Dorothy Sayers - The Nine Tailors

Here, by exercising a certain amount of tact, he obtained a list of those households to which Bass was regularly supplied in quarts. Most of the names were those of farmers in outlying places, but as an afterthought, Mrs. Tebbutt mentioned one which made Wimsey prick up his ears.

“Will Thoday, he had a few while Jim was at home — a dozen or so, it might be. He’s a nice chap, is Jim Thoday — makes you laugh by the hour telling his tales of foreign parts. He brought back that there parrot for Mary, though as I says to her, that bird ain’t no proper example for the children. How it do go on, to be sure. I’m sure, if you’d heard what it said to Rector the other day! I didn’t know where to look. But it’s my belief. Rector didn’t understand half of it. He’s a real gentleman, is Mr. Venables, not like old parson. He was a kind man, too, but different from Rector, and they say he used to swear something surprising in a clergyman. But there, poor man! He had a bit of a weakness, as they say. ‘Do as I say, don’t do as I do’—that’s what he used to say in his sermons. Terrible red in the face he were, and died sudden, of a stroke.”

Wimsey tried in vain to steer the conversation back to Jim Thoday. Mrs. Tebbutt was fairly launched into reminiscences of Old Rector, and it was half an hour before he was able to make his way out of the Wheatsheaf. Turning back towards the Rectory, he found himself at Will Thoday’s gate. Glancing up the path, he saw Mary, engaged in hanging out washing. He suddenly determined on a frontal attack.

“I hope you’ll forgive me, Mrs. Thoday,” he said, when he had announced himself and been invited to enter, “if I take your mind back to a rather painful episode. I mean to say, bygones are bygones and all that and one hates digging anything up, what? But when it comes to dead bodies in other people’s graves and so on, well, sometimes one gets wondering about them and all that sort of thing, don’t you know.”

“Yes, indeed, my lord. I’m sure if there’s anything I can do to help, I will. But as I told Mr. Blundell, I never knew a thing about it, and I can’t imagine how it came there. That was the Saturday night he was asking me about, and I’m sure I’ve thought and thought, but I couldn’t call to mind as I’d seen anything.”

“Do you remember a man who called himself Stephen Driver?”

“Yes, my lord. Him that was at Ezra Wilderspin’s. I remember seeing him once or twice. They said at the inquest that the body might have been him.”

“But it wasn’t,” said Wimsey.

“Wasn’t it, my lord?”

“No. Because we’ve found this chap Driver and he’s still alive and kicking. Had you ever seen Driver before he came here?”

“I don’t think so, my lord; no, I can’t say as I ever did.”

“He didn’t remind you of anybody?”

“No, my lord.”

She appeared to be answering quite frankly, and he could not see any signs of alarm in voice or expression.

“That’s odd,” said Wimsey, “because he says that he ran away from St. Paul because he thought you had recognised him.”

“Did he? Well, that’s a strange thing, my lord.”

“Did you ever hear him speak?”

“I don’t think I ever did, my lord.”

“Suppose he hadn’t been wearing a beard, now — would he remind you of anybody?”

Mary shook her head. Like most people, she found the effort of imagination beyond her.

“Well, do you recognise this?”

He took out a photograph of Cranton, taken at the time of the Wilbraham emeralds affair.

“That?” Mrs. Thoday turned pale. “Oh, yes, my lord. I remember him. That was Cranton, that took the necklace and was sent to prison same time as — as my first husband, my lord. I expect you know all about that. That’s his wicked face. Oh, dear! it’s given me quite a turn, seeing that again.”

She sat down on a bench and stared at the photograph. “This isn’t — it couldn’t be Driver?”

“That’s Driver,” said Wimsey. “You had no idea of it?”

“That I never had, my lord. If I’d ever had such a thought, I’d have spoken to him, don’t you fear! I’d have got out of him where he put those emeralds to. You see, my lord, that was what went so hard against my poor husband, this man saying as my husband had kept the necklace himself. Poor Jeff, there’s no doubt he was tempted — all through my fault, my lord, talking so free — and he did take the jewels, I’m sorry to say. But he didn’t have them afterwards; It was this Cranton had them all the time. Don’t you think it hasn’t been a bitter hard cross to me, my lord, all these years, knowing as I was suspected? The jury believed what I said, and so did the judge, but you’ll find some as thinks now that I had a hand in it and knew where the necklace was. But I never did, my lord, never. If I’d been able to find it, I’d have crawled to London on my hands and knees to give it back to Mrs. Wilbraham. I know what poor Sir Henry, suffered with the loss of it. The police searched our place, and I searched it myself, over and over—”

“Couldn’t you take Deacon’s word for it?” asked Wimsey, softly.

She hesitated, and her eyes clouded with pain.

“My lord, I did believe him. And yet, all the same — well! it was such a terrible shock to me that he could have done such a thing as rob a lady in the master’s house, I didn’t know but what he mightn’t perhaps have done the other too. I didn’t rightly know what to believe, if you understand me, my lord. But now I feel quite sure that my husband was telling the truth. He was led away by this wicked Cranton, there’s no doubt of that, but that he was deceiving us all, afterwards, I don’t believe. Indeed, my lord, I don’t think he was — I’m quite sure of it in my own mind.”

“And what do you suppose Cranton came down here for?”

“Doesn’t that show, my lord, that it was him as hid them after all? He must have got frightened and hid them away in some place that night, before he got away.”

“He says himself that Deacon told him in the dock that the emeralds were here, and he was to ask Tailor Paul and Batty Thomas to find them for him.”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t understand that, my lord. But if my husband had said such a thing to him then, Cranton wouldn’t have kept quiet about it. He’d have told the jury, he was that mad with Jeff.”

“Would he? I’m not so sure. Suppose Deacon told Cranton where to find the emeralds, don’t you think Cranton would have waited in the hope of getting hold of them when he came out of prison? And mightn’t he have come down here last January to look for them? And then, thinking you’d spotted him, mightn’t he have run away in a fright?”

“Well, my lord, I suppose he might. But then, who would that poor dead man be?”

“The police think he may have been an accomplice of Cranton’s, who helped him to find the emeralds and was killed for his pains. Do you know whether Deacon made any friends among the other convicts or the warders at Maidstone?”

“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, my lord. He was allowed to write now and again, of course, but naturally he wouldn’t tell anybody a thing like that, because his letters would be read.”

“Naturally. I wondered whether perhaps you’d had a message from him at some time — through a released prisoner, or anything like that?”

“No, my lord, never.”

“Have you ever seen this writing?”

He handed her the cryptogram.

“That writing? Why, of course—”

“Shut up you fool! Shut up you bloody fool! Come on, Joey! Show a leg there!”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Wimsey, startled. Peering round the door into the inner room, he encountered the bright eye of a grey African parrot fixed knowingly upon him. At sight of a stranger, the bird stopped talking, cocked its head aslant, and began to sidle along its perch.