Busman’s Honeymoon

Chapter VII. Lotos And Cactus

– James Thomson: In the Room.

Harriet left Miss Twitterton tucked up on the nuptial couch with a hot-water bottle and an aspirin and, passing softly into the next room, discovered her lord in the act of pulling his shirt over his head. She waited for his face to reappear and then said, ‘Hullo!’

‘Hullo! All serene?’

‘Yes. Better now. What’s happening downstairs?’

‘Sellon’s telephoned from the post-office and the Super’s coming over from Broxford with the police-surgeon. So I came up to put on a collar and tie.’

Of course, thought Harriet, secretly entertained. Someone has died in our house, so we put on a collar and tie. Nothing could be more obvious. How absurd men are! And how clever in devising protective armour for themselves! What kind of tie will it be? Black would surely be excessive. Dull purple or an unobtrusive spot? No. A regimental tie. Nothing could be more proper. Purely official and committing one to nothing. Completely silly and charming.

She smoothed the smile from her lips and watched the solemn transference of personal property from blazer pockets to appropriate situations about a coat and waistcoat.

‘All this,’ observed Peter, ‘is a damned nuisance.’ He sat on the edge of the naked bedstead to exchange his slippers for a pair of brown shoes. ‘It’s not worrying you too much, is it?’ His voice was a little smothered with stooping to fasten the laces.

‘No.’

‘One thing, it’s nothing to do with us. That is, he wasn’t killed for the money we paid him. He had it all in his pocket. In notes.’

‘Good heavens!’

‘There’s not much doubt he meant to make a bolt of it when somebody intervened. I can’t say I feel any strong personal regret. Do you?’

‘Far from it. Only-’

‘M’m?…It is worrying you. Blast!’

‘Not really. Only when I think about him, lying down there in the cellar all the time. I know it’s perfectly idiotic of me-but I can’t help wishing we hadn’t slept in his bed.’

‘I was afraid you might feel like that.’ He got up and stood for a moment looking from the window over the sloping field and woodland that stretched away beyond the lane. ‘And yet, you know, that bed must be pretty nearly as old as the house-the original bits of it, anyhow. It could tell a good many tales of births and deaths and bridal-nights. One can’t escape from these things-except by living in a brand-new villa and buying one’s furniture in the Tottenham Court Road… All the same, I wish to God it hadn’t happened. I mean, if it’s going to make you uncomfortable every time you think about-’

‘Oh, Peter, no. I didn’t mean that. It’s not as though-It would be different if we had come here in another sort of way-’

“That’s the point. Supposing I’d come here to disport myself with somebody who didn’t matter twopence, I should be feeling a complete wart. Quite unreasonably, I dare say, but I can be just as unreasonable as anyone else, if I put my mind to it. But as things are, no! Nothing that you or I have done is any insult to death-unless you think so. Harriet, I should say, if anything could sweeten the atmosphere that wretched old man left behind him, it would be the feeling we-the feeling I have for you, at any rate, and yours for me if you feel like that. I do assure you, so far as I am concerned, there’s nothing trivial about it.’

‘I know that. You’re absolutely right. I won’t think about it that way any more. Peter-there weren’t-there weren’t rats in the cellar, were there?’

‘No, dearest, no rats. And all quite dry. Just a perfectly good cellar.’

‘I’m glad. I was sort of imagining rats. Not that I suppose it matters very much after one’s dead, but I don’t seem to mind all the rest nearly so much if I don’t have to think of rats. In fact, I don’t mind at all, not now.’

‘We shall have to stick round till after the inquest, I’m afraid, but we could easily get put up somewhere else. That’s one thing I was going to ask you about There’s probably a decent inn at Pagford or Broxford.’

Harriet considered this. ‘No. I don’t care about that. I think I’d rather stay here.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It’s our house. It never was his-not really. And I’m not going to let you think there’s any difference between your feelings and mine. That would be worse than rats even.’

‘My dear, I’m not proposing to make staying here a test of your affections. Not love, quoth he, but vanity, sets love a task like that. It’s easy enough for me. I was begotten and born in the bed where twelve generations of my forefathers were born and wedded and died-and some of then made pretty poor ends from the parson’s point of view-so I don’t suffer much from hauntings of that kind. But there’s no reason at all why you shouldn’t feel rather differently.’

‘Don’t say another word about it. We’re going to stay here and exorcise the ghosts. I’d rather.’

‘Well, if you change your mind, tell me,’ he said, still uneasy.

‘I shan’t change my mind. We’d better go down now if you’re ready, because Miss Twitterton ought to get some sleep if she can. Now I come to think of it, she didn’t ask for another bedroom, and it’s her own uncle.’

Country people are very matter-of-fact about life and death. They live so close to reality.’

‘So do your sort of people. It’s my sort that go all sanitary and civilised, and get married in hotels and do their births and deaths in nursing-homes where they give offence to nobody. I say, Peter, do we have to feed all these doctors and superintendents and people? And does Bunter carry on all by himself, or ought I to give him some orders?’

‘Experience has taught me,’ said Peter, as they moved down the stair, ‘that no situation finds Bunter unprepared. That he should have procured The Times this morning by the simple expedient of asking the milkman to request the postmistress to telephone to Broxford and have it handed to the bus-conductor to be dropped at the post-office and brought up by the little girl who delivers the telegrams is a trifling example of his resourceful energy. But he would probably take it as a compliment if you were to refer the difficulty to him and congratulate him when he tells you that everything is provided for.’

