In the Teeth of the Evidence

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  But as he followed Popper out of the room, he held his head erect and moved with a new assurance.

  ‘That is a very dreadful story,’ said the Padre.

  ‘Very,’ said I, ‘and there are some rather odd points about it. Did commercial travellers dash about in motor-cars when Popper was a youngster? And why didn’t he take that evidence straight to the police?’

  Timpany chuckled.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Popper attended the inquest on Davenant-Smith’s butler. He must have spotted that doctor bloke the minute he set eyes on him. Popper’s the kindest-hearted old bluffer going, but you mustn’t believe a word of those stories of his. He was in great form tonight, was old Popper.’

  AN ARROW O' ER THE HOUSE

  ‘The fact is, Miss Robbins,’ said Mr Humphrey Podd, ‘that we don’t go the right way about it. We are too meek, too humdrum. We write – that is, I write – a story that is a hair-raiser, a flesh-creeper, a blood-curdler, calculated to make stony-eyed gorgons howl in their haunted slumbers. And what do we do with it?’

  Miss Robbins, withdrawing from the typewriter the final sheet of The Time Will Come! by Humphrey Podd, fastened it to the rest of the chapter with a paper clip and gazed timidly at her employer.

  ‘We send it to a publisher,’ she hazarded.

  ‘Yes,’ repeated Mr Podd, bitterly, ‘we send it to a publisher. How? Tied up in brown paper, with a servile covering note, begging to submit it for his consideration. Does he consider it? Does he even read it? No! He keeps it in a dusty basket for six months and then sends it back with a hypocritical thanks and compliments.’

  Miss Robbins glanced involuntarily towards a drawer, in which, as she too well knew, lay entombed the still-born corpses of Murder Marriage, The Deadly Elephant, and The Needle of Nemesis, battered with travel and melancholy with neglect. Tears came into her eyes, for, though Heaven had denied her brains, she was as devoted to her work as any typist can be, and cherished, moreover, a secret and passionate attachment to Mr Podd.

  ‘Do you think a personal call –?’ she began.

  ‘That’s no good,’ said Mr Podd. ‘The beasts are never in. Or if they are, they are always in conference with somebody of importance, ha ha! No. What we want to do is to take a leaf out of the advertiser’s book – create a demand – arouse expectation. The “Watch This Space” stunt, and all that sort of thing. We must plan a campaign.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Podd.’

  ‘We must be up to date, dynamic, soul-shattering,’ pursued the author. He swept back the lock of fair hair which was trained to tumble into his eyes at impressive moments, and assumed the air of a Napoleon. ‘Whom shall we select as our objective? Not Sloop – he is too well-fed. Nothing could make that swill-fatted carcase quiver. Nor Gribble and Tape, because they are both dead and you cannot hope to stagger a bone-headed Board of Directors. Horace Pincock is vulnerable, but I would rather starve in a garret than become a Horace Pincock author.’ (Not that there was any chance of Mr Podd starving, for he had an ample allowance from his widowed mother, but the expression sounded well.) ‘Nor Mutters and Stalk – I’ve met Algernon Mutters and he reminded me of a lop-eared rabbit. John Paragon is out of the question – his own advertising is pitiable, and he wouldn’t appreciate us. I think we will concentrate on Milton Ramp. For a publisher he is intelligent and go-ahead, and my friends tell me he is highly strung. Go and get me a broad pen, a bottle of scarlet ink, and some of that revolting bright green paper you buy from the sixpenny bazaar.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Podd,’ breathed Miss Robbins.

  The campaign against Mr Milton Ramp opened that day with an emerald missive marked ‘Private and Confidential’. Inside the paper bore only the words: THE TIME WILL COME! executed in scarlet letters an inch high. Miss Robbins posted this at the West Central Post Office.

  ‘They must all be posted from different places,’ said Mr Podd, ‘for fear of discovery.’

