The Nine Tailors (14 page)

“Nothing, Bob, nothing.”

“That’s a good thing.”

Mr. Russell watched the imbecile uneasily as he shuffled away, his big head rolling and his hands swinging loosely at his sides. “He’s getting very queer, is Potty,” said he. “I ’ope as he’s safe. I reckon he did ought to be shut up.”

“No, no,” said the sexton. “Potty’s safe enough. I don’t ’old with these ’ere asylums.”

At this point Mrs. Venables joined them to take possession other guest.

“Poor little Hilary Thorpe wasn’t in church,” she observed. “Such a nice child. I should have liked you to see her. But she’s quite prostrated, poor child, so Mrs. Gates tells me. And you know, the village people do stare so at anybody who’s in trouble, and they will want to talk and condole. They mean well, but it’s a terrible ordeal. I’ll take you along to the Red House one day. Come along now—I’m sure you want your dinner.”

LORD PETER IS TAKEN FROM LEAD AND MAKES THIRD PLACE

The bell that the treble takes from lead makes thirds place and returns to lead again; while the bells in 4, 5 and 6, 7 dodge when the place is made.

RULES FOR RINGING GRANDSIRE TRIPLES.

Lord Peter watched the coffin borne up the road. “Here comes my problem,” said he to himself, “going to earth on the shoulders of six stout fellows. Finally, this time, I suppose, and I don’t seem to have got very much out of it. What a gathering of the local worthies—and how we are all enjoying it! Except dear old Venables—he’s honestly distressed.... This everlasting tolling makes your bones move in your body.... Tailor Paul... Tailor Paul... two mortal tons of bawling bronze.... ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life...’ that’s all rather sobering. This chap’s first resurrection was ghastly enough—let’s hope there won’t be another this side of Doomsday.... Silence that dreadful bell!... Tailor Paul... though even that might happen, if Lubbock finds anything funny.... ‘Though after my skin worms destroy this body....’ How queer that fellow Thoday looks... something wrong there, I shouldn’t wonder.... Tailor Paul... ‘We brought nothing into. this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out...’ except our secrets, old Patriarch; we take those with us all right.”

The deep shadows of the porch swallowed up priest, corpse and bearers, and Wimsey, following with Mrs. Venables, felt how strange it was that he and she should follow that strange corpse as sole and unexpected mourners.

“And people may say what they like,” thought Wimsey again “about the services of the Church of England, but there was genius in the choosing of these psalms. ‘That I may be certified how long I have to live’—what a terrifying prayer! Lord, let me never be certified of anything of the kind. ‘A stranger with Thee and a sojourner’—that’s a fact God knows.... ‘Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee’ ... very likely, and why should I, Peter Wimsey, busy myself with digging them up? I haven’t got so very much to boast about myself, if it comes to that.... Oh, well! ... ‘world without end, Amen.’ Now the lesson. I suppose we sit down for this—I’m not very well up in the book of the words.... Yes.... This is the place where the friends and relations usually begin to cry—but there’s nobody here to do it—not a friend, nor a—How do I know that? I don’t know it. Where’s the man or woman who would have recognised that face, if the murderer hadn’t taken all those pains to disfigure it?... That red-haired kid must be Hilary Thorpe... decent of her to come ... interesting type... I can see her making a bit of a splash in five years’ time.... ‘I have fought with beasts at Ephesus’... what on earth has that got to do with it?... ‘raised a spiritual body’—what does old Donne say? ‘God knows in what part of the world every grain of every man’s dust lies.... He whispers, he hisses, he beckons for the bodies of his saints’ ... do all these people believe that? Do I? Does anybody? We all take it pretty placidly, don’t we? ‘In a flash, at a trumpet crash, this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond is—immortal diamond.’ Did the old boys who made that amazing roof believe? Or did they just make those wide wings and adoring hands for fun, because they liked the pattern? At any rate, they made them look as though they believed something, and that’s where they have us beat. What next? Oh, yes, out again to the grave, of course. Hymn 373... there must be some touch of imagination in the good Mr. Russell to have suggested this, though he looks as he thought of nothing but having tinned salmon to his tea.... ‘Man that is born of a woman...’ not very much further to go now; we’re coming into the straight... ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts....’ I knew it, I knew it! Will Thoday’s going to faint.... No, he’s got hold of himself again. I shall have to have a word with that gentleman before long... ‘for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.’ Damn it! that goes home. Why? Mere splendour of rhythm, I expect—there are plenty of worse pains.... ‘Our dear brother here departed’... brother... we’re all dear when we’re dead, even if beforehand somebody hated us enough to tie us up and... Great Scott, yes! What about that rope?”

