Dorothy Sayers - The Nine Tailors

He very well remembered the episode of the motorbike. It had struck him as funny at the time. He had been hanging round a garridge in Bloomsbury in the early morning of January 5th, hoping to pick up a job, when he see a bloke coming along on this here bike. The bloke was short and stocky, with blue eyes and sounded like he might be the boss of some outfit or other — he spoke sharp. and quick, like he might be accustomed to giving orders. Yes, he might have been an officer in the mercantile marine, very likely. Come to think of it, he did look a bit like a sailor. He was dressed in a very wet and dirty motoring coat and wore a cap, pulled down over his face, like. This man had said: “Here, sonny, d’you want a job?” On being told “Yes,” he had asked: “Can you ride a motor-bike?”

Frank Jenkins had replied, “Lead me to it, guv’nor”; whereupon he had been told to take the machine back to a certain garage, to collect the deposit and to bring it to the stranger outside the Rugby Tavern at the corner of Great James Street and Chapel Street, when he would receive something for his pains. He had done his part of the business, and hadn’t took more than an hour, all told (returning by ’bus), but when he arrived at the Rugby Tavern, the stranger was not there, and apparently never had been there. A woman said she had seen him walking away in the direction of Guildford Street. Jenkins had hung about till the middle of the morning, but had seen no sign of the man in the motor-coat. He had therefore deposited the money with the landlord of the Tavern, with a message to say that he could wait no longer and had kept back half-a-crown — that being the amount he thought fair to award himself for the transaction. The landlord would be able to tell them if the sum had ever been claimed.

The landlord, being interrogated, brought the matter to mind. Nobody answering the description of the stranger had ever called for the money, which, after a little search and delay, was produced intact in a dirty envelope. Enclosed with it was the garage-proprietor’s receipt, made out in the name of Joseph Smith, at a fictitious address.

The next thing was, obviously, to confront James Thoday with Frank Jenkins. The messenger identified his employer immediately; James Thoday persisted, politely, that there was some mistake. What next, thought Mr. Parker.

He put the question to Lord Peter, who said:

“I think it’s time for a spot of dirty work, Charles. Try putting William and James alone in a room with a microphone or whatever you call the beastly gadget. It may not be pretty, but you’ll probably find that it works.”

In these circumstances, therefore, the brothers met for the first time since James had left William on the morning of January 4th. The scene was a waiting-room at Scotland Yard.

“Well, William,” said James.

“Well. James,” said William.

There was a silence. Then James said: “How much do they know?”

“Pretty well everything, by what I can make out.”

There was another pause. Then James spoke again in a constrained voice: “Very well. Then you had better let me take the blame. I’m not married, and there’s Mary and the kids to be thought of. But in God’s name, man, couldn’t you have got rid of the fellow without killing him?”

“That,” said William, “is just what I was going to ask you.”

“You mean to say, it wasn’t you did away with him?”

“Of course not. I’d be a fool to do it. I’d offered the brute two hundred pounds to go back where he came from. If I hadn’t a-been ill, I’d a-got him away all right, and that’s what I thought you’d a-done. My God! when he come up out o’ that grave, like Judgment Day, I wished you’d killed me along of him.”

“But I never laid hand on him, Will, till after he was dead. I saw him there, the devil, with that ghastly look on his face, and I never blamed you for what you’d done. I swear I never blamed you. Will — only for being such a fool as to do it. So I broke his ugly face in, so that no one should ever guess who he was. But they’ve found out, seemingly. It was cursed bad luck, that grave being opened so soon. May be it’d have been better if I’d carried him out and thrown him in the Drain, but it’s a long way to go, and I thought we’d be safe enough.”

“But, see here, James — if you didn’t kill him, who did?”

It was at this point that Superintendent Blundell, Chief Inspector Parker and Lord Peter Wimsey walked in on the pair of them.

THE FIFTH PART

THE DODGING

Then whispered they of a violated grave — of a disfigured body.

EDGAR ALLAN POE: Berenice.

The only difficulty was that the two witnesses who had formerly refused to speak could now hardly speak fast enough and spoke both together. Chief Inspector Parker was obliged to call for silence.

“All right,” he said. “You’ve both been suspecting each other and shielding each other. We’ve grasped that. Now that we’ve got that clear, let’s have the story. William first.” He added the usual caution.

“Well, sir,” replied William, briskly. “I don’t know as I’ve much to tell you, because his lordship here seems to have worked it all out surprising neat. What my feelings were when he told me just what I did that night I won’t say — but what I do want to make as clear as I can is that my poor wife never knew one thing about it, first to last. Why, that was my whole trouble all the time — how to keep it from her.

“I’ll begin right at the beginning, with the night of December 30th. I was just coming home, pretty late for me, from seeing to one of the cows that had gone sick up at Sir Henry’s place, and as I was passing the church, I thought I saw somebody a-creeping up to the porch and going in. It was a dark night, of course, but, if you remember, sir, it had begun to snow, and I could see something moving, like, against the white. So I thinks, that’s Potty up to his games again — I better send him off home. So I goes up to the church door, and I sees footmarks going all along the path as far as the porch, and there they seems to stop. So I says, Hallo! and looks round about a bit. That’s queer, I says to myself, where’s the beggar got to? So I goes round the church, and I sees a light a-moving about and going towards the vestry. Well, I thinks, maybe it’s Rector. And then I thinks, well, maybe it ain’t. So I comes back to the door, and there’s no key in it, like there would be in the ordinary way if Rector had been inside. So I pushes the door and it opens. And in I goes. And then I hears somebody a-moving about and bumping, like, up in the chancel. I goes along quiet, having rubber boots on, that I was wearing for the fields, and when I gets round behind the chancel screen I sees a light and hears the bloke in the vestry, so in I goes and there’s a fellow a-tugging away at the ladder Harry Gotobed uses for seeing to the lamps and that, what’s always kept a-lying along the wall. He had his back to me, and on the table I see a kind of a dark lantern and something else as had no right to be there, and that’s a revolver. So I catches hold of the revolver and said, loud and sharp, ‘What are you doing there?’ And he jumped round pretty damn quick and made a dive for the table. ‘No, you don’t,’ I said, ‘I’ve got your gun and I know how to use it. What are you after?’ Well, he started some sort of tale about being out of work and tramping about and wanting a place to sleep in, and I said,’ That won’t wash. How about this gun? Hands up,’ I said, ‘let’s see what else you’ve got on you.’ So I went through his pockets and brought out what looked to me like a set of pick-locks. ‘Well, my lad,’ I said, ‘that’s quite enough for me. You’re for it.’ And he looked at me, and laughed like hell, and said, ‘Think again, Will Thoday.’ And I said, ‘How do you know my name?’ and then I looked again and said, ‘My God, it’s Jeff Deacon!’ And he said, ‘Yes; and you’re the man that’s married my wife.’ And he laughed again. And then it come over me just what it all meant.”