Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey 03] (30 page)

“But where is Miss Whittaker?”

“In hiding somewhere. We shall get her all right. She can’t get money from her own bank—they’re warned. If Mrs. Forrest tries to get money for her, she will be followed. So if the worst comes to the worst, we can starve her out in time with any luck. But we’ve got another clue. There has been a most determined attempt to throw suspicion on an unfortunate relative of Miss Whittaker’s—a black Nonconformist parson, with the remarkable name of Hallelujah Dawson. He has certain pecuniary claims on Miss Whittaker—not legal claims, but claims which any decent and humane person should have respected. She didn’t respect them, and the poor old man might very well have been expected to nurse a grudge against her. Yesterday morning he tried to cash a Bearer cheque of hers for £10,000, with a lame-sounding story to the effect that it had arrived by the first post, without explanation, in an envelope. So, of course, he’s had to be detained as one of the kidnappers.”

“But that is very clumsy, surely. He’s almost certain to have an alibi.”

“I fancy the story will be that he hired some gangsters to do the job for him. He belongs to a Mission in Stepney—where that mauve cap came from—and no doubt there are plenty of tough lads in his neighbourhood. Of course we shall make close inquiries and publish details broadcast in all the papers.”

“And then?”

“Well then, I fancy, the idea is that Miss Whittaker will turn up somewhere in an agitated condition with a story of assault and holding to ransom made to fit the case. If Cousin Hallelujah has not produced a satisfactory alibi, we shall learn that he was on the spot directing the murderers. If he has definitely shown that he wasn’t there, his name will have been mentioned, or he will have turned up at some time which the poor dear girl couldn’t exactly ascertain, in some dreadful den to which she was taken in a place which she won’t be able to identify.”

“What a devilish plot.”

“Yes. Miss Whittaker is a charming young woman. If there’s anything she’d stop at, I don’t know what it is. And the amiable Mrs. Forrest appears to be another of the same kidney. Of course, doctor, we’re taking you into our confidence. You understand that our catching Mary Whittaker depends on her believing that we’ve swallowed all these false clues of hers.”

“I’m not a talker,” said the doctor. “Gang you call it, and gang it is, as far as I’m concerned. And Miss Findlater was hit on the head and died of it. I only hope my colleague and the Chief Constable will be equally discreet. I warned them, naturally, after what you said last night.”

“It’s all very well,” said Wimsey, “but what positive evidence have we, after all, against this woman? A clever defending counsel would tear the whole thing to rags. The only thing we can absolutely
prove
her to have done is the burgling that house on Hampstead Heath and stealing the coal. The other deaths were returned natural deaths at the inquest. And as for Miss Findlater—even if we show it to be chloroform—well, chloroform isn’t difficult stuff to get hold of—it’s not arsenic or cyanide. And even if there were finger-prints on the spanner—”

“There were not,” said Parker, gloomily. “This girl knows what she’s about.”

“What did she want to kill Vera Findlater for, anyway?” asked the doctor, suddenly. “According to you, the girl was the most valuable bit of evidence she had. She was the one witness who could prove that Miss Whittaker had an alibi for the other crimes—if they were crimes.”

“She may have found out too much about the connection between Miss Whittaker and Mrs. Forrest. My impression is that she had served her turn and become dangerous. What we’re hoping to surprise now is some communication between Forrest and Whittaker. Once we’ve got that—”

“Humph!” said Dr. Faulkner. He had strolled to the window. “I don’t want to worry you unduly, but I perceive Sir Charles Pillington in conference with the Special Correspondent of the
Wire.
The
Yell
came out with the gang story all over the front page this morning, and a patriotic leader about the danger of encouraging coloured aliens. I needn’t remind you that the
Wire
would be ready to corrupt the Archangel Gabriel in order to kill the
Yell
’s story.”

“Oh, hell!” said Parker, rushing to the window.

“Too late,” said the doctor. “The
Wire
man has vanished into the post office. Of course, you can phone up and try to stop it.”

Parker did so, and was courteously assured by the editor of the
Wire
that the story had not reached him, and that if it did, he would bear Inspector Parker’s instructions in mind.

The editor of the
Wire
was speaking the exact truth. The story had been received by the editor of the
Evening Banner,
sister paper to the
Wire.
In times of crisis, it is sometimes convenient that the left hand should not know what the right hand does. After all, it was an exclusive story.

