“Yours sincerely,
“HILARY THORPE.”
“A colleague, as Sherlock Holmes would say, after my own heart,” said Wimsey, as he unfolded the thin enclosure. “Oh, lord! ‘I thought to see the fairies in the fields’—a lost work by Sir James Barrie, no doubt! Literary sensation of the year. ‘But I saw only the evil elephants with their black backs.’ This is neither rhyme nor reason. Hum! there is a certain dismal flavour about it suggestive of Potty, but no reference to hanging, so I conclude that it is not his — he surely couldn’t keep King Charles’ Head out of it so long. Foreign paper — wait a minute! I seem to know the look of that paper. By God, yes! Susanne Legros’ letter! If the paper isn’t the dead spit of this, I’m a Dutchman. Let me think. Suppose this was the paper Jean Legros sent to Cranton, or Will Thoday, or whoever it was? Blundell had better have a look at it. Bunter, get the car out. And what do you make of this?”
“Of this, my lord? I should say that it was written by a person of no inconsiderable literary ability, who had studied the works of Sheridan Lefanu and was, if I may be permitted the expression, bats in the belfry, my lord.”
“It strikes you that way? It does not look to you like a cipher message, or anything of that kind?”
“It had not occurred to me to regard it in that light, my lord. The style is cramped, certainly, but it is cramped in what I should call a consistent manner, suggestive of — ah! — literary rather than mechanical effort.”
“True, Bunter, true. It certainly isn’t anything simple and bucolic of the every-third-word type. And it doesn’t look as if it was meant to be read with a grid, because, with the possible exception of ‘gold,’ there isn’t a single word in it that’s significant — or could be significant of anything but moonshine. That bit about the moon is rather good, of its kind. Mannered, but imaginative. ‘Frail and faint as a sickle of straw.’ Alliteration’s artful aid, what? ‘So then came minstrels, having gold trumpets, harps and drums. These played very loudly beside me, breaking that spell.’ Whoever wrote that had an ear for a cadence. Lefanu, did you say? That’s not a bad shot, Bunter. It reminds me a little of that amazing passage in Wylder’s Hand about Uncle Lorne’s dream.”
“That was the passage I had in mind, my lord.”
“Yes. Well — in that case the victim was due to ‘be sent up again, at last, a thousand, a hundred, ten and one, black marble steps, and then it will be the other one’s turn.’ He was sent up again, Bunter, wasn’t he?”
“From the grave, my lord? I believe that was so. Like the present unknown individual.”
“As you say — very like him. ‘Hell gapes, Erebus now lies open,’ as our correspondent has it. ‘The mouths of Death wait on thy end.’ Does he mean anything by that. Bunter?”
“I could not say, my lord.”
“The word ‘Erebus’ occurs in the Lefanu passage too, but there, if I remember rightly, it is spelt with an H. If the man who wrote this got his inspiration there, he knew enough, at any rate, about Erebus to be familiar with both spellings. All very curious, Bunter mine. We’ll go along to Leamholt and get the two sheets of paper put side by side.”
* * *
There was a great wind blowing over the fen, and immense white clouds sailing fast in the wide blue dome of sky. As they drew up before the police-station at Leamholt, they met the Superintendent just about to step into his own car. “Coming to see me, my lord?”
“I was. Were you coming to see me?”
“Yes.”
Wimsey laughed.
“Things are moving. What have you got?”
“We’ve got Cranton.”
“No!”
“Yes, my lord. They’ve run him to earth in a place in London. I heard from them this morning. Seems he’s been ill, or something. Anyway, they’ve found him. I’m going up to interrogate him. Would you like to come?”
“Rather! Shall I run you up there? Save the force a bit of money, you know, on train-fares. And be quicker and more comfortable.”
“Thank you very much, my lord.”
“Bunter, wire to the Rector that we have gone to Town. Hop in, Super. You will now see how safe and swift modern methods of transport are when there is no speed-limit. Oh, wait a moment. While Bunter is wiring, have a look at this. It reached me this morning.”
He handed over Hilary Thorpe’s letter and the enclosure. “Evil elephants?” said Mr. Blundell. “What in the name of goodness is all this about?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping your friend Cranton can tell us.”
“But it’s potty.”
“I don’t think Potty could rise to such heights. No, I know what you mean — don’t trouble to explain. But the paper, Superintendent, the paper!”
“What about it? Oh, I get you. You think this came from the same place as Suzanne Legros’ letter. I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right. Step in and we’ll have a look. By Jove, my lord, and you are right. Might have come out of the same packet. Well, I’ll be — Found in the belfry, you say. What do you think it all means, then?”
“I think this is the paper that Legros sent to his friend in England — the ‘guarantee’ that he composed, shut up in his room for so many hours. And I think it’s the clue to where the emeralds were hidden. A cipher, or something of that sort.”
“Cipher, eh? It’s a queer one, then. Can you read it?”
