“Probably Sparky Bones or the Fly-Catcher,” put in Parker, thoughtfully.
“Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies. My pal decanted me a few miles out and I footslogged it. I made out I was a tramp labourer, looking for work on the New Cut. Thank God, they weren’t taking on any hands, so they didn’t detain me.”
“So we gathered.”
“Ah! I suppose you would go nosey-parkering round there. I got a lift part of the way to Fenchurch and walked the rest. Beastly country it is, too, as I said before. I’m not doing my hiking thereabouts, I can tell you.”
“That was when we ran across one another, I think,” said Wimsey.
“Ah! and if I’d known who I had the pleasure of stopping I’d have walked off home,” said Mr. Cranton, handsomely. “But I didn’t know, so I trotted along and — but there! I expect you know that part of it.”
“You got a job with Ezra Wilderspin and made inquiries for Paul Taylor.”
“Yes — and a nice business that was!” exclaimed Nobby with indignation. “Mr. Paul Bleeding Taylor and Mr. Batty Thomas! Bells, if you please! And not a hide nor hair of my Paul Taylor to be seen or heard of. I tell you, that made me think a bit. I didn’t know if he’d been and gone, or if he’d been pinched on the way, or if he was lurking about round the corner or what. And that chap Wilderspin — he was a good hand at keeping a hardworking man’s nose to the grindstone, curse him! ‘Driver, come here!’ ‘Steve, do this!’ I didn’t have a minute to call my own. All the same, I started to think quite a lot about that cipher. I took the idea that maybe it had to do with those bells. But could I get into the confounded belfry? No, I couldn’t. Not openly, I mean. So I made out to do it one night and see if I could make sense of the thing up there. So I made a couple or so of pick-locks, the forge being handy for the job, and on Saturday night I just let myself quietly out of Ezra’s backdoor.
“Now, look here. What I’m going to tell you is gospel truth. I went down to that church a bit after midnight, and the minute I put my hand on the door, I found it was open. What did I think? Why, I thought Deacon must be in there on the job. Who else was it likely to be, that time of night? I’d been in the place before and made out where the belfry door was, so I went along nice and quiet, and that was open, too. ‘That’s all right,’ I thought. ‘Deacon’s here, and I’ll give him Tailor Paul and Batty Thomas for not keeping me posted. I got up into a sort of place with ropes in it — damn nasty, I thought they looked. And then there was a ladder and more ropes a-top of that. And then another ladder and a trapdoor.”
“Was the trap-door open?”
“Yes, and I went up. And I didn’t half like it, either. Do you know, when I got up into the next place — Gee! there was a queer feel about it. Not a sound, but like as if there might be people standing round. And dark! It was a pitch-black beast of a night and raining like hell, but I never met anything like the blackness of that place. And I felt as if there was hundreds of eyes watching me. Talk about the heebie-jeebies! Well, there!
“After a bit, with still not a sound, I sort of pulled myself together and put my torch on. Say, have you ever been up in that place? Ever seen those bells? I’m not what you’d call fanciful in a general way, but there was something about the bells that gave me the fantods.”
“I know,” said Wimsey, “they look as if they were going to come down on you.”
“Yes, you know,” said Nobby, eagerly. “Well, I’d got to where I wanted, but I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t know the first thing about bells, or how to get to them or anything. And I couldn’t make out what had happened to Deacon. So I looked round on the floor with the torch and — Boo! — there he was!”
“Dead?”
“Dead as a door-nail. Tied up to a big kind of post, and a look on his face — there! I don’t want to see a face like that again. Just as though he’d been struck dead and mad all at one go, if you see what I mean.”
“I suppose there’s no doubt he was dead?”
“Dead?” Mr. Cranton laughed. “I never saw anyone deader.”
“Stiff?”
“No, not stiff. But cold, my God! I just touched him. He swung on the ropes and his head had fallen over — well, it looked as if he’d got what was coming to him, anyhow, but worse. Because, to do them justice, they’re pretty quick on the drop, but he looked as if it had lasted for a good long time.”
“Do you mean the rope was round his neck?” demanded Parker, a little impatiently.
“No. He wasn’t hanged. I don’t know what killed him. I was just looking to see, when I heard somebody starting to come up the tower. I didn’t stop, you bet. There was another ladder, and I legged it up that as high as I could go, till I got to a sort of hatch leading out on to the roof, I suppose. I squatted inside that and hoped the other fellow wouldn’t take it into his head to come up after me. I wasn’t keen on being found up there at all, and the body of my old pal Deacon might want some explaining. Of course, I could have told the truth, and pointed out that the poor bloke was cold before I got there, but me having picklocks in my pocket rather jiggered up that bit of the alibi. So I sat tight. The chap came up into the place where the body was and started moving round and shuffling about, and once or twice he said ‘Oh, God!’ in a groaning sort of voice. Then there was a nasty soft sort of thump, and I reckoned he’d got the body down on the floor. Then after a bit I heard him pulling and hauling, and presently his steps went across the floor, very slow and heavy, and a bumping noise, like he was dragging old Deacon after him. I couldn’t see him at all from where I was, because from my corner I could only see the ladder and the wall opposite, and he was right away on the other side of the room. After that there was more scuffling, and a sort of bumping and sliding, and I took it he was getting the body down the other ladder. And I didn’t envy him the job, neither.
