Busman’s Honeymoon (22 page)

  ‘Well?’

  Kirk knew that something was coming and braced himself to meet it. Force Peter’s sort to the wall, and they will tell the truth. He had said so, and now his words were to be proved upon him, and he had got to take the punishment.

  ‘That story of his. It sounded all right.... But it wasn’t ... One bit of it was a lie.’

  ‘A lie?’

  ‘Yes.... He said he never came into the house.... He said he saw the clock from that window....’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I tried to do the same thing just now, when I was out in the garden. I wanted to set my watch. Well ... it can’t be done, that’s all.... That damned awful cactus is in the way.’

  ‘What!’

  Kirk sprang to his feet.

  ‘I say, that infernal bloody cactus is in the way. It covers the face of the clock. You can’t see the time from that window.’

  ‘You can’t?’

  Kirk darted towards the window, knowing only too well what he would find there.

  ‘You can try it,’ said Peter, ‘from any point you like. It’s absolutely and definitely impossible. You can
not
see the clock from that window.’

  ‘What should I have done?’ I cried, with some heat.

  ‘Gone to the nearest public-house. That is the centre of country gossip.’

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE:
The Solitary Cyclist.

  The police were out of the house by tea-time. Indeed the unhappy Kirk, having ascertained that by no dodging, stooping or standing on tip-toe could anyone obtain a sight of the clock-face from the window, found himself with but little zest to prolong his inquiries. He made the half-hearted suggestion that Noakes might have temporarily removed the cactus from its pot after 6.20 and replaced it before 9.30; but he could offer himself no plausible explanation of any such aimless proceeding. There was, of course, only Crutchley’s word for it that the plant had been there at 6.20—if there was even that; Crutchley had mentioned watering it—he might have taken it down and left it for Noakes to put back. One could ask—but even as he made a note of this intention, Kirk felt little hope of any result. He examined the bedrooms in a dispirited way, impounded a number of books and papers from a cupboard and again examined Mrs Ruddle about Sellon’s interview with Noakes.

  The result of all this was not very satisfactory. A notebook was discovered, containing, among other entries, a list of weekly payments, five shillings at a time, under the initials ‘J.S.’ This corroborated a story that scarcely needed corroboration. It also suggested that Sellon’s frankness might be less a virtue than a necessity, since, had he suspected the existence of such a document, he would have realised that it was better to confess before being confronted with it Peter’s comment was. Why, if Sellon were the murderer, had he not searched the house for compromising papers? With this consideration Kirk tried hard to comfort himself.

  There was nothing else that could be interpreted as evidence of blackmailing payments from anybody, though plenty of testimony going to show that Noakes’s affairs were in an even worse state of confusion than had hitherto appeared. An interesting item was a bundle of newspaper cuttings and jottings in Noakes’s hand, concerning cheap cottages on the west coast of Scotland—a country in which it is notoriously difficult to proceed for the recovery of civil debts contracted elsewhere. That Noakes had been the ‘proper twister’ Kirk had supposed him was clear enough; unhappily, it was not his misdoings that needed proof.

  Mrs Ruddle was unhelpful. She had heard Noakes slam the window shut and seen Sellon retreat in the direction of the front door. Supposing that the show was over, she had hastened home with her pail of water. She thought she had heard a knocking at the doors a few minutes later, and thought, ‘He’s got some hopes!’ Asked whether she had heard what the quarrel was about, she admitted, with regret, that she had not, but (with a malicious grin) ‘supposed as Joe Sellon knew all about it.’ Sellon, she added, ‘often came up to see Mr Noakes’—her own opinion, if Kirk wanted it, was that he was ‘a-trying to borrer money’ and that Noakes had refused to lend any more. Mrs Sellon was thriftless, everybody knew that. Kirk would have liked to ask her whether, having last seen Mr Noakes engaged in a violent quarrel, she had had no qualms about his subsequent disappearance; but the question stuck in his throat. He would be saying in so many words that an officer of the law could be suspected of a murder; without better evidence he could not bring himself to do it. His next dreary job was to question the Sellons, and he was not looking forward to that. In a mood of the blackest depression, he went off to interview the coroner.

  In the meantime, Mr Puffett, having cleared the kitchen chimney from above and assisted at the lighting of the fire, had taken his fee and gone home, uttering many expressions of sympathy and goodwill. Finally, Miss Twitterton, tearful but nattered, was conveyed to Pagford by Bunter in the car, with her bicycle perched ‘high and disposedly’ upon the back seat. Harriet saw her off and returned to the sitting-room, where her lord and master was gloomily building a house of cards with a greasy old pack which he had unearthed from the what-not.

  ‘Well!’ said Harriet, in unnaturally cheerful tones, ‘they’ve gone. At last we are alone!’