“No, but I jolly well will. Or find somebody who can. I’m hoping that Cranton will read it for us. I bet he won’t, though,” added his lordship, thoughtfully. “And even if we do read it, it isn’t going to do us much good, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?”
“Why, because you can bet your sweet life that the emeralds were taken away by whoever it was killed Legros — whether it was Cranton or Thoday or somebody else we don’t know about yet.”
“I suppose that’s a fact. Anyhow, my lord, if we read the cipher and find the hiding-place, and the stuff’s gone, that’ll be pretty good proof that we’re working along the right lines.”
“So it will. But,” added Wimsey, as the Superintendent and Bunter piled into the car and were whisked away out of Leamholt at a speed which made the policeman gasp, “if the emeralds are gone, and Cranton says he didn’t take them, and we can’t prove he did, and we can’t find out who Legros really was, or who killed him, why then — where are we?”
“Just where we were before,” said Mr. Blundell.
“Yes,” said Wimsey. “It’s like Looking-Glass Country. Takes all the running we can do to stay in the same place.”
The Superintendent glanced about him. Flat as a chessboard, and squared like a chess-board with intersecting dyke and hedge, the fen went flashing past them.
“Very like Looking-Glass Country,” he agreed, “same as the picture in the book. But as for staying in the same place — all I can say is, it don’t look like it, my lord — not where you’re concerned.”
THE EIGHTH PART
LORD PETER FOLLOWS HIS COURSE BELL TO LEAD
I will again urge on the young conductor the great advantage that it will be to him to write out touches or even whole peals… whereby he will gain a great insight into the working of the bells.
TROYTE On Change-Ringing.
“Well, of course,” admitted Mr. Cranton, grinning up ruefully from his pillow into Lord Peter’s face, “if your lordship recognises me, that’s done it. I’ll have to come clean, as the sheet said to the patent washer. It’s a fact I was in Fenchurch St. Paul on New Year’s Day, and a lovely place it is to start a happy New Year in, I don’t think. And it’s true I failed to report myself as from last September. And if you ask me, I think it’s damned slack of you flatties not to have dug me out earlier. What we pay rates and taxes for I don’t know.”
He stopped and shifted restlessly.
“Don’t waste your breath in giving us lip,” said Chief Inspector Parker of the C.I.D., kindly enough. “When did you start growing that face-fungus? In September? I thought so. What w
as the idea? You didn’t think it was becoming, did you?”
“I didn’t,” said Mr. Cranton. “Went to my heart, I may say, to disfigure myself. But I thought, ‘They’ll never know Nobby Cranton with his handsome features all hidden in black hair.’ So I made the sacrifice. It’s not so bad now, and I’ve got used to it, but it looked horrible while it was growing. Made me think of those happy times when I lived on His Majesty’s bounty. Ah! and look at my hands. They’ve never got over it. I ask you, how can a gentleman carry on with his profession after all those years of unrefined manual labour? Taking the bread out of a man’s mouth, I call it.”
“So you had some game on, which started last September,” said Parker, patiently. “What was it, now? Anything to do with the Wilbraham emeralds, eh?”
“Well, to be frank, it was,” replied Nobby Cranton. “See here, I’ll tell you the truth about that. I didn’t mind — I never have minded — being put inside for what I did do. But it’s offensive to a gentleman’s feelings when his word isn’t believed. And when I said I never had those emeralds, I meant what I said. I never did have them, and you know it. If I had had them, I wouldn’t be living in a hole like this, you can bet your regulation boots. I’d have been living like a gentleman on the fat of the land. Lord!” added Mr. Cranton, “I’d have had ’em cut up and salted away before you could have said ‘knife.’ Talk about tracing them — you’d never have traced them the way I’d have worked it.”
“So you went to Fenchurch St. Paul to try and find them, I suppose?” suggested Wimsey.
“That’s right, I did. And why? Because I knew they must be there. That swine — you know who I mean—”
“Deacon?”
“Yes, Deacon.” Something that might have been fear and might have been mere anger twisted the sick man’s face. “He never left the place. He couldn’t have got them away before you pinched him. You watched his correspondence, didn’t you? If he’d packed them up and posted them, you’d have known it, eh? No. He had them there — somewhere — I don’t know — but he had them. And I meant to get them, see? I meant to get them, and I meant to bring them along and show ’em to you and make you take back what you said about my having had them. Pretty silly, you’d have looked, wouldn’t you, when you had to own up that I was right?”
“Indeed?” said Parker. “That was the idea, was it? You were going to find the stuff and bring it along like a good little boy?”
“That’s right.”
“No idea of making anything out of them, of course?”
“Oh, dear, no,” replied Mr. Cranton.
“You didn’t come to us in September and suggest that we should help you to find them?”
“Well, I didn’t,” agreed Mr. Cranton. “I didn’t want to be bothered with a lot of clumsy cops. It was my own little game, see? All my own work, as the pavement-artists say.”
