” Wimsey remarked, as they drove back again towards London, “that it’s inevitable that the bullet was fired from a pistol of that type? I’m not much of a whale on firearms. There couldn’t be any other kind of weapon that would fire a bullet of that size?”
“Hardly a rifle,” Parker said doubtfully. “It’s a lot smaller than a 22, you see. I can ask our expert, if you like.”
“Yes, you might. I don’t suppose there’s anything in the idea, but I’m puzzled how to account for another of these little pistols being at Hursley Lodge that day, when you tell me there probably aren’t more than a dozen of ’em in England altogether. In fact, there are quite a lot of things that puzzle me in this case. I think I’ll give up sleuthin’ and buy a farm. Alas, what boots it with uncessant care to tend the homely, slighted sleuther’s trade and strictly meditate the thankless corpse? Were it not jolly well better done, Charles, as others use, to sport with Amaryllis in the shade? Upon my soul, sometimes I think it were. Exit Hawkshaw the detective through concealed trap-door; enter Corydon, singing and dancing and covered with straw. Poetry.”
The way back to London took them again past Hursley Lodge. To Parker’s surprise Wimsey once more insisted on stopping the car, this time against the boundary wall of the Lodge, and mounting on the seat, peered long and earnestly across the lawn at the house.
“I want to have one more look at those angles,” he explained. “One last fond look, and then farewell. One gets rather a good view from here. Oh, for the eye, for the eye of a bird. Not that a bird’s eye is really needed. Funny thing about plans, isn’t it? They never prepare you for what a place really looks like. Now I’d taken it for granted that the lawn here was about a hundred feet across, and it’s not much more than thirty. The plan told me that, of course, but I hearkened not to its pleading. Whisper and I shan’t hear; that’s the motto for plans. Well, well.” He climbed down again, fitted his long form neatly into the narrow seat, and slipped in the gear.
From Hursley Lodge to Piccadilly Wimsey spoke only once; Between two trams on the outskirts of Mitcham he lifted both hands from the wheel in a gesture of triumph, and exclaimed:
“I’ve got it!”
Parker shudderingly averted his eyes from the imminent death that was bearing down upon him. “Got what?”
“Whom Mills reminds me of,” said Wimsey, grasping the wheel again just in time to curvet away from the bows of the approaching tram. “William Palmer, the poisoner.”
“The question is,” said Wimsey moodily “is a woman justified in shooting her blackmailer, or is she not?”
He was sitting in Miss Katherine Climpson’s little drawing-room. Having stowed Mrs. Merdle away and sent Parker about his business, he had put through two telephone calls, and one of them had been to Miss Climpson to ask whether he might come and drink a late cup of tea at her flat, a proposal which had received an enthusiastic assent.
“Personally,” he added,” I hold that she is. Strongly.”
Miss Climpson helped herself to another piece of wafer-thin bread and butter before replying. The long gold chain round her neck, hung with an assortment of small ornaments, jangled in unison with the numerous bangles which encircled her thin, lace-covered wrists.
“Well, really that is a very difficult problem, isn’t it?” she said, sitting very upright in her chair. “We are taught quite clearly that murder is wicked, but then blackmailing is wicked too. Outrageously wicked. Really, Lord Peter, as you know I am not a violent woman, but when I hear, as I sometimes do, of the misery that has been caused by blackmailers, it makes my blood positively boil. Even I,” said Miss Climpson, her sallow face growing a little pink, “feel that I could do simply anything to them. But whether one ought to shoot them or not—well, don’t you think that depends?”
“Yes, I do. But supposing it is a case where she ought to shoot him, and supposing some interfering busybody of an amateur sleuth finds out that she did shoot him, and supposing she’ll get away with it if he holds his tongue and get hanged if he doesn’t. … Oh, hell. I beg your pardon.”
“Not at all,” said Miss Climpson with energy. “I always think it quite right for a man to swear occasionally, when he feels it warranted. It is a male prerogative. So long as he keeps within reasonable bounds, of course, and I know, Lord Peter, you would always do that. I remember an uncle of mine would invariably ejaculate ‘Assouan!’ when he was deeply moved, which as you know is the largest dam in the world, or was then, and he was a dean.”
“Where the dean clucks, there cluck I,” said Wimsey, with a ghastly smile.
