Have His Carcase

Wimsey drove over to Darley, interviewed the farmer and asked for the loan of the-bay mare and

moment at which he himself should come into view, and thence time his progress. The farmer, surmising with a wink that the loosing of the mare and the, tragedy at the Flat-Iron had some connection with one another, readily agreed, and, himself mounting a sturdy white nag, took his departure along the shore, while Wimsey, glancing at his watch, set out in pursuit of the bay mare.

She came up to be caught with remarkable readiness, no doubt connecting Wimsey; in her simple equine mind with oats. The gap in the hedge had been opened again, by permission, and Wimsey, having bridled her, rode her through it and stirred her up to a canter.

The mare, though willing enough, had, as he expected, no exceptional turn of speed, and since their progress had to be made actually through the water, it was a trifle impeded and remarkably noisy. As he rode, Wimsey kept his eye on the cliffs above. Nobody, and nothing was in sight, with the exception of a few grazing animals. The road was hidden. He made good time to the cottages, and then began to look about for Ormond’s break in the cliff. He recognised it when he came to it by the fallen rocks and the fragments of broken fence above, and looked at his watch. He was a little ahead of time. Glancing along the shore, he saw the Flat-Iron well in view, with Farmer Newcombe seated upon it, a little dark lump at a mile’s distance. He left the break in the cliff to be explored on the return journey, and urged the mare to her best pace. She responded vigorously, and they made the final mile in fine style, the water spraying about them. Wimsey could see the farmer clearly now; he had the white horse tethered to the famous ring-bolt and was standing on the rock, watch conscientiously in hand, to time them.

It was not till they were within a few score paces of the rock that the bay mare seemed to realise what was happening. Then she started as if she had been shot, flung up her head and slewed round so violently that Wimsey, jerked nearly on to her neck by the plunge, was within an ace of being spun off altogether. He dug his knees into her bare sides and’ hauled hard upon the bridle, but, like many farm nags, she had a mouth of iron, and the snaffle made little impression upon her. She was off, tearing back in her tracks as if the devil was after her. Wimsey, cynically telling himself that he had under-estimated her power of speed, clung grimly to her withers and concentrated on shortening his left-hand rein so as to wrench her head, round to the sea. Presently, finding it hard to go, forward against this determined drag, she slacked pace, skirmishing sideways.

‘Bless and save you, my girl,’ said Wimsey, mildly, ‘what s the matter with you?’

The mare panted and shuddered.

But this’ll never do,’ said Wimsey. He stroked her sweaty shoulder reassuringly. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you, you know.’

She stood quietly enough, but shook as she stood.

‘There, there,’ said Wimsey.

He turned her head once more in the direction of the Flat-Iron and was aware of the hurried approach of Mr Newcombe, on the white horse.

‘Lord a’mighty,’ exclaimed Mr Newcombe, ‘what’s come to the mare? I thought she’d have you off surely. Done a bit of riding, ain’t you.

‘Something must have frightened her,’ said Wimsey., ‘Has she ever been there before?’

‘Not as I know on,’ said the farmer.

‘You weren’t waving your arms or anything, were you?? ‘Not I. I was looking at my watch — and there! Dang me if I haven’t clean forgot what time I made it. I was fair mazed with her taking fright so all of a sudden.’ ‘Is she given to shying?’

‘Never known her take and do such a thing before.’ ‘Queer,’ said Wimsey. ‘I’ll try her again. Keep behind

us, and we’ll know it wasn’t you that startled her.’

He urged the mare back towards the rock at a gentle trot. She moved forward uneasily, chucking her head about.

Then, as before, she stopped dead and stood trembling.

They tried her half-a-dozen times, cajoling and encouraging her, but to no purpose. She would not go near the Flat-Iron — not even when Wimsey dismounted and led her step by step. She flatly refused to budge, standing with her shaking legs rooted to the sand, and rolling white and terrified eyes. Out of sheer mercy for her they had to give up the attempt.

‘I’ll’ be damned,’ said Mr Newcombe.

‘And so will I,’ said Wimsey.

‘What can have come over her-’ said Mr Newcombe.

‘I know what’s come over her all right,’ said Wimsey, ‘but well, never mind, we’d better go back’

They rode slowly homewards, Wimsey did not stay to examine the break in the cliff. He did not need to. He knew now exactly what had happened between Darley and the Flat-Iron Rock. As he went, he put the whole elaborate structure of his theories together, line by line, and like Euclid, wrote at the bottom of it:

WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE.

In the meantime a constable Ormond was also feeling a little blue.. He had suddenly bethought him of the one person in Darley who was likely to have kept tabs on Mr Perkins. This was old Gaffer Gander who, every day, rain or shine, sat on the seat of the little shelter built about the village oak in the centre of the green. He had unaccountably overlooked Gaffer Gander the previous day, owing to the fact that — by a most unusual accident — the Gaffer had not been in. his accustomed seat when Ormond was making his inquiries It turned out that Mr Gander had actually been in Wilvercombe, celebrating his youngest grandson’s wedding to a young woman of that town, but now he was back again and ready to be interviewed. The old gentleman was in high spirits. He was eighty-five come Martinmas, hale and hearty, and boasted that, though he might per haps be a trifle hard of hearing, his eyes, thank God, were as good as ever they were.

Why, yes, he remembered Thursday, 18th Day as the poor young man was found dead at the Flat-Iron. A beautiful day, surely, only a bit blowy towards evening. He always notices any strangers that came through. He remembered seeing a big open car come past at ten o’clock. A red one it was, and he even knew the number of it, because his greatgrandson, little Johnnie — ah! and a bright lad he was — had noticed what a funny number it was. 01 0101—just like you might be saying Oy, oy, oy. Mr Gander could call to mind the day when there wasn’t none o’ them things about, and folks was none; the worse for it, so far as he could see. Not that Mr Gander was agin’ progress. He’d always voted Radical in his young days, but these here Socialists was going too far, he reckoned. Too free with other folks’ money, that’s what they were. It was Mr Lloyd George as give him the Old Age Pension, which was only right, seeing he had worked hard all his life, he didn’t hold with no dole for boys of eighteen. When Mr Gander was eighteen, he was up at four o’clock every morning and on the land till sunset and after for five shillings week and it hadn’t done him no harm as he could see: Married at nineteen he was, and ten children, seven of them still alive and hearty. Why, yes, the car had come back at one o’clock. Mr Gander had just come out from the Feathers after having a pint to his dinner, and he see the car stop and the gentleman as was camping in the lane get out of it. There was a lady in the car, very finely rigged out, but mutton dressed as lamb in Gaffer’s opinion. In his day, women weren’t ashamed of their age. Not that he minded a female making the best of herself, he was all for progress, but he thought they were going a bit too far nowadays. — Mr Martin, that was the gentleman’s name, had said good morning to him and gone into the Feathers, and the car had taken the Heathbury road. Why, yes, he’d seen Mr Martin leave. Half-past one it were by the church clock. A good clock, that was. Vicar, he’d had it put in order at his own expense two years ago and when they turned the wireless on, you might hear Big Ben and the church clock striking together quite beautiful. There hadn’t been no wireless in Mr Gander’s day, but he thought it was a great thing and a fine bit of progress. His grandson Willy, the one that was married on a woman over to, Taunton, had give: him a beautiful set. It was that loud, he could hear it beautiful, even though his hearing was getting a little hard… He’d heard tell as they were going to show you pictures by wireless soon, and he hoped the Lord might spare him long enough to see it., He hadn’t nothing against wireless, though some people thought it was going a bit far to have the Sunday services laid on like gas, as you might say. Not but what it might be a good thing for them as was ailing, but he thought it made the young folks lazy and disrespectful-like. He himself hadn’t missed going to Sunday church for twenty year, not since he broke his leg falling off the hayrick, and while he had his strength, please God, he would sit under vicar. Why, yes, he did remember a strange young man coming through the village that afternoon. Of course he could describe him; there wasn’t nothing wrong with his eyes, nor his memory neither, praise be. It was only his hearing as wasn’t so good but, as Mr Ormond might have noticed, you had only to speak up clear and not mumble as these young people did nowadays and Mr Gander could hear you well enough. One of these rickety-looking townbred fellows it was, in big glasses, with a little bag strapped to his back and along stick to walk with, same as they all had. Hikers, they called them. They all had long sticks, like these here; Boy Scouts, though, as anybody with experience could have told them, there was nothing like a good crutch-handled ash-plant to give you a help along when you were walking. Because, it stood to reason, you got a better holt on it than on one of they long sticks. But young folks never listened to reason, especially the females, and he thought they was going a bit far, too, with their bare legs and short pants like football players. Though Mr Gander wasn’t so old neither that he didn’t like to look at a good pair of female legs. In his days females didn’t show their legs, but he’d known men as would go a mile to look at a pretty ankle.

Constable Ormond put all his energy into his last question.