I will.’

In the short time that they had been upstairs, Mr Puffett had evidently finished his chimney-sweeping, for the sittingroom had been cleared of dust-sheets and a fire kindled upon the hearth. A table had been drawn out into the centre of the room; on it stood a tray filled with plates and cutlery. Passing through into the passage, Harriet was aware of a good deal of activity in progress. Before the shut door of the cellar stood the uniformed figure of P.C. Sellon, like young Harry with his beaver on, prepared to resist any interference with the execution of his duty. In the kitchen, Mrs Ruddle was cutting sandwiches. In the scullery, Crutchley and Mr Puffett were clearing a quantity of pots and pans and old flower-pots from a long deal dresser, preparatory (as appeared from the presence beside them of a steaming pail) to scrubbing it clean to receive the body of its late owner. In the back door stood Bunter, conducting some kind of financial transaction with two men who seemed to have arrived from nowhere in a motor van. Beyond them could be seen Mr MacBride, strolling about the back-yard; he had the air of inventorying its contents with a view to assessing their value. And at that moment there came a heavy knock on the front door.

‘That’ll be the police,’ said Peter. He went to let them in, and at the same time Bunter finished paying the men, came in, and shut the back door sharply.

‘Oh, Bunter,’ said Harriet, ‘I see you’re giving us something to eat-?’

‘Yes, my lady. I succeeded in intercepting the Home & Colonial and procuring some ham for sandwiches. There is also a portion of the foie gras and the Cheshire cheese which we brought from Town. The draught beer in the cellar being at the moment not readily available, I took the liberty of instructing Mrs Ruddle to fetch a few bottles of Bass from the village. If anything further should be required, there is a jar of caviar in the hamper, but we have no lemons, I am sorry to say.’

‘Oh, I don’t think caviar would strike the right note, Bunter, do you?’

‘No, my lady. The heavy luggage has just arrived, per Carter Paterson; I instructed that it should be deposited in the oil-shed until we had leisure to attend to it.’

‘The luggage! I’d forgotten all about it.’

‘Very naturally, my lady, if I may say so… The scullery,’ went on Bunter, with a touch of hesitation, ‘appeared a more suitable place than the kitchen for-ah-the medical gentlemen to work in.’

‘Certainly,’ said Harriet, with emphasis.

‘Yes, my lady. I inquired of his lordship whether, in view of all the circumstances, he would desire me to order in any coal. He said he would refer the matter to your ladyship.’

‘He has. You can order the coal.’

‘Very good, my lady. I fancy there will be time between lunch and dinner to effect a clearance of the kitchen chimney, provided there is no interference from the police. Would your ladyship wish me to instruct the sweep accordingly?’

‘Yes, please. I don’t know what we should do without your head for detail, Bunter.’

‘I am much obliged to your ladyship.’

The police party had been taken into the sittingroom. Through the half-open door one could hear Peter’s high, fluent voice giving a lucid account of the whole incredible business, with patient pauses for interrogation or to allow a deliberate constabulary pencil to catch up with him.

Harriet sighed angrily. ‘I do wish he hadn’t to be worried like this! It’s too bad.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Bunter’s face stirred, as though some human emotion were trying to break through. He made no further comment, but something which Harriet recognised as sympathy seemed to waft out of him. She said impulsively: ‘I wonder. Do you think I’m right in ordering the coal?’

It was scarcely fair to push Bunter on to such delicate ground. He remained impassive: ‘It is not for me to say, my lady.’

She was determined not to be beaten. ‘You have known him much longer than I have, Bunter. If his lordship had only himself to consider, do you suppose he would go or stay?’

‘Under those circumstances, my lady, I fancy his lordship would decide to remain.’

‘That’s what I wanted to know. You had better order enough coal for a month.’

‘Certainly, my lady.’

The men were coming out of the sittingroom. They were introduced: Dr Craven, Superintendent Kirk, Sergeant Blades. The cellar door was opened; somebody produced an electric torch and they all went down. Harriet, relegated to the woman’s role of silence and waiting, went into the kitchen to help with the sandwiches. The role, though dull, was not a useless one, for Mrs Ruddle, with a large knife in her hand, was standing at the scullery door as though prepared to carry out a butcherly kind of post-mortem upon whatever might be brought up from the cellar.

‘Mrs Ruddle!’

Mrs Ruddle gave a violent start and dropped the knife.

‘Law, m’lady! You did give me a turn.’

‘You want to cut the bread thinner. And please shut that door.’

A slow, heavy shuffling. Then voices. Mrs Ruddle broke off in the middle of a spirited piece of narrative to listen.

‘Yes, Mrs Ruddle?’

