Dorothy Sayers - The Nine Tailors

“Well, I thought, you’d better make tracks. Nobby, while the dirty work’s going on down there. So I came in again carefully and bolted the door after me and started to come down the ladder. It was awkward going in the dark and after a bit I switched my torch on, and I wished I hadn’t. There I was, and those bells just beneath me — and, God! how I hated the look of them. I went all cold and sweaty and the torch slipped out of my hand and went down, and hit one of the bells. I’ll never forget the noise it made. It wasn’t loud, but kind of terribly sweet and threatening, and it went humming on and on, and a whole lot of other notes seemed to come out of it, high up and clear and close — right in my ears. You’ll think I’m loopy, but I tell you that bell was alive. I shut my eyes and hung on to the ladder and wished I’d chosen a different kind of profession — and that’ll show you what a state I was in.”

“You’ve got too much imagination. Nobby,” said Parker.

“You wait, Charles,” said Lord Peter. “You wait till you get stuck on a ladder in a belfry in the dark. Bells are like cats and mirrors — they’re always queer, and it doesn’t do to think too much about them. Go on, Cranton.”

“That’s just what I couldn’t do,” said Nobby, frankly. “Not for a bit. It felt like hours, but I daresay it wasn’t more than five minutes. I crawled down at last — in the dark, of course, having lost the torch. I groped round after it and found it, but the bulb had gone, naturally, and I hadn’t any matches. So I had to feel for the trapdoor, and I was terrified of pitching right down. But I found it at last, and after that it was easier, though I had a nasty time on the spiral staircase. The steps are all worn away, and I slipped about, and the walls were so close I couldn’t breathe. My man had left all the doors open, so I knew he’d be coming back, and that didn’t cheer me up much, either. When I was out in the church I hared it for all I was worth to the door. I tripped over something on the way, too, that made an awful clatter. Something like a big metal pot.”

“The brass ewer at the foot of the font,” said Wimsey.

“They didn’t ought to keep it there,” said Mr. Cranton, indignantly. “And when I got out through the porch, I had to pussyfoot pretty gently over that beastly creaking gravel. In the end I got away and then I ran — golly, how I ran! I hadn’t left anything behind at Wilderspin’s, bar a shirt they’d lent me and a tooth-brush I’d bought in the. village, and I wasn’t going back there. I ran and ran like hell, and the rain was something cruel. And it’s a hell of a country. Ditches and bridges all over the place. There was a car came past one time, and trying to get out of the light, I missed my footing and rolled down the bank into a ditch full of water. Cold? It was like an ice-bath. I fetched up at last in a barn near a railway station and shivered there till morning, and presently a train came along, so I got on that. I forget the name of the place, but it must have been ten or fifteen miles away from Fenchurch. By the time I got up to London I was in a fever, I can tell you; rheumatic fever, or so they said. And you see what it’s done to me. I pretty nearly faded out, and I rather wish I had. I’ll never be fit for anything again. But that’s the truth and the whole truth, my lord and officers. Except that when I came to look myself over, I couldn’t find Deacon’s cipher. I thought I’d lost it on the road, but if you picked it up in the belfry, it must have come out of my pocket when I pulled the torch out. I never killed Deacon, but I knew I’d have a job to prove I didn’t, and that’s why I spun you a different tale the first time you came.”

“Well,” said Chief Inspector Parker, “let’s hope it’ll be a lesson to you to keep out of belfries.”

“It will,” replied Nobby fervently. “Every time I see a church tower now it gives me the jim-jams. I’m done with religion, I am, and if I ever go inside a church-door again, you can take and put me in Broadmoor.”

THE THIRD PART

WILL THODAY GOES IN QUICK AND COMES OUT SLOW

For while I held my tongue, my bones consumed away through my daily complaining.

PSALM xxxii. 3.

Wimsey thought he had never seen such utter despondency on any face as on William Thoday’s. It was the face of a man pushed to the last extremity, haggard and grey, and pinched about the nostrils like a dead man’s. On Mary’s face there was anxiety and distress, but something combative and alert as well. She was still fighting, but Will was obviously beaten.

“Now then, you two,” said Superintendent Blundell, “let’s hear what you have to say for yourselves.”

“We’ve done nothing we need be ashamed of,” said Mary.

“Leave it to me, Mary,” said Will. He turned wearily to the Superintendent. “Well,” he said, “you’ve found out about Deacon, I suppose. You know that he done us and ours a wrong that can’t be put right. We been trying, Mary and me, to put right as much as we can, but you’ve stepped in. Reckon we might have known we couldn’t keep it quiet, but what else could we do? There’s been talk enough about poor Mary down in the village, and we thought the best thing was to slip away, hoping to make an honest woman of her without asking the leaves of all they folk with long tongues as ’ud only be too glad to know something against us. And why shouldn’t we? It weren’t no fault of ours. What call have you got to stop us?”

“See here. Will,” said Mr. Blundell, “it’s rough luck on you, and I’m not saying as ’tisn’t, but the law’s the law. Deacon was a bad lot, as we all know, but the fact remains somebody put him away, and it’s our job to find out who did it.”

“I ain’t got nothing to say about that,” said Will Thoday, slowly. “But it’s cruel hard if Mary and me—”

“Just a moment,” said Wimsey. “I don’t think you quite realise the position, Thoday. Mr. Blundell doesn’t want to stand in the way of your marriage, but, as he says, somebody did murder Deacon, and the ugly fact remains that you were the man with the best cause to do it. And that means, supposing a charge were laid against you, and brought into court — well, they might want this lady to give evidence.”

“And if they did?” said Will.

“Just this,” said Wimsey. “The law does not allow a wife to give evidence against her husband.” He waited while this sank in. “Have a cigarette, Thoday. Think it out.”

“I see,” said Thoday, bitterly. “I see. It comes to this — there ain’t no end to the wrong that devil done us. He ruined my poor Mary and brought her into the dock once, and he robbed her of her good name and made bastards of our little girls, and now he can come between us again at the altar rails and drive her into the witness-box to put my neck in the rope. If ever a man deserved killing, he’s the one, and I hope he’s burning in hell for it now.”

“Very likely he is,” said Wimsey, “but you see the point. If you don’t tell us the truth now—”

“I’ve nothing to tell you but this,” broke out Thoday in a kind of desperation. “My wife — and she is my wife in God’s sight and mine — she never knew nothing about it. Not one word. And she knows nothing now, nothing but the name of the man rotting in that grave. And that’s the truth as God sees us.”

“Well,” said Mr. Blundell, “you’ll have to prove that.”

“That’s not quite true, Blundell,” said Wimsey, “but I dare say it could be proved. Mrs. Thoday—”

The woman looked quickly and gratefully at him.

“When did you first realise that your first husband had been alive till the beginning of this year, and that you were, therefore, not legally married to Will Thoday here?”