The problem of the rope—absurdly overlooked and now absurdly insistent—took such possession of Wimsey that he forgot to join in the Lord’s Prayer; nor had he even wits to spare for a sardonic commentary on the means used by Providence to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world. He was amazed that he had not earlier seized upon the rope as a clue to the labyrinth. For the tying-up of the dead man implied so much.

Where had the rope come from? How had it happened to be handy for the tying-up, and where had that tying taken place? You might kill a man in hot blood, but you did not first tie him. The death of a bound man meant premeditation—a calf roped for the shambles. The rope had been removed before burial; there was a horrid thrift about that.... At this point Wimsey shook himself. There was no need to fancy things; there were plenty of other reasons for the removal of the rope. It had been removed before death. It had been removed and replaced where it came from, lest its absence should arouse suspicion. It had been removed for the same reason that the face had been mutilated—lest anyone finding the body should recognise it. Finally, it had been removed because it bad tied the body to something—and that, perhaps, was the likeliest reason. For the body must have been brought from somewhere—how? Car, lorry, cart, waggon, wheelbarrow, truck...? It reminded one of “Tinker, tailor...”

“Everything very nicely done, Mr. Russell,” said Mrs. Venables.

“Yes’m,” said Mr. Russell. “Very glad you think so, ’m. We done what we could to the best of our ability.”

“I’m sure” said Mrs. Venables, “that if his own people had been here, they couldn’t have wished for anything
nicer.
”

“No’m,” agreed Mr. Russell, much gratified, “and it’s a pity they couldn’t a-been present, for there’s no doubt a handsome funeral is a great comfort to them as is left. Of course, it ain’t so grand as a London funeral would be—” He glanced wistfully at Wimsey.

“But much nicer,” said Wimsey, in a ridiculous echo of Mrs. Venables. “You see, it has so much more of the personal touch.”

“That’s very true,” said the undertaker, much encouraged. “Why, I dessay these London men get as much as three or four funerals every week, and it stands to reason as they can’t put the same ’eart into it—let alone not knowing the parties. Well, I’ll be getting along now. There’s someone wants to speak to you, my lord.”

“No,” said Wimsey, firmly, to a gentleman in well-worn tweeds, who approached briskly. “I have no story for the
Morning Star.
Nor for any other paper. Hop it. I have other things to do.”

“Yes,” added Mrs. Venables, addressing the reporter as though he were an importunate child at a school treat, run away now, the gentleman’s busy. How tiresome these newspapers are! You must get sick to death of them. Come along. I want to introduce you to Hilary Thorpe. Hilary, my dear, how are you? Very sweet of you to come—so trying for you. How is your uncle? This is Lord Peter Wimsey.”

“I’m ever so glad to meet you. Lord Peter. Dad used to read about your cases—he’d have loved to have a talk with you. You know, I think he’d have been frightfully amused to think of being mixed up in one himself—if only it hadn’t been Mother’s grave. I’m glad he didn’t know about that. But it is a mystery, isn’t it? And he was—well, quite a kid about mysteries and things.”

“Was he? I should have thought he’d had about enough of them.”

“You mean about the necklace? That was pretty awful for him, poor dear. Of course, it all happened before I was born, but he often used to talk about it. He always used to say he believed Deacon was the worst of the two men, and that Grand-dad ought never to have had him in the house. It was funny, but I believe he rather took a liking to the other man—the London thief. He only saw him at the trial, of course, but he said he was an amusing beggar and he believed he was telling the truth.”

“That’s dashed interesting.” Lord Peter turned suddenly and savagely on the young man from the
Morning Star,
who still hovered at a little distance. “See here, my lad, if you don’t make a noise like a hoop and roll away, I shall have something to say to your editor. I will not have this young lady followed about and bothered by you. Go right away, and if you’re good I’ll see you later and tell you any lies you like. See? Now vanish!... Curse the Press!”

