Dorothy Sayers - The Nine Tailors

“I couldn’t just feel the same, Will,” said Jim. “I didn’t blame you, mind — but that rope stuck in my gullet. When did you find out what had happened?”

“Why, when the corpse came up. And — you’ll have to forgive me, Jim — but, naturally, I fancied you’d done the job yourself, and — why, there! I didn’t rightly feel the same, neither. Only I kept on hoping, maybe he’d died natural.”

“He didn’t do that,” said Parker, thoughtfully.

“Then who killed him?” demanded Jim.

“I’m sure you didn’t, for one,” replied the detective. “If you had, you’d have accepted the suggestion that he died of exposure. And somehow I’m inclined to believe your brother didn’t do it either — though you’re both accessories after the fact to Deacon’s crimes, and you aren’t clear of the other thing yet; don’t think it. You’d have an awkward time with a prosecuting counsel, both of you. But personally, I’m inclined to believe you both.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“How about Mrs. Thoday? The truth, mind.”

“That’s all right, sir. She was uneasy in her mind — I won’t say she wasn’t, seeing me so queer, especially after the body was found. But it was only when she saw Deacon’s handwriting on that paper that the meaning of it all come to her. Then she asked me, and I told her part of the truth. I said I’d found out that the dead man was Deacon and that somebody — not me — must have killed him. And she guessed that Jim was mixed up in it. So I said, maybe, but we must stand together and not make trouble for Jim. And she agreed, only she said we must get married again, because we were living in sin. She’s a good woman, and I couldn’t reason her out of it, so I gave in about that, and we’d fixed to get it all done quiet-like in London — only you found us out, sir.”

“Yes,” said Blundell, “you’ve got to thank his lordship here for that. He seemed to know all about it, and very sorry he was to have to stop you, I must say. Seemed to think whoever put Deacon away ought to get the Wedding March out of Lohengrin and flowers all down the aisle.”

“Is there any reason why they shouldn’t go on and get married now, Superintendent?”

“I don’t know as there is,” grunted Mr. Blundell. “Not if these two are telling the truth. Proceedings there may be — you two ain’t out of the wood yet, but as to getting married, I don’t see no great harm in it. We’ve got their story, and I don’t know as poor Mary can add very much to it.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Will again.

“But as to who did kill Deacon,” went on the Superintendent, “we don’t seem very much forrarder. Unless it was Potty or Cranton, after all. I don’t know as I ever heard anything queerer than this business. All these three, a-dodging in and out of that old belfry, one up t’other come on — there’s something behind it yet that we don’t understand. And you two—” he turned fiercely on the brothers—“you keep your mouths shut about this. It’ll have to come out some time, that’s a certainty, but if you get talking and obstruct us in our duty of laying hands on the rightful murderer, you’re for it. Understand?”

He ruminated, sucking his walrus moustache between his large yellow teeth. “I’d better go down home and grill Potty, I suppose,” he muttered, discontentedly. “But if he done it, how did he do it? That’s what beats me.”

IV.

A FULL PEAL OF KENT TREBLE BOB MAJOR

(Three Parts)

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8th the Observation.

Call her before, middle with a double, wrong with a double and home; wrong with a double and home with a double; middle with a double; wrong and home with a double; before, middle with a double, wrong and home with a double; before, middle with a double and wrong with a double. Twice repeated.

(J. WILDE)

THE FIRST PART

THE WATERS ARE CALLED OUT

Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creepeth upon the earth there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark.

GENESIS vii. 8, 9.

The public memory is a short one. The affair of the Corpse in Country Churchyard was succeeded, as the weeks rolled on, by so many Bodies in Blazing Garages, Man-Hunts for Missing Murderers, Tragedies in West-End Flats, Suicide-Pacts in Lonely Woods, Nude Corpses in Caves and Midnight Shots in Fashionable Road-Houses, that nobody gave it another thought, except Superintendent Blundell and the obscure villagers of Fenchurch St. Paul. Even the discovery of the emeralds and the identity of the dead man had been successfully kept out of the papers, and the secret of the Thoday remarriage lay buried in the discreet breasts of the police, Lord Peter Wimsey and Mr. Venables, none of whom had any inducement to make these matters known.

Potty Peake had been interrogated, but without much success. He was not good at remembering dates, and his conversation, while full of strange hints and prophecies, had a way of escaping from the restraints of logic and playing gruesomely among the dangling bell-ropes. His aunt gave him an alibi, for what her memory and observation were worth, which was not a great deal. Nor did Mr. Blundell feel any great enthusiasm about putting Potty Peake in the dock. It was a hundred to one that he would be pronounced unfit to plead, and the result, in any case, might be to lock him up in an institution. “And you know, old lady,” said Mr. Blundell to Mrs. Blundell, “I can’t see Potty doing such a thing, poor chap.” Mrs. Blundell agreed with him.

As regards the Thodays, the position was highly unsatisfactory. If either were charged separately, there would always be sufficient doubt about the other to secure an acquittal, while, if they were charged together, their joint story might well have the same effect upon the jury that it had already had upon the police. They would be acquitted and left under suspicion in the minds of their neighbours, and that would be unsatisfactory too. Or they might, of course, both be hanged—“and between you and me, sir,” said Mr. Blundell to the Chief Constable, “I’d never be easy in my mind if they were.”

The Chief Constable was uneasy too. “You see, Blundell,” he observed, “our difficulty is that we’ve no real proof of the murder. If you could only be sure what the fellow died of—”

So a period of inaction set in. Jim Thoday returned to his ship; Will Thoday, his marriage ceremony performed, went home and went on with his work. In time the parrot forgot its newly-learnt phrases — only coming out with them at long and infrequent intervals. The Rector carried on with his marryings, churchings and baptisms, and Tailor Paul tolled out a knell or two, or struck her solemn blows as the bells hunted in their courses. And the River Wale, rejoicing in its new opportunity, and swollen by the heavy rains of a wet summer and autumn, ground out its channel inch by inch and foot by foot, nine feet deeper than before, so that the water came up brackish at high tide as far as the Great Leam and the Old Bank Sluices were set open to their full extent, draining the Upper Fen.

And it was needed; for in that summer the water lay on the land all through August and September, and the corn sprouted in the stocks, and the sodden ricks took fire and stank horribly, and the Rector of Fenchurch St. Paul, conducting the Harvest Festival, had to modify his favourite sermon upon Thankfulness, for there was scarcely sound wheat enough to lay upon the altar and no great sheaves for the aisle windows or for binding about the stoves, as was customary. Indeed, so late was the harvest and so dank and chill the air, that the stoves were obliged to be lit for the evening service, whereby a giant pumpkin, left incautiously in the direct line of fire, was found to be part-roasted when the time came to send the kindly fruits of the earth to the local hospital.