Busman’s Honeymoon (38 page)

  ‘How very chaste and appropriate!’

  Bunter said he was much obliged.

  ‘
Everybody
was there,’ said Miss Twitterton. ‘Dr Craven came over, and old Mr and Mrs Sowerton, and the Jenkinses from Broxford and that rather odd young man who came to tell us about Uncle William’s misfortunes, and Miss Grant had all the school-children carrying flowers.’

  ‘And Fleet Street in full force,’ said Peter. ‘Bunter, I see glasses on the radio cabinet. We could do with some drinks.’

  ‘Very good, my lord.’

  ‘I’m afraid they’ve commandeered the beer-barrel,’ said Harriet, with a glance at Mr Puffett.

  ‘That’s awkward,’ said Peter. He stripped off his overcoat, and with it his last vestige of sobriety. ‘Well, Puffett, I dare say you can make do for once with the bottled variety. First discovered, so they say, by Izaak Walton, who while fishing one day—’

  Into the middle of this harangue there descended unexpectedly from the stairs Bill and George, carrying, the one a dressing-mirror and a wash-basin, and the other, a ewer and a small bouquet of bedroom utensils. They seemed pleased to see the room so full of company, and George advanced gleefully upon Peter.

  ‘Excuse me, guv’nor,’ said George, flourishing the utensils vaguely in the direction of Miss Twitterton, who was sitting near the staircase. ‘All them razors and silver-mounted brushes up there—’

  ‘Tush!’ said his lordship, gravely, ‘nothing is gained by coarseness.’ He draped his coat modestly over the offending crockery, added his scarf, crowned the ewer with his top-hat, and completed the effect by hanging his umbrella over George’s extended arm. ‘Trip it featly here and there through the other door and ask my man to come up presently and tell you which things are what.’

  ‘Right-oh, guv’nor,’ said George, ambling away a trifle awkwardly, for the topper showed a tendency to overbalance. The vicar, surprisingly, relieved the general embarrassment by observing with a reminiscent smile:

  ‘Now, you might not believe it, but when was up at Oxford I once put one on the Martyrs’ Memorial.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Peter. ‘I was one of the party that tied an open umbrella over each of the Caesars. They were the Fellows’ umbrellas. Ah! here come the drinks.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Miss Twitterton. She shook her head sadly at the glass. ‘And to think that the last time we partook of Lord Peter’s sherry—’

  ‘Dear me, dear me!’ said Mr Goodacre. ‘Thank you. Ah! yes, indeed.’

  He turned the wine musingly upon his tongue and appeared to compare its flavour favourably with that of the best sherry in Pagford.

  ‘Bunter—you’ve got some beer in the kitchen for Puffett.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  Mr Puffett, reminded that he was, in a manner of speaking, in the wrong place, picked up his curly bowler and said heartily:

  ‘That’s very kind of your lordship. Come along, Martha. Get off your bonnet and shawl and we’ll give these lads a ’and outside.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘Bunter will be wanting you, Mrs Ruddle, to see about getting some lunch of some sort. Will you stay and have something with us. Miss Twitterton?’

  ‘Oh, no, really. I must be getting home. It’s so good of you.’

  ‘But you mustn’t hurry,’ said Harriet, as Puffett and Mrs Ruddle vanished. ‘I only said that because Mrs Ruddle—though an excellent servant in her way—sometimes needs a reminder. Mr Goodacre, won’t you have a drop more sherry?’

  ‘No, really—I must be moving homewards.’

  ‘Not without your plants,’ said Peter. ‘Mr Goodacre has prevailed on Mr MacBride, Harriet, to let the cacti go to a good home.’

  ‘For a consideration, no doubt?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said the vicar. ‘I paid him for them. That was only right. He has to consider his clients. The other person—Solomons, I think his name is—made a slight difficulty, but we managed to get over that.’

  ‘How did you manage?’

  ‘Well,’ admitted the vicar, ‘I paid him too. But it was a small sum. Quite a small sum, really. Less than the plants are worth. I did not like to think of their going to a warehouse with no one to care for them. Crutchley has always looked after them so well. He is very knowledgeable with cacti.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Miss Twitterton, so sharply that the vicar stared at her in mild astonishment. ‘I am
glad
to hear that Frank Crutchley fulfilled
some
of his obligations.’

  ‘Well, padre,’ said Peter, ‘rather you than me. I don’t like the things.’

  ‘They are not to everybody’s taste, perhaps. But this one, for instance—you must acknowledge that it is a superb specimen of its kind.’