‘Yes, m’lady. So I says to him, “You needn’t think you’re going to ketch me that way, Joe Sellon,” I says. “Like to make out you’re somebody, don’t you,” I says. “I wonder you ’as the face, seem’ what a fool you made of yourself over Aggie Twitterton’s ’ens. No,” I says, “when a proper policeman comes, ’e can ask all the questions ’e likes. But don’t you think you can go ordering me about,” I says, “an’ me old enough to be your grandma. You can put away that there notebook,” I says, “go on,” I says, “it’d make me old cat laugh ter see yer,” I says. “I’ll tell ’ em all I knows,” I says, “don’t you fret yourself, w’en the time comes.” “You ain’t no right,” ’e says, “to obstruct an orficer of the law.” “Law?” I says. “Call yerself the law? If you’re the law,” I says, “I don’t think much of it.” ’E got that red. “You’ll ’ear about this,” ’e says. And I says, “And you’ll ’ear summink, too. None o’ yer sauce,” I says. “They’ll be glad enough to ’ear what I ’as to tell ’em, I dessay, without you goin’ an’ twistin’ it all up afore they gets it,” I says. So ’e says-’

There was a peculiar mixture of malice and triumph in Mrs Ruddle’s voice which Harriet felt the episode of the hens did not altogether account for. But at this moment Bunter came in by the passage door.

‘His lordship’s compliments, my lady; and Superintendent Kirk would be glad to see you for a moment in the sittingroom if you can spare the time.’

Superintendent Kirk was a large man with a mild and ruminative expression. He seemed already to have obtained from Peter most of the information he needed, asking only a few questions to confirm such points as the time of the party’s arrival at Talboys and the appearance of the sittingroom and kitchen when they came in. What he really wanted to get from Harriet was a description of the bedroom. All Mr Noakes’s clothes had been there? His toilet articles? No suitcases? No suggestion that he intended to leave the house at once? No? Well, that confirmed the idea that Mr Noakes intended to get away, but was in no immediate hurry. Not, for example, particularly expecting any unpleasant interview that night. The Superintendent was much obliged. to her ladyship; he should be sorry to disturb poor Miss Twitterton, and, after all, nothing much was to be gained by examining the bedroom at once, since its contents had already been disturbed. That applied, of course, to the other rooms as well. Unfortunate, but nobody could be blamed for that. They might be a bit further on when they had Dr Craven’s report. He would perhaps be able to tell them whether Noakes had been alive when he fell down the cellar steps or had been killed and thrown there afterwards. No bloodshed, that was the trouble, though the skull had been broken by the blow. And with so many people in and out of the house all night and morning, one could scarcely expect footprints or anything like that. At any rate, nothing had been seen to suggest a struggle? Nothing. Mr Kirk was greatly obliged.

Harriet said. Not at all, and murmured something about lunch. The Superintendent said he saw no objection to that; he had finished with the sittingroom for the moment. He would just like a word with this fellow MacBride about the financial side of the business, but he would send him in a soon as he had done with him. He tactfully refused to join the party, but he accepted the offer of a mouthful of bread and cheese in the kitchen. When the doctor had finished, he would finish the interrogations in the light of whatever the medical examination might reveal.

Years afterwards. Lady Peter Wimsey was accustomed to say that the first few days of her honeymoon remained in her memory as a long series of assorted surprises, punctuated by the most incredible meals. Her husband’s impression were even less coherent; he said he had had, all the time the sensation of being slightly drunk and tossed in a blanket, The freakish and arbitrary fates must have given the blanket an especially energetic tweak, to have tossed him, towards the end of that strange, embarrassed luncheon, so high over the top of the world. He stood at the window, whistling, Bunter, hovering about the room, handing sandwiches and straightening out the last traces of disorder left after the sweep’s departure, recognised the tune. It was the one he had heard the night before in the woodshed. Nothing could have been less suited to the occasion, nothing should more deeply have offended his inborn sense of propriety; yet, like the poet Wordsworth, he heard it and rejoiced.

‘Another sandwich, Mr MacBride?’ (The newly-wedded lady doing the honours at her own table for the first time. Curious, but true.)

‘No more, thanks; much obliged to you.’ Mr MacBride swallowed the last drop of his beer and polished his mouth and fingers politely with his handkerchief. Bunter swept down upon the empty plate and glass.

‘I hope you’ve had something to eat, Bunter?’ (One must consider the servants. Only two fixed points in the universe: death, and the servants’ dinner; and there they both were.)

‘Yes, thank you, my lady.’

‘I suppose they’ll be wanting this room in a minute. Is the doctor still there?’

‘I believe he has concluded his examination, my lady.’

‘Nice job, I don’t think,’ said Mr MacBride.

‘La caill’, la tourterelle

Et la joli’ perdrix

Aupres de ma blonde

Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon.

Aupres de ma blonde-’

Mr MacBride looked round, scandalised. He had his own notions of propriety. Bunter darted hastily across the room and attracted the singer’s wandering attention.

‘Yes, Bunter?’

‘Your lordship will excuse me. But in view of the melancholy occasion-’

‘Eh, what? Oh, sorry. Was I making a noise?’

‘My dear-’ His swift, secret, reminiscent smile was a challenge; she beat it down, and achieved the right tone of wifely rebuke. ‘Poor Miss Twitterton’s trying to get to sleep.’

‘Yes. Sorry. Dashed thoughtless of me. And in a house of bereavement and all that.’ His face darkened with a sudden odd impatience. ‘Though, if you ask me, I doubt whether anybody-I say, anybody-feels particularly bereft.’

‘Except,’ said Mr MacBride, ‘that chap Crutchley with his forty pound. I fancy that grief’s genuine.’

‘From that point of view,’ said his lordship, ‘you should be the chief mourner.’

