Busman’s Honeymoon (19 page)

  ‘What’s the matter? Kirk hasn’t been unpleasant, surely?’

  ‘Oh, no. He handled me with kid gloves on. Showed all the proper consideration for my rank and refinement and other inferiorities. My own fault, I asked for it. Oh, golly, here’s the vicar. What does he want?’

  ‘They asked him to come back. Go on out the back way, Peter. I’ll tackle him.’

  Kirk and Sellon, from the window, had watched Mr MacBride’s departure.

  ‘Hadn’t I ought to fetch Aggie Twitterton down myself,’ suggested Sellon. ‘His lordship will maybe tell his wife to give her the tip.’

  ‘The trouble with you, Joe,’ replied the Superintendent, ‘is, you ain’t got no pussychology, as they call it. They wouldn’t do a thing like that, neither of them. They ain’t impounding no felonies nor yet obstructing the law. All that’s the matter is,
he
don’t like ’urting women and
she
don’t like ’urting him. But they won’t either on ’em put out a finger to stop it, because that sort of thing ain’t done. And when things ain’t done, they won’t do ’em—and that’s the long and the short of it.’

  Having thus laid down the code of behaviour for the nobility and gentry, Mr Kirk blew his nose, and resumed his seat; whereupon the door opened to admit Harriet and Mr Goodacre.

  Dost thou know what reputation is?

  I’ll tell thee—to small purpose, since the instruction

  Comes now too late....

  You have shook hands with Reputation,

  And made him invisible.

  JOHN WEBSTER:
The Duchess of Malfi.

  The Rev. Simon Goodacre blinked nervously when confronted by the two officers drawn up, as it were, in battle array, and Harriet’s brief announcement on her way upstairs that he had ‘something to say to you Superintendent’, did little to set him at ease.

  ‘Dear me! Well. Yes. I came back to see if you wanted me for anything. As you suggested, you know, as you suggested. And to tell Miss Twitterton—but I see she is not here—Well, only that I had seen Lugg about the—er, dear me, the coffin. There must be a coffin, of course—I am not acquainted with the official procedure in such circumstances, but no doubt a coffin will have to be provided?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Kirk.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. I had supposed so. I have referred Lugg to you, because I imagine the—the body is no longer in the house.’

  ‘It’s over at the Crown,’ said the Superintendent. ‘The inquest will have to be held there.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Mr Goodacre. ‘The inquest—oh, yes.’

  ‘The coroner’s officer will give all the usual facilities.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, thank you. Er—Crutchley spoke to me as I came up the path.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Well—I think he thinks he might be suspected.’

  ‘What makes him think that?’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Mr Goodacre. ‘I fear I am putting my foot in it. He didn’t say he did think it. I only thought he might think it from what he said. But I assure you. Superintendent, that I can confirm his alibi in every particular. He was at choir practice from 6.30 to 7.30, and then he took me over to Pagford for the whist-drive and brought me back here at 10.30. So. you see—’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. If an alibi’s wanted for them times, you and turn’s out of it.’

  ‘I’m out of it?’ exclaimed Mr Goodacre. ‘Bless my soul, Superintendent.’

  ‘Only my joke, sir.’

  Mr Goodacre seemed to find the joke in but poor taste. He replied, however, mildly:

  ‘Yes, yes. Well, I hope I may assure Crutchley that it’s all right. He’s a young man of whom I have a very high opinion. So keen and industrious. You mustn’t attach too much importance to his chagrin about the forty pounds. It’s a considerable sum for a man in his position.’

  Don’t you worry about that, sir,’ said Kirk. ‘Very glad to have your confirmation of those times.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I thought I’d better mention it. Now, is there anything else I can do to help?’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir; I don’t know as there is. You spent Wednesday night at home, I take it, after 10.30?’

  ‘Why, of course,’ said the vicar, not at all relishing this tendency to harp upon his movements. My wife and my servant can substantiate my statement. But you scarcely suppose—’

  ‘We ain’t got to supposing things yet, sir. That comes later. This is all rowtine. You didn’t call here at any time during the last week, by any chance?’

  ‘Oh, no. Mr Noakes was away.’

  ‘Oh! you knew he was away, did you, sir?’

  ‘No, no. At least, I supposed so. That is to say, yes. I called here on the Thursday morning, but got no answer, so I supposed he was away, as he sometimes was. In fact I fancy Mrs Ruddle told me so. Yes, that was it.’

  ‘That the only time you called?’

  ‘Dear me, yes. It was only a little matter of a subscription—in fact, that was what I came about today. I was passing by, and saw a notice on the gate asking for bread and milk to be delivered, so I supposed he had returned.’

