Busman’s Honeymoon (15 page)

  Harriet said. Not at all, and murmured something about lunch. The Superintendent said he saw no objection to that; he had finished with the sitting-room for the moment. He would just like a word with this fellow MacBride about the financial side of the business, but he would send him in a soon as he had done with him. He tactfully refused to join the party, but he accepted the offer of a mouthful of bread and cheese in the kitchen. When the doctor had finished, he would finish the interrogations in the light of whatever the medical examination might reveal.

  Years afterwards. Lady Peter Wimsey was accustomed to say that the first few days of her honeymoon remained in her memory as a long series of assorted surprises, punctuated by the most incredible meals. Her husband’s impression were even less coherent; he said he had had, all the time the sensation of being slightly drunk and tossed in a blanket, The freakish and arbitrary fates must have given the blanket an especially energetic tweak, to have tossed him, towards the end of that strange, embarrassed luncheon, so high over the top of the world. He stood at the window, whistling, Bunter, hovering about the room, handing sandwiches and straightening out the last traces of disorder left after the sweep’s departure, recognised the tune. It was the one he had heard the night before in the woodshed. Nothing could have been less suited to the occasion, nothing should more deeply have offended his inborn sense of propriety; yet, like the poet Wordsworth, he heard it and rejoiced.

  ‘Another sandwich, Mr MacBride?’

  (The newly-wedded lady doing the honours at her own table for the first time. Curious, but true.)

  ‘No more, thanks; much obliged to you.’ Mr MacBride swallowed the last drop of his beer and polished his mouth and fingers politely with his handkerchief. Bunter swept down upon the empty plate and glass.

  ‘I hope you’ve had something to eat, Bunter?’ (One must consider the servants. Only two fixed points in the universe: death, and the servants’ dinner; and there they both were.)

  ‘Yes, thank you, my lady.’

  ‘I suppose they’ll be wanting this room in a minute. Is the doctor still there?’

  ‘I believe he has concluded his examination, my lady.’

  ‘Nice job, I don’t think,’ said Mr MacBride.

  ‘La caill’, la tourterelle

  Et la joli’ perdrix

  Auprès de ma blonde

  Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon.

  Auprès de ma blonde—’

  Mr MacBride looked round, scandalised. He had his own notions of propriety. Bunter darted hastily across the room and attracted the singer’s wandering attention.

  ‘Yes, Bunter?’

  ‘Your lordship will excuse me. But in view of the melancholy occasion—’

  ‘Eh, what? Oh, sorry. Was I making a noise?’

  ‘My dear—’ His swift, secret, reminiscent smile was a challenge; she beat it down, and achieved the right tone of wifely rebuke. ‘Poor Miss Twitterton’s trying to get to sleep.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Dashed thoughtless of me. And in a house of bereavement and all that.’ His face darkened with a sudden odd impatience. ‘Though, if you ask me, I doubt whether anybody—I say,
anybody
—feels particularly bereft.’

  ‘Except,’ said Mr MacBride, ‘that chap Crutchley with his forty pound. I fancy that grief’s genuine.’

  ‘From that point of view,’ said his lordship, ‘you should be the chief mourner.’

  ‘It won’t keep
me
awake at night,’ retorted Mr MacBride: ‘It ain’t my money, you see,’ he added frankly. He rose, opened the door and glanced out into the passage. ‘I only hope they’re getting a move on out there. I’ve got to toddle back to Town and see Mr Abrahams. Pity you ain’t on the telephone.’ He paused. ‘If I was you, I wouldn’t let it worry me. Seems to me, deceased was a dashed unpleasant old gink and well out of the way.’ He went out, leaving the atmosphere clearer, as though by the removal of funeral flowers.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Just as well, isn’t it?’ Wimsey’s tone was studiously light ‘When I’m investigating a murder, I hate to have too much sympathy with the corpse. Personal feelings cramp the style.’

  ‘But, Peter—need you investigate this? It’s rather rotten for you.’

  Bunter, piling plates on a tray, made for the door. This, of course, was bound to happen. Let them fight it out for themselves. He had delivered his own warning.

  ‘No, I needn’t. But I expect I shall. Murders go to my head like drink. I simply can’t keep off them.’