‘It won’t keep me awake at night,’ retorted Mr MacBride: ‘It ain’t my money, you see,’ he added frankly. He rose, opened the door and glanced out into the passage. ‘I only hope they’re getting a move on out there. I’ve got to toddle back to Town and see Mr Abrahams. Pity you ain’t on the telephone.’ He paused. ‘If I was you, I wouldn’t let it worry me. Seems to me, deceased was a dashed unpleasant old gink and well out of the way.’ He went out, leaving the atmosphere clearer, as though by the removal of funeral flowers.

‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ said Harriet.

‘Just as well, isn’t it?’ Wimsey’s tone was studiously light ‘When I’m investigating a murder, I hate to have too much sympathy with the corpse. Personal feelings cramp the style.’

‘But, Peter-need you investigate this? It’s rather rotten for you.’

Bunter, piling plates on a tray, made for the door. This, of course, was bound to happen. Let them fight it out for themselves. He had delivered his own warning.

‘No, I needn’t. But I expect I shall. Murders go to my head like drink. I simply can’t keep off them.’

‘Not even now? They can’t expect you, surely! You’ve got a right to your own life sometimes. And it’s such a beastly little crime-sordid and horrible.’

‘That’s just it,’ he broke out, with unexpected passion “That’s why I can’t leave it alone. It’s not picturesque. It’s not exciting. It’s no fun at all. Just dirty, brutal bashing, like a butcher with a pole-axe. It makes me sick. But who the hell am I, to pick and choose what I’ll meddle in?’

‘I see. But after all, this was just wished on us. It’s not as though you’d been called in to help.’

‘How often am I “called in”, I wonder,’ he demanded rather bitterly. ‘I call myself in, half the time, out of sheer mischief and inquisitiveness. Lord Peter Wimsey the aristocratic sleuth-my god! The idle rich gentleman who dabbles in detection. That’s what they say-isn’t it?’

‘Sometimes. I lost my temper with somebody who said that, once. Before we were engaged. It made me wonder if wasn’t getting rather fond of you.’

‘Did it? Then perhaps I’d better not justify that view of myself. What do such fellows as I, crawling between heaven and earth? I can’t wash my hands of a thing, merely because it’s inconvenient to my lordship, as Bunter says of the sweep. I hate violence! I loathe wars and slaughter, and men quarrelling and fighting like beasts! Don’t say it isn’t my business. It’s everybody’s business.’

‘Of course it is, Peter. Go ahead. I was just being feminine or something. I thought you looked as if you’d be better for a little peace and quiet. But you don’t seem to shine as a lotos-eater.’

‘I can’t eat lotos, even with you,’ he said, pathetically, ‘with murdered bodies popping up all over the place.’

‘You shan’t, angel, you shan’t. Have a nice mouthful of prickly cactus instead. And don’t pay any attention to my imbecile efforts to strew your path with rose-leaves. It won’t be the first time we’ve followed the footprints together. Only’-she faltered a moment as another devastating matrimonial possibility loomed up like a nightmare-‘whatever you do, you’ll let me take a hand, won’t you?’

To her relief, he laughed. ‘All right, Domina. I promise you that. Cactus for both or neither, and no lotos till we can share it. I won’t play the good British husband-in spite of your alarming plunge into wifeliness. The Ethiopian shall stay black and leave the leopardess her spots.’

He appeared satisfied, but Harriet cursed herself for a fool. This business of adjusting oneself was not so easy after all. Being preposterously fond of a person didn’t prevent one from hurting him unintentionally. She had an uncomfortable feeling that his confidence had been shaken and that this was not the end of the misunderstanding. He wasn’t the kind of man to whom you could say, ‘Darling, you’re wonderful, and whatever you do is right’-whether you thought so or not. He would write you down a fool. Nor was he the sort who said, ‘I know what I’m doing and you must take my word for it’ (Thank god for that anyway!) He wanted you to agree with him intelligently or not at all. And her intelligence did agree with him. It was her own feelings that didn’t seem to be quite pulling in double harness with her intelligence. But whether it was her feeling for Peter or her feeling for the deceased Mr Noakes, butchered to make a busman’s honeymoon for them, or a merely selfish feeling that she didn’t want to be bothered at this moment with corpses and policemen, she was not sure.

‘Cheer up, sweetheart,’ said Peter. “They may not want my kind assistance. Kirk may cut the Gordian knot by booting me out.’

‘Well, he’d be an idiot!’ said Harriet, with prompt indignation.

Mr Puffett entered suddenly without knocking.

‘They’re takin’ Mr Noakes away. Shall I be getting’ on with the kitchen chimney?’ He walked across to the fireplace. ‘Draws beautiful now, don’t she? I allus said there was nothing the matter with the flue. Ah! it’s a good thing Mr Noakes ain’t alive to see all that ’eap of coal. That’s a fire as does credit to any chimney.’

‘All right, Puffett,’ said Peter, absently. ‘Carry on.’

Steps on the path, and a dismal little procession passing the window: a sergeant of police and another uniformed man, carrying a stretcher between them.

‘Very good, me lord.’ Mr Puffett glanced from the window and removed his bowler hat ‘And where’s all ’is cheese parin’ brought ’im now?’ he demanded. ‘Nowhere.’ He marched out.

‘De mortuis,’ said Peter, ‘and then some.

‘Yes, he seems to be getting a nice derangement of epitaphs, poor old creature.’

