The Nine Tailors (30 page)

“Is that the bird your brother-in-law gave you? I’ve heard about him from Mrs. Tebbutt.”

“Yes, my lord, that’s him. He’s a wonderful talker, but he does swear and that’s the truth.”

“I’ve no use for a parrot that doesn’t,” said Wimsey. “Seems unnatural. Let me see—what were we—? Oh, yes, that bit of writing. You were just saying—”

“I said, of course I’d never seen it before, my lord.”

Wimsey could have sworn that she had been going to say just the opposite. She was looking at—no, not at, but through and past him, with the face of someone who sees an incredible catastrophe approaching.

“It’s queer-looking stuff, isn’t it?” she went on, in a flat voice, “don’t seem to mean anything. What made you think I should know anything about the like of that?”

“We had an idea that it might have been written by some man your late husband knew at Maidstone. Did you ever hear of anyone called Jean Legros?”

“No, my lord. That’s a French name, isn’t it? I’ve never seen a Frenchman, except a few of those Beljums that came over here in the War.”

“And you never knew anyone called Paul Taylor?”

“No, never.”

The parrot laughed heartily. “Shut up, Joey!”

“Shut up, you fool! Joey, Joey, Joey! Scratch a poll, then. Aw!”

“Oh, well,” said Wimsey. “I just wondered.”

“Where did that come from?”

“What? Oh, this? It was picked up in the church, and we had an idea it might be Cranton’s. But he says it isn’t, you know.”

“In the
church?
”

As though the word were a cue, the parrot picked it up, and began muttering excitedly:

“Must go to church. Must go to church. The bells. Don’t tell Mary. Must go to church. Aw! Joey! Joey! Come on, Joey! Must go to church.”

Mrs. Thoday stepped hurriedly into the other room and flung a cloth over the cage, while Joey squawked protestingly.

“He goes on like that,” she said. “Gets on my nerves. He picked it up the night Will was so bad. They were ringing the peal, and it worried him, like, that he couldn’t be there. Will gets that angry with Joey when he starts mocking him. Shut up, now, Joey, do.”

Wimsey held out his hand for the cryptogram, which Mary surrendered—reluctantly, he thought, and as though her thoughts were elsewhere.

“Well, I mustn’t bother you any more, Mrs. Thoday. I just wanted to clear up that little point about Cranton. I expect you are right after all, and he just came down here to snoop about on his own. Well, you aren’t likely to be bothered with him again. He’s ill, and in any case, he’ll have to go back to prison to work out his time. Forgive my bargin’ along and botherin’ you about what’s best forgotten.”

But all the way back to the Rectory, he was haunted by Mary Thoday’s eyes and by the hoarse muttering voice of the parrot:

“The bells! the bells! Must go to the church! Don’t tell Mary!”

* * *

Superintendent Blundell clicked his tongue a good deal over all this.

“It’s a pity about the bottle,” he said. “Don’t suppose it would have told us anything, but you never know. Emily Holliday, eh? Of course, she’s a cousin of Mary Thoday’s. I’d forgotten that. That woman beats me—Mary, I mean. Damned if I know what to make of her, or her husband either. We’re in touch with those people at Hull, and they’re arranging to get James Thoday shipped back to England as soon as possible. We told them he might be wanted as a witness. Best way to work it—he can’t skip his orders; or, if he does, we’ll know there’s something wrong and go after him. It’s a queer business altogether. As regards that cipher, what do you say to sending it along to the Governor of Maidstone? If this fellow Legros or Taylor or whatever he is was ever in there, they may be able to spot the handwriting.”

“So they may,” said Wimsey thoughtfully. “Yes, we’ll do that. And I’m hoping that we hear from M. Rozier again soon. The French haven’t any of our inhibitions about dealing with witnesses.”

“Lucky them, my lord,” said Mr. Blundell, with fervour.

LORD PETER IS CALLED WRONG

And he set the cherubims within the inner house: and they stretched forth the wings of the cherubims.

1 KINGS vi. 27.

And above were costly stones.

1 KINGS vii. 11.

“I hope,” said the Rector on the following Sunday morning, “there is nothing wrong with the Thodays. Neither Will nor Mary was at Early Service. I’ve never known them both miss before, except when he was ill.”