  ‘That’s a blessing,’ said he, glumly.

  ‘Yes; I couldn’t have stood much more. Could you?’

  ‘Not any more.... And I can’t stand it now.’ The words were not said rudely; he sounded merely helpless and exhausted.

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Harriet.

  He made no reply, seeming absorbed in adding the fourth storey to his structure. She watched him for a few moments, then decided he was best left alone and wandered upstairs to fetch pen and paper. She thought it might be a good thing to write a few lines to the Dowager Duchess.

  Passing through Peter’s dressing-room, she found that somebody had been at work there. The curtains had been hung, the rugs put down and the bed made up. She paused to wonder what might be the significance of this—if any. In her own room, the traces of Miss Twitterton’s brief occupation had been removed—the eiderdown shaken, the pillows made smooth, the hot-water bottle taken away, the disorder of washstand and dressing-table set to rights. The doors and drawers left open by Kirk had been shut, and a bowl of chrysanthemums stood on the window-sill. Bunter, like a steam-roller, had passed over everything, flattening out all traces of upheaval. She got the things she needed and carried them down. The card house had reached the sixth storey. At the sound of her step, Peter started, his hand shook, and the whole flimsy fabric dissolved into ruins. He muttered something and began doggedly to rebuild it.

  Harriet glanced at the clock; it was nearly five, and she felt she could do with some tea. She had coerced Mrs Ruddle into putting the kettle on and doing some work; it could not take very long now. She sat down on the settle and began her letter. The news was not exactly what the Duchess would expect to receive, but it was urgently necessary to write something that she might get before the headlines broke out in the London papers. Besides, there were things Harriet wanted to tell her—things she would have told her in any case. She finished the first page and looked up. Peter was frowning; the house, risen once again to the fourth storey, was showing signs of imminent collapse. Without meaning to, she began to laugh.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ said Peter. The tottering cards immediately slid apart, and he damned them fretfully. Then; his face suddenly relaxed, and the familiar, sidelong smile lifted the corner of his mouth.

  ‘I was seeing the funny side of it,’ said Harriet, apologetically. ‘This looks not like a nuptial.’

  ‘True, O God!’ said he, ruefully. He got up and came over to her. ‘I rather think,’ he observed in a detached and dubious manner, ‘I am behaving like a lout.’

  ‘Do you? Then all I can say is, your notion of loutishness is exceedingly feeble and limited. You simply don’t know how to begin.’

  He was not comforted by her mockery. ‘I didn’t mean things to be like this,’ he said, lamely.

  ‘My dear cuckoo—’

  ‘I wanted it all to be wonderful for you.’

  She waited for him to find his own answer to this, which he did with disarming swiftness.

  ‘That’s vanity, I suppose. Take pen and ink and write it down. His lordship is in the enjoyment of very low spirits, owing to his inexplicable inability to bend Providence to his own designs.’

  ‘Shall I tell your mother so?’

  ‘Are you writing to her? Good Lord, I never thought about it, but I’m dashed glad you did. Poor old Mater, she’ll be horribly upset about it all. She’d got it firmly into her head that to be married to her white-headed boy meant an untroubled Elysium, world without end, amen. Strange, that one’s own mother should know so little about one.’

  ‘Your mother is the most sensible woman I ever met. She has a much better grasp of the facts of life than you have.’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘Yes, of course. By the way, you don’t insist on a husband’s rights to read his wife’s letters?’

  ‘Great heavens, no!’ said Peter, horrified.

  ‘I’m glad of that. It mightn’t be good for you. Here’s Bunter coming back; we may get some tea. Mrs Ruddle is in such a state of excitement that she has probably boiled the milk and put the tea-leaves into the sandwiches. I ought to have stood over her till she’d finished.’

  ‘Blow Mrs Ruddle!’

  ‘By all means—but I expect Bunter is doing that already.’

  The precipitate entry of Mrs Ruddle with the tea-tray gave weight to the supposition.

  ‘Which,’ said Mrs Ruddle, setting down her burden with a rattle on a small table before the fire, ‘I’d a-brought it before, if it wasn’t the policeman from Broxford come a-busting in, jest as I was makin’ of the toast. Me ’eart come into me mouth, thinkin’ summink ’orrible ’ad ’appened. But it ain’t only summingses from the coroner. Quite a bunch of ’em ’e ’ad in ’is ’and, and these ’ere is yours.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Peter, breaking the seal. ‘They’ve been pretty quick. “To wit—To Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey. By virtue of a Warrant under the Hand and Seal of John Perkins”—all right, Mrs Ruddle, you needn’t wait.’

  ‘Mr Perkins the lawyer, that is,’ explained Mrs Ruddle. ‘A very nice gentleman, so I’m told, though I ain’t never seen ’im to speak to.’