  The second message (posted in Shaftesbury Avenue) had no wording; it consisted merely of an immense scarlet arrow with a venomous-looking barb. The third (posted in Fleet Street) showed the arrow again, together with the mysterious caption: ‘Time has an arrow – see Eddington – its mark is ruin and desolation.’ The fourth drove home this ambiguous remark with a quotation from Mr Podd’s latest work: ‘Ruin may seem far distant, but – The Time Will Come!’ At this point the week-end intervened, and Mr Podd rested on his oars. He spent Sunday morning in picking out choice bits from his novel. The story lent itself to this, being concerned with the activities of an indignant gentleman wrongfully condemned to penal servitude by the machinations of a company promoter, and devoting his remaining years to a long-drawn-out series of threats and revenges. On Sunday night, Mr Podd posted the next letter with his own hand. It was an excerpt from Chapter IV, where the hero, in a great scene, defies his oppressor, and ran:

  ‘Guilty as you are, you cannot escape for ever. Truth shall prevail. The Time Will Come!’

  On Monday he was assailed by the thought that Mr Ramp might take the whole thing as a joke. This worried him. He made researches into the life-history of a more celebrated author, and wrote:

  ‘You laugh now – but The Time Will Come when you will hear me! – see Disraeli.’

  This pleased him until the moment when he found Miss Robbins throwing a letter into the waste-paper basket.

  ‘Only an advertising circular, Mr Podd,’ explained Miss Robbins.

  ‘Woman!’ cried Mr Podd, ‘you alarm me! How if the hippopotamus-skinned Ramp has protected himself with a bulwark of women like you? Perhaps he has never even seen our well-thought-out nerve-shatterers! Damnable thought. But stay! Did not that idea also occur to the injured Rupert Pentecost?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Podd. In Chapter XV. I’ll look it up for you.’

  ‘A quotation to suit every situation,’ said Mr Podd. ‘Ah! thank you, Miss Robbins. Yes “Remember the woman whose life you laid waste! If you persist in your obduracy, the warnings will go to your private address.” That will do nicely. Pass me the red ink. Post this in Hampstead on your way home and find out where the unspeakable Ramp has his detested lair.’

  The task was not a hard one, for Mr Ramp’s lair was quite openly entered in the telephone directory, and the next letter was posted (from a pillar-box in Piccadilly) to that address:

  ‘Nemesis sits on the ruined hearth. The Time Will Come!’

  This was embellished by a clock-face, in which arrow-shaped bands pointed to half-past eleven.

  ‘We will move the time five minutes on every day,’ said Mr Podd. ‘In another week’s time the fellow ought to be twittering. We’ll show him what advertising means. Talking about it’s paying to advertise, oughtn’t we to make some suggestion about advance royalties? Five hundred would be mild for a book of this quality, but these fellows are all hard-fisted misers. Let us say £250 to start with.’

  ‘There’s nothing about that in the book,’ said Miss Robbins.

  ‘No, not in the book,’ agreed Mr Podd, ‘because Jeremy Vanbrugh is supposed to be a sympathetic character – I didn’t want to turn him into a blackmailer. The public can get fond of a mere murderer and doesn’t mind if the detective lets him off at the end, but a blackmailing murderer must be hanged. It’s one of the rules.’

  ‘But,’ said Miss Robbins, ‘mightn’t Mr Ramp think we were blackmailers if we asked for money?’

  ‘That’s different,’ replied Mr Podd, rather irritably. ‘We are only asking for our due reward. He’ll think so when he sees the book. Let’s see: “A first payment of £250” – no, hang it! that sounds like hire-purchase. Wait a minute. “I only ask for £250 – now – but The Time Will Come when you will pay me more” – no – “pay up in full” – that’s crisper. We’ll push this round to both addresses.’

  He wrote the letters and dictated a chapter of a new book. ‘It will be wanted quickly when the first one gets going,’ he observed. ‘We shall hardly be able to turn them out fast enough. It
will be a great strain, no doubt.’

  ‘Oh, but you have so many wonderful ideas, Mr Podd. And I don’t mind working extra.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Robbins,’ said Mr Podd, condescendingly. ‘You are a good girl. I don’t know what I should do without you.’ He tossed back the Napoleon lock. ‘Have you got your note-book? Take down this. The Corpse in the Sewer. Chapter I. The Smell in the Scullery. “Anne,” said Mrs Fletcher to the cook, “have you been throwing cabbage-water down the sink?” “No, ma’am,” replied the girl, pertly, “I should hope I know better than that –” That gives the right domestic touch for the opening, I think.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mr Podd.’

