Dorothy Sayers - Busman’s Honeymoon

The witness failed to catch the note of warning, and said briefly, ‘Yes, my lord.’ He licked his lips nervously and went on: ‘Then I taps on the window and he comes over and opens it. I tells him I ain’t got the money and he laughs at me, nasty-like. “All right,” he says, “I’ll report you in the morning.” So then I plucks up ‘eart and says to him, “You can’t. It’s blackmail. All this money you’ve been takin’ off of me is blackmail, and I’ll see you in the dock for it.” And he says, “Money? You can’t prove you ever paid me money. Where’s your receipts? You got nothing on paper.” So I swears at him.’

‘No wonder,’ said Peter.

‘“Get out,” he says, and slams the window shut. I tried the doors, but they was locked. So I gets out, and that’s the last I seen of him.’

Kirk drew a long breath. ‘You didn’t go into the house?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Are you telling all the truth?’

‘Honest to God, I am, sir.’

‘Sellon, are you sure?’ This time, the warning was unmistakable.

‘It’s God’s truth, my lord.’

Peter’s face changed. He got up and walked slowly over to the fireplace.

‘H’m, well,’ said Kirk. ‘I don’t rightly know what to say. See here, Joe; you better go over straight away to Pagford and check up that alibi for Crutchley. See this man Williams at the garage and get a statement from him.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Sellon in a subdued tone.

‘I’ll talk to you when you come back.’

Sellon said again, ‘Very good, sir.’ He looked at Peter, who was gazing down at the burning logs and made no movement. ‘I hope you won’t be too hard on me, sir.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Kirk, not unkindly. The constable went out, his big shoulders drooping.

‘Well,’ said the Superintendent, ‘and what do you think of that?’

‘It sounded straight enough-so far as the note-case was concerned. So there’s a motive for you-a nice new motive, all a-growing and a-blowing. Widens the field a bit, doesn’t it? Blackmailers don’t as a rule stop at a single victim.’

Kirk scarcely noticed this ingenious attempt to divert him from his natural suspicions. It was the breach of duty by one of his own officers that hurt him. Theft and the concealment of evidence-He hammered on at this wretched worry, the angrier because it was the kind of thing that need not ever have occurred. ‘Why couldn’t the young fool have come to his sergeant, if he was short-or to me? This is the devil and all. Beats me altogether. I wouldn’t have believed it.’

‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ said Peter, with a kind of melancholy amusement.

‘That’s so, my lord. There’s a lot of truth in Hamlet.’’

‘Hamlet?’ Peter’s bark of harsh laughter astonished the Superintendent. ‘By God, you’re right. Village or hamlet of this merry land. Stir up the mud of the village pond and the stink will surprise you.’ He paced the room restlessly. The light thrown on Mr Noakes’s activities had only confirmed his own suspicions, and if there was one sort of criminal whom he would have been ready to strangle with his bare hands, it was the blackmailer. Five shillings a week for two years. He could not doubt that part of the story; no man would so pile up the evidence against himself unless he were telling the truth. All the same-He stopped abruptly at Kirk’s side.

‘Look here!’ he said. ‘You’ve had no official information about that theft, have you? And the money’s been paid back-twice over.’

Kirk fixed him with a steady eye. ‘It’s easy enough for you to be soft-’earted, my lord. It ain’t your responsibility.’ This time the kid gloves were off, and Peter took it on the chin. ‘Coo!’ added Kirk, reflectively. ‘That there Noakes he must have been a proper old twister.’

‘It’s a damned ugly story. It’s enough to make a man-’

But it was not. Nothing was enough for that. ‘Oh, hell!’ said Peter, beaten and exasperated.

‘What’s up?’

‘Superintendent, I’m sorry for that poor devil, but-curse it-I suppose I’ve got to say it-’

‘Well?’ Kirk knew that something was coming and braced himself to meet it. Force Peter’s sort to the wall, and they will tell the truth. He had said so, and now his words were to be proved upon him, and he had got to take the punishment.

‘That story of his. It sounded all right… But it wasn’t… One bit of it was a lie.’

‘A lie?’

‘Yes… He said he never came into the house… He said he saw the clock from that window…’

‘Well?’

‘Well, I tried to do the same” thing just now, when I was out in the garden. I wanted to set my watch. Well… it can’t be done, that’s all… That damned awful cactus is in the way.’

‘What!’ Kirk sprang to his feet.

‘I say, that infernal bloody cactus is in the way. It covers the face of the clock. You can’t see the time from that window.’

‘You can’t?’ Kirk darted towards the window, knowing only too well what he would find there.

‘You can try it,’ said Peter, ‘from any point you like. It’s absolutely and definitely impossible. You can not see the clock from that window.’

The police were out of the house by tea-time. Indeed the unhappy Kirk, having ascertained that by no dodging, stooping or standing on tip-toe could anyone obtain a sight of the clock-face from the window, found himself with but little zest to prolong his inquiries. He made the half-hearted suggestion that Noakes might have temporarily removed the cactus from its pot after 6.20 and replaced it before 9.30; but he could offer himself no plausible explanation of any such aimless proceeding. There was, of course, only Crutchley’s word for it that the plant had been there at 6.20-if there was even that; Crutchley had mentioned watering it-he might have taken it down and left it for Noakes to put back. One could ask-but even as he made a note of this intention, Kirk felt little hope of any result. He examined the bedrooms in a dispirited way, impounded a number of books and papers from a cupboard and again examined Mrs Ruddle about Sellon’s interview with Noakes.

The result of all this was not very satisfactory. A notebook was discovered, containing, among other entries, a list of weekly payments, five shillings at a time, under the initials ‘J.S.’ This corroborated a story that scarcely needed corroboration. It also suggested that Sellon’s frankness might be less a virtue than a necessity, since, had he suspected the existence of such a document, he would have realised that it was better to confess before being confronted with it Peter’s comment was. Why, if Sellon were the murderer, had he not searched the house for compromising papers? With this consideration Kirk tried hard to comfort himself.

There was nothing else that could be interpreted as evidence of blackmailing payments from anybody, though plenty of testimony going to show that Noakes’s affairs were in an even worse state of confusion than had hitherto appeared. An interesting item was a bundle of newspaper cuttings and jottings in Noakes’s hand, concerning cheap cottages on the west coast of Scotland-a country in which it is notoriously difficult to proceed for the recovery of civil debts contracted elsewhere. That Noakes had been the ‘proper twister’ Kirk had supposed him was clear enough; unhappily, it was not his misdoings that needed proof. Mrs Ruddle was unhelpful. She had heard Noakes slam the window shut and seen Sellon retreat in the direction of the front door. Supposing that the show was over, she had hastened home with her pail of water. She thought she had heard a knocking at the doors a few minutes later, and thought, ‘He’s got some hopes!’ Asked whether she had heard what the quarrel was about, she admitted, with regret, that she had not, but (with a malicious grin) ‘supposed as Joe Sellon knew all about it.’ Sellon, she added, ‘often came up to see Mr Noakes’-her own opinion, if Kirk wanted it, was that he was ‘a-trying to borrer money’ and that Noakes had refused to lend any more. Mrs Sellon was thriftless, everybody knew that. Kirk would have liked to ask her whether, having last seen Mr Noakes engaged in a violent quarrel, she had had no qualms about his subsequent disappearance; but the question stuck in his throat. He would be saying in so many words that an officer of the law could be suspected of a murder; without better evidence he could not bring himself to do it. His next dreary job was to question the Sellons, and he was not looking forward to that. In a mood of the blackest depression, he went off to interview the coroner.