‘What time did this young man go through?’’

‘What time? You needn’t shout, young man — I may be a bit hard of hearing, but I’m not deaf. I says to vicar only last Monday, “That was a good sermon you give us yesterday,” I says. And he says, “Can, you hear all right where you sit?” And I says to him, “I may not have my hearing as good as it was when I was a young man,” I says, “but I can still hear you preach, vicar,” I says, “from My Text is taken to Now to God the Father.” And he says, “You’re a wonderful man for your age, Gander,” he says. And so I be, surely.’

‘So you are, indeed,’ said Ormond. ‘I was just asking you when you saw this fellow with the glasses and the long stick pass through the village.’

‘Nigh on two o’clock it was,’ replied the old gentleman, triumphantly, ‘nigh on two o’clock. Because why? I says to myself, “You’ll be wanting a wet. to your whistle, my lad,’.’ I says, “and the Feathers shuts at two, so you’d better hurry up a bit.” But he goes. right on, coming from Wilvercombe and walking straight through towards Hinks’s Lane. So I says “Bah!’ I says, “you’re one o’ them pussy-footin’ slop-swallowers, and you looks it, like as if you was brought, up on them gassy lemonades, all belch and no body (if you’ll excuse me), that’s what I says to myself. And I says, “Gander,” I says, ‘that comes like a reminder as you’ve just got time for another pint.” So I has my second pint, and when I gets into the bar I see as it’s two o’clock by the clock in the bar, as is always kept five minutes_ fast, on account of getting the men out legal’

Constable Oemond took the blow in silence. Wimsey was wrong; wrong as sin. The two o’clock alibi was proved up to the hilt. Weldon was innocent; Bright was innocent;

Perkins was innocent as day. It now only remained to prove that the mare was innocent, and the whole Weldon-theory would collapse like a pack of cards.

He met Wimsey on the village green and communicated this depressing intelligence.

Wimsey looked at him. ‘Do you happen to have a railway time-table on you?’ he said at last.

‘Time-table? No, my lord. But I could get one. Or perhaps I could tell your lordship—’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Wimsey. ‘I only wanted to look up the next train to Colney Hatch.’

The constable stared in his turn.,

‘The mare is guilty,’ said Wimsey. ‘She was at the Flat-Iron, and she saw the murder done.’

‘But I thought, my lord, you proved that that was impossible.’

‘So it is. But it’s true.’

Wimsey returned to report his conclusions to Superintendent Glaisher, whom he found suffering from, nerves and temper.

‘Those London fellows have lost Bright,’ he remarked, curtly. ‘They traced him to the Morning Star office, where he drew his reward in the form of an open cheque. He cashed it at once in currency notes and then skipped off to a big multiple outfitters — one of those places all lifts and exits. To cut a long story short, he diddled them there, and now he’s vanished. I thought you could rely on these London men, but it seems I was mistaken. I wish we’d never come up against this qualified case,’ added the Superintendent bitterly. ‘And now you say that the mare was there and that she wasn’t there, and that none of the people who ought to have ridden her did ride her. Are you going to say; next that she cut the bloke’s throat with her own shoe and turned herself into a sea-horse?’

Saddened, Wimsey went home to the Bellevue and found a telegram waiting for him. It had been despatched from a West-end office that afternoon, and ran:

DOING BRIGHT WORK HERE. EXPECT RESULTS SHORTLY. COMMUNICATING CHIEF INSPECTOR PARKER. HOPE FIND OPPORTUNITY DESPATCH LOVAT TWEEDS FROM FLAT. — BUNTER

Chapter XXVII. The Evidence Of The Fisherman’s Grandson

‘Has it gone twelve?

This half-hour. Here I’ve set

A little clock, that you may mark the time.’

— Death’s Jest-Book

Wednesday, I July

‘THERE’S one thing that stands out a mile,’ said Inspector Umpelty. ‘If there was any hanky-panky with that horse round about; two o’clock at the. Flat-Iron,’ Pollock and his precious grandson must have seen it. It’s not a mite of use saying they didn’t. I always did think that lot was in it up to the eyes. A quiet, private, heart-to-heart murder they might have overlooked, but a wild horse careering about they couldn’t, and there you are.’

Wimsey nodded.

‘I’ve seen that all along — but how are you going to get it out of them? Shall I have a go at it, Umpelty? That young fellow, Jem — he, doesn’t look as surly as his grandpa — how about him? Has he got any special interest or hobbies?’

‘Well, I don’t know, my lord, not without it might be football. He’s reckoned a good player, and I know he’s hoping to get taken on by the Westshire Tigers.’

‘H’m. Wish it had been cricket — that’s more in my line. Still, we can but try. Think one might find him anywhere about this evening? How about the Three Feathers?’

‘If he’s not out with his boat, you’d most likely find him there.’

Wimsey did find him there, It is always reasonably easy to get conversation going in a pub, and it will be a black day for detectives when beer is abolished. After an hour’s entertaining discussion about football and the chances of various teams in the coming season, Wimsey found Jem becoming distinctly more approachable. With extreme care and delicacy he then set out to work the conversation round to the subject of fishing, the Flat-Iron and the death of Paul Alexis. At first, the effect was disappointing. Jem lost his loquacity, his smile vanished, and he fell into a brooding gloom. Then, just as Wimsey was deciding to drop the dangerous subject, the young man seemed to make up his mind. He edged a little closer to Wimsey, glanced over his shoulder at the crowd about the bar, and muttered:

‘See here, sir, I’d like to have a word with you about that.’

By all means. Outside? Right! — Dashed interesting,’ he added, more loudly. Next time I’m down this way I’d like to come along and see you play. Well, I must be barging along. You going home? I can run you over in the car if you like — won’t take a minute.’

‘Thank’ee, sir. I’d be glad of it.’

‘And you could show me those photographs you were talking about.’

The two pushed their way out. Good-nights were exchanged, but Wimsey noticed that none of the — Darley inhabitants seemed particularly cordial to join. There was a certain air of constraint about their farewells.

They got into the car, and drove in silence till they were past the level crossing. Then Jem spoke:

‘About that business, sir. I told Grandad he’d better tell the police how it were, but he’s that obstinate, and it’s a fact there’d be murder done if it was to get out. None the more for that, he did ought to speak, because this here’s a hanging matter and there’s no call as I see to get mixed up with it. But Grandad, he don’t trust that Umpelty and his lot, and he’d leather the life out of Mother or me if we was to let on. Once tell the police, he says, and it ‘ud be all about the place.’

‘Well — it depends what it is,’ said Wimsey, a little mystified. ‘Naturally, the police can’t hide anything — well, anything criminal, but—’

‘Oh, ’tis not that, sir. Leastways, not as you might take notice on. But if they Bainses was to hear tell on it and was to let Gurney know — but there! I’ve always told Grandad as it wur a fool thing to do, never mind if Tom Gurney did play a dirty trick over them there nets.’

‘If it’s nothing criminal,’ said Wimsey, rather relieved, ‘you may be sure I shan’t let anybody know.’

‘No, sir. That’s why I, thought I’d like to speak to you, sir. You see, Grandad left a bad impression, the, way he wouldn’t let on what he was doing off the Grinders, and I reckon I did ought to have spoke up at the time, only for knowing as Grandad ‘ud take it out of Mother the moment my back was turned.’

‘I quite understand. But, what was it you were doing at the Grinders?’

‘Taking lobsters, sir.’

‘Taking lobsters? What’s the harm in that?’

‘None, sir; only, you see, they was Tom Gurney’s pots.’

After a little interrogation, the story became clear. The unfortunate Tom Gurney, who lived in Darley, was accustomed to set out his lobster-pots near the Grinders, and drove a very thriving trade with them. But, some time previously, he had offended old Pollock in the matter of certain nets, alleged to have sustained wilful damage. Mr Pollock, unable to obtain satisfaction by constitutional methods, had adopted a simple method of private revenge. He chose suitable moments when Tom Gurney was absent, visited the lobster-pots, abstracted the greater part of their live contents and replaced the pots. It was not, Jem explamed, that Mr Pollock really hoped to take-out the whole value of the damaged nets in lobsters; the relish of the revenge lay in the thought of ‘doing that Gurney down’ and in hearing ‘that Gurney swearing from time to time about the scarcity of lobsters in the bay. Jem thought the whole thing rather foolish and, didn’t care for having a hand in, it, because it would have suited his social ambitions better to keep on good terms with his neighbours, but what with one thing and another (meaning, Wimsey gathered, what with old Pollock’s surly temper — and the possibility of his leaving, his very considerable savings to some other person, if annoyed), Jem had humoured his grandfather in this matter of lobster-snatching.

Wimsey was staggered. It was as simple as that, then. All this mystification, and nothing behind it but a trivial local feud. He glanced sharply at Jem. It was getting dark, and the young man’s face was nothing but an inscrutable profile.