  He shuffled his short-sighted way towards the hanging cactus and peered at it with an anticipatory pride of possession.

  ‘Uncle William,’ said Miss Twitterton in a quavering voice, ‘always took great pride in that cactus.’

  Her eyes filled with tears, and the vicar turned quickly towards her.

  ‘I know. Indeed, Miss Twitterton, it will be quite happy and safe with me.’

  Miss Twitterton nodded, speechlessly; but any further demonstration was cut short by the entrance of Bunter, who said, coming up to her:

  ‘Excuse me. The furniture removers are about to clear the attics and have desired me to inquire what is to be done with the various trunks and articles labelled “Twitterton”.’

  ‘Oh! dear me! Yes of course. Oh, dear—yes, please tell them I think I had better come and see to that myself.... You see—dear me!—however did I come to forget?—there are quite a lot of my things here.’ She fluttered towards Harriet. ‘I
hope
you won’t mind—I won’t trespass on your time—but I’d
better
just see what’s mine and what isn’t. You see, my cottage is so very
small,
and Uncle very kindly let me store my little belongings—some of dear Mother’s things—’

  ‘But of course,’ said Harriet. ‘Do go anywhere you like, and if you want any help—’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much. Oh, Mr Goodacre, thank you.’

  The vicar, politely holding open the staircase door, extended his hand.

  ‘As I shall be going in a very few minutes, I’ll say goodbye now. Just for the moment. I shall of course come and see you. And now, you mustn’t allow yourself to brood, you know. In fact, I’m going to ask you to be very brave and sensible and come and play the organ for us on Sunday as usual. Now, will you? We’ve all come to rely on you so much.’

  ‘Oh, yes—on Sunday. Of course, dear Mr Goodacre, if you wish it, I’ll do my best—’

  ‘It will gratify me very much.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. I—you—everybody’s so good to me.’

  Miss Twitterton vanished upstairs in a little whirl of gratitude and confusion.

  ‘Poor little woman! poor little soul!’ said the vicar. ‘It’s most distressing. This unsolved mystery hanging over us—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, absently; ‘not too good.’

  It gave Harriet a shock to see his eyes, coldly reflective, still turned towards the door by which Miss Twitterton had gone out. She thought of the trap-door in the attic—and the boxes. Had Kirk searched those boxes, she wondered. If not—well, then, what? Could there be anything in a box? A blunt instrument, with perhaps a little skin and hair on it? It seemed to her that they had all been standing silent a very long time, when Mr Goodacre, who had resumed his doting contemplation of the cactus, suddenly said:

  ‘Now, this is very strange—very strange indeed!’

  She saw Peter start as it were out of a trance and cross the room to see the strange thing. The vicar was staring up into the nightmare vegetable above his head with a deeply puzzled expression. Peter stared too; but, since the bottom of the pot was three or four inches over his head, he could see very little.

  ‘Look at that!’ said Mr Goodacre, in a voice that positively shook. ‘Do you see what that is?’

  He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil, with which he pointed excitedly to something in the centre of the cactus.

  ‘From here,’ said Peter, stepping back, ‘it looks like a spot of mildew, though I can’t see very well from this distance. But perhaps in a cactus that’s merely the bloom of a healthy complexion.’

  ‘It
is
mildew,’ said the vicar, grimly. Harriet, feeling that intelligent sympathy was called for, climbed on the settle, so that she could look at the plant on a level.

  ‘There’s some more of it on the upper side of the leaves if they are leaves, and not stalks.’

  ‘Somebody,’ said Mr Goodacre, ‘has been giving it too much water.’ He looked accusingly from husband to wife.

  ‘We haven’t any of us touched it,’ said Harriet. She stopped, remembering that Kirk and Bunter had handled it. But they were scarcely likely to have watered it.

  ‘I’m a humane man,’ began Peter, ‘and though I don’t
like
the prickly brute—’

  Then he, too, broke off, and Harriet saw his face change. It frightened her. It became the kind of face that might have belonged to that agonised dreamer of the morning hours.

  ‘What is it, Peter?’

  He said in a half whisper: ‘Here we go round the prickly pear, the prickly pear, the prickly pear—’

  ‘Once the summer is over,’ pursued the vicar, ‘you must administer water very sparingly, very sparingly indeed.’

  ‘Surely,’ said Harriet, ‘it couldn’t have been the knowledgeable Crutchley.’