Corpses and policemen-there they were, not to be go rid of, whatever one’s feelings might be. Much better to accept the situation and do one’s best. Superintendent Kirk came in, followed by Joe Sellon.

‘Well, well’ said Peter. ‘All ready for the third degree?’

‘T’ain’t likely to come to that. my lord,’ replied Mr Kirk jovially. ‘You and your lady had something better to do last week than committing murders, I’ll be bound. That’s right Joe, come along. Let’s see what you can do with a bit o shorthand. I’m sending my sergeant over to Broxford to pick up what he can there, so Joe can give me a hand with the statements. I’d like to use this room, if it’s not inconvenient.’

‘Not at all.’ Seeing the Superintendent’s eye fix modestly upon a spindly specimen of Edwardian craftsmanship, Peter promptly pushed forward a stout, high-backed chair with gouty arms and legs and an eruption of heavy scroll work about its head. ‘You’ll find this about up to your weight, I fancy.’

‘Nice and imposing,’ said Harriet.

The village constable added his comment: ‘That’s old Noakes’s chair, that was.’

‘So,’ said Peter, ‘Galahad will sit down in Merlin’s seat.’

Mr Kirk, on the point of lowering his solid fifteen stone into the chair, jerked up abruptly. ‘Alfred,’ said he, ‘Lord Tennyson.’

‘Got it in one,’ said Peter, mildly surprised. A glow of enthusiasm shone softly in the policeman’s ox-like eyes. ‘You’re a bit of a student, aren’t you. Superintendent?’

‘I like to do a bit o’ reading in my off-duty,’ admitted Mr Kirk, bashfully. ‘It mellows the mind.’ He sat down. ‘I often think as the rowtine of police dooty may tend to narrow a man and make him a bit hard, if you take my meaning.

When I find that happening, I say to myself, what you need, Sam Kirk, is contact with a Great Mind or so, after supper. Reading maketh a full man-’

‘Conference a ready man,’ said Harriet.

‘And writing an exact man,’ said the Superintendent.

‘Mind that, Joe Sellon, and see you let me have them notes so as they can be read to make sense.’

‘Francis Bacon,’ said Peter, a trifle belatedly. ‘Mr Kirk, you’re a man after my own heart.’

“Thank you, my lord. Bacon. You’d call him a Great Mind, wouldn’t you? And what’s more, he came to be Lord Chancellor of England, so he’s a bit in the legal way, too. Ah! well, I suppose we’ll have to get down to business.’

‘As another Great Mind so happily put it, “However entrancing it is to wander through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?”’

‘What’s that?’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s a new one Ion me. “Garden of bright images,” eh? That’s pretty, that’.

‘Kai-Lung,’ said Harriet.

‘Golden Hours of,’ said Peter. ‘Ernest Bramah.’

‘Make a note o’ that for me, will you, Joe?’ “Bright images”-that’s just what you get in poetry, isn’t it? Pictures. as you might say. And in a garden too-what you call flowers of fancy, I dessay. Well, now-’ He pulled him self together and turned to Peter. ‘As I was saying, we mustn’t waste time with the fancy-work. About this money: we found on the body. What did you say you paid him for the house?’

‘Six-fifty, altogether. Fifty at the beginning of the negotiations and the six hundred at quarter-day.’

‘That’s right. That accounts for the six hundred he had in his pocket. He’d just about have cashed it the day he was put away.’

‘The quarter-day was a Sunday. The cheque was actually dated and sent on the 28th. It would have reached him Monday.’

‘That’s right. We’ll check the payment at the bank. but it’s not really necessary. Wonder what they thought of him taking it away in cash instead of paying it in. H’m. It’s a pity it ain’t the bank’s business to give us the office when people do things that look like bolting. But it wouldn’t do naturally.’

‘He must have had it in his pocket when he told poor Crutchley he’d no money to pay him his forty pounds. He could have given it him then.’

‘Course he could, my lady, if he’d wanted to. He was a proper old dodger, was Mr Noakes; a regular Artful Dodger.’

‘Charles Dickens!’

‘That’s right. There’s an author what knew a bit about crooks, didn’t he? A pretty rough place London must have been in those days, if you go by what he says. Fagin and all But we wouldn’t hang a man for being a pickpocket, not now. Well-and having sent the cheque, you just came on here the next week and left it to him?’

‘Yes. Here’s his letter, you see, saying he’d have everything ready. It’s addressed to my agent. We really ought to have sent someone ahead to see to things, but the fact is, as I told you before, what with newspaper reporters and one thing and another-’

‘They give us a lot of trouble, them fellows,’ said Mr Kirk, sympathetically.

‘When,’ said Harriet, ‘they gate-crash your flat and try to bribe your servants.’

‘Fortunately, Bunter is sea-green incorruptible-’

‘Carlyle,’ said Mr Kirk, with approval. ‘French Revolution. Seems a good man, that Bunter. Head screwed on the right way.’

‘But we needn’t have troubled,’ said Harriet. ‘We’ll have them all on our backs now.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Kirk. ‘That’s what comes of being a public character. You can’t escape the fierce light that beats upon-’

‘Here!’ said Peter, ‘that’s not fair. You can’t have Tennyson twice. Anyway, there it is and what’s done-no, I may want Shakespeare later on. The ironical part of it is that we expressly told Mr Noakes we were coming for peace and quiet and didn’t want the whole thing broadcast about the neighbourhood.’