‘Very well, Jem,’ he said. ‘I quite see. But now, about this business on the shore. Why did you and your grandfather persist in saying you saw nobody there?’

‘But that was right, sir. We didn’t see nobody. You see, it was like this, sir. We had the boat out, and we brings her along there; round ‘bout the slack, knowin’ as the other boats ‘ud be comin’ home with the tide, see? And Grandad says, “Have a look along the shore, Jem,’ he says, ‘and see as there’s none o’ them Gurneys a-hangin’ about.” So I looks, an’ there weren’t a soul to be seen, leaving out this chap on the Flat-Iron. And I looks at him and I sees as he’s asleep or summat, and he’s none of us by the looks of him, so I says to Grandad as he’s some fellow from the town, like.’

‘He was asleep, you say?’

‘Seemingly. So Grandad takes a look at him and says,’”He’s doin’ no harm,” he says, “but keep your eyes skinned for the top of the cliffs.” So I did, and there wasn’t a single soul come along that there shore before we gets to the Grinders, and that’s the truth if I was to die for it.’

‘Now, see here, Jem, said Wimsey. ‘You heard all the evidence at the inquest, and you know that this poor devil was killed round about two o’clock.’

‘That’s true, sir; and as sure as I’m sitting here, he must ha’ killed himself, for there was nobody come a-nigh him — barring the young lady, of course. Unless it might be while we was taking them pots up. I won’t say but what we might a-missed summat then. We finished that job round about two o’clock — I couldn’t say just when it were, not to the minute, but the tide had turned nigh on three-quarters of an hour, and that’s when I looks at this fellow again and I says to Grandad, “Grandad,” I says, “that chap there on the rock looks queer-like,” I says, “I wonder if there’s sum mat wrong.” So we brings the boat inshore a bit, and then, all of a sudden, out comes the young lady from behind them rocks and starts caperin’ about. And, Grandad, he says “Let un bide,” he says, “let un bide. Us have no call to be meddlin’ wi’ they, he says: And so we puts about again. Because, you see, sir, if we’d gone a-meddling and it was to come out as we was thereabouts with the boat full of Tom Gurney’s, lobsters, Tom Gurney’d a-had summat to say about it.’

‘Your grandfather said you saw Alexis first at about 1.45. It ‘ud be before that, sir. But I’ll not say as we kept our eyes on un all the time, like’

‘Suppose someone had come along, say, between 1.45 and two o’clock, would you have seen him?’

‘Reckon so. No, sir; that poor gentleman made away with himself, there’s no doubt of it. Just cut his throat quiet-like as he sat there. There’s no manner of doubt about that.’

Wimsey was puzzled: If this was lying, it was done with a surprising appearance of sincerity. But if it was truth, it made the theory of murder still harder. to substantiate than before. Every fragment of evidence there was, pointed to the conclusion that Alexis had died alone upon his rock aid by his own hand.

And yet — why wouldn’t the bay mare go near the Flat-Iron? Was it possible Wimsey was no friend to superstition, but he had known such things happen before — was it possible that the uneasy spirit of Paul Alexis still hung about the Flat-Iron, perceptible to the brute though not to self-conscious man? He had known another horse that refused to pass the scene of an age-old crime.

He suddenly thought of another point that he might incidentally verify.

‘Will anybody be up and about at your home, Jem?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. Mother’s sure to be waiting up for me.’

‘I’d like to see her.’

Jem offered no objection, and Wimsey went in with him to Pollock’s cottage. Mrs Pollock, stirring soup for Jem in a saucepan, received him politely, but shook her head at his question.

‘No, sir. We heard no horse on the beach this afternoon.’ That settled that, then. If Wimsey could ride past the cottages unnoticed, so could any other man.

‘The wind’s off-shore today,’ added Mrs Pollock.

‘And you’re still sure you heard nothing of the sort last Thursday week?’

‘Ah!’ Mrs Pollock removed the saucepan. ‘Not in the afternoon, what the police was asking about. But Susie have called to mind as she did hear something like a trampling round about dinner-time. Happen it might be twelve o’clock. But being at her work, she didn’t run out to look.

’Twelve o’clock?’

‘Thereabout, sir. It come back to her all of a sudden, when we was talkin’ over what that young Ormond wur askin’ about.’

Wimsey left the cottage with his ideas all in disorder. If someone had been riding on the shore at twelve o’clock it accounted for the horseshoe, but it did not account for the murder. Had he, after all, been quite wrong in attaching so much importance to the horseshoe? Might not some mischievous lad, finding the bay mare at large, have ridden her along the beach for a lark? Might she not even have strayed away on her own-account?

But that brought him back to her strange behaviour of that afternoon, and to the problem of the ring-bolt. Had the ring-bolt been used for some other purpose? Or suppose the murderer had come to the rock on horseback at twelve o’clock and remained talking there with Alexis till two o’clock? But Jem said that there had been only the one figure on the Flat-Iron. Had the murderer lurked hidden in the rocky cleft till the time came to strike the blow? But why? Surely, the sole reason for riding thither could only have been the establishment of an alibi, and an alibi is thrown away if one lingers for two hours before taking advantage of it. And how had the mare got home? She was not on the shore between one o’clock and two o’clock if — again Jem was to be trusted. Wimsey played for a few moments with the idea of two men riding on one horse — one to do the murder and one to take the animal back, but the thing seemed far-fetched and absurd.

Then an entirely new thought struck him. In all the discussions about the crime, it had been taken for granted that Alexis had walked along, the coast-road to the Flat-Iron; but had this been proved? He had never thought to ask. Why might not Alexis have been the rider?

In that case, the time of the mare’s passing might be explained, but other problems bristled up thick as thorns in a rose-garden. At what point had he taken horse? He had been seen to leave Darley Halt, by road in the direction of Lesston Hoe. Had he subsequently returned and fetched the mare from the field, and so ridden? If not, who had brought her and to what rendezvous? And again, how had she, returned?

He determined to hunt out Inspector Umpelty and face him with these problems.

‘The Inspector was just going to bed, and his welcome was not a hearty one, but, he showed signs of animation on hearing Wimsey’s fresh information.

‘Them Pollocks and Moggeridges are the biggest liars in creation,’’’ he observed, ‘and if there’s been murder done, it’s good proof that they’re all concerned in it,’ said he. ‘But as to how Alexis got there; you can set your mind at rest. We’ve found six witnesses who saw him at various points along the road between 10.15 and 11.45, and unless there’s some other fellow been going about in a black beard, you can take it as proved that he went by the coast-road and no other way.’

‘Did none of the witnesses know him personally?’

‘Well, no, ‘the Inspector admitted, ‘but it isn’t likely there’d be more than one young fellow in a blue suit and a beard going about at that time, unless somebody was deliberately disguised as him, and where’d be the point of that? I mean to say, the only reasons for anybody impersonating.him would be to make out either, that he was in that neighbourhood at that particular time when he was really elsewhere, or that he was really alive some time after he was supposed to be killed. Now, we know that he was in that neighbourhood all right, so that disposes of number one and we know that he really was killed at two o’clock and not earlier, and that disposes of number two. Unless, of course,’ said the Inspector, slowly, ‘the real Alexis was up to some funny business between 10.15 and two o’clock, and this other fellow was making an alibi for him. I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘I suppose,’ said Wimsey, ‘that it really was Alexis who was killed. His face was gone, you know, and we’ve only the clothes and a photograph to go upon.’’

‘Well, it was somebody else with a real beard, anyhow,’ said the Inspector. ‘And who would Alexis be wanting to kill, do you suppose?’

‘Bolsheviks,’ suggested Wimsey, lightly. ‘He might make an appointment with a Bolshevik who meant to murder him, then murder the Bolshevik.’

‘So he might — but that doesn’t make things any easier. Whoever it was did the murder, he had to get away from the Flat-Iron. And how could he have managed to change clothes with the victim? There wasn’t time.’

‘Not after the murder, certainly.’

‘Then where are you? It’s only making things more complicated. If you ask me, I think your notion of the mare having been ridden down there at some other time by some mischievous young fellow is a good one. There’s nothing against it except that ring-bolt, and that might quite well have been put there for a quite different purpose. That washes the mare out of the thing altogether and makes it all a lot easier. Then we can say that either Alexis did away with himself or else he was murdered by some person we don’t know of yet, who just walked along the coast on his two feet. It doesn’t matter, that those Pollocks didn’t see him. He could have been hiding under the rock, like you said. The only trouble is, who was he? It wasn’t Weldon, it wasn’t Bright, and it wasn’t Perkins. But they’re not the only people in the world.’

Wimsey nodded.

‘I’m feeling a bit depressed,’ he said. ‘I seem to have fallen down a bit over this case.’

‘It’s a nuisance,’ said Umpelty, ‘but there, We’ve only been at it a fortnight, and what’s a fortnight? We’ll have to be patient, my lord, and wait for the translation of that letter to come through. The explanation may be all in that.’