“And I am afraid, dear Lord Peter,” said Miss Climpson, the ornaments on her gold chain clinking agitatedly, “that you are deeply moved too. Do please let me give you another cup of tea. Tea is really so soothing in times of mental stress. At least, I know I always find it so, though men, I know, pretend to despise it; but I’m afraid I haven’t any whisky. Don’t you think,” said Miss Climpson all in a rush, “that you had better tell me all about it? A trouble shared, they say, is a trouble halved. But not, of course, if you think it inadvisable; because you mustn’t think …”
“I think,” said Wimsey, taking his cup of tea, “that you’re a darling, Miss Climpson; and I am going to tell you all about it. My theory, you see, is that she shot him from the near side of the window while his head was turned towards the farther side of the room—the door, we’ll say, of Mills’s office. She could have done it quite safely. The gardener had his back turned, and the pistol made no more noise than a breaking stick, which is quite the kind of noise one would expect to hear in a garden.”
“Did you ask the gardener if he heard a stick break after the lady had gone past him?” asked Miss Climpson acutely.
“No, I did not,” Wimsey answered, with a kind of restrained violence. “Because I don’t want to know if the gardener heard a noise like that or not. This is only a theory, remember. I can’t prove it, and I don’t want to prove it. But the devil of it is that I’ve already proved to Parker, or as near as dash it, that the shot must have come from outside the house, because of the times; and it doesn’t need a man from Scotland Yard to work out, from the upward direction of the wound and the height above ground of the window (Littleton himself called it a goodish drop), that the firing-point might have been pretty close to the window. And it certainly doesn’t take Scotland Yard to know,” Wimsey concluded bitterly, “that the only person pretty close to the window just then was Hope-Fairweather’s girl friend.”
Miss Climpson nodded her iron-grey head. “I see. Poor thing! How dreadful she must have felt to do such a terrible thing. But Lord Peter, let us look on the bright side, as my dear father used to say. Perhaps she didn’t do it. We don’t know, you see; do we? And I always think it is so much better not to be quite certain of the truth about anything really dreadful. Where ignorance is bliss, you know. But, of course, in this case it isn’t bliss, is it?” added Miss Climpson rather lamely, with a glance at Wimsey’s anything but blissful face.
“I shall drop out of the case,” Wimsey said savagely. “I don’t care a hang about the Home Secretary, or anyone else. It’s the only decent thing to do.”
“You’re quite certain it was blackmail, then?” asked Miss Climpson, a little timidly.
Wimsey told her about the missing document.
“And the joke is,” he said, brightening a little, “that Mills and Farrant each think the other’s got it. They’re both of them hedging on their stories now, because there’s a partnership in the air to pool the paper and split results; but each of them still believes the other’s got it.”
“And who has got it?” Miss Climpson asked.
“Hope-Fairweather, of course,” said Wimsey.
Miss Climpson buttered a second scone with deliberation. “Then do you know what I should do? I should go to Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather and have a talk with him.”
“Miss Climpson,” said Wimsey with enthusiasm, “doesn’t it ever give you a pain in the head, a kind of swelling pain, being always right?”
The idea of seeking an interview with Sir Charles had, of course, been in Wimsey’s mind already. He had put it aside, because he had no wish to drag out of that unfortunate man a truth which he would much prefer to leave unconfirmed. Now he saw that things could not be left quite as they were. The best thing would be to see Sir Charles, drop a hint or two about what he knew, and at the same time mention his decision to retire from the case, and then drop another hint or two about what he might do were he in Sir Charles’s place. For Wimsey not only had every sympathy with Sir Charles, he had every sympathy, too, with the lady whom he had referred to as Sir Charles’s girl friend. If people will go a-blackmailing, and in a particularly dirty way, they must be prepared to be shot; and Wimsey was not going to lift a finger against their executioners. On that point his determination was now firm.
Wimsey had not been quite so open with Miss Climpson as to be indiscreet. He had told her very little more than what she was bound to learn shortly from the newspapers. Not for a moment had he let her guess that the name of Sir Charles’s girl friend was perfectly well-known to him, as indeed was the lady herself.
Already, on the chauffeur’s description, he had had his suspicions; the second of the two telephone calls which he had put through on reaching his flat, had confirmed them. It had been to Maggioli’s restaurant. Maggioli’s had the reputation of being extremely discreet. But discretion does not always pay, and a successful restaurant proprietor is not he who knows how to be discreet, but he who knows when not to be discreet. Maggioli was a very successful restaurant-proprietor. He knew all about Lord Peter Wimsey; and he had not the least hesitation in informing his lordship, in the strictest confidence, that the lady with whom Lord Comstock had dined, in a private room, the night before his death, was Mrs. Arbuthnot. And Mrs. Arbuthnot was not only Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather’s niece, but she was the sister-in-law of Freddie Arbuthnot; and if the other had not settled it, that did.