  ‘I think it was,’ said Peter, as though returning to them from a long journey. ‘Harriet—you heard Crutchley tell Kirk how he watered it last Wednesday week and wound the clock before collecting his wages from old Noakes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the day before yesterday you saw him water it again.’

  ‘Of course; we all saw him.’

  Mr Goodacre was aghast.

  ‘But, my dear Lady Peter, he couldn’t have done that. The cactus is a desert plant. It only requires watering about once a month in the cooler weather.’

  Peter, having emerged to clear up this minor mystery, seemed to be back on his nightmare trail. He muttered: ‘I can’t remember—’

  But the vicar took no notice.

  ‘
Somebody
has touched it lately,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve put it on a longer chain.’

  Peter’s gasp was like a sob.

  ‘That’s it. The chain. We were all chained together.’

  The struggle passed from his face, leaving it empty as a mask. ‘What’s that about a chain, padre?’

  And here an engine fit for my proceeding!

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE:
Two Gentlemen of Verona.

  To be interrupted at a crisis had become so much a feature of daily life at Talboys that Harriet felt no surprise to see Bunter enter upon these words, as upon a cue. Behind him hovered the forms of Puffett and Crutchley.

  ‘If it will not inconvenience your lordship, the men are anxious to get these pieces of furniture out.’

  ‘You see,’ added Mr Puffett, stepping forward, ‘they works on contract. Now, if we could jest slip some of these ’ere things out to them—’ He waved a fat hand persuasively towards the sideboard, which was a massive dresser, made all in one piece and extremely heavy.

  ‘All right.’ said Peter; ‘but be quick. Take them and go.’

  Bunter and Puffett seized upon the near end of the dresser, which came staggering away from the wall, its back festooned with cobwebs. Crutchley seized the far end and backed with it to the door.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Mr Goodacre, whose mind, once it fastened on anything, clung to it with the soft tenacity of a sea-anemone. ‘Yes. I suppose the old chain had become unsafe. This is an improvement. You get a much better idea of the cactus now.’

  The sideboard was moving slowly across the threshold; but the amateurs were not making too good a job of it, and it stuck. Peter, with sudden impatience, pulled off his coat.

  ‘How he hates,’ thought Harriet, ‘to see anything bungled.’

  ‘Easy does it,’ said Mr Puffett.

  Whether by good luck or superior management, no sooner had Peter set his hand to it than the top-heavy monstrosity abandoned the position and went sweetly through.

  ‘That’s done it!’ said Peter. He shut the door and stood before it, his face slightly flushed with exertion. ‘Yes, padre—you were saying about the chain. It used to be shorter?’

  ‘Why, yes. I’m positive it was. Quite positive. Let me see the bottom of the pot used to come about here.’

  He raised his hand slightly above the level of his own tall bead.

  Peter came down to him.

  ‘About four inches higher. You’re sure?’

  ‘Oh, yes, quite. Yes—and the—’

  Through the unguarded door came Bunter once more, armed with a clothes-brush. He made for Peter, seized him from behind and began to brush the dust from his trousers. Mr Goodacre, much interested, watched the process.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, dodging out of the way as Puffett and Crutchley came in to remove the settle nearest the window, ‘that’s the worst of those heavy old sideboards. It’s so difficult to clean behind them. My wife always complains about ours.’

  ‘That’ll do, Bunter. Can’t I be dusty if I like?’

  Bunter smiled gently and began on the other leg.

  ‘I am afraid,’ went on the vicar, ‘I should give your excellent man many hours of distress if I were his employer. I am always being scolded for my untidiness.’ Out of the tail of his eye he saw the door shut behind the other two men, and his mind, lagging behind his vision, made a sudden bound to catch up with it. ‘Wasn’t that Crutchley? We ought to have asked him—’

  ‘Bunter,’ said Peter, ‘you heard what I said. If Mr Goodacre likes, you can brush him. I will
not
be brushed. I refuse.’

  He spoke with more sharpness, under his light tone, than Harriet had ever heard him use. She thought: ‘For the first time since we were married he has forgotten my existence.’ She went over to the coat he had thrown off and began to search it for cigarettes; but she did not miss Bunter’s quick upward glance or the almost imperceptible jerk of Peter’s head.

  Bunter, without a word, went to brush the vicar, and Peter, released, walked straight up to the fireplace. Here he stopped, and his eye searched the room.

  ‘Well, really,’ said Mr Goodacre, with a refreshing delight in novelty. ‘Being valeted is quite a new experience for me.’