“I know thou art religious,

And hast a thing within thee called conscience,

With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies

Which I have seen thee careful to observe.”

TITUS ANDRON1CUS

T
HURSDAY, JUNE 23RD, WAS
the Eve of S. John. The sober green workaday dress in which the church settles down to her daily duties after the bridal raptures of Pentecost, had been put away, and the altar was white and shining once again. Vespers were over in the Lady Chapel at S. Onesimus—a faint reek of incense hung cloudily under the dim beams of the roof. A very short acolyte with a very long brass extinguisher snuffed out the candles, adding the faintly unpleasant yet sanctified odour of hot wax. The small congregation of elderly ladies rose up lingeringly from their devotions and slipped away in a series of deep genuflections. Miss Climpson gathered up a quantity of little manuals, and groped for her gloves. In doing so, she dropped her office-book. It fell, annoyingly, behind the long kneeler, scattering as it went a small pentecostal shower of Easter cards, book-markers, sacred pictures, dried palms and Ave Marias into the dark corner behind the confessional.

Miss Climpson gave a little exclamation of wrath as she dived after them—and immediately repented this improper outburst of anger in a sacred place. “Discipline,” she murmured, retrieving the last lost sheep from under a hassock, “discipline. I must learn self-control.” She crammed the papers back into the office-book, grasped her gloves and handbag, bowed to the Sanctuary, dropped her bag, picked it up this time in a kind of glow of martyrdom, bustled down the aisle and across the church to the south door, where the sacristan stood, key in hand, waiting to let her out. As she went, she glanced up at the High Altar, unlit and lonely, with the tall candles like faint ghosts in the twilight of the apse. It had a grim and awful look she thought, suddenly.

“Good night, Mr. Stanniforth,” she said, quickly.

“Good night, Miss Climpson, good night.”

She was glad to come out of the shadowy porch into the green glow of the June evening. She had felt a menace. Was it the thought of the stern Baptist, with his call to repentance? the prayer for grace to speak the truth and boldly rebuke vice? Miss Climpson decided that she would hurry home and read the Epistle and Gospel—curiously tender and comfortable for the festival of that harsh and uncompromising Saint. “And I can tidy up these cards at the same time,” she thought.

Mrs. Budge’s first-floor front seemed stuffy after the scented loveliness of the walk home. Miss Climpson flung the window open and sat down by it to rearrange her sanctified oddments. The card of the Last Supper went in at the Prayer of Consecration; the Fra Angelico Annunciation had strayed out of the office for March 25th and was wandering among the Sundays after Trinity; the Sacred Heart with its French text belonged to Corpus Christi; the … “Dear me!” said Miss Climpson, “I must have picked this up in church.”

Certainly the little sheet of paper was not in her writing. Somebody must have dropped it. It was natural to look and see whether it was anything of importance.

Miss Climpson was one of those people who say: “I am not the kind of person who reads other people’s postcards.” This is clear notice to all and sundry that they are, precisely, that kind of person. They are not untruthful; the delusion is real to them. It is merely that Providence has provided them with a warning rattle, like that of the rattle-snake. After that, if you are so foolish as to leave your correspondence in their way, it is your own affair.

Miss Climpson perused the paper.

In the manuals for self-examination issued to the Catholic-minded, there is often included an unwise little paragraph which speaks volumes for the innocent unworldliness of the compilers. You are advised, when preparing for confession, to make a little list of your misdeeds, lest one or two peccadilloes should slip your mind. It is true that you are cautioned against writing down the names of other people or showing your list to your friends, or leaving it about. But accidents may happen—and it may be that this recording of sins is contrary to the mind of the church, who bids you whisper them with fleeting breath into the ear of a priest and bids him, in the same moment that he absolves, forget them as though they had never been spoken.

At any rate, somebody had been recently shriven of the sins set forth upon the paper—probably the previous Saturday—and the document had fluttered down unnoticed between the confession-box and the hassock, escaping the eye of the cleaner. And here it was—the tale that should have been told to none but God—lying open upon Mrs. Budge’s round mahogany table under the eye of a fellow-mortal.