Wimsey saw Sir Charles late that evening, when he got back from the House. He had been waiting in the big library in Eaton Place for over an hour, and with every minute he disliked more the interview ahead of him. But Miss Climpson had been perfectly right. It was one of those things which have to be done.
Sir Charles came in just before midnight. He looked tired, and Wimsey thought the lines on his face more deeply incised than when he had seen him last. Quite obviously he was not too pleased to see his visitor.
“Ah, Wimsey. You want to see me? Not been waiting long, I hope. You’ve got a drink? It’s about this Comstock business, I suppose.”
Wimsey nodded. “’Fraid so, Sir Charles. Sorry to bother you, and all that.”
“Oh, I’m getting used to it,” said Sir Charles, mixing himself a drink and dropping into a chair. “I’d better not be so unofficial as to say straight out that this is a fool idea of Brackenthorpe’s, calling the police off and all you other chaps on, but if it isn’t, I’d like to know what a fool idea is. All right, get on with your questions.”
“I haven’t come to ask any questions, Sir Charles,” Wimsey said softly. “Ask, and it shall be answered unto you. I don’t want to be answered.”
Sir Charles lifted his eybrows. “Eh? Don’t get you, I’m afraid.”
“I’m retiring from the case.”
“Oh!”
There was a grim little silence. Wimsey sipped his drink and stared straight ahead of him.
Sir Charles said quietly:
“Care to explain why?”
“I don’t think I need, need I? We’ll say, if you like, that I prefer not to find out the truth.”
“Ah!”
“But it’s probable, you know,” Wimsey said gently, that someone else may. Dashed probable. And what I’ve really come for is to say that if there’s anything I can do. …”
“Ah,” said Sir Charles again, unhelpfully.
There was another little silence. Wimsey was determined not to break it. He had said all he meant to say, and more quickly than he had expected; and if the other wanted to leave it at that, Wimsey was quite ready to do the same.
“Am I to gather,” asked Sir Charles with some care, “that you consider the world well rid of Comstock?”
“What I have found out,” Wimsey answered, with no less care, “makes me rather anxious not to find out any more.”
Sir Charles took a sip of his whisky-and-soda. “You think I shot the fellow?” he asked, in a more conversational tone.
“Oh no, I don’t. On the contrary, I’m pretty sure you didn’t.”
“Then why all this hush-hush business?”
Wimsey laughed. “Sorry if I’ve been turning melodramatic. Enter Wimsey, the Masked Bandit, disguised as a sleuth; fly, all is discovered. No, but seriously, sir, and without trying to butt in, I do hope that document’s safely destroyed.”
“What document?”
“The letter, or whatever it was, that you nicked out of the drawer in Comstock’s desk. A pretty smart piece of work, Sir Charles, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”
“Ah,” observed Sir Charles again, and lit a cigar rather elaborately.
“You trying to pump me? “he asked, when the cigar was drawing nicely.
“No. I told you, I’d retired from the case.”
“Have you got any idea as to who shot Comstock? I’d rather like to hear it, if you have. Because, I can tell you, it beats me.”
“Ah,” said Wimsey.
Sir Charles glanced at him sharply. “Don’t believe that, eh?”
“It doesn’t matter what one believes, does it?” Wimsey said evasively. “The point is, I don’t know.”
Sir Charles shifted his position in his chair. “Look here, Wimsey, we’re talking at cross-purposes. You’ve evidently got some notion in your head, and I’m pretty sure it’s a wrong one. Anyhow, is this pow-wow official or not?”
“If you mean, will anything you spill to me now go any farther, it won’t. But take my advice, sir, and don’t spill it.”
“No,” said Sir Charles; “I think I will. I’m going to tell you something I deliberately kept back from Brackenthorpe; and I kept it back because I doubted very much whether he’d believe it, and in any case I didn’t see that it would help matters. The truth is, young feller, that I’m in a bit of an awkward position. I know that, of course; and I’m going to tell you this because it’s a case of who is not for me is against me, and you seem to be busy informing me that you’re among the pros. Anyhow, I’m going to let you in on what I actually saw happen; and if you can make anything of it, go ahead and do so—so long, of course, as you don’t give me away.”