“I waited up there and waited, till I couldn’t hear him any more, and then I began to wonder what I should do next. So I tried the door on to the roof. There was a bolt inside, so I undid that and stepped out. It was raining like blazes and pitch-black, but out I crawled and got to the edge of the tower and looked over. How high is that cursed tower? Hundred and thirty feet, eh? Well, it felt like a thousand and thirty. I’m no cat-burglar, nor yet a steeple-jack. I looked down, and I saw a light moving about right away up the other end of the church, miles away beneath me in the graveyard. I tell you I hung on to that blinking parapet with both hands and I got a feeling in my stomach as though me and the tower and everything was crumbling away and going over. I was glad I couldn’t see more than I did.
“Well, I thought, you’d better make tracks. Nobby, while the dirty work’s going on down there. So I came in again carefully and bolted the door after me and started to come down the ladder. It was awkward going in the dark and after a bit I switched my torch on, and I wished I hadn’t. There I was, and those bells just beneath me — and, God! how I hated the look of them. I went all cold and sweaty and the torch slipped out of my hand and went down, and hit one of the bells. I’ll never forget the noise it made. It wasn’t loud, but kind of terribly sweet and threatening, and it went humming on and on, and a whole lot of other notes seemed to come out of it, high up and clear and close — right in my ears. You’ll think I’m loopy, but I tell you that bell was alive. I shut my eyes and hung on to the ladder and wished I’d chosen a different kind of profession — and that’ll show you what a state I was in.”
“You’ve got too much imagination. Nobby,” said Parker.
“You wait, Charles,” said Lord Peter. “You wait till you get stuck on a ladder in a belfry in the dark. Bells are like cats and mirrors — they’re always queer, and it doesn’t do to think too much about them. Go on, Cranton.”
“That’s just what I couldn’t do,” said Nobby, frankly. “Not for a bit. It felt like hours, but I daresay it wasn’t more than five minutes. I crawled down at last — in the dark, of course, having lost the torch. I groped round after it and found
it, but the bulb had gone, naturally, and I hadn’t any matches. So I had to feel for the trapdoor, and I was terrified of pitching right down. But I found it at last, and after that it was easier, though I had a nasty time on the spiral staircase. The steps are all worn away, and I slipped about, and the walls were so close I couldn’t breathe. My man had left all the doors open, so I knew he’d be coming back, and that didn’t cheer me up much, either. When I was out in the church I hared it for all I was worth to the door. I tripped over something on the way, too, that made an awful clatter. Something like a big metal pot.”
“The brass ewer at the foot of the font,” said Wimsey.
“They didn’t ought to keep it there,” said Mr. Cranton, indignantly. “And when I got out through the porch, I had to pussyfoot pretty gently over that beastly creaking gravel. In the end I got away and then I ran — golly, how I ran! I hadn’t left anything behind at Wilderspin’s, bar a shirt they’d lent me and a tooth-brush I’d bought in the. village, and I wasn’t going back there. I ran and ran like hell, and the rain was something cruel. And it’s a hell of a country. Ditches and bridges all over the place. There was a car came past one time, and trying to get out of the light, I missed my footing and rolled down the bank into a ditch full of water. Cold? It was like an ice-bath. I fetched up at last in a barn near a railway station and shivered there till morning, and presently a train came along, so I got on that. I forget the name of the place, but it must have been ten or fifteen miles away from Fenchurch. By the time I got up to London I was in a fever, I can tell you; rheumatic fever, or so they said. And you see what it’s done to me. I pretty nearly faded out, and I rather wish I had. I’ll never be fit for anything again. But that’s the truth and the whole truth, my lord and officers. Except that when I came to look myself over, I couldn’t find Deacon’s cipher. I thought I’d lost it on the road, but if you picked it up in the belfry, it must have come out of my pocket when I pulled the torch out. I never killed Deacon, but I knew I’d have a job to prove I didn’t, and that’s why I spun you a different tale the first time you came.”
“Well,” said Chief Inspector Parker, “let’s hope it’ll be a lesson to you to keep out of belfries.”
“It will,” replied Nobby fervently. “Every time I see a church tower now it gives me the jim-jams. I’m done with religion, I am, and if I ever go inside a church-door again, you can take and put me in Broadmoor.”
THE THIRD PART
WILL THODAY GOES IN QUICK AND COMES OUT SLOW
For while I held my tongue, my bones consumed away through my daily complaining.
PSALM xxxii. 3.
Wimsey thought he had never seen such utter despondency on any face as on William Thoday’s. It was the face of a man pushed to the last extremity, haggard and grey, and pinched about the nostrils like a dead man’s. On Mary’s face there was anxiety and distress, but something combative and alert as well. She was still fighting, but Will was obviously beaten.