Chapter XXVIII. The Evidence Of The Cipher

‘I know not whether

I see your meaning: if I do, it lies

Upon the wordy wavelets of your voice,

Dim as an evening shadow in a brook.’

— Fragment

Friday, 3 July

THE letter from ‘Clumps’ at the Foreign Office did not arrive till the Friday, and then was a disappointment. It ran:

‘DEAR WIMBLES,

‘Got your screed. Old Bungo is in China, dealing. with the mess-up there, so have posted enclosure off to him as per instructions. He may be up-country, but he’ll probably get it in a few weeks. How’s things? Saw Trotters last week at the Carlton. He has got himself into a bit of a mess with his old man, but seems to bear, up. You remember the Newton-Carberry business? Well, it’s settled, and Flops has departed for the Continent. What-ho!

‘Yours ever,

CLUMPS.’

‘Young idiot!’ said Wimsey, wrathfully. He threw the letter into the waste-paper basket, put on his hat and went round to Mrs Lefranc’s. Here he found Harriet industriously at work upon the cipher.’ She reported, however, total failure.

‘I don’t think it’s a scrap of good going on with these marked words,’ said Wimsey. ‘And Bungo has failed us. Let’s put our great brains to the business. Now, look here. Here is a problem to start with. What is in this letter, and why wasn’t it burnt with the rest?’

‘Now you mention it, that is rather odd.’

‘Very. This letter came, on the Tuesday morning. On the Wednesday, bills were settled up, and on the Wednesday night, papers were burned. On Thursday, morning, Alexis set out to catch his train: Is it too much to suppose that the instructions to do all this were in the letter?’

‘It looks likely.’

‘It does. That means that this letter probably made the appointment for the meeting at the Flat-Iron. Now why wasn’t this letter burnt with the rest?’

Harriet let her mind range over the field of detective fiction, with which she was moderately well acquainted.

‘In my own books,’ she remarked, ‘I usually make the villain end up by saying “Bring this letter with you.” The idea is, from the villain’s point of view, that he can then make certain that the paper is destroyed. From my point of view, of course, I put it in so that the villain can leave a fragment of paper clutched in the victim’s stiffened hand to assist Robert Templeton.’

‘Just so. Now, suppose our villain didn’t quite grasp the duplicity of your motives. Suppose he said to himself: “Harriet Vane and other celebrated writers of mystery fiction always make the murderer tell the victim to bring the letter with him. That is evidently the correct thing to do.” That would account for the paper’s being here.’

‘He’d have to be rather an amateur villain.’

‘Why shouldn’t he be? Unless this is really the work of a trained Bolshevik agent, he probably is. I suggest that somewhere in this letter, perhaps at the end, we shall find the words “Bring this letter with you” and that will account for its presence.’

‘I see. Then why, do we find it tucked away in an inner pocket and not in the victim’s hand as per schedule?’

‘Perhaps the victim didn’t play up?’

‘Then the murderer ought to have searched him and found the paper.’

‘He must have forgotten.’

‘How inefficient!’

‘I can’t help that. Here is the paper. And no doubt it’s full of dangerous and important information. If it made an appointment, it must be because it would then almost amount to a proof that Alexis didn’t commit suicide but was murdered.’

‘Look here, though! Suppose the letter was brought simply because it contained instructions for reaching the Flat-Iron and so on, which Alexis didn’t want to forget.’

‘Can’t be that. For one thing, he’d have had it handy, in an outer pocket — not tucked away in a case. And besides—’

‘Not necessarily. He’d keep it handy till he got to the place and then he’d tuck it away safely. After all, he sat at the Flat-Iron alone for an hour or so, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but I was going to say something else. If he wanted to keep on referring to the letter, he’d take — not the cipher, which would be troublesome to read, but the decoded copy.’

‘Of course but — don’t you see, that solves the whole thing! He did take the copy, and the villain said: “Have you brought the letter?”‘ And Alexis, without thinking, handed him the copy, and the villain took that and destroyed that, forgetting that the original might be on the body too.’

‘You’re right,’ said Wimsey, ‘you’re dead right. That’s exactly what must have happened. Well, that’s that, but it doesn’t get us very much farther. Still, we’ve got some idea of what must have been in the letter, and that will be a great help with the decoding. We’ve also got the idea that the villain may have been a bit of an amateur, and that, is borne out by the letter itself.’

‘How?’

‘Well, there are two lines here at the top, of six letters apiece. Nobody but an amateur would present us with six isolated letters, let alone two sets of six. He’d run the whole show together. There are just about two things these words might be. One: they might be a key to the cipher — a letter-substitution key, but they’re not, because I’ve tried them, and anyway, nobody would be quite fool enough to send keyword and cipher together on the same sheet of paper. They might, of course, be, a key-word or words for the next letter, but I don’t think so. Six letters is very short for the type of code I have in mind, and words of twelve letters with no repeating letter are very rare in any language.’.

‘Wouldn’t any word do, if you left out the repeated letters?’

‘It would but judging by Alexis careful marking of his dictionary, that simple fact does not seem to have occurred to these amateurs. Well, then, if these words are not, keys to a cipher, I suggest that they represent an address, or, more probably, an address and date. They’re in the right place for it. I don’t mean a whole address, of course — just the name of a town — say Berlin or London — and the date below it.’

‘That’s possible.’

‘We can but try. Now we don’t know much about the town, except that the letters are said to have come from Czechoslovakia. But we might get the date.’

‘How would that be written?’

‘Let’s see. The letters may just represent the figures of the day, month and year. That means that one of them is an arbitrary fill-up letter, because you can’t have an odd number of letters, and a double figure for the number of the months is quite impossible, since the letter arrived here on June 17th. I don’t quite know how long the post takes from places in Central Europe, but surely not more than three or four days at the very outside. That means it must have been posted After the 10th of June. If the letters do not stand for numbers, then I suggest that RBEXMG stands either for something-teen June or June something-teen. Now, to represent figures our code-merchant may have taken 1=A, 2=B, 3=C, and so on, or he may have taken 1 as the first letter of the code-word and so on. The first would be more sensible, because it wouldn’t give the code away.” So we’ll suppose that 1 =A, so that he originally wrote A? JUNE or JUNE A? and then coded the letters in, the ordinary, way, the? standing for the unknown figure, which must be less than 5. Very good. Now, is he more likely to have written June something-teen or something-teen June?’

‘Most English people write the day first and the month second. Business people at any rate, though old-fashioned ladies still stick to putting the month first.’

‘All right.’ We’ll try something-teen June first and say that RBEXMG stands for A? June. Very good. Now we’ll see what we can make of that. Let’s write it out in pairs. We’ll leave out RB for the moment and start with EX. Now EX=JU. Now there’s one point about this code that is rather helpful in decoding. Supposing two letters come next door to one another in the code-diagram, either horizontally or vertically, you’ll find that the code pair and the clear pair have a letter in common. You don’t get that? Well, look! Take our old key-word SQUANDER, written in the diagram like this:

S

Q

U

A

N

D

E

R

If you’re coding the pair of letters DE, then, by taking the letters to the right of them (by the horizontal rule) you get DÉER; the letter B appears both in code and clear. And the same for letters that immediately follow one another in a vertical line. Now, in our first pair EX= JU, this doesn’t

The hypothesis that RBEXMG represented a date written entirely in numerals proved to be untenable, and for brevity’s sake, the calculations relating to this supposition are omitted.

happen, some may provisionally write them down in diagonal form

J

E

X

U

Taking these letters as forming the corners of a parallelogram, we can tell ourselves that JX must come on the same line in the diagram either vertically or horizontally; the same with JE, the same with EU, and the same with UX.’

‘But suppose JN follows the horizontal rule or the vertical rule without the two letters actually coming together?’

‘It doesn’t matter; ‘it’ would only mean then that all four of them come on the same line like this;? J E U X, or X U E? J or some arrangement of that kind, So taking all the letters we have got and writing them in diagonals we get this:

J

E

X

U

N

M

G

E

A

R

B

?

Unfortunately there are no side-by-side letters at all. It would be very helpful if there were, but we can’t have everything.