“I won’t give you away,” Wimsey promised gravely, “or Mrs. Arbuthnot. I thought,” he added, “that you’d better know that I know that.”
“I was afraid it would come out,” said Sir Charles equably; but the sudden tightening of his fingers on the cigar showed what his voice was so careful to conceal.
“So far as I know, that piece of information is exclusive to me,” Wimsey soothed him.
“Ah! Well, let’s hope it remains so. Betty’s had trouble enough already without getting mixed up in this business,” Sir Charles pronounced.
Wimsey raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, but did not speak.
“Anyhow, here’s what’s happened. I went down there that morning to get those letters out of Comstock, by hook or by crook. I needn’t go into details, but Comstock was about as low as they make ’em where women were concerned. And he’d got hold of these letters of—of someone whose name we needn’t bother about. She’d come here late the night before and told me the whole rotten story. She was pretty well desperate; just been having dinner with him, and he’d put things to her. Well, I knew there was no time to waste, so down I went the next morning. She insisted on coming too. I knew where the letters were; I think he’d told her, or she’d seen ’em; and I was quite ready to knock the fellow out, if I could, to get them.
“Well, then, there was that trouble about seeing him at all. I tried to get rid of that secretary chap with a message to the car, but it didn’t come off—luckily, as it happened. Then, when I heard the Archbishop being shown out, I thought I’d better nip in and tackle Comstock before Mills could get busy again. I remembered the lie of the rooms at Hursley Lodge well enough to know that I could get into Comstock’s study without showing myself in the hall, so I waited till the voices died away, and then went through.
“Comstock was standing by the window. He turned round when I came in from the office and looked a bit surprised, but said ‘hullo’ civilly enough. I went straight to the point—told him he was a blackguard, and that I wanted those letters. He began sneering, and I was just on the point of going for him when suddenly he crumpled up without a word, and sort of slithered via the chair to the floor, upsetting it on top of him. I thought he’d had a stroke, and to tell you the truth I didn’t care what he’d had, because it had given me the chance to get those letters. The drawer was actually open, and the packet was lying on the top. I simply grabbed it, had a quick look out into the garden to make sure that no one had seen me through the window, and beat it back to the secretary’s office. I was trying to get through to the waiting-room, but my sleeve caught a tray of papers and crashed it on to the floor. While I was picking them up, the fellow came in. Luckily I must have pulled the study door to behind me. You know the rest. But I can tell you, Wimsey, when I heard in Brackenthorpe’s room that Comstock had been shot, it gave me a nasty moment. I simply hadn’t the faintest idea.”
“Well, I’m dashed!” said Wimsey. “You know, Sir Charles, that’s an uncommonly interestin’ story.” He was trying to pick out the vital facts. One in particular stood out. “You say you looked out into the garden within a few seconds of Comstock’s crumpling up. Who was there?”
“No one! That’s the astonishing thing. Comstock must have been shot from the garden. Everything goes to prove that. It was the left temple, wasn’t it? Well, that fits; he was standing sideways on to the window, facing me; his left temple was towards the garden. But I’ll swear that when I looked out there was nobody within sight except the gardener, and Betty just crossing the drive.”
“Mrs. Arbuthnot was just crossing the drive?” Wimsey repeated innocently. “I wonder if she saw or heard anyone.”
“No. I’ve asked her. She says she’d just walked on to the lawn, feeling anxious, and then decided that she had better not be seen, got in a bit of a panic and hurried back to the car. She swears, too, that there was nobody else in the garden. But she has got a vague notion that she might have heard a subdued crack as she was stepping on to the drive, because she remembers looking back at the gardener under the impression that he’d broken a rake or something.”
“She was going away from the house when you saw her?”
“Oh yes.”
“Ah,” said Wimsey. If Betty Arbuthnot had been crossing the drive fifteen seconds after Comstock had been shot, with the gardener between her and the house, then it was quite impossible that Betty Arbuthnot could have fired the shot. Of course Sir Charles might be shielding her, but on the whole Wimsey thought he was speaking the truth. “Here be mysteries,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what I think, Wimsey. It wasn’t any of the people who are known to have been in and around the place that morning, who shot Comstock. The crime was carefully planned, and the murderer was hiding somewhere in the garden. He’s left no clue, nobody’s got the least idea who he was, and he won’t be found. And I for one shan’t be sorry if he isn’t.”