  ‘The chain,’ said Peter. ‘Now, where—?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mr Goodacre took up his thread again. ‘I was about to say, that is certainly a new chain. The old one was of brass to match the pot, whereas this—’

  ‘Peter!’ said Harriet, involuntarily.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know now.’ He seized upon the ornamental drain-pipe, tossed the pampas-grasses out of it and tilted it up, just as Crutchley came in—this time with the man Bill—and advanced upon the other settle.

  ‘If you don’t mind, guv’nor.’

  Peter jerked the pipe swiftly back and sat on it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished here. Take yourselves off. We must have something to sit on. I’ll make it right with your employer.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Bill. ‘Well—right y’are, guv’nor. But mind you, this job’s got to be done today.’

  ‘It will be,’ said Peter.

  George might have stood out; but Bill evidently possessed a more sensitively balanced temperament or a livelier eye to the main chance. He said submissively, ‘Right-ho, guv’nor,’ and went out, taking Crutchley with him.

  As the door shut, Peter lifted the drain-pipe. At the bottom of it lay a brass chain, curled together like a sleeping serpent.

  Harriet said: ‘The chain that came down the chimney.’

  Peter’s glance swept over her as though she had been a stranger.

  ‘A new chain was fixed up and the other one hidden up the chimney. Why?’ He lilted the chain and looked at the cactus as it hung centred over the radio cabinet. Mr Goodacre was deeply intrigued.

  ‘Now that,’ he said, taking the end of the chain in his hand, ‘looks remarkably like the original chain. See. It is darkened with soot, but it’s quite bright when you rub it.’

  Peter dropped his end of the chain, leaving it dangling in the vicar’s hand. He picked out Harriet from the rest and said to her, as though propounding a problem to the brightest-looking of a not-too-hopeful class:

  ‘When Crutchley had watered the cactus, which he had watered the week before and which should only be watered once a month—’

  ‘—in the colder weather,’ said Mr Goodacre.

  ‘—he was on the steps here. He wiped the pot. He got down. He put back the steps over here by the clock. He came back here to the cabinet. Can you remember what he did next?’

  Harriet shut her eyes, once more seeing the room as it had been on that strange morning.

  ‘I believe—’

  She opened them again. Peter laid his hands gently, one on each side of the cabinet.

  ‘Yes—he did. I know he did. He pulled the cabinet forward to bring it centrally under the pot. I was sitting quite close to him at the end of the settle—that’s why I noticed.’

  ‘I noticed it too. That’s the thing I couldn’t remember.’

  He pushed the cabinet gently back, moving forward with it so that the pot now hung directly over his head and about three inches above it.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Mr Goodacre, surprised to discover that something of importance was apparently going on, ‘this is all very mysterious.’

  Peter made no reply, but stood gently lifting and letting fall the lid of the radio cabinet. ‘Like this,’ he said, softly. ‘Like this ... This is London calling.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m being very stupid,’ ventured the vicar again.

  This time Peter looked up and smiled at him.

  ‘Look!’ he said. He put up his hand and lightly touched the pot, setting it gently swinging at the end of its eight-foot chain. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘My God! it’s possible. Mr Noakes was about your height, wasn’t he, padre?’

  ‘Just about. Just about. I may have had the advantage of him by an inch, but not more.’

  ‘If I’d had more inches,’ said Peter, regretfully (for his height was a sensitive point with him), ‘I might have had more brains. Better late than never.’ His eye roamed the room, passed over Harriet and the vicar and rested on Bunter. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we’ve got the first and last terms of the progression—if we could fill in the middle terms.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ agreed Bunter, in a colourless voice. His heart had leapt within him. Not the new wife this time, but the old familiar companion of a hundred cases—the appeal had been to him. He coughed. ‘If I might make a suggestion, it would be as well to verify the difference in the chains before we proceed.’

  ‘Quite right, Bunter. Clear as you go. Get the steps.’

  Harriet watched Bunter as he mounted and took the brass chain that the vicar mechanically handed to him. But it was Peter who heard the step on the stair. Before Miss Twitterton was in the room he was halfway across it, and when she turned from shutting the door after her, he stood at her elbow.

  ‘So
that’s
all seen to.’ said Miss Twitterton brightly. ‘Oh, Mr Goodacre—I didn’t think I should see you again. It is nice to think you’re having Uncle William’s cactus.’

  ‘Bunter’s just coping with it,’ said Peter. He stood between her and the steps and his five-foot nine was an effectual screen to her four-foot eight. ‘Miss Twitterton. if you’ve really finished, I wonder if you would do something for me?’

