Dorothy Sayers - Busman’s Honeymoon

‘Were you aware that he was absent from home ever since last Wednesday?’

‘But he wasn’t absent!’ exclaimed Miss Twitterton. ‘He was here all the time.’

‘Quite so,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Did you know he was here, and not absent?’

‘Of course not. He often goes away. He usually tells-I mean, told me. But it was quite an ordinary thing for him to be at Broxford. I mean, if I had known, I shouldn’t have thought anything of it. But I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Anything about what?’

‘About anything. I mean, nobody told me he wasn’t here, so I thought he was here-and so he was, of course.’

‘If you’d been told the house was shut up and Mrs Ruddle couldn’t get in, you wouldn’t have been surprised or uneasy?’

‘Oh, no. It often happened. I should have thought he was at Broxford.’

‘You have a key for the front door, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes. And the back door, too.’ Miss Twitterton fumbled in a capacious pocket of the old-fashioned sort. ‘But I never use the back-door key because it’s always bolted the door, I mean.’ She pulled out a large key-ring. ‘I gave them both to Lord Peter last night-off this bunch. I always keep them on the ring with my own. They never leave me. Except last night, of course, when Lord Peter had them.’

‘H’m!’ said Kirk. He produced Peter’s two keys. ‘Are these the ones?’

‘Well, they must be, mustn’t they, if Lord Peter gave them to you.’

‘You haven’t ever lent the front-door key to anybody?’

‘Oh, dear no!’ protested Miss Twitterton. ‘Not an y body. If Uncle was away and Frank Crutchley wanted to get in on Wednesday morning, he always came to me and I went over with him and unlocked the door for him. Uncle was ever so particular. And besides, I should want to go myself and see that the rooms were all right. In fact, if Uncle William was at Broxford I used to come over most days.’

‘But on this occasion, you didn’t know he was away?’

No, I didn’t. That’s what I keep on telling you. I didn’t know. So of course I didn’t come. And he wasn’t away.’

‘Exactly. Now. you’re sure you’ve never left these keys about where they might be pinched or borrowed?’

‘No, never,’ replied Miss Twitterton, earnestly-as though, thought Harriet, she asked nothing better than to twist a rope for her own neck. Surely she must see that the key to the house was the key to the problem; was it possible for any innocent person to be quite as innocent as that? The Superintendent ploughed on with his questions, unmoved.

‘Where do you keep them at night?’

‘ Always in my bedroom. The keys, and dear Mother’s silver tea-pot and Aunt Sophy’s cruet that was a wedding-present to grandpa and grandma. I take them up with me every night and put them on the little table by my bed, with the dinner-bell handy in case of fire. And I’m sure nobody could come in when I was asleep, because I always put a deck-chair across the head of the staircase.’

‘You brought the dinner-bell down when you came to let us in,’ said Harriet, vaguely corroborative. Her attention was distracted by the sight of Peter’s face, peering in through the diamond panes of the lattice. She waved him a friendly gesture. Presumably he had walked off his attack of self-consciousness and was getting interested again.

‘A deck-chair?’ Kirk was asking.

‘To trip up a burglar,’ explained Miss Twitterton, very seriously. ‘It’s a splendid thing. You see, while he was getting all tangled up and making a noise, I should hear him and ring the dinner-bell out of the window for the police.’

‘Dear me!’ said Harriet (Peter’s face had vanished perhaps he was coming in.) ‘How dreadfully ruthless of you, Miss Twitterton. The poor man might have fallen over it and broken his neck.’

‘What man?’

‘The burglar.’

‘But, dear Lady Peter, I’m trying to explain-there never was a burglar.’

‘Well,’ said Kirk, ‘it doesn’t look as if anybody else could have got at the keys. Now, Miss Twitterton-about these money difficulties of your uncle’s-’

‘Oh, dear, oh dear!’ broke in Miss Twitterton, with unfeigned emotion. ‘I knew nothing about those. It’s terrible. It gave me such a shock. I thought-we all thought-Uncle was ever so well off.’

Peter had come in so quietly that only Harriet noticed him. He remained near the door, winding his watch and setting it by the clock on the wall. Obviously he had come back to normal, for his face expressed only an alert intelligence.

‘Did he make a will, do you know?’ Kirk dropped the question out casually; the tell-tale sheet of paper lay concealed under his notebook.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Twitterton, ‘I’m sure he made a will. Not that it would have mattered, I suppose, because I’m i the only one of the family left. But I’m certain he told me. he’d made one. He always said, when I was worried about things-of course I’m not very well off-he always said, Now, don’t you be in a hurry, Aggie. I can’t help you now, because it’s all tied up in the business, but it’ll come to you after I’m dead.’

‘I see. You never thought he might change his mind?’

‘Why, no. Who else should he leave it to? I’m the only one. I suppose now there won’t be anything?’

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look like it.’

‘Oh, dear! Was that what he meant when he said it was tied up in the business? That there wasn’t any?’

‘That’s what it very often does mean,’ said Harriet.

‘Then that’s what-’ began Miss Twitterton, and stopped.

‘That’s what, what?’ prompted the Superintendent

‘Nothing,’ said Miss Twitterton, miserably. ‘Only something I thought of. Something private. But he said once something about being short and people not paying their bills… Oh, what have I done? How ever can I explain-?’

‘What?’ demanded Kirk again.

‘Nothing,’ repeated Miss Twitterton, hastily. ‘Only it sounds so silly of me.’ Harriet received the impression that this was not what Miss Twitterton had originally meant to say. ‘He borrowed a little sum of me once-not much-but of course I hadn’t got much. Oh, dear! I’m afraid it looks dreadful to be thinking about money just now, but… I did think I’d have a little for my old age… and times are so hard… and… and… there’s the rent of my cottage… and…’

She quavered on the verge of tears. Harriet said, confusedly:

‘Don’t worry. I’m sure something will turn up.’

Kirk could not resist it. ‘Mr Micawber!’ he said, with a sort of relief. A faint echo behind him drew his attention to Peter, and he glanced round. Miss Twitterton hunted wildly for a handkerchief amid a pocketful of bast, pencils and celluloid rings for chickens’ legs, which came popping out in a shower.

‘I’d counted on it-rather specially,’ sobbed Miss Twitterton. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t pay any attention.’

Kirk cleared his throat. Harriet, who was as a rule good at handkerchiefs, discovered to her annoyance that on this particular morning she had provided herself only with an elegant square of linen, suitable for receiving such rare and joyful drops as might be expected on one’s honeymoon. Peter came to the rescue with what might have been a young flag of truce.

‘It’s quite clean,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I always carry a spare.’

(The devil you do, said Harriet to herself; you are too well trained by half.)

Miss Twitterton buried her face in the silk and snuffled in a dismal manner, while Joe Sellon studiously consulted the back pages of his shorthand notes, the situation threatened to prolong itself.