“On the whole,” said Wimsey, “I’m inclined to agree with you.”
He asked the other a few more questions, but could elicit nothing more that looked helpful. Now that his first theory seemed to be disproved, his investigating instincts were once more roused. He had told Sir Charles that he was retiring from the case, and so he would, officially; but perhaps unofficially he might still retain a paternal interest in it.
“It’s lucky,” he remarked, “that you were so quick off the mark, isn’t it? Otherwise, as things turned out, you’d have lost those letters. Bis rapit qui cito rapit.”
“Well, as a matter of fact it was on my way. I was going to Winborough that morning in any case. The by-election, you know. There was a big lunch-hour meeting that day, with Brackenthorpe speaking, and a lunch afterwards. I only had to start a bit earlier. The only trouble was putting Brackenthorpe off. His chauffeur was laid up and he wanted me to drive him down. Brackenthorpe hates driving himself. However, I managed to get out of it.”
“And lucky you did,” Wimsey said, rising. “Well, Sir Charles, I can promise you none of this will go any farther, and thanks frightfully for marks of confidence and all that in telling me. I agree with you that the chap who shot Comstock was too cunning. I don’t think they’ll get him. No, I won’t have another drink, thanks.”
It was past one o’clock when Wimsey got home, but Bunter appeared in the little hall almost before the latchkey had ceased to turn in the lock.
“Bunter,” Wimsey said severely, “I keep telling you not to wait up for me when I’m late, but you will do it. Why won’t you obey me, Bunter? It makes things frightfully awkward for me, you know. Especially this evening, when every prospect pleases, and only Bunter’s vile.”
“May I inquire, my lord, whether you have solved the Comstock mystery?”
“Don’t talk like the title of a detective story, Bunter. No, not to say solved it. I had a theory, but it’s just died on me, I’m glad to say.”
“Indeed, my lord?”
“Yes, it was a nasty little theory. I never liked it. Nor did Miss Climpson. Have you got a Miss Climpson, Bunter, to take all your troubles to? You should have. What lasting joys that man attend, Bunter, who hath a polished female friend.”
“So I have always understood, my lord,” said Bunter, mixing a whisky-and-soda from the tray which stood ready on the Sheraton table.
Wimsey settled himself comfortably on the couch. “Well, it may interest you to hear that I’ve proved that Comstock wasn’t shot from the house, and he wasn’t shot from the garden. Therefore there’s only one place he could have been shot from, and that is the road. You’ve studied the plan of the place? Then you’ll have realized, as I didn’t, that it’s barely thirty feet from the house to the road. I stopped the car there this afternoon and had a peep over the wall. If I was a good shot with a revolver, which I’m not, I could have picked off anyone standing in the study window as easy as falling off a log. What do you think of that?”
“I must admit, my lord, that it is a possibility which had already occurred to me after a perusal of the plan.”
“It would have,” Wimsey said bitterly. “I have to go down there and run about with my nose to the ground, of course, to see anything so obvious; but you’re like one of those Austrian professors of criminology, who solve everything without moving out of their studies. Have you ever thought of emigrating to Austria, Bunter? They’d pay you good money there.”
“I fear, my lord, that life among a foreign people would not suit me for long.”
“Back flies the homing Bunter, like a swallow to its nest. Anyhow, it’s my belief that this is just what the murderer did. He stopped his car by that wall, waited till Comstock presented a nice easy target, and then pipped him neatly and drove off. Ha!” exclaimed Wimsey, “and I wonder if that’s why the policeman was on the wrong side of the road. I knew there was something significant in that, if only we could see what it was. Had that possibility occurred to you?”
“No, my lord. I regret to confess that I had overlooked such an obvious conclusion.”
“Don’t spoil it, just because I’m one up on you. Be generous, sweet Bunter, and let who will be wiser. They haven’t rung up from Winborough, have they? I’m very much afraid, you know, that when that policeman does recover consciousness, there won’t be any Comstock mystery left. If I am right, and the shooting did take place from the road, he probably saw the whole thing. Well, well, we can but wait. Not that it makes any difference to me. I’ve retired from the case.”
“Indeed, my lord?”
“Yes, I’ve decided that I don’t care who shot Comstock. I’m just rather glad that somebody did.”
“I have always understood,” said Bunter, “that Lord Comstock was not a very nice gentleman.”