‘Now the first striking thing is this that U and X have to come on the same line. That very strongly suggests that they both come in the bottom line. There are five letters that follow U in the alphabet, and only four spaces in which to put them. One of them, therefore, must be in the key-word. We’ll take a risk with it and assume that it isn’t Z. If it is, we’ll have to start all over again, but one must make a start somewhere. We’ll risk Z. That gives us three possibilities for our last line: UVXYZ with W in the key-word, or UWXYZ with V in the key-word, or UVWXZ with Y in the key-word. But in any case, U must be in the bottom left-hand corner. Now, looking again at our diagonals, we find that E and U must come in the same line. We can’t suppose that E comes immediately above U, because it would be a frightful great key-word that only left us with four spaces between E and U, so we must put E in one of the top three spaces of the left-hand column, like this:

e

e

e

U

Z

‘That’s not much, but it’s a beginning. Now let’s tackle X. There’s one square in which we know it can’t be: It can’t come next to U, or there would be two spaces between X and Z with only one letter to fill them, so X must come in either the third or the fourth square of the bottom line. So now we have two possible diagrams.

e

e

e

U

X

Z

e

e

e

U

X

Z

‘Looking at our diagonal pairs again, we find that J and X come in the same line and so do J and E. That means that J can’t come immediately above X, so we will again enter it on both our diagrams in the top three squares in

the X line. Now we come to an interesting point. M and N have got to come in the same line. In Diagram 1 it looks fearfully tempting’ to put them into the two empty spaces on the right of J, leaving K and L for the key-word; but you can’t do that in Diagram 2, because there’s not room in the line. If Diagram 2 is the right; one, then M or N or both of them must come in the key-word. M and E,come in the same line, but N can’t come next-door to E. That warns us against a few arrangements, but still leaves a devil of a lot of scope. Our key-word can’t begin with EN, that’s a certainty. But now, wait! If E is rightly, placed in the third square down, then N can’t come at the right-hand extremity of the same line, for that would bring it next to E by the horizontal rule; so in Diagram, I that washes out the possibility of JMN or JLN for that line. It would give us JLM, which is impossible unless N is the key-word, because N can’t come next to E and yet must be in the same line with it and also with. M.’

Wimsey clawed a little at his hair and sat muttering.

‘It looks as though we’d sucked our five letter rather dry,’ said Harriet. ‘How about trying the rest of the message? I’ve got it all ready sorted out into pairs., Hullo! Here’s our old friend EXMG appearing again in the body of it.’

‘Is there?’ Wimsey sat up. ‘Then, if we’re right, that will be another, date in June. I can’t believe it’s part of two words, one of which ends in J, or I, or JU or IU or IUN or JUN. If the letter was making an appointment for June 18th, why shouldn’t the two letters before it be the letters for 18, that is AH? We’ll try it, anyway; what are they?’

‘O B’

‘OB=AH. That’s a fat lot of use. Well, we’ll stick em down.

O

A

H

B

O and A in the same line, 0 and H in the same line, and A and B we knew about before. That looks as though we might be on the right track, but it doesn’t help us much, because none of the letters we’ve; already placed comes into it.

‘Just a moment,’ put in Harriet. “I’ve got a brainwave. That town in the heading it’s supposed to be something in Central Europe. It’s got six letters, and the last two are the first two reversed. How about Warsaw?’

‘By jove! that’s bright! We can but try it. Let’s see — that gives us this He wrote down the new pairs of diagonals.

W

X

N

A

R

A

T

S

“W and X come in the same line,’ he observed, ‘and it’s terribly tempting to imagine that W comes in-’the last line, next door to X. Otherwise, of course, it must be in the keyword. Just for fun, let’s enter it in the last line in both our diagrams. Now, this becomes interesting. W and N are also in the same line. We can’t place N in the fourth line down, because it’s got to be in line with E. Nor can we put it in the third line down, because there are only six letters that come between N and U, and we should have eight spaces left to put them in. Therefore, if W is rightly placed, N has got to go in the top two lines, which means that it definitely does belong to the key-word.

Harriet filled the letters in tentatively.

1

e

n

i

e

n

i

e

U

W

X

Y

Z

2

e

n

i

e

n

i

e

i

U

W

X

Z

‘That makes Diagram 1 look wrong,’ she said. ‘Why? What have we done? Oh, I know. E and N can’t come together, so if that’s the right diagram, E must come in the third line. I say! That would mean a key-word of eleven letters!’

‘Not necessarily. E may be in its proper alphabetical place. But if Diagram 1 is right, then the beginning of Line 3 is the only place for it. Let’s get on. S and T come in one line, and so do R and T, but RST don’t follow one another, or RS would become ST, which it doesn’t. I should like ST to go in the two places next before U, but we can’t be sure that that is the right place for them. Well, dash, it! stick ’em down — if we’re wrong we must do it again, that’s all. There! Now in that case, R must be in the key-word and therefore in one of the top two spaces on the right of the diagram. That means that RS will be something — T.’

But we know RS! If AT=RS, then RS=AT.”

‘Good lord! so it does! That’s fine? That practically proves that our S and T are correct. And now we know that AR must come next to one another in the key-word.’

Harriet pored over the diagrams again.

‘Can’t we do something now with NX=AW? Yes — look! If we put A into either of the squares in Diagram 1, so as to make NX=AW, then A won’t come next to R! So either we’re all wrong, or we can wash our Diagram 1 altogether.’

‘Hurray! — Brilliant woman! I always hated Diagram 1, so we’ll stash it. That leaves us with a very hopeful-looking Diagram 2.’

e

N

ia

r

e

N

ia

r

e

S

T

U

V

W

X

Z

‘I’m glad you think it’s hopeful! How about this, of M and N coming in the same line? Can we do anything with that now?’

‘Why not? Let’s try. Put M immediately, below the N spaces. That leaves five spaces, between it and S and only three letters to fill them, because we know that N and R are in the key-word. So that M must come in one of the four spaces in the top left-hand corner: Now we do know that NÉMG. Obviously G can’t come immediately between E and N anywhere, because that would give us a key-word with MNG in it, which sounds almost incredible. But that still leaves us with several possible arrangements. Is there anything else we can do?’

‘We can fill in Q in the space before S. It isn’t likely to be in the key-word without its U, and we know roughly what has become of R.

‘Yes. All right. There it is. Do any of these pairs of letters make sense in the letter itself, by the way?’

‘No. I’ve been trying to fit them in, but they’re remarkably unhelpful. There’s a group ATGM which works out as RSEN, but that might be anything. And quite near the beginning there’s TS followed by QJ. TS=SQ, and you’d expect the next group to be U — something, but it isn’t. QJ must be S — something-?

‘So it is; that shows we’re on the right track. Q is an arbitrary letter stuck in to separate the two S’s it’s curious how little one can get out of the actual text at this stage. Shows what an ingenious beast of a code it is, doesn’t it? Wait a jiff the group before that is MG=NE — that gives us NESS. Perfectly possible and even probable, but it might be anything. Here it comes again! Whatever it is, it appears to be important — its the same word, BFFY followed by NESS, but BFFY is simply baffling, I can see nothing for it but to go on struggling with the top left-hand corner. Let’s write out all the possible positions for NE =MG.

E

G

M

N

E

G

M

N

M

N

E

G

‘I cam see one thing,’ said Harriet, ‘and that is that we have got to have a vowel of some kind between M and N, and that vowel can’t be A, E, I, or U, because we’ve placed those elsewhere. Therefore it’s got to be either 0 or Y.’

‘O for preference. The number of words with MYN in them must be limited: But Y has got to be in the key-word somewhere: The end would be the likeliest place for it. perhaps it ends in MONY. That gives us MONY in Diagram (1), and a word of nine letters. That’s quite plausible. And it’s got to begin with E — G. That’s less pleasant. EBG, ECG; let’s run through the alphabet. EHG — I think not. EIG pronounceable, but we got I elsewhere. ELG — where’s the dictionary? Nothing there. ENG is impossible, we know where N is — same with ERG. My child, you can wash out all words ending in MONY — they won’t work on Diagram, (1) or on Diagram (3), and as for Diagram (2), I refuse to believe in a fourteen-letter word until I’m absolutely forced to.’

‘In that case, you can wash out Diagram (2) altogether.’

‘Right-ho! I don’t mind, though a thirteen-letter word ending in MON is not absolutely; inconceivable. In that case, either our word begins with Mon, or it doesn’t.’

‘But it does! We couldn’t find any words beginning E — G’

‘Nor we could. — Now then! We’ve got our E and our G fixed as well as our MON. Now we shan’t be long! Fill them in! Oh! and look here! I’m sure the F must go between the E and the G — it’s so obviously the place for it.’

Harriet filled the diagram in with a quivering pencil.

M

O

N

ia

r

ia

r

E

F

G

i

Q

S

T

U

V

W

X

Z

That does look better,’ she admitted. Now, let’s see if it helps to get any sense out of the letter. Bother! What a lot of groups that we still haven’t got! Still no sense for BFFY. Oh! wait! Here’s something! MZ TS XS RS. Now, MZ is something — U, and quite possibly RU; it’s a 50–50 chance, anyway. TS is SQ and XS is S — something, which means that the Q is just a fill-in letter. Now suppose XS = SI — there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. Then RS might, quite likely be AT there’s nothing against it: And suppose — suppose all these supposes are right, then MZTSXSRS is RUSQSIAT. Knock out the Q and we’ve got RUSSIAT. Why couldn’t that be RUSSIA?’

‘Why, not, indeed? Let’s make it so. Write the, letters down. M O N A R-oh, Harriet!’