“Now then, you two,” said Superintendent Blundell, “let’s hear what you have to say for yourselves.”
“We’ve done nothing we need be ashamed of,” said Mary.
“Leave it to me, Mary,” said Will. He turned wearily to the Superintendent. “Well,” he said, “you’ve found out about Deacon, I suppose. You know that he done us and ours a wrong that can’t be put right. We been trying, Mary and me, to put right as much as we can, but you’ve stepped in. Reckon we might have known we couldn’t keep it quiet, but what else could we do? There’s been talk enough about poor Mary down in the village, and we thought the best thing was to slip away, hoping to make an honest woman of her without asking the leaves of all they folk with long tongues as ’ud only be too glad to know something against us. And why shouldn’t we? It weren’t no fault of ours. What call have you got to stop us?”
“See here. Will,” said Mr. Blundell, “it’s rough luck on you, and I’m not saying as ’tisn’t, but the law’s the law. Deacon was a bad lot, as we all know, but the fact remains somebody put him away, and it’s our job to find out who did it.”
“I ain’t got nothing to say about that,” said Will Thoday, slowly. “But it’s cruel hard if Mary and me—”
“Just a moment,” said Wimsey. “I don’t think you quite realise the position, Thoday. Mr. Blundell doesn’t want to stand in the way of your marriage, but, as he says, somebody did murder Deacon, and the ugly fact remains that you were the man with the best cause to do it. And that means, supposing a charge were laid against you, and brought into court — well, they might want this lady to give evidence.”
“And if they did?” said Will.
“Just this,” said Wimsey. “The law does not allow a wife to give evidence against her husband.” He waited while this sank in. “Have a cigarette, Thoday. Think it out.”
“I see,” said Thoday, bitterly. “I see. It comes to this — there ain’t no end to the wrong that devil done us. He ruined my poor Mary and brought her into the dock once, and he robbed her of her good name and made bastards of our little girls, and now he can come between us again at the altar rails and drive her into the witness-box to put my neck in the rope. If ever a man deserved killing, he’s the one, and I hope he’s burning in hell for it now.”
“Very likely he is,” said Wimsey, “but you see the point. If you don’t tell us the truth now—”
“I’ve nothing to tell you but this,” broke out Thoday in a kind of desperation. “My wife — and she is my wife in God’s sight and mine — she never knew nothing about it. Not one word. And she knows nothing now, nothing but the name of the man rotting in that grave. And that’s the truth as God sees us.”
“Well,” said Mr. Blundell, “you’ll have to prove that.”
“That’s not quite true, Blundell,” said Wimsey, “but I dare say it could be proved. Mrs. Thoday—”
The woman looked quickly and gratefully at him.
“When did you first realise that your first husband had been alive till the beginning of this year, and that you were, therefore, not legally married to Will Thoday here?”
“Only when you came to see me, my lord, last week.”
“When I showed you that piece of writing in Deacon’s hand?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“But how did that—?” began the Superintendent. Wimsey went on, drowning his voice.
“You realised then that the man buried in Lady Thorpe’s grave must be Deacon.”
“It came over me, my lord, that that must be the way of it. I seemed to see a lot of things clear that I hadn’t understood before.”
“Yes. You’d never doubted till that moment that Deacon had died in 1918?”
“Not for a moment, my lord. I’d never have married Will else.”
“You have always been a regular communicant?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“But last Sunday you stayed away.”
“Yes, I did, my lord. I couldn’t come there, knowing as me and Will wasn’t properly married. It didn’t seem right, like.”
“Of course not,” said Wimsey. “I beg your pardon, Superintendent. I’m afraid I interrupted you,” he added, blandly.
“That’s all very well,” said Mr. Blundell. “You said you didn’t recognise that writing when his lordship showed it to you.”
“I’m afraid I did. It wasn’t true — but I had to make up my mind quick — and I was afraid—”
“I’ll bet you were. Afraid of getting Will into trouble, hey? Now, see here, Mary, how did you know that paper wasn’t written donkey’s years ago? What made you jump so quick to the idea Deacon was the corpse in the Thorpe grave? Just you answer me that, my girl, will you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, faintly. “It came over me all of a sudden.”
“Yes, it did,” thundered the Superintendent. “And why? Because Will had told you about it already, and you knew the game was up. Because you’d seen that there paper before—”
“No, no!”
&n
bsp; “I say, Yes. If you hadn’t have known something, you’d have had no cause to deny the writing. You knew when it was written — now, didn’t you?”
“That’s a lie!” said Thoday.
“I really don’t think you’re right about that, Blundell,” said Wimsey, mildly, “because, if Mrs. Thoday had known about it all along, why shouldn’t she have gone to Church last Sunday morning? I mean, don’t you see, if she’d brazened it out all those months, why shouldn’t she do it again?”
“Well,” retorted the Superintendent, “and how about Will? He’s been going to church all right, ain’t he? You aren’t going to tell me he knew nothing about it either.”
“Did he, Mrs. Thoday?” inquired Wimsey, gently. Mary Thoday hesitated.
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