  ‘“... one of His Majesty’s coroners for the said county of Hertfordshire to be and appear before him on Thursday the tenth day of October” ... you’ll see him and hear him tomorrow all right, Mrs Ruddle ... “at 11 o’clock in the forenoon precisely at the Coroner’s Court at the Crown Inn situate in the parish of Paggleham in the said County; then I and there to give Evidence and be examined on. His Majesty’s behalf, touching the death of William Noakes, and a not to depart without leave.”’

  ‘That’s all very fine,’ observed Mrs Ruddle, ‘but ’oo’s to give my Bert ’is dinner? Twelve o’clock’s ’is time, and I ain’t a-goin’ to see my Bert go ’ungry, not for King George nor nobody.’

  ‘Bert will have to get on without you, I’m afraid,’ said Peter, solemnly. ‘You see what it says: “Herein fail not at your peril.”’

  ‘Lor’ now,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Peril of what, I should like to know?’

  ‘Prison,’ said Peter, in an awful voice.

  ‘Me go to prison?’ cried Mrs Ruddle, in great indignation. ‘That’s a nice thing for a respectable woman.’

  ‘Surely you could get a friend to see to Bert’s dinner,’ suggested Harriet

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Ruddle, dubiously, ‘maybe Mrs ’Odges would oblige. But I’m thinkin’ she’ll want to come and ’ear wot’s going on at the ’quest. But there! I dessay I could make a pie tonight and leave it out for Bert.’ She retreated thoughtfully to the door, returning to say, in a hoarse whisper:

  ‘Will I ’ave to tell ’im about the paraffin?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Not as there’s anything wrong in borrowin’ a drop of paraffin, w’en it’s easy replaced. But them there pleecemen do twist a woman’s words so.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think you need worry,’ said Harriet. ‘Shut the door, please, as you go out.’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ said Mrs Ruddle; and vanished with unexpected docility.

  ‘If I know anything about Kirk,’ said Peter, ‘they’ll adjourn the inquest, so it shouldn’t take very long.’

  ‘No. I’m glad John Perkins has been so prompt—we shan’t get such a crowd of reporters and people.’

  ‘Shall you mind the reporters very much?’

  ‘Not nearly as much as you will. Don’t be so tragic about it, Peter. Make up your mind that the joke’s on us, this time.’

  ‘It’s that, right enough. Helen’s going to make a grand cockadoodle over this.’

  ‘Well, let her. She doesn’t look as though she got much fun out of life, poor woman. After all, she can’t alter the facts. I mean, here I am, you know, pouring out tea for you—from a chipped spout, admittedly—but I’m here.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she envies you that job. I’m not exactly Helen’s cup of tea.’

  ‘She’d never enjoy any tea—she’d always be thinking about the chips.’

  ‘Helen doesn’t allow chips.’

  ‘No—she’d insist on silver—even if the pot was empty. Have some more tea. I can’t help its dribbling into the saucer. It’s the sign of a generous nature, or an overflowing heart, or something.’

  Peter accepted the tea and drank it in silence. He was still dissatisfied with himself. It was as though he had invited the woman of his choice to sit down with him at the feast of life, only to discover that his table had not been reserved for him. Men, in these mortifying circumstances, commonly find fault with the waiter, grumble at the food and irritably reject every effort to restore pleasantness to the occasion. From the worst exhibitions of injured self-conceit, his good manners were sufficient to restrain him, but the mere fact that he knew himself to be in fault made it all the more difficult for him to recover spontaneity. Harriet watched his inner conflict sympathetically. If both of them had been ten years younger, the situation would have resolved itself in a row, tears and reconciling embraces; but for them, that path was plainly marked, NO EXIT. There was no help for it; he must get out of his sulks as best he could. Having inflicted her own savage moods upon him for a good five years, she was in no position to feel aggrieved; compared with herself, indeed, he was making a pretty good showing.

  He pushed the tea-things aside and lit cigarettes for both of them. Then, rubbing fretfully upon the old sore, he said:

  ‘You show commendable patience with my bad temper.’

  ‘Is that what you call it? I’ve seen tempers in comparison with which you’d call that a burst of heavenly harmony.’

  ‘Whatever it is, you are trying to natter me out of it.’

  ‘Not at all.’ (Very well, he was asking for it; better use shock tactics and carry the place by assault.) ‘I’m only trying to tell you, in the nicest possible manner, that, provided I were with you, I shouldn’t
greatly
mind being deaf, dumb, halt, blind and imbecile, afflicted with shingles and whooping-cough, in an open boat without clothes or food, with a thunderstorm coming on. But you’re being painfully stupid about it.’