‘Don’t joggle!’

‘I must joggle! We’ve got the key-word. MONARCH. Wait a jiff. That leaves three spaces before E, and we’ve only got B and D to put in. Oh, no, I forgot! Y — dear old Y! MONARCHY! Three loud cheers! There you are’ All done by kindness! There! There’s your square complete.. And jolly pretty it looks, I must say.’

M

O

N

A

R

C

H

Y

B

D

E

F

G

IJ

K

L

P

Q

S

T

U

V

W

X

Z

‘Oh, Peter! How marvellous! Let’s, dance or do some thing.’

‘Nonsense! Let’s get on with the job. None of your frivolling now. Start away. PR BF XA LI MK MG BF FY MG TS QJ — and let’s get too the bottom of this BF FY business, once and for all. I’ll read out the diagonals and you write ’em down.’

‘Very well. T — O — H — I—“To His Serene”—can that be right?’

‘It’s English. Hurry up — let’s get BFFY.’

“To His Serene Highness”—Peter! what is all this about?’

Lord Peter turned pale.

‘My God!’ he exclaimed, melodramatically, ‘can it be? Have we been wrong and the preposterous Mrs ‘ Weldon right? Shall I be reduced, at my time of life, to hunting for a Bolshevik gang? Read on!’

Chapter XXIX. The Evidence O F The Letter

‘In one word hear, what soon they, all shall hear:

A king’s a man, and I will be no man

Unless I am a king.’

— Death’s Jest-Book

Friday, 3 July

‘To His SERENE Highness GRAND-DUKE PAVLO ALEXANDREVITCH heir to the throne of the Romanovs.

‘Papers entrusted to us by your Highness now thoroughly examined and marriage of your illustrious ancestress to Tsar Nicholas First proved beyond doubt.’

Harriet paused. ‘What does that mean?’

‘God knows. Nicholas I was no saint, but I didn’t think he ever married anybody except Charlotte-Louise of, Prussia. Who the deuce is Paul Alexis’ illustrious ancestress?’

Harriet shook her head and went on reading.

‘All is in readiness. Your people groaning under oppression of brutal Soviets eagerly welcome return of imperial rule to Holy Russia.’

Wimsey shook his head.

‘If so, that’s one in the eye for my Socialist friends. I was told only the other day that Russian Communism was doing itself proud and that the Russian standard of living, measured in boot-consumption, had risen from zero to one pair of boots in three years per head of population. Still, there may be Russians so benighted as not to be content with that state of things.’

‘Alexis did always say he was of noble birth, didn’t he?’

‘He did, and apparently found somebody to believe him. Carry on.’’

‘Treaty with Poland happily concluded. Money and arms at your disposal. Your presence alone needed.’

‘Oho!’ said Wimsey. ‘Now we’re coming to it. Hence the. passport and the three hundred gold sovereigns.’

‘Spies at work. Use caution. Burn all papers all clues to identity.’

‘He obeyed that bit all right, blow him!’ interjected Wimsey. ‘It looks as though we were now getting down to brass tacks.’

‘On Thursday I8 June take train reaching Darley Halt ten-fifteen walk by coast-road to Flat-Iron Rock. There await Rider from the Sea who brings instruction for your journey to Warsaw. The word is Empire.’

‘The Rider from the Sea? Good gracious! Does that mean that Weldon — that the mare — that —’

‘Read on. Perhaps Weldon is the hero of the piece instead of the villain. But if so, why didn’t he tell us about it?’

Harriet read on.

‘Bring this paper with you. Silence, secrecy, imperative. Boris.’

‘Well!’ said Wimsey. ‘In all this case, from beginning to end, I only seem to have got one thing right. I said that the letter would contain the words: ‘Bring this paper with you” and it does. But the rest of it beats me. “Pavlo Alexeivitch, heir to the throne of the Romanovs.” Can your landlady produce anything in the shape of a drink?’

After an interval for refreshment, Wimsey hitched his chair closer to the table and sat staring at the decoded message.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s get this straight. One thing is certain. This is the letter that brought Paul Alexis to the Flat-Iron. Boris sent it, whoeever he is. Now, is Boris a friend or an enemy?’

He rumpled, his hair wildly, and went on, speaking slowly.

‘The first thing one is inclined to think is that Boris was a friend and that the Bolshevik spies mentioned in the letter, got to the Flat-Iron before he did and murdered Alexis and possibly Boris as well. In that case, what about Weldon’s mare? Did she bring the “Rider from the Sea” to his appointment? And was Weldon the rider, and the imperialist.friend of Alexis? It’s quite. possible, because — no, it isn’t. That’s funny, if you like.’

‘What?’

‘I was going to say, that in that case Weldon could have ridden to the Flat-Iron at twelve, o’clock, when Mrs Pollock heard the sound of hoofs. But he didn’t. He was in Wilvercombe. But somebody else may have done so — some friend to whom Weldon lent the mare.’

‘Then how did the murderer get there?’

‘He walked through the water and escaped the same way, after hiding in the niche till you had gone. It was only while Weldon or Bright or Perkins was supposed to be the murderer that the time-scheme presented any real difficulty. But who was the Rider from the Sea? Why does he not come forward and say: “I had an appointment with this man. I saw him alive at, such a time?’

‘Why, because he is afraid that the man who murdered Alexis will murder him too. But it’s all very confusing. We’ve now got two unknown people to look for instead of one: the Rider from the Sea, who stole the mare and was at the Flat-Iron about midday, and the murderer; who was there at two o’clock.,

‘Yes. How difficult it all is. At any rate, all, this explains Weldon and Perkins. Naturally they said nothing about the mare, because she had gone — and come again long before either of them was at the camping-ground. Wait a moment, though; that’s odd. How did the Rider from the Sea know that Weldon was going to be away in Wilvercombe that morning? It seems to have been pure accident.’

‘Perhaps the Rider damaged Weldon’s car on purpose.’

‘Yes, but even then, how could he be sure that Weldon would go away? On the face of it, it was far more likely that Weldon would be there, tinkering with his car.’

‘Suppose he knew that Weldon meant to go to Wilvercombe that morning in, any case. Then the damaged H.T., lead would be pure bad luck for him, and the fact that Weldon did, after all, get to Wilvercombe, a, bit of compensating good luck.’

‘And how did he know about Weldon’s plans?’

‘Possibly he knew nothing about Weldon at all. Weldon only arrived at Darley on the Tuesday, and all this business was planned long before that, as the date of the letter shows. Possibly whoever it was was horrified to find Weldon encamped in Hinks’s Lane and frightfully relieved to see him barge off on the Thursday morning.’

Wimsey shook his head.

‘Talk’ about coincidence! Well, maybe so. Now let’s go on and see what happened. The Rider made the appointment with Alexis, who would get to the Flat-Iron about 11.45. The Rider met him there, and gave him his instructions — verbally, we may suppose. He then rode back to Darley, loosed the mare and went about his business. Right. The whole thing may have been over by 12.30 or 12.45, and

it must have been over by 1.30, or Weldon would, have

seen him on his return. Meanwhile, what does Alexis do? Instead of getting up and going about his business, he sits peacefully on the rock, waiting for someone: to come along and murder him at two o’clock’

‘He may have been told to sit on a bit, so as not to leave at the same time as the Rider. Or here’s a better. idea. When the Rider has gone, Alexis waits for a little bit — say five minutes — at any rate, till his friend is well out of reach. Then up pops the murderer from the niche in the rock, where he has been eavesdropping, and has an interview with Alexis.’ At two o’clock, the interview ends in murder. Then I turn up, and the murderer pops back into hiding. How’s that? The murderer didn’t show himself while the Rider was there, because he didn’t feel equal to tackling two men at once.’

‘That seems to cover the facts. I only wonder though, that he didn’t murder you too, while he was about it.’

‘That would make it look much less like suicide.’

‘Very true. But how was it you didn’t see these two people talking animatedly on the Flat-Iron when you arrived and looked over the cliff at one o’clock?’

‘Goodness knows! But if, the murderer was standing on the seaward side of the rock — or if they both were — I shouldn’t have seen anything. And they may have been, because it was quite low tide then and the sand would have been dry.’

‘Yes, so it would. And as, the discussion prolonged itself, they saw the tide turn, so they scrambled up on to the rock to keep their feet dry. That would be while you were asleep. But I wonder you didn’t hear the chattage and talkery going on while you were having your lunch. Voices carry well by the sea-shore.’

‘Perhaps they heard me scrambling down the cliff and shut up.’

‘Perhaps. And then the murderer, knowing that you were there, deliberately committed his murder under your very nose, so to speak.’

‘He may have thought I had gone. He knew I couldn’t see him at the moment, because he couldn’t see me.’

‘And Alexis yelled, and you woke up, and he had to hide.’

‘That’s about it. It seems to hang together reasonably well.