“No more they were,” said Mrs. Venables. “Perhaps Will has taken a chill again. These winds are very treacherous. Lord Peter, do have another sausage. How are you getting along with your cipher?”

“Don’t rub it in, I’m hopelessly stuck.”

“I shouldn’t worry,” said Mr. Venables. “Even if you have to lie still a whole pull now and again, you’ll soon find yourself back in the hunt.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Wimsey. “It’s lying behind the whole way that gets on my nerves.”

“There’s always something that lies behind a mystery,” said the Rector, mildly enjoying his little witticism. “A solution of some kind.”

“What I say is,” observed Mrs. Venables darkly, “there are always wheels within wheels.”

“And where there’s a wheel, there’s usually a rope,” added his lordship.

“Unhappily,” said the Rector, and there was a melancholy pause.

* * *

Anxiety about the Thodays was somewhat allayed by their appearance together at Matins, but Wimsey thought he had never seen two people look so ill and unhappy. In wondering about them, he lost all consciousness of what was going on about him, sat down for the Venite, lost the Psalms for the day, embarked on a loud and solitary “For thine is the Kingdom” at the end of the second “Our Father,” and only pulled himself together when Mr. Venables came down to preach his sermon. As usual, Mr. Gotobed had failed to sweep the chancel properly, and a hideous crunching of coke proclaimed the Rector’s passage to the pulpit. The Invocation was pronounced, and Wimsey sank back with a sigh of relief into the corner of the pew, folded his arms and fixed his gaze firmly on the roof.

“Who hast exalted thine only Son with great triumph into the Heavens. Those words are from the collect for the day. What do they mean to us? What picture do we make of the glory and triumph of Heaven? Last Thursday we prayed that we also might in heart and mind thither ascend and continually dwell, and we hope that after death we shall be admitted—not only in heart and mind but in soul and body—to that blessed state where cherubim and seraphim continually sing their songs of praise. It is a beautiful description that the Bible gives us—the crystal sea and the Lord sitting between the cherubims, and the angels with their harps and crowns of gold, as the old craftsmen imagined them when they built this beautiful roof that we are so proud of—but do we, do you and I really believe—?”

It was hopeless. Wimsey’s thoughts were far away again. “He rode upon the cherubim and did fly. He sitteth between the cherubims.” He was suddenly reminded of the little architect who had come down to advise about the church roof at Duke’s Denver. “You see, your Grace, the rot has got into the timbers; there are holes behind those cherrybims you could put your hand in.”
He sitteth between the cherubims.
Why, of course! Fool that he was—climbing up among the bells to look for cherubims when they were here over his head, gazing down at him, their blank golden eyes blind with excess of light. The cherubim? Nave and aisle were thick with cherubim, as autumn leaves in Vallombrosa. Nave and aisle—“the isles may be glad thereof”—and then the third text—“as the rivers in the south.” Between the cherubims in the south aisle—what could be clearer than that? In his excitement he nearly shot out of his seat. It only remained to discover which particular pair of cherubims was concerned, and that ought not to be very difficult. The emeralds themselves would be gone, of course, but if one could find even the empty hiding-place, that would prove that the cryptogram was connected with the necklace and that all the queer tragedy brooding over Fenchurch St. Paul was in some way connected with the emeralds too. Then, if the handwriting of the cryptogram could be traced back to Maidstone Gaol and to Jean Legros, they would know who Legros was, and with luck they would also link him up with Cranton. After that, if Cranton could escape from the murder charge, he would be a lucky man.

Over the Sunday beef and Yorkshire pudding, Wimsey tackled the Rector.

“How long ago was it, sir, that you took away the galleries from the aisles?”

“Let me see,” said Mr. Venables, “about ten years ago, I think. Yes, that is right. Ten years. Hideous, cumbersome things they were. They ran right across the aisle windows, obscuring all the upper tracery and blocking the light, and were attached to the arcading. As a matter of fact, what with those horrible great pews, like bathing machines, sprouting up from the floor, and the heavy galleries, you could scarcely see the shafts of the pillars at all.”

“Or anything else,” said his wife. “I always used to say it was regular blind man’s holiday underneath those galleries.”

“If you want to see what it was like,” added the Rector, “go and look at Upwell Church near Wisbech. You’ll find the same sort of gallery in the north aisle there (though ours was larger and uglier), and they have an angel roof, too, though not as fine as ours, because their angels are only attached to the roof itself, instead of being on the hammer-beams. In fact, you can’t see the angels in their north aisle at all, unless you climb up into the gallery.”