At four o’clock in the morning Wimsey was roused from sleep. Standing by the bed, Bunter was shaking him respectfully, but with firmness.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but the Winborough police-station is on the telephone. Although you gave me to understand that you have retired from the case, I fancied that you would be interested to hear anything they may wish to impart.”
“Yes,” said Wimsey, struggling with an enormous yawn. “After all, they don’t know I’ve retired, do they?”
The news from Winborough was interesting. The constable had recovered consciousness and had been able to make a statement.
“I hope I haven’t done wrong in calling you up at this time, my lord,” said a gruff, but apologetic voice, “but we understood that you wished to be informed at any hour of the day or night, and our orders are to give you every facility.”
“Quite right. Has the man got anything useful to say?”
“I’m afraid nothing helpful regarding the Comstock case, my lord. His story is that he was cycling along the road, and there was a car ahead of him drawn up at the side. He drew out to pass it, but before he could do so the car went on. Before the man could regain his own side of the road, another car came out of the drive at Hursley Lodge, on its wrong side of the road, and passed him.”
Hope-Fairweather’s, reflected Wimsey, with a prick of professional conscience that he had not thought of asking Sir Charles about the policeman.
“Our man was again about to ride over to his own side of the road, when another car, which we know now was Major Littleton’s, came out of the same drive at very great speed and, of course, crashed into him.”
“I see,” said Wimsey. “No, that doesn’t help much, does it? Did the man notice the car that was drawn up by the side of the road?” he added casually. “The driver might be able to substantiate part of his story, you see.”
“He didn’t take a note of the number, my lord. He thinks it was a blue saloon, but he doesn’t seem very sure about that. He’s only a young chap, and I’m afraid he isn’t as observant yet as he might be, in spite of his training.”
“And I suppose he didn’t notice the driver at all?”
“It was a saloon car, my lord. I don’t think he even saw the driver. But in any case the car was out of sight by the time of the accident, so the driver couldn’t help us much either way, could he?”
“Of course not,” said Wimsey.
He went thoughtfully back to bed.
“Nobody seems to know anything about this third pistol,” he mused, as he pulled the sheet up round his ear. “I wonder how Brackenthorpe got hold of it.”
Wimsey sat in Sir Philip Brackenthorpe’s room at the Home Office. Sir Philip sat at his table, facing him.
Wimsey smiled easily. “I’ve come to tell you, sir, that I’m retiring from the case.”
“Oh?” Sir Philip did not sound very interested. “You could have sent me a note.”
“I’m afraid you’re frightfully busy,” Wimsey said apologetically. “Sorry to be takin’ up your time, and all that, but there is one question I wanted to ask, and I thought it better to put it to you personally.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t think I’m interferin’, but—are you quite sure it’s all right about the pistol? I mean, it won’t be traced to you, and it’s safely out of the way now? Sorry to butt in, but I thought I’d better make sure.”
Sir Philip had looked up sharply. “What pistol?”
“Why,” said Wimsey innocently, “the pistol that you shot Comstock with.”
Sir Philip drew a piece of paper towards him. He marked three dots on it, and then very carefully drew lines from dot to dot. When his triangle was completed he looked at it for a moment, apparently in deep admiration, and then embarked on a square.
“Do I really understand you to say, Wimsey,” he remarked in a detached voice, “that you imagine that I shot Comstock?”
“I’m afraid—something like that, you know,” said Wimsey deprecatingly. His narrow face looked more completely vacuous than one would have believed possible. He beamed inanely.
“Preposterous!” observed Sir Philip absently, and tried his hand at a circle round the square. He frowned in a pained manner at the result’s lack of circularity.
“My theories often are,” said Wimsey, unabashed. “At least, so Parker says. But then, of course, he has the job of disproving the things. That’s where the work lies. Anyone can make dashed silly suggestions. Like this one, you know. Do you think I’d better hand it over to Parker to disprove? I will if you’d rather, Sir Philip.”
Sir Philip looked up. “What makes you think such a thing, Wimsey?”
Wimsey told him.
“But this is just guess-work,” was Sir Philip’s comment.
“At present. That’s all a theory really is, you know. But if it’s right, I expect a whole lot of it could be proved. Whereas,” said Wimsey brightly, “if it’s wrong, I expect it couldn’t.”
“You haven’t even traced the possession to me of one of those pistols.”