And that means we’ve got to look for a quite new murderer who had an opportunity of knowing about the appointment between Boris and Alexis. And,’ added Harriet, hopefully, ’it needn’t be a Bolshevik. It might be somebody with a private motive for doing away with Alexis. How; about the da Soto gentleman who got the reversion of Leila Garland? Leila may have told him some nasty story about Alexis.’

Wimsey was silent; his thoughts seemed to be wandering. Presently he said

‘Yes. Only we happen to know that da Soto was playing at the Winter Gardens all that time. But now I want to look at the thing from a quite different point of view. What about this letter? Is it genuine? It’s written on ordinary sort of paper, without a watermark, which might come from anywhere, so that proves nothing, but if it really comes from a foreign gentleman of the name of Boris, why is it written in English? Surely Russian would be safer and more likely, if Boris was really a Russian imperialist. Then again all that opening stuff about brutal Soviets and Holy Russia is so vague and sketchy. Does it look like the letter of a serious conspirator doing a; real job of work? No names mentioned; no details about the Treaty with Poland; and, on the other hand, endless wasted words about an “illustrious ancestress” and “His Serene Highness”. It doesn’t ring true. It doesn’t look like business. It looks like somebody with a very sketchy idea of the way revolutions really work, trying to flatter that poor boob’s monomania about’ his birth.’

‘I’ll tell you what it does look like,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s like the kind of thing I should put into a detective story if I didn’t know a thing about Russia and. didn’t care much, and only wanted to give a general idea that somebody was a conspirator.’

‘That’s it!’ said Wimsey. ‘You’re absolutely right, It might have come straight out of one of those Ruritanian romances that Alexis was so fond of.’

‘Of course and now we know why he was fond of them.

No wonder! They were all part of the mania. I suppose we ought to have guessed all that.’

‘And here’s another thing. Do you notice that the first two paragraphs of the letter are very casually coded. The sentences are all run together anyhow, as though the writer didn’t much care whether Alexis got them right or wrong. But the minute the good Boris gets down to specific instructions, he starts marking off the ends of his sentences with extra Q’s and X’s, so as to make sure there will be no mistake in decoding. The Flat-Iron loomed much larger in his mind than Holy Russia and disgruntled Poland.’

‘In fact, you think the letter looks like a lure:’

‘Yes. But it’s difficult to be quite sure, even then, who sent it and why. If Weldon is at the bottom of it, as we originally thought, then we are still bothered by all these alibis. If it isn’t Weldon, who is it? If we’re really investigating a political plot, then who was Alexis? Why should anybody want to get rid of him? Unless, of course, he genuinely was somebody important, which seems, hard to believe. He can’t even have imagined himself to be one of the Russian Imperial house — his age is all wrong. I know we’re always hearing tales about the Tsarevitch’s having survived the Revolution, but his name was Alexei Nicholavitch, not Pavlo Alexeivitch. And his age would be quite different — and besides, there never was any doubt about his descent from Nicholas I. There isn’t any note in any of Alexis’ books anywhere, is there? — that would tell us who he imagined he might have been.’

‘Not a thing.’’

Wimsey gathered up the papers from the table and rose to his feet.

‘I shall hand these over to Glaisher,’ he said. ‘They will give him something to think about. I like to see other people doing a spot of work from time to time. Do you realise that it’s nearly tea-time and we haven’t had any lunch?’

‘Time passes when one is pleasantly occupied,’ said Harriet, sententiously.

Wimsey put his hat and papers down on the table, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, took up his belongings again and marched to the door.

‘Cheerio!’ he said, amiably.

‘Cheerio!’ replied Harriet.

He went out. Harriet sat looking at the closed door.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘thank goodness he’s given up asking me to marry him. It’s much better he should put it out of his mind.’

She must have felt strongly about it, for she repeated the remark several times.

Wimsey absorbed, an anomalous meal in the Grill Room, went round to the police-station, handed the decoded letter to the Superintendent, whom; it surprised very much, and then ran his car out to Darley. He was still worried by the coincidence about Weldon and, his absence from Hinks’s Lane during the, crucial period. He approached Mr Polwhistle.

‘Why, yes, my lord,’ said that worthy. ‘The fault was in the H.T. leads all right. We tried the mag, and she was working top-hole, and there wasn’t nothing wrong with the plugs, so after we’d fiddled about a bit more, young Tom here says, “Well,” he says, “only: thing I can think of is the leads,” he says. Didn’t you, Tom?’

‘That’s right. Me having a motor-bike, and having had trouble with the leads before, on account of the insulation having got worked through, like, against the radiator-fins, I said, “How about the H.T. leads?” And Mr Martin, he says, “That’s an idea,” and before I could say “knife” he whips the leads out of the clip and gets them off. “Let’s have a look, sir,” I says. “Never mind looking at the blasted things,” he says, “you can’t do no bloody good” begging your pardon—“by looking at ’em,” he, says. Shove a new pair in and look smart.” So I got a bit of H. T. wire out of my bag and I fixes up a new pair of leads and connects ’em up, and no sooner I done so than up she starts, sweet as a nut. What I think, my lord, there must have been a fault in the insulation, see? — what were giving an intermittent short the day before when Mr Martin complained of bad — running and starting, and somehow or other the wires might ha’ got fused together, and that made a dead short on the Thursday.’

‘Very likely,’ said Wimsey, ‘Did you actually examine the leads afterwards?’

Tom scratched his head:

‘Now you ask me,’ he said, ‘I don’t rightly know what happened to them leads. I recollect seem of Mr Martin a-dangling of them in his hand, but whether he took, ’em away or whether he left ’em I couldn’t say for certain.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Polwhistle, triumphantly, ‘but I can, though. When Mr Martin went to start up the engine, he pushed them leads into his pocket, careless-like, and when he pulled out his, handkerchief to wipe the oil off of his fingers, them leads falls out on the grass. And I picks ’em up, — seeing as he wasn’t likely to be a-wantin’ of ’em and I drops ’em into my little bag, what I always carried, being a tidy-minded man and thinkin’ as a bit on ’em might come in useful one day for a motor-bike or such-like. And there they lays; to this day, if they ain’t been used for nothin’ since.’

‘I’d like to have a look at them.’

‘Nothing easier,’ said Mr Polwhistle, producing a small tool-bag and routing among a quantity of miscellaneous odds and ends. ‘Nothing easier, and here they do be, which just shows you what it is to be a tidy-minded man.’

Wimsey took the pair of leads from his hands.

‘H’m yes — they seem to be fused together just where they pass under the clip.’ He jerked the wires apart. ‘Nothing wrong with the insulation, though, apparently. Hullo hullo!’

He ran a finger lightly along one of the leads. ‘Here’s your trouble,’ he said.

Mr Polwhistle also ran his finger along and then withdrew it with a hasty exclamation. “That’s pretty sharp,’ he muttered. ‘What is it?’

‘I suggest that it’s the business end of a sewing-needle,’ said Wimsey. ‘Give us a sharp pen-knife, and we’ll soon see.’

When the insulation was opened up the cause of the short-circuit was abundantly plain. A needle had been passed through; the lead and broken off short, so as to leave no visible trace of its presence. When the two leads were in place side by side, it was clear that the needle would pass through both, thus effectively bridging the circuit and shorting the spark.

‘Well, there now!’ said Mr Polwhistle. ‘To think of that! That’s a nice, dirty trick to play on a gentleman. Who could a-done it beats me. How was it you missed seeing them two leads skewered together that way, Tom?’

‘Nobody could, positively see it when it was in place,’ said Wimsey., ‘It would be pushed up under the clip.’

‘And Mr Martin jerking the leads out that sudden,’ put in Tom, ’it stands to reason I couldn’t a-seen it. Of course, if I’d had ’em in my hands afterwards

He gazed reproachfully at Mr Polwhistle, who ignored the gaze.

‘It’s a wonder to me,’ said Mr. Polwhistle, ‘how you came to think of such a thing, my lord.’

‘I’ve seen it done before. It’s a very handy way of holding up a motor-cyclist at the beginning of a race, for example.’

‘And when you came here asking about them leads, did you expect to find that needle there, my lord?’

‘I didn’t, Tom. I’d made sure I shouldn’t find it. I came here on purpose to prove it wasn’t there. Look here, you two, don’t say a word about this to anybody.’

‘Not, my, lord? But we did surely ought to find out what young devil it is that was monkeying about with the gentleman’s car.’

‘No. I’ll take the thing up myself if it’s necessary. But it’s possible that this trick may have been played by somebody connected with that business up at the Flat-Iron, and it’s best not talked about. You see? Somebody who didn’t want Mr Martin to go to Wilvercombe that morning.’

‘I see, my lord. Very good. We won’t say a word. But that’s a queer thing, none the more for that.’ ‘It is,’ said Wimsey, ‘very queer.’