  ‘But of
course
—if I
can!
’

  ‘I think I must have dropped my fountain-pen somewhere in the bedroom, and I’m rather afraid one of those fellows up there may put his foot on it. If I might trouble you—’

  ‘Why, with pleasure!’ cried Miss Twitterton, delighted that the task was not beyond her powers. ‘I’ll run up and look for it at once. I always say I’m
remarkably
good at finding things.’

  ‘It’s extraordinarily kind of you,’ said Peter. He manoeuvred her gently to the door, opened it for her, and shut it after her. Harriet said nothing. She knew where Peter’s pen was, for she had seen it in the inner breast pocket of his coat when she was looking for cigarettes, and she felt a cold weight at the pit of her stomach. Bunter, who had slipped quickly down from the steps, stood, chain in hand, as though ready to put the gyves on a felon when he heard the word. Peter came back with urgency in his step.

  ‘Four inches difference, my lord.’

  His master nodded.

  ‘Bunter—no, I shall want you.’ He saw Harriet and spoke to her as though she had been his footman. ‘Here, you, go and fasten the door at the top of the back stair. Don’t let her hear you if you can help it. Here are the house-keys. Lock the doors, front and back. Make sure that Ruddle and Puffett and Crutchley are all inside. If anyone says anything, those are my orders. Then bring the keys back—do you understand? ... Bunter, take the steps and see if you can find anything in the way of a hook or a nail in the wall or ceiling on that side of the chimney-place.’

  Harriet was out of the room, and tip-toeing along the passage. Voices in the kitchen and a subdued clinking told her that lunch was being got ready—and probably eaten. Through the open door she glimpsed the back of Crutchley’s head—he was tilting a mug to his lips. Beyond him stood Mr Puffett, his wide jaws moving slowly on a large mouthful. She could not see Mrs Ruddle, but in a moment her voice came through from the scullery. ‘See, it was that there Joe, plain as the nose on ’is face, and goodness knows that’s big enough, but there! ’e’s too much taken up with ’is good lady ...’ Somebody laughed. Harriet thought it was George. She scurried past the kitchen, ran up the Privy Stair, locking the back door as she went, and found herself, panting, more with excitement than haste, at the door of her own room. The key was on the inside. She turned the handle softly and crept in. Nothing was there but her own boxes, packed and waiting, and the component parts of what had been the bed, stacked ready for removal. In the next room she could hear little scuffling sounds, and then Miss Twitterton chirping agitatedly to herself (like the White Rabbit, thought Harriet): ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear! what has become of it?’ (or was it, ‘what will become of me?’). For a flash of time Harriet stood, her hand already on the key. If she were to go in and say, ‘Miss Twitterton,
he knows
who killed your uncle, and ...’ Like the White Rabbit—a white rabbit in a cage....

  Then she was out and locking the door behind her.

  Back in the passage now ... and quietly past that open door. Nobody seemed to take any notice. She locked the front door, and the house was fast, as it had been on the night of the murder.

  She returned to the sitting-room, and found she had been so quick that Bunter was still on the steps by the fireplace, searching the dark beams with a pocket-torch.

  ‘A cup-hook, my lord, painted black and screwed into the beam.’

  ‘Ah!’ Peter measured the distance with his eye, from the hook to the cabinet and back again. Harriet held out the keys to him and he pocketed them absent-mindedly without so much as a nod.

  ‘Proof,’ he said. ‘Proof of something at last. But—where is the—?’

  The vicar, who seemed to have been putting two and two carefully together in his mind, cleared his throat:

  ‘Do I understand,’ he said, ‘that you have discovered a—what they call a
clue
to the mystery?’

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘We’re looking for that. The clue. Ariadne’s clue of thread—the little ball of twine to thread the labyrinth—the—yes, twine. Who said twine? Puffett, by jove! He’s our man!’

  ‘Tom Puffett!’ exclaimed the vicar. ‘Oh, I should not like to think that Puffett—’

  ‘Fetch him here,’ said Peter.

  Bunter was off the steps before he spoke. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said, and was gone like lightning. Harriet’s eye fell on the chain, which lay, where Bunter had left it. on top of the cabinet. She picked it up and the clink of the links caught Peter’s ear.

  ‘Best get rid of that,’ he said. ‘Give it me.’ He scanned the room for a hiding-place—then, with a sort of chuckle, made for the chimney.

  ‘We’ll put it back where it came from,’ he said, as he dived under the cowl. ‘Safe bind, safe find, as Puffett is fond of observing.’ He emerged again, dusting his hands.