To do Miss Climpson justice, she would probably have destroyed it instantly unread, if one sentence had not caught her eye:

“The lies I told for M. W.’s sake.” At the same moment she realised that this was Vera Findlater’s handwriting, and it “came over her like a flash”—as she explained afterwards, exactly what the implication of the words was.

For a full half-hour Miss Climpson sat alone, struggling with her conscience. Her natural inquisitiveness said “Read”; her religious training said, “You must not read”; her sense of duty to Wimsey, who employed her, said, “Find out”; her own sense of decency said, “Do no such thing”; a dreadful, harsh voice muttered gratingly, “Murder is the question. Are you going to be the accomplice of Murder?” She felt like Lancelot Gobbo between conscience and the fiend—but which was the fiend and which was conscience?

“To speak the truth and boldly rebuke vice.”

Murder.

There was a real possibility now.

But
was
it a possibility? Perhaps she had read into the sentence more than it would bear.

In that case, was it not—almost—a duty to read further and free her mind from this horrible suspicion?

She would have liked to go to Mr. Tredgold and ask his advice. Probably he would tell her to burn the paper promptly and drive suspicion out of her mind with prayer and fasting.

She got up and began searching for the match-box. It would be better to get rid of the thing quickly.

What, exactly, was she about to do?—To destroy the clue to the discovery of a Murder?

Whenever she thought of the word, it wrote itself upon her brain in large capitals, heavily underlined. MURDER—like a police-bill.

Then she had an idea. Parker was a policeman—and probably also he had no particular feelings about the sacred secrecy of the Confessional. He had a Protestant appearance—or possibly he thought nothing of religion one way or the other. In any case, he would put his professional duty before everything. Why not send him the paper, without reading it, briefly explaining how she had come upon it? Then the responsibility would be his.

On consideration, however, Miss Climpson’s innate honesty scouted this scheme as jesuitical. Secrecy was violated by this open publication as much as if she had read the thing—or more so. The old Adam, too, raised his head at this point, suggesting that if anybody was going to see the confession, she might just as well satisfy her own reasonable curiosity. Besides—suppose she was quite mistaken. After all, the “lies” might have nothing whatever to do with Mary Whittaker’s alibi. In that case, she would have betrayed another person’s secret wantonly, and to no purpose. If she
did
decide to show it, she was bound to read it first—in justice to all parties concerned.

Perhaps—if she just glanced at another word or two, she would see that it had nothing to do with—MURDER—and then she could destroy it and forget it. She knew that if she destroyed it unread she never would forget it, to the end of her life. She would always carry with her that grim suspicion. She would think of Mary Whittaker as—perhaps—a Murderess. When she looked into those hard blue eyes, she would be wondering what sort of expression they had when the soul behind them was plotting—MURDER. Of course, the suspicions had been there before, planted by Wimsey, but now they were her own suspicions. They crystallised—became real to her.

“What shall I do?”

She gave a quick, shamefaced glance at the paper again. This time she saw the word “London.”

Miss Climpson gave a kind of little gasp, like a person stepping under a cold shower-bath.

“Well,” said Miss Climpson, “if this is a sin I am going to do it, and may I be forgiven.”

With a red flush creeping over her cheeks as though she were stripping something naked, she turned her attention to the paper.

The jottings were brief and ambiguous. Parker might not have made much of them, but to Miss Climpson, trained in this kind of devotional shorthand, the story was clear as print.

“Jealousy”—the word was written large and underlined. Then there was a reference to a quarrel, to wicked accusations and angry words and to a pre-occupation coming between the penitent’s soul and God. “Idol”—and a long dash.

From these few fossil bones, Miss Climpson had little difficulty in reconstructing one of those hateful and passionate “scenes” of slighted jealousy with which a woman-ridden life had made her only too familiar. “I do everything for you—you don’t care a bit for me—you treat me cruelly—you’re simply sick of me, that’s what it is!” And “Don’t be so ridiculous. Really, I can’t stand this. Oh, stop it, Vera! I hate being slobbered over.” Humiliating, degrading, exhausting, beastly scenes. Girls’ school, boarding-house, Bloomsbury-flat scenes. Damnable selfishness wearying of its victim. Silly
schwärmerei
swamping all decent self-respect. Barren quarrels ending in shame and hatred.