“Delightful,” said Parker. “And what made you think you knew where to look for them?”
“Ah!” said Mr. Cranton, cautiously. “Something Deacon once said gave me an idea. But he was a liar about that, too. I never met such a liar as that fellow was. He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin. It serves me right for having to do with menials. A mean, sneaking spirit, that’s what you find in that sort. No sense of honour at all.”
“Very likely,” said the Chief Inspector. “Who is Paul Taylor?”
“There you are!” said Mr. Cranton, triumphantly. “Deacon said to me—”
“When?”
“In the — oh, well! — in the dock, if you will excuse my mentioning such a vulgar place. ‘Want to know where those shiners are?’ he said. ‘Ask Paul Taylor or Batty Thomas’—and grinned all over his face. ‘Who’ve they?’ said I. ‘you’ll find ’em in Fenchurch,’ he said, grinning still more. ‘But you aren’t likely to see Fenchurch again in a hurry,’ he said. So then I biffed him one — excuse the expression — and the blinking warder interfered.”
“Really?” said Parker, incredulously.
“Cross my heart and wish I may die,” said Mr. Cranton. “But when I got down to Fenchurch, you see, I found there were no such people — only some rubbish about bells. So I dismissed the matter from my mind.”
“And sneaked off on the Saturday night. Why?”
“Well, to be frank with you,” replied Mr. Cranton, “there was an individual in that place I didn’t like the looks of. I got the idea that my face struck a chord in her mind, in spite of the exterior decorations. So, not wishing for argument — which is always ungentlemanly — I went quietly away.”
“And who was the penetrating individual?”
“Why, that woman — Deacon’s wife. We had stood shoulder to shoulder, as you might say, under unfortunate circumstances, and I had no wish to renew the acquaintance. I never expected to see her in that village, and, candidly, I thought she showed a lack of taste.”
“She came back when she married a man named Thoday,” said Wimsey.
“Married again, did she?” Cranton’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see. I didn’t know that. Well, I’m damned!”
“Why the surprise?”
“Why? — Oh, well — somebody wasn’t too particular, that’s all.”
“See here,” said Parker, “you may as well tell the truth now. Did that woman have anything to do with the theft of the emeralds?”
“How should I know? But to be frank, I don’t believe she did. I think she was just a plain fool. Deacon’s cats-paw. I’m sure the fellow put her on to find out about the stuff, but I don’t think she was wise to what she was doing. Honestly, I don’t think so, because I can’t see that man Deacon giving his game away. But hell! What do I know about it?”
“You don’t think she knows where the stuff is?”
Cranton thought for a moment. Then he laughed. “I’d pretty well take my oath she doesn’t.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. “If she knew and was straight, she’d have told the police, wouldn’t she? If she knew and was crooked, she’d have told me or my pals. No. You won’t get it out other.”
“H’m! You say you think she recognised you?”
“I got a sort of idea that she was beginning to find my face familiar. Mind you, it was only a kind of hunch I got. I might have been wrong. But I anticipated argument, and I have always considered argument ill-bred. So I went away. In the night. I was working for the blacksmith — an excellent fellow, but crude. I didn’t want any argument with him, neither. I just went quietly home to think things out, and then I got laid up with rheumatic fever, and it’s left my heart dickey, as you see.”
“Quite so. How did you get rheumatic fever?”
“Well, wouldn’t anybody get rheumatic fever, if he’d fallen into one of those cursed dykes? I never saw such a country, never. Country life never did suit me — particularly in the blasted middle of winter, with a thaw going on. I was damn nearly found dead in a ditch, which is no end for a gentleman.”
“You didn’t investigate the matter of Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul any further, then?” said Parker, placidly putting aside the eloquence which Mr. Cranton seemed ready to lavish on any side-issue. “I am referring to the bells. You did not, for instance, visit the belfry, to see if the emeralds were hidden up there?”
“No, of course I didn’t. Besides,” went on Mr. Cranton, much too hastily,” the confounded place was always locked.”
“You tried it, then?”
“Well, to be frank, I may just have laid my hand on the door, so to speak.”
“You never went up into the bell-chamber?”
“Not me.”
“Then how do you account for that?” demanded Parker, suddenly producing the mysterious cipher and thrusting it under the sick man’s eyes. Mr. Cranton turned extremely white.
“That?” he gasped. “That? — I never—” He fought for breath. “My heart — here, give me some of the stuff in that glass—”
“Give it him,” said Wimsey, “he’s rea
lly bad.”
Parker gave him the medicine with a grim face. After a time the blue pallor gave place to a healthier colour, and the breathing became more natural.
“That’s better,” said Cranton. “You startled me. What did you say? That? I never saw that before.”
“You’re lying,” said the Chief Inspector, curtly. “You have seen it. Jean Legros sent it to you, didn’t he?”
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