  ‘Ah, yes. When you came on Thursday, you didn’t notice anything funny about the house?’

  ‘Goodness me, no. Nothing unusual at all. What would there be to notice?’

  ‘Well—’ began Kirk; but, after all, what could he expect this short-sighted old gentleman to notice? Signs of a struggle? Finger-prints on a door? Footmarks on the path?

  Scarcely. Mr Goodacre would possibly have noticed a full-sized corpse, if he had happened to trip over it, but probably nothing smaller.

  He accordingly thanked and dismissed the vicar, who, once more observing that he could fully account for Crutchley’s movements and his own after half-past six, blundered vaguely out again, murmuring a series of agitated ‘Good afternoons’ as he went.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Kirk. He frowned. ‘What makes the old gentleman so sure those
are
the essential times.
We
don’t know they are.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Sellon.

  ‘Seems very excited about it. It can’t ’ardly be him, though, come to think of it, he’s tall enough. He’s taller nor what you are—pretty well as tall as Mr Noakes was, I reckon.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said the constable, ‘it couldn’t be vicar, sir.’

  ‘Isn’t that just what I’m saying? I suppose Crutchley must a-got the idea of the times being important from us questioning so close about them. It’s a hard life,’ added Mr Kirk, plaintively. ‘If you ask questions, you tell the witness what you’re after; if you don’t ask ’em, you can’t find out anything. And just when you think you’re getting on to something you come slap up against the Judges’ Rules.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sellon, respectfully. He rose as Harriet led Miss Twitterton in, and brought forward another chair.

  ‘Oh, please!’ exclaimed Miss Twitterton, faintly. ‘Please don’t leave me. Lady Peter.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Harriet. Mr Kirk hastened to reassure the witness.

  ‘Sit down. Miss Twitterton; there’s nothing to be alarmed about. Now, first of all, I understand you know nothing about your uncle’s arrangements with Lord Peter Wimsey selling the house, I mean, and so on. No. Just so. Now, when had you seen him last?’

  ‘Oh! not for’—Miss Twitterton paused and counted the fingers of both hands carefully—‘not for about ten days. I looked in last Saturday after morning service. I mean, of course, last Sunday
week.
I come over, you see, to play the organ for the dear vicar. It’s a tiny church, of course, and
not
many people—nobody in Paggleham plays the organ, and of course I’m delighted to help in any way—and I called on Uncle then and he seemed
quite
as usual, and—and that’s the—the last time I saw him. Oh, dear!’

  ‘Were you aware that he was absent from home ever since last Wednesday?’

  ‘But he wasn’t absent!’ exclaimed Miss Twitterton. ‘He was here all the time.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Did you know he was here, and not absent?’

  ‘Of course not. He often goes away. He usually tells—I mean, told me. But it was quite an ordinary thing for him to be at Broxford. I mean, if I had known, I shouldn’t have thought anything of it. But I didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Anything about what?’

  ‘About anything. I mean, nobody told me he wasn’t here, so I thought he was here—and so he was, of course.’

  ‘If you’d been told the house was shut up and Mrs Ruddle couldn’t get in, you wouldn’t have been surprised or uneasy?’

  ‘Oh, no. It often happened. I should have thought he was at Broxford.’

  ‘You have a key for the front door, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And the back door, too.’ Miss Twitterton fumbled in a capacious pocket of the old-fashioned sort. ‘But I never use the back-door key because it’s always bolted—the door, I mean.’ She pulled out a large key-ring. ‘I gave them both to Lord Peter last night—off this bunch. I always keep them on the ring with my own. They
never
leave me. Except last night, of course, when Lord Peter had them.’

  ‘H’m!’ said Kirk. He produced Peter’s two keys. ‘Are these the ones?’

  ‘Well, they must be, mustn’t they, if Lord Peter gave them to you.’

  ‘You haven’t ever lent the front-door key to anybody?’

  ‘Oh,
dear
no!’ protested Miss Twitterton. ‘Not
anybody.
If Uncle was away and Frank Crutchley wanted to get in on Wednesday morning, he always came to me and I went over with him and unlocked the door for him. Uncle was
ever
so particular. And besides, I should want to go myself and see that the rooms were all right. In fact, if Uncle William was at Broxford I used to come over
most
days.’

  ‘But on this occasion, you didn’t know he was away?’

  No, I didn’t. That’s what I keep on telling you. I didn’t know. So of course I didn’t come. And he
wasn’t
away.’

  ‘Exactly. Now. you’re sure you’ve never left these keys about where they might be pinched or borrowed?’