‘Well, he saw to that all right,’ said the Superintendent. ‘By George, you were making it easy for him. weren’t you? Easy as pie. Off he could go, and no inquiry. Don’t suppose he meant to go quite so far as he did go, all the same.’

‘Meaning, there’s no chance of it’s being suicide?’

‘Not likely, is it, with all that money on him? Besides, the doctor says there’s not a chance of it. We’ll come to that later. About them doors, now. You’re sure they were both locked when you arrived?’

‘Absolutely. The front we opened ourselves with the latchkey, and the back-let me see-’

‘Bunter opened that, I think,’ said Harriet.

‘Better have Bunter in,’ said Peter. ‘He’ll know. He never forgets anything.’ He called Bunter, adding, ‘What we want here is a bell.’

‘And you saw no disturbance, except what you’ve mentioned. Egg-shells and such. No marks? No weapon? Nothing out of its place?’

‘I’m sure I didn’t notice anything,’ said Harriet. ‘But then wasn’t much light, and, of course, we weren’t looking for anything. We didn’t know there was anything to look for.’

‘Wait a bit,’ said Peter. ‘Wasn’t there something struck me this morning? I-no, I don’t know. It was all upset for the sweep, you see. I don’t know what I thought I-If there was anything, it’s gone now… Oh, Bunter! Superintendent Kirk wants to know was the back door locked when we arrived last night.’

‘Locked and bolted, my lord, top and bottom.’

‘Did you notice anything funny about the place at all?’

‘Apart,’ said Mr Bunter, warmly, ‘from the absence o those conveniences that we were led to expect, such as lamps and coal and food and the key of the house and the beds made up and the chimneys swept, and allowing further for the soiled crockery in the kitchen and the presence of Mr Noakes’s personal impedimenta in the bedroom, no, my lord. The house presented no anomalies nor incongruities of any kind that I was able to observe. Except-’

‘Yes?’ said Mr Kirk, hopefully.

‘I attached no significance to it at the time,’ said Bunter slowly, as though he were admitting to a slight defection from duty, ‘but there were two candlesticks in this room upon the sideboard. Both candles were burnt down to the socket. Burnt out.’

‘So they were,’ said Peter. ‘I remember seeing you clear out the wax with a pen-knife. Night’s candles are burnt out.’ The Superintendent, absorbed in the implications of Bunter’s statement, neglected the challenge till Peter poked him in the ribs and repeated it, adding, ‘I knew I should want Shakespeare again!’

‘Eh?’ said the Superintendent ‘Night’s candles? Romeo and Juliet-not much o’ that about this here. Burnt out. Yes. They must a-been alight when he was killed. After dark that means.’

‘He died by candle-light Sounds like the tide of a highbrow thriller. One of yours, Harriet. When found, make a note of.’

‘Captain Cuttle,’ said Mr Kirk, not to be caught napping again. ‘October 2nd-sun would be setting about half-past five. No, it was Summer Time. Say half-past six. I dunno as that gets us much further. You didn’t see nothing lying about as might have been used for a weapon? No mallet or bludgeon, eh? Nothing in the way of a-’

‘He’s going to say it!’ said Peter to Harriet, in a whisper.

‘-in the way of a blunt instrument?’

‘He’s said it!’

‘I’ve never really believed they did say it.’

‘Well, now you know.’

‘No,’ said Bunter, after a short meditation. ‘Nothing of that description. Nothing beyond the customary household utensils in their appropriate situations.’

‘Have we any idea,’ inquired his lordship, ‘what kind of a jolly old blunt instrument we are looking for? How big? What shape?’

‘Pretty heavy, my lord, that’s all I can say. With a smooth, blunt head. Meaning, the skull was cracked like an eggshell, but the skin hardly broken. So there’s no blood to help us, and the worst of it is, we don’t know, no more than Adam, whereabouts it all ’appened. You see, Dr Craven says deceased-Here, Joe, where’s that letter Doctor wrote out for me to send to the coroner? Read it out to his lordship. Maybe he’ll be able to make it out, seem’ he’s had a bit of experience and more eddication than you or me. Beats me what doctors want to use them long words for. Mind you, it’s educational; I don’t say it isn’t I’ll have a go at it with the dictionary afore I goes to bed and I’ll know I’m learning something. But to tell you the truth, we don’t have many murders and violent deaths hereabouts, so I don’t get much practice in the technical part, as you might say.’

‘All right, Bunter,’ said Peter, seeing that the Superintendent had finished with him. ‘You can go.’

Harriet thought Bunter seemed a little disappointed. He would doubtless have appreciated the doctor’s educational vocabulary.

P.C. Sellon cleared his throat and began: ‘ “Dear Sir-It is my duty to notify-”’

‘Not there,’ interrupted Kirk. ‘Where it begins about deceased.’

P.C. Sellon found the place and cleared his throat again:

‘ “I may state, as the result of a superficial examination”-is that it, sir?’

‘That’s it.’

‘ “That deceased appears to ‘ave been, struck with a ‘eavy blunt instrument of some considerable superficies – ”’

‘Meaning, he said, by that,’ explained the Superintendent, ‘as it wasn’t a little fiddlin’ thing like the beak of a ‘ammer.’

