Wimsey said No, not to-day. He would have a bottle of Bass for a change.
Mr. Donnington produced the Bass, observing that his lordship would find it in very nice condition.
“Condition is nine-tenths of the bottle,” said Wimsey, “and a lot of it depends upon the bottling. Who are your bottlers?”
“Griggs of Walbeach,” said Mr. Donnington. “Very sound people they are, too; I’ve got no complaints to make. Just you try for yourself — though you can tell by the look of it, if you see what I mean. Clear as a bell — though, of course, you have to be able to trust your cellarman. I had a chap once that never could be taught not to pack his Bass ’ead down in the basket, same as if it was stout. Now stout will stand being stood on its ’ead, though it’s not a thing I ever would do myself and I don’t recommend it, but Bass must be stood right ways up and not shook about if you’re to do justice to the beer.”
“Very true indeed,” said Wimsey. “There’s certainly nothing wrong with this. Your health. Won’t you take something yourself?”
“Thank you, my lord, I don’t mind if I do. Here’s luck. Now, that,” said Mr. Donnington, raising the glass to the light, “is as nice a glass of Bass as you could wish to see.”
Wimsey asked whether he did much with quart bottles.
“Quarts?” said Mr. Donnington. “No. Not with quarts, I don’t. But I believe Tom Tebbutt down at the Wheatsheaf does a bit. Griggs bottles for him, too.”
“Ah!” said Wimsey.
“Yes. There’s one or two prefers quarts. Though, mind you, most of the business about here is draught. But there’s a farmer here and there as likes the quarts delivered at their homes. Ah! in the old days they all did their own brewing — there’s plenty farms now with the big brewing coppers still standing, and there’s a few as still cures their own sides of bacon — Mr. Ashton’s one on ’em, he won’t have nothing new-fangled. But what with these chain stores and their grocery vans, and the girls all wanting to be off to the pictures in their silk stockings and so many things coming in tins, it’s not many places where you can see a bit of real home-cured. And look at the price of pig-feed. What I say is, the farmers did ought to have some protection. I was brought up a Free Trader myself, but times has changed. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of these things, my lord. They may not come your way. Or — there — I’m forgetting. Maybe you sit in the ’Ouse of Lords, now. Harry Gotobed will have it that that’s so, but I said as he was mistook — but there I you’ll know better than me about that.”
Wimsey explained that he was not qualified to sit in the House of Lords. Mr. Donnington observed with pleasure that in that case the sexton owed him half a crown, and while he made a note of the fact on the back of an envelope, Wimsey escaped and made his way to the Wheatsheaf.
Here, by exercising a certain amount of tact, he obtained a list of those households to which Bass was regularly supplied in quarts. Most of the names were those of farmers in outlying places, but as an afterthought, Mrs. Tebbutt mentioned one which made Wimsey prick up his ears.
“Will Thoday, he had a few while Jim was at home — a dozen or so, it might be. He’s a nice chap, is Jim Thoday — makes you laugh by the hour telling his tales of foreign parts. He brought back that there parrot for Mary, though as I says to her, that bird ain’t no proper example for the children. How it do go on, to be sure. I’m sure, if you’d heard what it said to Rector the other day! I didn’t know where to look. But it’s my belief. Rector didn’t understand half of it. He’s a real gentleman, is Mr. Venables, not like old parson. He was a kind man, too, but different from Rector, and they say he used to swear something surprising in a clergyman. But there, poor man! He had a bit of a weakness, as they say. ‘Do as I say, don’t do as I do’—that’s what he used to say in his sermons. Terrible red in the face he were, and died sudden, of a stroke.”
Wimsey tried in vain to steer the conversation back to Jim Thoday. Mrs. Tebbutt was fairly launched into reminiscences of Old Rector, and it was half an hour before he was able to make his way out of the Wheatsheaf. Turning back towards the Rectory, he found himself at Will Thoday’s gate. Glancing up the path, he saw Mary, engaged in hanging out washing. He suddenly determined on a frontal attack.
“I hope you’ll forgive me, Mrs. Thoday,” he said, when he had announced himself and been invited to enter, “if I take your mind back to a rather painful episode. I mean to say, bygones are bygones and all that and one hates digging anything up, what? But when it comes to dead bodies in other people’s graves and so on, well, sometimes one gets wondering about them and all that sort of thing, don’t you know.”
“Yes, indeed, my lord. I’m sure if there’s anything I can do to help, I will. But as I told Mr. Blundell, I never knew a thing about it, and I can’t imagine how it came there. That was the Saturday night he was asking me about, and I’m sure I’ve thought and thought, but I couldn’t call to mind as I’d seen anything.”
“Do you remember a man who called himself Stephen Driver?”
“Yes, my lord. Him that was at Ezra Wilderspin’s. I remember seeing him once or twice. They said at the inquest that the body might have been him.”
“But it wasn’t,” said Wimsey.
“Wasn’t it, my lord?”
“No. Because we’ve found this chap Driver and he’s still alive and kicking. Had you ever seen Driver before he came here?”
“I don’t think so, my lord; no, I can’t say as I ever did.”