“That lad’s a sticker,” said Miss Thorpe. “He badgered poor Uncle nearly out of his senses this morning. That’s Uncle, talking to the Rector. He’s a Civil Servant, and he disapproves of the Press altogether. He disapproves of mysteries, too. It’s rotten for Uncle.”

“I expect he’ll disapprove of me.”

“Yes, he does. He thinks your hobby unsuited to your position in life. That’s why he’s rather carefully avoiding an introduction. Uncle’s a comic old bird, but he isn’t a snob and he’s rather decent, really. Only he’s not a bit like Dad. You and Dad would have got on splendidly. Oh, by the way—you know where Dad and Mother are buried, don’t you? I expect that was the first place you looked at.”

“Well, it was; but I’d rather like to look at it again. You see, I’m wondering just exactly how the—the—”

“How they got the body there? Yes, I thought you’d be wondering that. I’ve been wondering, too. Uncle doesn’t think it’s nice of me to wonder anything of the sort. But it really makes things easier to do a little wondering, I mean, if you’re once interested in a thing it makes it seem less real. That’s not the right word, though.”

“Less personal?”

“Yes; that’s what I mean. You begin to imagine how it all happened, and gradually it gets to feel more like something you’ve made up.”

“H’m!” said Wimsey. “If that’s the way your mind works, you’ll be a writer one day.”

“Do you think so? How funny! That’s what I want to be. But why?”

“Because you have the creative imagination, which works outwards, till finally you will be able to stand outside your own experience and see it as something you have made, existing independently of yourself. You’re lucky.”

“Do you really think so?” Hilary looked excited.

“Yes—but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won’t understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they’ll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless. They’ll be quite wrong both times—but they won’t ever know it, and you won’t know it at first, and it’ll worry you.”

“But that’s just what the girls say at school. How did you know? ... Though they’re all idiots—mostly, that is.”

“Most people are,” said Wimsey, gravely, “but it isn’t kind to tell them so. I expect you do tell them so. Have a heart; they can’t help it.... Yes, this is the place. Well, you know, it isn’t very much overlooked, is it? That cottage is the nearest—whose is that?”

“Will Thoday’s.”

“Oh, is it?... And after that, there’s only the Wheatsheaf and a farm. Whose is the farm?”

“That’s Mr. Ashton’s place. He’s quite a well-to-do kind of man, one of the churchwardens. I liked him very much when I was a kid; he used to let me ride on the farmhorses.”

“I’ve heard of him: he pulled my car out of the ditch one day—which reminds me. I ought to call and thank him personally.”

“That means you want to ask him questions.”

“If you
do
see through people as clearly as that, you oughtn’t to make it so brutally plain to them.”

“That’s what Uncle calls my unfeminine lack of tact. He says it comes of going to school and playing hockey.”

“He may be right. But why worry?”

“I’m not worrying—only, you see. Uncle Edward will have to look after me now, and he thinks it’s all wrong for me to be going to Oxford.... What are you looking at? The distance from the South gateway?”

“Uncomfortably discerning woman—yes, I was. You could bring the body in a car and carry it round without too much difficulty. What’s that, there, close up by the north wall of the churchyard? A well?”

“Yes; that’s the well where Gotobed gets the water for washing out the porch and scrubbing the chancel and all that. I think it’s rather deep. There used to be a pump there at one time, but the village people used to come and use it for drinking water, when the village well ran dry, and Mr. Venables had to stop it, because he said it wasn’t sanitary, drinking water out of a graveyard; so he took the pump away, and paid for having the village well dug deeper and put in order. He’s a frightfully good old sort. When Gotobed wants water he has to haul it up as best he can in a bucket. He grumbles a lot about it. The well’s a great nuisance, anyway, because it makes the graves on that side very damp, and sometimes in the winter you can’t die them properly. It was worse before Mr. Venables had the churchyard drained.”

“Mr. Venables seems to do a lot for the parish.”

“He does. Dad used to subscribe to things, of course, but Mr. Venables generally starts things, when it’s anything to do with the Church. At least, when it’s things like drains, it’s probably Mrs. Venables. Why did you want to know about the well?”

“I wanted to know whether it was used or disused. As it’s used, of course nobody would think of hiding anything large in it.”