Dorothy Sayers - The Nine Tailors

“Why not?”

“Why, because you can bet your sweet life that the emeralds were taken away by whoever it was killed Legros — whether it was Cranton or Thoday or somebody else we don’t know about yet.”

“I suppose that’s a fact. Anyhow, my lord, if we read the cipher and find the hiding-place, and the stuff’s gone, that’ll be pretty good proof that we’re working along the right lines.”

“So it will. But,” added Wimsey, as the Superintendent and Bunter piled into the car and were whisked away out of Leamholt at a speed which made the policeman gasp, “if the emeralds are gone, and Cranton says he didn’t take them, and we can’t prove he did, and we can’t find out who Legros really was, or who killed him, why then — where are we?”

“Just where we were before,” said Mr. Blundell.

“Yes,” said Wimsey. “It’s like Looking-Glass Country. Takes all the running we can do to stay in the same place.”

The Superintendent glanced about him. Flat as a chessboard, and squared like a chess-board with intersecting dyke and hedge, the fen went flashing past them.

“Very like Looking-Glass Country,” he agreed, “same as the picture in the book. But as for staying in the same place — all I can say is, it don’t look like it, my lord — not where you’re concerned.”

THE EIGHTH PART

LORD PETER FOLLOWS HIS COURSE BELL TO LEAD

I will again urge on the young conductor the great advantage that it will be to him to write out touches or even whole peals… whereby he will gain a great insight into the working of the bells.

TROYTE On Change-Ringing.

“Well, of course,” admitted Mr. Cranton, grinning up ruefully from his pillow into Lord Peter’s face, “if your lordship recognises me, that’s done it. I’ll have to come clean, as the sheet said to the patent washer. It’s a fact I was in Fenchurch St. Paul on New Year’s Day, and a lovely place it is to start a happy New Year in, I don’t think. And it’s true I failed to report myself as from last September. And if you ask me, I think it’s damned slack of you flatties not to have dug me out earlier. What we pay rates and taxes for I don’t know.”

He stopped and shifted restlessly.

“Don’t waste your breath in giving us lip,” said Chief Inspector Parker of the C.I.D., kindly enough. “When did you start growing that face-fungus? In September? I thought so. What was the idea? You didn’t think it was becoming, did you?”

“I didn’t,” said Mr. Cranton. “Went to my heart, I may say, to disfigure myself. But I thought, ‘They’ll never know Nobby Cranton with his handsome features all hidden in black hair.’ So I made the sacrifice. It’s not so bad now, and I’ve got used to it, but it looked horrible while it was growing. Made me think of those happy times when I lived on His Majesty’s bounty. Ah! and look at my hands. They’ve never got over it. I ask you, how can a gentleman carry on with his profession after all those years of unrefined manual labour? Taking the bread out of a man’s mouth, I call it.”

“So you had some game on, which started last September,” said Parker, patiently. “What was it, now? Anything to do with the Wilbraham emeralds, eh?”

“Well, to be frank, it was,” replied Nobby Cranton. “See here, I’ll tell you the truth about that. I didn’t mind — I never have minded — being put inside for what I did do. But it’s offensive to a gentleman’s feelings when his word isn’t believed. And when I said I never had those emeralds, I meant what I said. I never did have them, and you know it. If I had had them, I wouldn’t be living in a hole like this, you can bet your regulation boots. I’d have been living like a gentleman on the fat of the land. Lord!” added Mr. Cranton, “I’d have had ’em cut up and salted away before you could have said ‘knife.’ Talk about tracing them — you’d never have traced them the way I’d have worked it.”

“So you went to Fenchurch St. Paul to try and find them, I suppose?” suggested Wimsey.

“That’s right, I did. And why? Because I knew they must be there. That swine — you know who I mean—”

“Deacon?”

“Yes, Deacon.” Something that might have been fear and might have been mere anger twisted the sick man’s face. “He never left the place. He couldn’t have got them away before you pinched him. You watched his correspondence, didn’t you? If he’d packed them up and posted them, you’d have known it, eh? No. He had them there — somewhere — I don’t know — but he had them. And I meant to get them, see? I meant to get them, and I meant to bring them along and show ’em to you and make you take back what you said about my having had them. Pretty silly, you’d have looked, wouldn’t you, when you had to own up that I was right?”

“Indeed?” said Parker. “That was the idea, was it? You were going to find the stuff and bring it along like a good little boy?”

“That’s right.”

“No idea of making anything out of them, of course?”

“Oh, dear, no,” replied Mr. Cranton.

“You didn’t come to us in September and suggest that we should help you to find them?”

“Well, I didn’t,” agreed Mr. Cranton. “I didn’t want to be bothered with a lot of clumsy cops. It was my own little game, see? All my own work, as the pavement-artists say.”

“Delightful,” said Parker. “And what made you think you knew where to look for them?”

“Ah!” said Mr. Cranton, cautiously. “Something Deacon once said gave me an idea. But he was a liar about that, too. I never met such a liar as that fellow was. He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety-pin. It serves me right for having to do with menials. A mean, sneaking spirit, that’s what you find in that sort. No sense of honour at all.”

“Very likely,” said the Chief Inspector. “Who is Paul Taylor?”

“There you are!” said Mr. Cranton, triumphantly. “Deacon said to me—”

“When?”

“In the — oh, well! — in the dock, if you will excuse my mentioning such a vulgar place. ‘Want to know where those shiners are?’ he said. ‘Ask Paul Taylor or Batty Thomas’—and grinned all over his face. ‘Who’ve they?’ said I. ‘you’ll find ’em in Fenchurch,’ he said, grinning still more. ‘But you aren’t likely to see Fenchurch again in a hurry,’ he said. So then I biffed him one — excuse the expression — and the blinking warder interfered.”

“Really?” said Parker, incredulously.

“Cross my heart and wish I may die,” said Mr. Cranton. “But when I got down to Fenchurch, you see, I found there were no such people — only some rubbish about bells. So I dismissed the matter from my mind.”

“And sneaked off on the Saturday night. Why?”

“Well, to be frank with you,” replied Mr. Cranton, “there was an individual in that place I didn’t like the looks of. I got the idea that my face struck a chord in her mind, in spite of the exterior decorations. So, not wishing for argument — which is always ungentlemanly — I went quietly away.”

“And who was the penetrating individual?”

“Why, that woman — Deacon’s wife. We had stood shoulder to shoulder, as you might say, under unfortunate circumstances, and I had no wish to renew the acquaintance. I never expected to see her in that village, and, candidly, I thought she showed a lack of taste.”

“She came back when she married a man named Thoday,” said Wimsey.

“Married again, did she?” Cranton’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see. I didn’t know that. Well, I’m damned!”

“Why the surprise?”

“Why? — Oh, well — somebody wasn’t too particular, that’s all.”