“No,” Wimsey admitted. “That is the snag, of course.” His shining face took on an expression of interested inquiry. “How did you get hold of it?”
“We’re talking nonsense,” said Sir Philip briefly, and made a movement as if to get up.
Wimsey leaned back and beamed at him. “You know, I had my suspicions about you from the beginning.”
“From the beginning?” Sir Philip sat back again, abruptly.
“Yes; when you called Scotland Yard off and put the amateurs on. That looked dashed fishy to me. But it was a clever move. Scotland Yard won’t catch up now. But you shouldn’t have given away the fact that you knew Comstock, you know; it would have come out, no doubt, but you needn’t have advertised it; because to know him, I imagine, was to loathe him. By the way, how did you get hold of the pistol?”
Sir Philip looked at him.
“I’m only asking for your own good,” Wimsey said plaintively. “I just want to make sure you haven’t done anything silly.”
Sir Philip looked at him.
“Am I to hand the theory over to Parker, then?” asked Wimsey.
“I thought,” said Sir Philip slowly, “that you had come here to tell me you had retired from the case.”
“I have. The only question now is whether I hand it over to Parker or whether I don’t.”
There was a long silence. Sir Philip began to draw a most elaborate pattern, based on a rhomboid.
He looked up from it. “The pistol was sent to me, fully loaded, by an anonymous correspondent, with a message inside which ran, if I remember rightly, ‘This is just one of a good many that are going to make you wish you’d never been born.’ I get a lot of things like that.”
“And where is it now?”
“At the bottom of the sea.”
“Does anyone know you had it?”
“No. It arrived just as I was setting off for Winborough. It was marked ‘Private and personal—urgent,’ so my butler gave it to me personally instead of handing it over with my other correspondence to my secretary. I opened it actually in the car. Nobody but myself has seen it.”
“Then you ought to be all right,” said Wimsey cheerfully.
Sir Philip extended one side of the rhomboid to form the base of a would-be isosceles triangle.
“In a way,” he remarked, “it wasn’t really murder.”
“Not at all,” Wimsey agreed politely. “It was a legitimate function of your office. A bit unconventional, perhaps, but none the worse for that.”
“I’d been wondering on the way down,” Sir Philip pursued, “whether I’d stop at Hursley Lodge and have a word with Comstock myself. The man was becoming a public pest. The harm he had done to this country, abroad as well as at home, was already incalculable. For the national good he had to be silenced. I was meditating something in the nature of a personal appeal, backed by threats, before proceeding to sterner measures. I had already made up my mind that if he forced us to do so, we would deal with him on no less a count than high treason. I was anxious, however, that any interview I might have with him should be a complete secret, with no witnesses even as to my own arrival. I therefore stopped my car, as you deduced, by that wall, got out on the running-board, and looked over to see whether the place seemed deserted or not. I saw Comstock standing in a window, quite a short distance away from me. The pistol was in my pocket. I felt very strongly about the man, so strongly that I hardly realized the insane thing I was doing. I took out the pistol and had a shot at him. I can say quite truthfully that I had not the very faintest expectation of hitting him. Indeed, the idea of hitting him hardly occurred to me. I am not merely an indifferent shot with a pistol, I have never even fired one before. The ridiculous idea in my mind, I think, was just to give him a severe fright. But I did hit him; and if I were a religious man I should sincerely believe that a divine guidance had directed that bullet. I saw him collapse, and continued to watch, in a sort of trance of horror. Then to my astonishment I recognized Littleton bending over the body. That brought me to myself. I got back into my car and drove off. I never saw the policeman you mention.”
“You’re quite safe from him,” said Wimsey. “I don’t think anyone will connect that car with Comstock’s death for a time yet; and if they do then, the scent will be too cold.”
Sir Philip smiled faintly. “You know, I can’t regret it.”
“Regret it?” said Wimsey with indignation. “I should think not. If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Sir Philip, it’s the best thing you ever did in your life. It’s a pity we can’t tell the world, so that you can go down in posterity and become a legend. With weepin’ and with laughter still is the story told, how well Sir Philip pipped his man in the brave days of old. But, alas! we must keep it under our hats.
“Not,” added Wimsey thoughtfully, “that you’re in any real danger, because if the worst came to the worst and they did nab you for it, you could always give yourself a reprieve, couldn’t you? Or couldn’t you? It’s a nice legal point. I must remember to put it to Murbles next time I see him.”