‘“On the posterior part of the”-I can’t rightly make this out, sir. Looks to me like “onion”, and that makes sense all right, only it don’t sound like doctor’s language.’

‘It couldn’t be that, Joe.’

‘Nor it ain’t “geranium” neither-leastways, there’s no tail to the G.’

‘“Cranium”, perhaps,’ suggested Peter. ‘The back of the skull.’

‘That’ll be it,’ said Kirk. ‘That’s where it is, anyhow, never mind what the doctor calls it.’

‘Yes, sir. “A little above and behind the left ear, the apparent direction of the blow being from behind downwards. An extensive fracture – ”’

‘Hallo!’ said Peter. ‘On the left, from behind downwards. That looks like another of our old friends.’

‘The left-handed criminal,’ said Harriet.

‘Yes. It’s surprising how often you get them in detective fiction. A sort of sinister twist running right through the character.’

‘It might be a back-handed blow.’

‘Not likely. Who goes about swotting people left-handed? Unless the local tennis-champion wanted to show off. Or a navvy mistook old Noakes for a pile that needed driving.”

‘A navvy’d have hit him plumb centre. They always do. You think they’re going to brain the man who holds the thing up, but it never happens. I’ve noticed that. But there’s another thing. My recollection of Noakes is that he was awfully tall.’

‘Quite right,’ said Kirk, ‘so he was. Six foot four, only he stooped a bit. Call it six foot two or three.’

‘You’ll want a pretty tall murderer,’ said Peter.

‘Wouldn’t a long-handled weapon do? Like a croquet mallet? or a golf club?’

‘Yes, or a cricket-bat. Or a beetle, of course-’

‘Or a spade-the flat side-’

‘Or a gun-stock. Possibly even a poker-’

‘It’d have to be a long, heavy one with a thick knob. I think there’s one in the kitchen. Or even a broom, I suppose-’

‘Don’t think it’d be heavy enough, though it’s possible. How about an axe or a pick-?’

‘Not blunt enough. They’ve got square edges. What other long things are there? I’ve heard of a flail, but I’ve never seen one. A lead cosh, if it was long enough. Not a sandbag-they bend.’

‘A lump of lead in an old stocking would be handy.’

‘Yes-but look here, Peter! Anything would do-even a rolling-pin, always supposing-’

‘I’ve thought of that. He might have been sitting down.’

‘So it might be a stone or a paper-weight like that one on the window-sill there.’

Mr Kirk started. ‘Strewth!’ he observed, ‘you’re quick, you two. Not much you miss, is there? And the lady’s as smart as the gentleman.’

‘It’s her job,’ said Peter. ‘She writes detective stories.’

‘Does she now?’ said the Superintendent. ‘I can’t say I reads a lot o’ them, though Mrs Kirk, she likes a good Edgar Wallace now and again. But I couldn’t rightly call ‘em a mellering influence to a man in my line. I read an American story once, and the way the police carried on-well, it didn’t seem right to me. Here, Joe, hand me that there paper-weight, would you? Hi! Not that way! Ain’t you never heard of fingerprints?’

Sellon, his large hand clasped round the stone, stood awkwardly and scratched his head with his pencil. He was a big, fresh-faced young man, who looked as though he would be better at grappling with drunks than measuring prints and reconstructing the time-table of the crime. At length he opened his fingers and brought the paper-weight balanced on his open palm.

‘That won’t take finger-prints,’ said Peter. ‘It’s too rough. Edinburgh granite, from the look of it.’

‘It might a-done the bashing, though,’ said Kirk. ‘Leastways, the underneath part, or this here rounded end. Model of a building, ain’t it?’

‘Edinburgh Castle, I fancy. It shows no signs of skin or hair or anything about it. Just a minute.’ He picked it up by a convenient chimney, examined its surface with a lens, and said, definitely, ‘No.’

‘Humph. Well. That gets us nowhere. We’ll have a look at the kitchen poker presently.’

‘You’ll find lots of finger-prints on that. Bunter’s and mine, and Mrs Ruddle’s-possibly Puffett’s and Crutchley’s.’

‘That’s the devil of it,’ said the Superintendent, frankly. ‘But none the more for that. Joe, you keep your fingers off anything what looks like a weapon. If you sees any of them things what his lordship and her ladyship here mentioned laying about, you just leave ‘em be and shout till I come. See?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘To go back’, said Peter, ‘to the doctor’s report. I take it Noakes can’t have bashed the back of his own head falling down the steps? He was an oldish man, wasn’t he?’

‘Sixty-five, me lord. Sound as a bell, though, as far as you can judge now. Eh, Joe?’

‘That’s a fact, sir. Boasted of it, he did. Talked large as ’ow Doctor said ’e was good for another quarter of a century. You ask Frank Crutchley. ’E ‘eard ’im. Over at Pagford, in the Pig and Whistle. And Mr Roberts wot keeps the Crown in the village-he’ve heard him many a time.’

‘Ah! well, that’s as may be. It ain’t never safe to boast. The boast of heraldry-well, I take it that’d be more in your lordship’s line, but it all leads to the grave, as Gray’s Elegy has it. Still, he wasn’t killed falling down the stairs, because there’s a bruise on his forehead where he went down and hit the bottom step-’

‘Oh!’ said Peter. ‘Then he was alive when he fell?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Kirk, a little put out by being anticipated. ‘That’s what I was leading up to. But there again, that don’t prove nothing, because seemm’ly he didn’t die straight off, Accordin’ to what Dr Craven makes out-’

‘Shall I read that bit. sir?’