“He didn’t remind you of anybody?”
“No, my lord.”
She appeared to be answering quite frankly, and he could not see any signs of alarm in voice or expression.
“That’s odd,” said Wimsey, “because he says that he ran away from St. Paul because he thought you had recognised him.”
“Did he? Well, that’s a strange thing, my lord.”
“Did you ever hear him speak?”
“I don’t think I ever did, my lord.”
“Suppose he hadn’t been wearing a beard, now — would he remind you of anybody?”
Mary shook her head. Like most people, she found the effort of imagination beyond her.
“Well, do you recognise this?”
He took out a photograph of Cranton, taken at the time of the Wilbraham emeralds affair.
“That?” Mrs. Thoday turned pale. “Oh, yes, my lord. I remember him. That was Cranton, that took the necklace and was sent to prison same time as — as my first husband, my lord. I expect you know all about that. That’s his wicked face. Oh, dear! it’s given me quite a turn, seeing that again.”
She sat down on a bench and stared at the photograph. “This isn’t — it couldn’t be Driver?”
“That’s Driver,” said Wimsey. “You had no idea of it?”
“That I never had, my lord. If I’d ever had such a thought, I’d have spoken to him, don’t you fear! I’d have got out of him where he put those emeralds to. You see, my lord, that was what went so hard against my poor husband, this man saying as my husband had kept the necklace himself. Poor Jeff, there’s no doubt he was tempted — all through my fault, my lord, talking so free — and he did take the jewels, I’m sorry to say. But he didn’t have them afterwards; It was this Cranton had them all the time. Don’t you think it hasn’t been a bitter hard cross to me, my lord, all these years, knowing as I was suspected? The jury believed what I said, and so did the judge, but you’ll find some as thinks now that I had a hand in it and knew where the necklace was. But I never did, my lord, never. If I’d been able to find it, I’d have crawled to London on my hands and knees to give it back to Mrs. Wilbraham. I know what poor Sir Henry, suffered with the loss of it. The police searched our place, and I searched it myself, over and over—”
“Couldn’t you take Deacon’s word for it?” asked Wimsey, softly.
She hesitated, and her eyes clouded with pain.
“My lord, I did believe him. And yet, all the same — well! it was such a terrible shock to
me that he could have done such a thing as rob a lady in the master’s house, I didn’t know but what he mightn’t perhaps have done the other too. I didn’t rightly know what to believe, if you understand me, my lord. But now I feel quite sure that my husband was telling the truth. He was led away by this wicked Cranton, there’s no doubt of that, but that he was deceiving us all, afterwards, I don’t believe. Indeed, my lord, I don’t think he was — I’m quite sure of it in my own mind.”
“And what do you suppose Cranton came down here for?”
“Doesn’t that show, my lord, that it was him as hid them after all? He must have got frightened and hid them away in some place that night, before he got away.”
“He says himself that Deacon told him in the dock that the emeralds were here, and he was to ask Tailor Paul and Batty Thomas to find them for him.”
Mary shook her head. “I don’t understand that, my lord. But if my husband had said such a thing to him then, Cranton wouldn’t have kept quiet about it. He’d have told the jury, he was that mad with Jeff.”
“Would he? I’m not so sure. Suppose Deacon told Cranton where to find the emeralds, don’t you think Cranton would have waited in the hope of getting hold of them when he came out of prison? And mightn’t he have come down here last January to look for them? And then, thinking you’d spotted him, mightn’t he have run away in a fright?”
“Well, my lord, I suppose he might. But then, who would that poor dead man be?”
“The police think he may have been an accomplice of Cranton’s, who helped him to find the emeralds and was killed for his pains. Do you know whether Deacon made any friends among the other convicts or the warders at Maidstone?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, my lord. He was allowed to write now and again, of course, but naturally he wouldn’t tell anybody a thing like that, because his letters would be read.”
“Naturally. I wondered whether perhaps you’d had a message from him at some time — through a released prisoner, or anything like that?”
“No, my lord, never.”
“Have you ever seen this writing?”
He handed her the cryptogram.
“That writing? Why, of course—”
“Shut up you fool! Shut up you bloody fool! Come on, Joey! Show a leg there!”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Wimsey, startled. Peering round the door into the inner room, he encountered the bright eye of a grey African parrot fixed knowingly upon him. At sight of a stranger, the bird stopped talking, cocked its head aslant, and began to sidle along its perch.
“Damn your eyes!” said his lordship, pleasantly. “You made me jump.”
“Aw!” said the bird, with a long, self-satisfied chuckle.
“Is that the bird your brother-in-law gave you? I’ve heard about him from Mrs. Tebbutt.”
“Yes, my lord, that’s him. He’s a wonderful talker, but he does swear and that’s the truth.”
“I’ve no use for a parrot that doesn’t,” said Wimsey. “Seems unnatural. Let me see — what were we—? Oh, yes, that bit of writing. You were just saying—”
“I said, of course I’d never seen it before, my lord.”
Wimsey could have sworn that she had been going to say just the opposite. She was looking at — no, not at, but through and past him, with the face of someone who sees an incredible catastrophe approaching.
