Dorothy Sayers - Busman’s Honeymoon

‘All right, ma,’ said Kirk, shaken, but sticking loyally by his subordinate. ‘Much obliged. That brings us pretty near the time. Nine o’clock, you say it was?’

‘Near as makes no difference. My clock said ten past, but it gains a bit. But you ask Joe Sellon. If yer want to know the time, ask a p’leeceman!’

‘Very good,’ replied the Superintendent. ‘We just wanted a bit of confirmation on that there point. Two witnesses are better than one. That’ll do. Now, just you run along, and-see here-don’t you get shooting your mouth off.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Mrs Ruddle, bridling, ‘I ain’t one to talk.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Peter. ‘That’s the last thing anybody would accuse you of. But, you see, you’re a very important witness-you and Sellon here-and there might be all sorts of people, reporters and so on, trying to wheedle things out of you. So you must be very discreet-just like Sellon and come down sharp on them. Otherwise, you might make things difficult for Mr Kirk.’

‘Joe Sellon, indeed!’ said Mrs Ruddle, contemptuously. ‘I can do as well as ‘im any day. I ‘ope I knows better than to go talking to newspaper fellows. A nasty, vulgar lot.’

‘Most unpleasant people,’ said Peter. He made for the door, driving her gently before him like a straying hen. ‘We know we can rely on you, Mrs Ruddle, thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time. Whatever you do,’ he added earnestly, as he propelled her over the threshold, ‘don’t say anything to Bunter-he’s the world’s worst chatterbox.’

‘Certainly not, my lord,’ said Mrs Ruddle. The door closed. Kirk drew himself up in the big chair; his subordinate sat huddled, waiting for the explosion.;;:;;;:

‘Now, Joe Sellon. What’s the meaning of this?’

‘Well, sir-’

‘I’m disappointed in you, Joe,’ went on Kirk, with more distress than anger in his puzzled voice. ‘I’m astonished. Mean to say you was there at nine o’clock talking to Mr Noakes and you said nothin’ about it? Ain’t you got no sense of duty?’

‘I’m sure I’m very sorry, sir.’

Lord Peter Wimsey strolled over to the window. One does not interfere with another man ticking off his subordinate. All the same-

‘ Sorry ? That’s a nice word to use. You-a police-officer?

With’oldin’ important evidence? And say you’re sorry?’

(Dereliction of duty. Yes-that was the first way it would strike one.)

‘I didn’t mean-’ began Sellon. Then, furiously: ‘I didn’t know that old cat had seen me.’

‘What the hell does it matter who saw you?’ cried Kirk, with rising exasperation. ‘You ought to have told me first thing… My god, Joe Sellon, I don’t know what to make of you. Upon my word I don’t… You’re for it, my lad.’

The wretched Sellon sat twisting his hands together, finding no answer but a miserable mumble: ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Now, look here,’ said Kirk, with a dangerous note in his voice. ‘What were you doing there, that you didn’t want anybody to know about?… Speak up!… Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.’ (He’s seen it, thought Peter, and turned round.) ‘You’re left-handed, ain’t you?’

‘Oh, my God, sir, my God! I never done it! I swear I never done it! ‘Eaven knows I ‘ad cause enough, but I never done it-I never laid a’and on ’im-’

‘Cause? What cause?… Come on, now. Out with it!

What were you doing with Mr Noakes?’

Sellon looked round wildly. At his shoulder stood Peter Wimsey with an inscrutable face.

‘I never touched ‘im. I never done nothing to ‘im. If I was to die the next minute, sir, I’m innocent!’

Kirk shook his massive head, like a bull teased by gadflies. ‘What were you doing up here at nine o’clock?’

‘Nothin’,’ said Sellon, stubbornly. The excitement died out of him. ‘Only to pass the time of day.’

‘Time o’ day!’ echoed Kirk, with so much contempt and irritation that Peter nerved himself to interfere.

‘Look here, Sellon,’ he said, in a voice that had induced many a troubled private to disclose his pitiful secrets. ‘You’d much better make a clean breast of it to Mr Kirk. Whatever it is.’

‘This,’ growled Kirk, ‘is a nice thing, this is. A police officer-’

‘Go easy with him. Superintendent.’ said Peter. ‘He’s only a youngster.’ He hesitated. Perhaps it would be easier for Sellon without an outside witness. ‘I’ll push along into the garden,’ he said, reassuringly.

Sellon turned in a flash. ‘No, no! I’ll come clean. Oh, my God, sir!-Don’t go, my lord. Don’t you go!… I’ve made a damn’ bloody fool of myself.’

‘We all do that at times,’ said Peter, softly.

‘ You’ll believe me, my lord… Oh, God, this’ll break me.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Kirk, grimly.

Peter glanced at the Superintendent, saw that he, too, recognised the appeal to an authority older than his own, and sat down on the edge of the table. ‘Pull yourself together, Sellon. Mr Kirk’s not the man to be hard or unjust to anybody. Now, what was it all about?’

‘Well… that there note-case of Mr Noakes’s-what he lost-’

‘Two years ago-well, yes. What happened to it?’

‘I found it… I-I-he’d dropped it in the road-ten pound it had in it. I-my wife was desperate bad after the baby-doctor said she ought to have special treatment-I hadn’t saved nothing-and the pay’s not much, nor the allowance-I been a damned fool-I meant to put it back right away. I thought he could spare it, being well off. I know we’re supposed to be honest, but it’s a dreadful temptation in a man’s way.’

Yes,’ said Peter. ‘A generous country expects a lot of honesty for two or three pounds a week.’ Kirk seemed incapable of speech, so he went on: ‘And what happened about it?’

‘He found out, my lord. I dunno how, but he did. Threatened to report me. Well, of course, that’d have been the end of me. Out of a job, and who’d a-given me work after that? So I ‘ad to pay him what he said, to stop his tongue.’

‘Pay him?’

‘That’s blackmail,’ said Kirk, coming out of his stupefaction with a pounce. He spoke the words as though they were, somehow, a solution of this incredible situation. ‘It’s an indictable offence. Blackmail. And compounding a felony.’

‘Call it what you like, sir-it was life and death to me. Five bob a week he been bleeding me for these last two years.’

‘Good God!’ said Peter, disgusted.

‘And I tell you, my lord, when I came in this room this morning and ‘eard as he was dead, it was like a breath of ‘Eaven to me… But I didn’t kill him-I swear I didn’t. You do believe me? My lord, you believe me. I didn’t do it.’

‘I don’t know that I could blame you if you had.’

‘But I didn’t,’ said Sellon, eagerly. Peter’s face was noncommittal and he turned to Kirk again. ‘It’s all right, sir. I know I been a fool-and worse-and I’ll take my medicine; but as sure as I stand here, I didn’t kill Mr Noakes.’

‘Well, Joe,’ said the Superintendent, heavily, ‘it’s bad enough without that. You’ve been a fool and no mistake. We’ll have to see about that later. You’d better tell us now what did happen.’

‘I came up to see him, to tell him I hadn’t got the money that week. He laughed in my face, the old devil.’

‘What time was this?’

‘I came up here by the path and I looked in at that there window. The curtains wasn’t drawn, and it was all dark. Only then I see him coming in from the kitchen with a candle in his hand. He holds the candle up to the clock there, and I see it was five minutes past nine.’

Peter shifted his position and spoke quickly: ‘You saw the clock from the window. You’re sure?’