“I suppose there was the usual amount of opposition when you took the galleries down?”

“A certain amount, of course. There are always some people who oppose any change. But it did seem absurd, when the church was far too large for the parish in any case, to have all that unnecessary seating. There was plenty of room for the school-children in the aisle.”

“Did anybody sit in the gallery besides the schoolchildren?”

“Oh, yes. The Red House servants and a few of the oldest inhabitants, who had been there from time immemorial. Indeed, we really had to wait for one poor old soul to die before we embarked on the improvements. Poor old Mrs. Wilderspin, Ezra’s grandmother. She was ninety-seven and came regularly to church every Sunday, and it would have broken her heart to have turned her out.”

“Which side did the Red House servants sit?”

“At the west end of the south aisle. I never liked that, because one couldn’t see what they were doing, and sometimes their behaviour wasn’t as reverent as it might have been. I do not think the House of God is a proper place for flirtation, and there was so much nudging and giggling that it really was very unseemly.”

“If that woman Gates had done her duty and sat with the servants it would have been all right,” said Mrs. Venables, “but she was far too much of a lady. She always has to have her own seat, just inside the south door, for fear she should feel faint and have to go out. “

“Mrs. Gates is not a robust woman, my dear.”

“Rubbish!” said Mrs. Venables. “She eats too much and gets indigestion, that’s all.”

“Perhaps you are right, my dear.”

“I can’t stand the woman,” said Mrs. Venables. “The Thorpes ought to sell that place, but apparently they can’t under Sir Henry’s will. I don’t see how it can be kept up, and the money would be more use to Hilary Thorpe than that great tumble-down house. Poor little Hilary! If it hadn’t been for that horrible old Wilbraham creature and her necklace—I suppose there’s no hope of recovering the necklace,. Lord Peter, after all this time?”

“I’m afraid we’re a day after the fair. Though I’m pretty sure it was in this parish up to last January.”

“In the parish? Where?”

“I think it was in the church,” said Wimsey. “That was a very powerful sermon of yours this morning, padre. Very inspiring. It inspired me to guess the riddle of the cryptogram.”

“No!” exclaimed the Rector. “How did it do that, I wonder?”

Wimsey explained.

“Good gracious! How very remarkable! We must investigate the place at once.”

“Not at once, Theodore.”

“Well, no, my dear, I didn’t mean to-day. I’m afraid it wouldn’t do to take ladders into the church on Sunday. We are still rather touchy here about the Fourth Commandment. Besides, I have the Children’s Service this afternoon and three baptisms, and Mrs. Edwards is coming to be churched. But, Lord Peter, how do you suppose the emeralds got up in the roof?”

“Why, I was just thinking about that. Isn’t it true that this fellow Deacon was arrested after church on Sunday morning? I expect he got some idea of what was going to happen to him, and concealed his loot somehow during the service.”

“Of course, he was sitting up there that morning. Now I understand why you asked so many questions about the gallery. What a sad villain the man must have been! He really did—what is that word they use when one malefactor deceives another?”

“Double-cross?” suggested Wimsey.

“Ah! that is the very expression I was looking for. He did double-cross his accomplice. Poor man! I mean the accomplice. Ten years in prison for a theft of which he never enjoyed the fruits. One cannot help feeling some sympathy for him. But in that case. Lord Peter, who constructed the cryptogram?”

“I think it must have been Deacon, because of the bell-ringing.”

“Ah, yes. And then he gave it to this other man, Legros. Why did he do that?”

“Probably as an inducement to Legros to help him to escape from Maidstone.”

“And Legros waited all these years before making use of it?”

“Legros obviously had very good reasons for keeping out of England. Eventually he must have passed the cryptogram on to somebody here—Cranton, perhaps. Possibly he couldn’t decipher it himself, and in any case he wanted Cranton’s help to get back from France.”

“I see. Then they found the emeralds and Cranton killed Legros. How sad it makes me to think of all this violence for the sake of a few stones!”

“It makes me still sadder to think of poor Hilary Thorpe and her father,” said Mrs. Venables. “You mean to say that while they needed that money so badly, the emeralds were hidden in the church all the time within a few feet of them?”