“It’s queer-looking stuff, isn’t it?” she went on, in a flat voice, “don’t seem to mean anything. What made you think I should know anything about the like of that?”
“We had an idea that it might have been written by some man your late husband knew at Maidstone. Did you ever hear of anyone called Jean Legros?”
“No, my lord. That’s a French name, isn’t it? I’ve never seen a Frenchman, except a few of those Beljums that came over here in the War.”
“And you never knew anyone called Paul Taylor?”
“No, never.”
The parrot laughed heartily. “Shut up, Joey!”
“Shut up, you fool! Joey, Joey, Joey! Scratch a poll, then. Aw!”
“Oh, well,” said Wimsey. “I just wondered.”
“Where did that come from?”
“What? Oh, this? It was picked up in the church, and we had an idea it might be Cranton’s. But he says it isn’t, you know.”
“In the church?”
As though the word were a cue, the parrot picked it up, and began muttering excitedly:
“Must go to church. Must go to church. The bells. Don’t tell Mary. Must go to church. Aw! Joey! Joey! Come on, Joey! Must go to church.”
Mrs. Thoday stepped hurriedly into the other room and flung a cloth over the cage, while Joey squawked protestingly.
“He goes on like that,” she said. “Gets on my nerves. He picked it up the night Will was so bad. They were ringing the peal, and it worried him, like, that he couldn’t be there. Will gets that angry with Joey when he starts mocking him. Shut up, now, Joey, do.”
Wimsey held out his hand for the cryptogram, which Mary surrendered — reluctantly, he thought, and as though her thoughts were elsewhere.
“Well, I mustn’t bother you any more, Mrs. Thoday. I just wanted to clear up that little point about Cranton. I expect you are right after all, and he just came down here to snoop about on his own. Well, you aren’t likely to be bothered with him again. He’s ill, and in any case, he’ll have to go back to prison to work out his time. Forgive my bargin’ along and botherin’ you about what’s best forgotten.”
But all the way back to the Rectory, he was haunted by Mary Thoday’s eyes and by the hoarse muttering voice of the parrot:
“The bells! the bells! Must go to the church! Don’t tell Mary!”
* * *
Superintendent Blundell clicked his tongue a good deal over all this.
“It’s a pity about the bottle,” he said. “Don’t suppose it would have told us anything, but you never know. Emily Holliday, eh? Of course, she’s a cousin of Mary Thoday’s. I’d forgotten that. That woman beats me — Mary, I mean. Damned if I know what to make of her, or her husband either. We’re in touch with those people at Hull, and they’re arranging to get James Thoday shipped back to England as soon as possible. We told them he might be wanted as a witness. Best way to work it — he can’t skip his orders; or, if he does, we’ll know there’s something wrong and go after him. It’s a queer business altogether. As regards that cipher, what do you say to sending it along to the Governor of Maidstone? If this fellow Legros or Taylor or whatever he is was ever in there, they may be able to spot the handwriting.”
“So they may,” said Wimsey thoughtfully. “Yes, we’ll do that. And I’m hoping that we hear from M. Rozier again soon. The French haven’t any of our inhibitions about dealing with witnesses.”
“Lucky them, my lord,” said Mr. Blundell, with fervour.
THE TENTH PART
LORD PETER IS CALLED WRONG
And he set the cherubims within the inner house: and they stretched forth the wings of the cherubims.
1 KINGS vi. 27.
And above were costly stones.
1 KINGS vii. 11.
“I hope,” said the Rector on the following Sunday morning, “there is nothing wrong with the Thodays. Neither Will nor Mary was at Early Service. I’ve never known them both miss before, except when he was ill.”
“No more they were,” said Mrs. Venables. “Perhaps Will has taken a chill again. These winds are very treacherous. Lord Peter, do have another sausage. How are you getting along with your cipher?”
“Don’t rub it in, I’m hopelessly stuck.”
“I shouldn’t worry,” said Mr. Venables. “Even if you have to lie still a whole pull now and again, you’ll soon find yourself back in the hunt.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Wimsey. “It’s lying behind the whole way that gets on my nerves.”
“There’s always something that lies behind a mystery,” said the Rector, mildly enjoying his little wit
ticism. “A solution of some kind.”
“What I say is,” observed Mrs. Venables darkly, “there are always wheels within wheels.”
“And where there’s a wheel, there’s usually a rope,” added his lordship.
“Unhappily,” said the Rector, and there was a melancholy pause.
* * *
Anxiety about the Thodays was somewhat allayed by their appearance together at Matins, but Wimsey thought he had never seen two people look so ill and unhappy. In wondering about them, he lost all consciousness of what was going on about him, sat down for the Venite, lost the Psalms for the day, embarked on a loud and solitary “For thine is the Kingdom” at the end of the second “Our Father,” and only pulled himself together when Mr. Venables came down to preach his sermon. As usual, Mr. Gotobed had failed to sweep the chancel properly, and a hideous crunching of coke proclaimed the Rector’s passage to the pulpit. The Invocation was pronounced, and Wimsey sank back with a sigh of relief into the corner of the pew, folded his arms and fixed his gaze firmly on the roof.
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