‘Don’t bother with it, Joe. It’s only a lot of rigmarole. I can explain to his lordship without all your onions and geraniums. What it comes to is this. Somebody ’it him and bust his skull, and he’d likely tumble down and lose consciousness-concussed, as you might say. After a bit, he’d come to, like as not. But he’d never know what hit ’im. Wouldn’t remember a thing about it.’

‘Nor he would,’ said Harriet, eagerly. She knew that bit, in fact she’d had to expound it in her latest detective novel but one. ‘There’d be complete forgetfulness of everything immediately preceding the blow. And he might even pick himself up and feel all right for some time.’

‘Except,’ put in Mr Kirk, who liked a literal precision, ‘for a sore head. But, generally speaking, that’s correct, according to Doctor. He might walk about and do quite a bit for himself.’

‘Such as locking the door behind the murderer?’

‘Exactly, there’s the trouble.’

‘Then,’ pursued Harriet, ‘he’d get giddy and drowsy, wouldn’t he? Wander off to get a drink or call for help-’ Memory suddenly showed her the open cellar-door, yawning between the back-door and the scullery. ‘And pitch down the cellar-steps and die there. That door was standing open when we arrived; I remember Mrs Ruddle telling her Bert to shut it.’

‘Pity they didn’t happen to look inside,’ grunted the Superintendent. ‘Not as it’ud have done the deceased any good-he’d been dead long enough-but if you’d a-know you could have kept the house in statu quo, as they say.’

‘We could,’ said Peter, with emphasis, ‘but I don’t mind telling you frankly that we were in no mood to.’

‘No,’ said Mr Kirk, meditatively, ‘I don’t suppose you were. No. All things considered, it would have been inconvenient, I see that. But it’s a pity, all the same. Because, you see, we’ve got very little to go on and that’s a fact. The pool old chap might a-been killed anywhere-upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.’

‘No, no. Mother Goose,’ said Peter, hastily. ‘Not there, not there, my child, Felicia Hemans. Let us pass on. How long did he live after he was hit?’

‘Doctor says,’ put in the constable,’ “from half an hour to one hour, judging by the-the-hem-something-or-other.”’

‘Haemorrhage?’ suggested Kirk, taking possession of the letter. ‘That’s it. Haemorrhagic effusion into the cortex. That’s a good one.’

‘Bleeding in the brain,’ said Peter. ‘Good lord-he had plenty of time. He may have been coshed outside the house altogether.’

‘But when do you suppose it all happened?’ demanded Harriet She appreciated Peter’s effort to exonerate the house from all share in the crime, and was annoyed with herself for having betrayed any sensibility on the subject It was distracting for him. Her tone, in consequence, was determinedly off-hand and practical.

‘That,’ said the Superintendent, ’is what we’ve got to fine out. Some time last Wednesday night, putting what the doctor says with the rest of the evidence. After dark, if them candles are anything to go by. And that means-H’m! We’d better have this chap Crutchley in. Seems like he might have been the last person to see the deceased alive.’

‘Enter the obvious suspect,’ said Peter, lightly.

“The obvious suspect is always innocent.’ said Harriet in the same tone.

‘In books, my lady,’ said Mr Kirk, with a little indulgent bow towards her, as who should say, ‘The ladies. God bless them!’

‘Come, come,’ said Peter, ‘we must not introduce our professional prejudices into the case. How about it. Superintendent? Shall we make ourselves scarce?’

‘That’s as you like, my lord. I’d be glad enough if you’d stay; you might give me a bit of help, seeing as you know the ropes, so to speak. Not but what it’ll be a kind of busman’s holiday for you,’ he finished up, rather dubiously.

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Harriet. ‘A busman’s honeymoon. Butchered to make a-’

‘Lord Byron!’ cried Mr Kirk, a little too promptly. ‘Butchered to make a busman’s-no, that don’t seem right somehow.’

‘Try Roman,’ said Peter. ‘All right, we’ll do our best. No objection to smoking in court, I take it. Where the devil did I put the matches?’

‘Here you are, my lord,’ said Sellon. He produced a box and struck a light. Peter eyed him curiously, and remarked: ‘Hullo! You’re left-handed.’

‘For some things, my lord. Not for writing.’

‘Only for striking matches-and handling Edinburgh rock?’

‘Left-handed?’ said Kirk. ‘Why, so you are, Joe. I hope you ain’t this tall, left-handed murderer what we’re looking out for?’ mm

‘No, sir,’ said the constable, briefly.

‘A pretty thing that’ud be?’ said his superior, with a hearty guffaw. ‘We shouldn’t never hear the last of that. Now, you hop out and get Crutchley. Nice lad he is,’ he went on, turning to Peter as Sellon left the room. ’Ard working, but no Sherlock ’Olmes, if you follow me. Slow in the uptake. I sometimes think his heart ain’t rightly in his work these days. Married too young, that’s what it is, and started a family, which is a handicap to a young officer.’

‘Ah!’ said Peter, ‘all this matrimony is a sad mistake.’

He laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder, while Mr Kirk tactfully studied his notebook.