  ‘Not even now? They can’t expect you, surely! You’ve got a right to your own life sometimes. And it’s such a beastly little crime—sordid and horrible.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ he broke out, with unexpected passion ‘That’s why I can’t leave it alone. It’s not picturesque. It’s not exciting. It’s no fun at all. Just dirty, brutal bashing, like a butcher with a pole-axe. It makes me sick. But who the hell am I, to pick and choose what I’ll meddle in?’

  ‘I see. But after all, this was just wished on us. It’s not as though you’d been called in to help.’

  ‘How often am I “called in”, I wonder,’ he demanded rather bitterly. ‘I call myself in, half the time, out of sheer mischief and inquisitiveness. Lord Peter Wimsey the aristocratic sleuth—my god! The idle rich gentleman who dabbles in detection. That’s what they say—isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes. I lost my temper with somebody who said that, once. Before we were engaged. It made me wonder if wasn’t getting rather fond of you.’

  ‘Did it? Then perhaps I’d better not justify that view of myself. What do such fellows as I, crawling between heaven and earth? I can’t wash my hands of a thing, merely because it’s inconvenient to my lordship, as Bunter says of the sweep. I hate violence! I loathe wars and slaughter, and men quarrelling and fighting like beasts! Don’t say it isn’t my business. It’s everybody’s business.’

  ‘Of course it is, Peter. Go ahead. I was just being feminine or something. I thought you looked as if you’d be better for a little peace and quiet. But you don’t seem to shine as a lotos-eater.’

  ‘I can’t eat lotos, even with you,’ he said, pathetically, ‘with murdered bodies popping up all over the place.’

  ‘You shan’t, angel, you shan’t. Have a nice mouthful of prickly cactus instead. And don’t pay any attention to my imbecile efforts to strew your path with rose-leaves. It won’t be the first time we’ve followed the footprints together. Only’—she faltered a moment as another devastating matrimonial possibility loomed up like a nightmare—‘whatever you do, you’ll let me take a hand, won’t you?’

  To her relief, he laughed. ‘All right, Domina. I promise you that. Cactus for both or neither, and no lotos till we can share it. I won’t play the good British husband—in spite of your alarming plunge into wifeliness. The Ethiopian shall stay black and leave the leopardess her spots.’

  He appeared satisfied, but Harriet cursed herself for a fool. This business of adjusting oneself was not so easy after all. Being preposterously fond of a person didn’t prevent one from hurting him unintentionally. She had an uncomfortable feeling that his confidence had been shaken and that this was not the end of the misunderstanding. He wasn’t the kind of man to whom you could say, ‘Darling, you’re wonderful, and whatever you do is right’—whether you thought so or not. He would write you down a fool. Nor was he the sort who said, ‘I know what I’m doing and you must take my word for it’ (Thank god for that anyway!) He wanted you to agree with him intelligently or not at all. And her intelligence did agree with him. It was her own feelings that didn’t seem to be quite pulling in double harness with her intelligence. But whether it was her feeling for Peter or her feeling for the deceased Mr Noakes, butchered to make a busman’s honeymoon for them, or a merely selfish feeling that she didn’t want to be bothered at this moment with corpses and policemen, she was not sure.

  ‘Cheer up, sweetheart,’ said Peter. ‘They may not want my kind assistance. Kirk may cut the Gordian knot by booting me out.’

  ‘Well, he’d be an idiot!’ said Harriet, with prompt indignation.

  Mr Puffett entered suddenly without knocking.

  ‘They’re takin’ Mr Noakes away. Shall I be getting’ on with the kitchen chimney?’ He walked across to the fireplace. ‘Draws beautiful now, don’t she? I allus said there was nothing the matter with the flue. Ah! it’s a good thing Mr Noakes ain’t alive to see all that ’eap of coal. That’s a fire as does credit to any chimney.’

  ‘All right, Puffett,’ said Peter, absently. ‘Carry on.’

  Steps on the path, and a dismal little procession passing the window: a sergeant of police and another uniformed man, carrying a stretcher between them.

  ‘Very good, me lord.’ Mr Puffett glanced from the window and removed his bowler hat ‘And where’s all ’is cheese parin’ brought ’im now?’ he demanded. ‘Nowhere.’ He marched out.

  ‘
De mortuis,
’ said Peter, ‘and then some.’

  ‘Yes, he seems to be getting a nice derangement of epitaphs, poor old creature.’

  Corpses and policemen—there they were, not to be go rid of, whatever one’s feelings might be. Much better to accept the situation and do one’s best. Superintendent Kirk came in, followed by Joe Sellon.