  Mr Podd was lunching with a literary friend named Gamble. He did not very much like Gamble, who was one of those people who are quite spoilt by a trifling success. Gamble’s novel Waste of Shame had, for some reason, achieved a sort of fluky popularity, and the incense had gone to his head. He was frequently seen at publishers’ parties, had made a witty speech before Royalty at a literary dinner, and now made a foolish pretence of possessing inside knowledge of everyone in the publishing world. One could not afford not to know Gamble, but he was very trying to his friends. Humphrey Podd looked forward to the day when he would be able to patronise Gamble in his turn.

  ‘Look!’ said Gamble, ‘there’s Ramp just come in. That fellow’s cracking up. Got the willies. You can see it in his face.’

  Mr Podd gazed at the publisher – a thin, dark, fretted face and a pair of nervous hands that picked unceasingly at a roll of bread.

  ‘Why?’ asked Mr Podd. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he? His stuff sells, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the business,’ said Gamble. ‘You’re all right there, if you’re thinking of placing anything with him. No – it’s something quite different. Don’t let this go any further, but I shouldn’t be surprised if there was an explosion in that quarter before very long.’

  ‘Explosion?’ repeated Mr Podd.

  ‘Well, yes – but I oughtn’t to say anything. I just happen to know, that’s all. One gets to hear these things somehow.’

  Mr Podd was annoyed. He would have liked to hear more, but he was determined not to encourage Gamble.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘as long as the firm’s all right, that’s the main thing. Chap’s private life is none of my business.’

  ‘Private – ah! there you are,’ said Gamble, darkly. ‘From what I hear, it won’t stay private very long. If some of the letters come into court – whew!’

  ‘Letters?’ asked Mr Podd suddenly interested.

  ‘Hell!’ said Gamble. ‘I oughtn’t to have said anything about that. It was told me in confidence. Forget it, will you, old boy?’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Humphrey Podd, annoyed with himself and with Gamble.

  ‘He’s beginning to sit up and take notice,’ announced Mr Podd to Miss Robbins. And he repeated Mr Gamble’s conversation.

  ‘Oh, Mr Podd!’ exclaimed Miss Robbins. She fiddled nervously with her typewriter ribbon. ‘Mr Podd!’ she burst out, uncontrollably, ‘you don’t suppose he – I mean, you never know, do you? And he might be angry.’

  ‘He’ll forget it, once he sees the book,’ said Mr Podd.

  ‘Yes, but – just imagine! I mean, he might have really done something. Perhaps he’s getting frightened – I mean – you’ll think I’m awfully silly.’

  ‘Not at all, Miss Robbins,’ said Humphrey Podd.

  ‘Well, I mean – suppose there’s a dark secret in his past life –’

  ‘That would be an idea,’ cried Mr Podd, excitedly. ‘Wait a minute – wait a minute! Miss Robbins, you’ve given me the plot for a new book. Here! take this down. Title: A Bow at a Venture. No, dash it! I’ve an idea that’s been used before. I’ve got it: An Arrow o’er the House. Quotation from Hamlet: “That I have shot my arrow o’er the house and hurt my brother.” Plot begins. Somebody – call him Jones – writes threatening letters to – say, Robinson. Jones means it for a joke, but Robinson is frightened to death because, unknown to Jones, he really has – call it, murdered somebody. Make it a woman – female victims always go down well. Robinson commits suicide and Jones is prosecuted for blackmail and murder. I’m not sure if frightening a man to death would be brought in murder, but I expect it would. Blackmail is a felony, and if you accidentally kill somebody while you’re engaged in felony, the killing is murder, so it might come in that way. I say, this idea of mine is going to be good. Wash out The Corpse in the Sewer – I never thought a lot of that. We’ll get going straight away on this one. Jones thinks he has covered his tracks, but the police – no, not the police – they’re baffled, of course. The detective. Let’s see; I think we’d better use Major Hawke again for this one. He’s my best detective, and if readers get keen on him in The Time Will Come they’ll want to hear about him again – Hawke gets on the scene of the letters. It’s difficult, because of course they’ve all been posted in different places, but –’

  Miss Robbins, her pencil staggering over the paper as she struggled to follow Humphrey Podd’s disjointed speech, gave a little gasp.