  ‘No, never,’ replied Miss Twitterton, earnestly—as though, thought Harriet, she asked nothing better than to twist a rope for her own neck. Surely she must see that the key to the house was the key to the problem; was it possible for any innocent person to be quite as innocent as that? The Superintendent ploughed on with his questions, unmoved.

  ‘Where do you keep them at night?’

  ‘
Always
in my bedroom. The keys, and dear Mother’s silver tea-pot and Aunt Sophy’s cruet that was a wedding-present to grandpa and grandma. I take them up with me
every
night and put them on the little table by my bed, with the dinner-bell handy in case of fire. And I’m
sure
nobody could come in when I was asleep, because I always put a deck-chair across the head of the staircase.’

  ‘You brought the dinner-bell down when you came to let us in,’ said Harriet, vaguely corroborative. Her attention was distracted by the sight of Peter’s face, peering in through the diamond panes of the lattice. She waved him a friendly gesture. Presumably he had walked off his attack of self-consciousness and was getting interested again.

  ‘A deck-chair?’ Kirk was asking.

  ‘To trip up a burglar,’ explained Miss Twitterton, very seriously. ‘It’s a
splendid
thing. You see, while he was getting all tangled up and making a noise, I should hear him and ring the dinner-bell out of the window for the police.’

  ‘Dear me!’ said Harriet (Peter’s face had vanished perhaps he was coming in.) ‘How dreadfully ruthless of you, Miss Twitterton. The poor man might have fallen over it and broken his neck.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The burglar.’

  ‘But, dear Lady Peter, I’m trying to explain—there never was a burglar.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kirk, ‘it doesn’t look as if anybody else could have got at the keys. Now, Miss Twitterton—about these money difficulties of your uncle’s—’

  ‘Oh, dear, oh dear!’ broke in Miss Twitterton, with unfeigned emotion. ‘I knew
nothing
about those. It’s terrible. It gave me
such
a shock. I thought—we
all
thought—Uncle was ever so well off.’

  Peter had come in so quietly that only Harriet noticed him. He remained near the door, winding his watch and setting it by the clock on the wall. Obviously he had come back to normal, for his face expressed only an alert intelligence.

  ‘Did he make a will, do you know?’ Kirk dropped the question out casually; the tell-tale sheet of paper lay concealed under his notebook.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Twitterton, ‘I’m sure he made a will. Not that it would have mattered, I suppose, because I’m the only one of the family left. But I’m certain he told me he’d made one. He always said, when I was worried about things—of course I’m
not
very well off—he always said, Now, don’t you be in a hurry, Aggie. I can’t help you now, because it’s all tied up in the business, but it’ll come to you after I’m dead.’

  ‘I see. You never thought he might change his mind?’

  ‘Why, no. Who else
should
he leave it to? I’m the only one. I suppose now there won’t be anything?’

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Oh, dear! Was that what he meant when he said it was tied up in the business? That there wasn’t any?’

  ‘That’s what it very often does mean,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Then that’s what—’ began Miss Twitterton, and stopped.

  ‘That’s what, what?’ prompted the Superintendent

  ‘Nothing,’ said Miss Twitterton, miserably. ‘Only something I thought of. Something private. But he said once something about being short and people not paying their bills.... Oh, what
have
I done? How ever can I explain—?’

  ‘What?’ demanded Kirk again.

  ‘Nothing,’ repeated Miss Twitterton, hastily. ‘Only it sounds so silly of me.’ Harriet received the impression that this was not what Miss Twitterton had originally meant to say. ‘He borrowed a little sum of me once—not much—but of course I hadn’t
got
much. Oh, dear! I’m afraid it looks dreadful to be thinking about money just now, but ... I
did
think I’d have a little for my old age ... and times are so hard ... and ... and ... there’s the rent of my cottage ... and ...’

  She quavered on the verge of tears. Harriet said, confusedly:

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure something will turn up.’

  Kirk could not resist it. ‘Mr Micawber!’ he said, with a sort of relief. A faint echo behind him drew his attention to Peter, and he glanced round. Miss Twitterton hunted wildly for a handkerchief amid a pocketful of bast, pencils and celluloid rings for chickens’ legs, which came popping out in a shower.

  ‘I’d counted on it—rather specially,’ sobbed Miss Twitterton. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t pay any attention.’

  Kirk cleared his throat. Harriet, who was as a rule good at handkerchiefs, discovered to her annoyance that on this particular morning she had provided herself only with an elegant square of linen, suitable for receiving such rare and joyful drops as might be expected on one’s honeymoon. Peter came to the rescue with what might have been a young flag of truce.