  ‘Well, well’ said Peter. ‘All ready for the third degree?’

  ‘T’ain’t likely to come to that. my lord,’ replied Mr Kirk jovially. ‘You and your lady had something better to do last week than committing murders, I’ll be bound. That’s right Joe, come along. Let’s see what you can do with a bit o shorthand. I’m sending my sergeant over to Broxford to pick up what he can there, so Joe can give me a hand with the statements. I’d like to use this room, if it’s not inconvenient.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Seeing the Superintendent’s eye fix modestly upon a spindly specimen of Edwardian craftsmanship, Peter promptly pushed forward a stout, high-backed chair with gouty arms and legs and an eruption of heavy scroll work about its head. ‘You’ll find this about up to your weight, I fancy.’

  ‘Nice and imposing,’ said Harriet.

  The village constable added his comment: ‘That’s old Noakes’s chair, that was.’

  ‘So,’ said Peter, ‘Galahad will sit down in Merlin’s seat.’

  Mr Kirk, on the point of lowering his solid fifteen stone into the chair, jerked up abruptly.

  ‘Alfred,’ said he, ‘Lord Tennyson.’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Peter, mildly surprised. A glow of enthusiasm shone softly in the policeman’s ox-like eyes. ‘You’re a bit of a student, aren’t you. Superintendent?’

  ‘I like to do a bit o’ reading in my off-duty,’ admitted Mr Kirk, bashfully. ‘It mellows the mind.’ He sat down. ‘I often think as the rowtine of police dooty may tend to narrow a man and make him a bit hard, if you take my meaning. When I find that happening, I say to myself, what you need, Sam Kirk, is contact with a Great Mind or so, after supper. Reading maketh a full man—’

  ‘Conference a ready man,’ said Harriet.

  ‘And writing an exact man,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Mind that, Joe Sellon, and see you let me have them notes so as they can be read to make sense.’

  ‘Francis Bacon,’ said Peter, a trifle belatedly. ‘Mr Kirk, you’re a man after my own heart.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord. Bacon. You’d call him a Great Mind, wouldn’t you? And what’s more, he came to be Lord Chancellor of England, so he’s a bit in the legal way, too. Ah! well, I suppose we’ll have to get down to business.’

  ‘As another Great Mind so happily put it, “However entrancing it is to wander through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?”’

  ‘What’s that?’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s a new one on me. “Garden of bright images,” eh? That’s pretty, that’.

  ‘
Kai-Lung,
’ said Harriet.

  ‘
Golden Hours of,
’ said Peter. ‘Ernest Bramah.’

  ‘Make a note o’ that for me, will you, Joe? “Bright images”—that’s just what you get in poetry, isn’t it? Pictures. as you might say. And in a garden too—what you call flowers of fancy, I dessay. Well, now—’ He pulled him self together and turned to Peter. ‘As I was saying, we mustn’t waste time with the fancy-work. About this money: we found on the body. What did you say you paid him for the house?’

  ‘Six-fifty, altogether. Fifty at the beginning of the negotiations and the six hundred at quarter-day.’

  ‘That’s right. That accounts for the six hundred he had in his pocket. He’d just about have cashed it the day he was put away.’

  ‘The quarter-day was a Sunday. The cheque was actually dated and sent on the 28th. It would have reached him Monday.’

  ‘That’s right. We’ll check the payment at the bank. but it’s not really necessary. Wonder what they thought of him taking it away in cash instead of paying it in. H’m. It’s a pity it ain’t the bank’s business to give us the office when people do things that look like bolting. But it wouldn’t do naturally.’

  ‘He must have had it in his pocket when he told poor Crutchley he’d no money to pay him his forty pounds. He could have given it him then.’

  ‘Course he could, my lady, if he’d wanted to. He was a proper old dodger, was Mr Noakes; a regular Artful Dodger.’

  ‘Charles Dickens!’

  ‘That’s right. There’s an author what knew a bit about crooks, didn’t he? A pretty rough place London must have been in those days, if you go by what he says. Fagin and all But we wouldn’t hang a man for being a pickpocket, not now. Well—and having sent the cheque, you just came on here the next week and left it to him?’

  ‘Yes. Here’s his letter, you see, saying he’d have everything ready. It’s addressed to my agent. We really ought to have sent someone ahead to see to things, but the fact is, as I told you before, what with newspaper reporters and one thing and another—’