  ‘Hawke traces the paper, of course – where purchased, and so on. And the ink. Oh, yes – and we can have a thumb-print on one of the envelopes. Not Jones’s – his fiancée’s, I think, who has posted the letters for him. She – yes, she’s a good character, but hopelessly under the influence of Jones. We’ll think that out. Better marry her off to somebody nicer in the end. Not Major Hawke – somebody else. We’ll invent a decent chap for her. There’ll be a good scene when she is frantically burning the evidence while the police hammer at the door. We must make her overlook something, of course, or Jones would never get detected – never mind, I can think that out later. Court scene – that’ll be good—’

  ‘Oh, Mr Podd! But does poor Jones get hanged? I mean, it seems very hard lines on him, when he only meant it for a joke.’

  ‘That’s where the irony comes in,’ said Mr Podd, ruthlessly. ‘Still, I see what you mean. The public will want him saved. All right – we’ll stack that. We’ll make him a bad character – one of those men who trample over women’s hearts and laugh at their sufferings. He gets away with all his real crimes and then – here’s your irony – does himself in over this one harmless joke on a man he quite likes. Make a note, “Jones laughs once too often.” Must get a better name than Jones. Lester is a good name. Everybody calls him “Laughing Lester”. Fair, curly hair – put that down – but his eyes are set a little too close together. I say, this is shaping splendidly.’

  ‘And about the letter to Mr Ramp,’ suggested Miss Robbins, with some hesitation, when the main lines of An Arrow o’er the House had been successfully laid down. ‘Perhaps you’d rather I didn’t post it?’

  ‘Not post it?’ said Mr Podd, amazed. ‘Why, it’s a beauty. “The Time Will Come – and it is later than you think.” Post it, of course. Ramp’s got to be roused.’

  Miss Robbins obediently posted the letter – with gloves on.

  It was not till the arrow-headed hands on Mr Podd’s clock-face had reached 11.45, and the message had taken the form, ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’, that it occurred to him to test the victim’s reaction personally. The idea came to him at 11.45 precisely, in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. With a hoarse chuckle, which caused a passing messenger-boy to turn round and stare at him in amazement, he plunged headlong down the subway and into a public call-box in the rotunda. Here he obtained the number of Mr Ramp’s office.

  The female voice that answered said that Mr Ramp was engaged, and inquired the name of the caller. Mr Podd was prepared for this, and said that the matter was strictly private and very urgent. Further, that he would not feel justified in giving his name to anybody but Mr Ramp. The girl seemed less surprised and less obdurate than Mr Podd might have expected. She put him through. A sharp, worried voice said: ‘Yes? yes? yes? Who’s that?’

  Mr Podd lowered his naturally rat
her high tones to an impressive croak.

  ‘The Time Will Come,’ he said. There was a pause.

  ‘What did you say?’ demanded the sharp voice, irritably.

  ‘The Time Will Come,’ repeated Mr Podd. Then, prompted by a sudden inspiration, he added: ‘Shall we send the proofs to the Public Prosecutor?’

  There was another pause. Then the voice said: ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Who is it speaking, please?’

  Mr Podd laughed fiendishly, and rang off.

  ‘And why not?’ said Mr Podd to Miss Robbins. ‘People are always sending advance proofs to Prime Ministers and literary critics. The Public Prosecutor’s opinion ought to be as good as anybody’s. Make a note of it.’

  Two days passed. The daily missive now bore only the ominous word: ‘Tomorrow.’ Mr Podd dictated three chapters of An Arrow o’er the House right off the reel and went out to tea with a friend, leaving Miss Robbins to pack up the top copy of The Time Will Come and dispatch it, per post, to Mr Milton Ramp.

  It was a raw and foggy day. Cold, too – Miss Robbins stoked up the stove in Humphrey Podd’s studio, for her fingers were numb with note-taking. As she stepped into the Square, with the manuscript under her arm, she shivered, and pulled her fur more closely about her neck.

  On her way to the post office she had to pass the news-vendor at the corner of the Square. The scarlet lettering on the placards he held made a splash of brightness in the gloom and caught Miss Robbins’s eye. With a sudden leap of the heart she read the words: London Publisher Shot.

  The manuscript slipped from her grasp. She picked it up, fumbled hurriedly in her bag for a penny, and bought a copy of the Evening Banner. She opened it, standing by the Square railings. A heavy splash of soot-laden water dripped from an overhanging tree upon the crown of her hat. At first she could not find what she was looking for. Eventually she discovered a few smudged lines in the Stop Press column.