It was rather queerer than Mr Polwhistle quite realised, though a peculiar glint in Tom’s eye suggested that he at least was beginning to appreciate its full oddity. A needle thrust through the H.T. leads of a two-cylinder car does not produce intermittent firing or erratic running: it stops the ignition dead. Yet on the Wednesday, Mr Martin’s Morgan had been running (though not well) up to the moment of his return to Hinks’s Lane. And to Wimsey, who knew that Martin was Weldon, the whole thing seemed doubly inexplicable. Why had Weldon gone out of his way to hire a, Morgan for his little trip when, with a tent and luggage to carry, he would surely have found a larger vehicle more convenient?’ Was it another coincidence that he should have particularly asked for a two-cylinder vehicle, which could be put completely out of action with one sewing needle? True, a Morgan pays a smaller tax than a four-wheeled car, but then, Weldon was not paying the tax. It might cost a little less to hire, but, under the circumstances, why should Weldon skimp himself on a week’s car hire?

And yet and yet whichever way you took it, it was obviously to everybody’s interest to get Mr Weldon away to Wilvercombe, and not keep him hanging about Hinks’s Lane. Could it be a coincidence that some practical joker had chosen to put the Morgan out of action at that particular moment? Surely not. But then, who had done it? Somebody who wanted a witness at Darley? Somebody who did not want Weldon to carry out his investigations in Wilvercombe? And why had Weldon complained of bad running the day before? Another coincidence? An intermittent choke, perhaps, which had blown itself out since? Perhaps.

‘One thing was certain: that Henry Weldon, arriving incognito in dyed hair and dark spectacles to carry on a bit of detective work on his own, had contrived to involve himself in a tangle of coincidence and conjecture which looked almost like the work of a malignant and interfering demon.

Another thing seemed certain, too: that every theory Wimsey had so far formed about the case was utterly and madly wide of the mark.

Chapter XXX. The Evidence Of The Gentleman’s Gentleman

‘Just so they crossed, and turned, and came again.’

— The Second Brother

Saturday, 4 July

MR. MERVYN BUNTER sat in the bedroom of a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury, keeping his eye on a rather dusty window, adorned with a rather grubby curtain, which he could see just across a very dingy courtyard. It was Mr Bunter’s fourth residence in as many days, and he felt that, if this went on much longer, it would be very difficult for him to keep out of view. His first night had been spent in the street, watching the door of a common lodging-house in the Whitechapel district. Thence he had followed his quarry to a gloomy little boarding-house in Brixton. On this occasion he had found a night’s lodging over a tobacconist’s,opposite, and by dint of returning very late and getting up very early, had contrived to keep on Mr Bright’s trail the following morning. The chase had then led him all round the more dreary parts of London, following a continual. succession of trams and omnibuses. This had been very difficult. Once or twice he had ventured on the same vehicle with Bright, but a dread of being spotted had obliged him to do most of his sleuthing in taxis, which, in that part of the town, were apt to be hard to find and pain fully conspicuous when found. The night had been dismally spent in the crypt of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields. Now here they were, and Bunter hoped that the ordeal would not last much longer. He had bought himself a suit of horrible cheap serge, which it gave him acute agony to wear, and he had also purchased a disgusting bowler of curly shape and heavy quality — also a check cap, a soft hat and a subfusc overcoat. Each day he had endeavoured to alter his appearance by successively assuming these repellent garments, carrying the-others, about with him in paper parcels, until at last he had felt, that, the perpetual presence of a man with a paper parcel would alarm the fugitive, and had relieved his arm and his mind by depositing the loathly bowler under the table in an eating-house and leaving it to its fate. Now, with a pair of pyjamas in one, pocket of the overcoat and a razor and tooth-brush in the other along with the cap, he sat, felt hat in hand, ready to dart out as soon as Bright showed any signs of moving.

During these last four hours, Bright had merely wandered. He had entered no hairdresser’s ‘shop and had made no attempt to get work. He seemed to be merely filling in time, or else deliberately confusing his trail. He had gone to a Talkie once or twice, had visited the British Museum, sat for a whole, afternoon on a bench in Hyde Park. He had spoken to nobody, except to bus-conductors, tram-conductors, waitresses and other harmless, necessary persons. At present he was sitting at his bedroom window, reading a book by Edgar Wallace which Bunter had seen him purchase the day before at Leicester Square Tube Station.

Suddenly, as Bunter watched him, he shut up the book and stepped back from the window. Peering across the courtyard, Bunter saw him stooping, moving about, raising and lowering his arms in a familiar series of actions. Bunter, who had performed these actions many hundreds of times, was not at a loss. The man was folding and packing pyjamas and other wearing apparel. Bunter hastened down to the office, handed over the key of his room (there was no bill for, being without luggage, he had paid for his bed and breakfast in advance), and stepped out into the street. Here he was fortunate enough to find a cruising taxi with an intelligent-looking driver, who was ready enough to engage in a little detectives work. The street was a cul-de-sac’ and Bunter, getting into the taxi, was driven out into the main road. Here he got out and entered a newspaper shop, leaving the taximan to watch the entrance to the cul-de-sac. Presently, while Bunter, standing just within the doorway, pretended to be absorbed in the morning paper, he saw the driver raise his hand as a signal, A green taxi had driven into the cul-de-sac. So far, so good.

‘Go slowly along to the corner,’ said-Bunter, ‘and stand there till the taxi comes out again. If it’s the, right man, I’ll tap on the glass. Then follow him, but not too close. Only don’t lose him in the traffic.’

‘Right you are. Divorce, eh?? ‘Murder,’ said Bunter.

‘Crikey!’ said the driver. ‘Police, eh?’ Bunter nodded.

‘Gorblimey,’ said the driver. ‘You don’t look it. P’raps you don’t mean to. Here we are. Taxi’s at the ‘otel door. Keep your ‘ed down — I’ll tell you when ’e comes out.’

So saying, the taximan descended in a leisurely way from his perch. and pulled open the bonnet of his machine. A passing policeman gave him a glance, nodded and strode heavily by.

‘Just a-coming out now,’ said the driver, thrusting his head in at the window, and then, in a louder tone: ‘All right, guv’nor — jest a loose connection.; She’ll start first swing now.’

He crawled up, just as the green taxi swung out of the cul-de-sac. Bunter, peering from behind his newspaper, recognised the pale face of Mr Bright and tapped on the glass. The green taxi passed within a foot of them. Bunter’s taxi circled in the road and swung in thirty yards behind.

The green taxi wriggled through some dismal by-streets, emerged into Judd Street and went ahead through Brunswick Square into Guilford Street and down Lamb’s Conduit Street and Red Lion Street. It turned to the right into Holborn, then to the left again into Kingsway, and then circled across into Great Queen Street and Long Acre. The following taxi kept it in view without very great difficulty till at last it turned to the left down one of the narrow streets, encumbered with huge drays and stationary carts, which lead down into Covent Garden. At the entrance to the market the green taxi pulled up.

Bunter’s taxi was one of the new and superior sort, which have an electric speaking-tube which really works. Bunter pressed the button and addressed his driver.

‘If he gets out here, drive past very slowly round that big cart. I shall slip out. Don’t look round or take any notice. I’m leaving a ten-bob note on the seat. Go straight on through the market.’

The driver’s head nodded assent. From the left-hand window, Bunter saw Bright standing on the pavement settling his fare. Bunter went on his way, and as the taxi passed on the far side of the big cart, he slipped quickly to the pavement. A fruiterer’s man, observing this manoeuvre, — turned sharply to shout to the driver that his fare was bilking him, but at that moment the hand of the faithful taximan came round and slammed the door shut. The fruiterer’s man stood staring, while Bunter, who had exchanged the felt hat for the cap in the taxi, dodged round in front of the cart to look for Bright.

To his great delight he saw Bright standing on the kerb, watching with a pleased air the steady retreat of Bunter’s taxi. After a quick scrutiny of his surroundings, the man appeared satisfied that he was not being followed and set off, briskly, suitcase in hand, towards the market. Bunter took up the trail, squelching — his way among the oddments of fruit and cabbage-leaves. The chase led through the market, out into Tavistock Street and down towards the Strand. Here Bright took a bus going West, Bunter pursuing in a fresh taxi. The new trail led only as far as Charing Cross, where Bright got out and hastened into the station yard. Bunter, hurriedly flinging a florin to his driver, dived in; after him.

Bright led the way into the Charing Cross Hotel; Bunter was forced this time to follow closely, lest he should lose his prey. Bright went up to the desk and spoke to the reception-clerk. After a short pause and the display of a visiting-card, a parcel was handed over. Upon receiving it and putting it away in his suit-case, Bright turned sharp round and walked back to the door, passing Bunter within a couple of feet. Their eyes met, but Bright’s showed no recognition. He went straight out into the station-yard again.

From now onwards it was hit or miss for Bunter. He had been seen once and it was now more than ever his business to keep out of sight. He waited for a few agonising moments before following, and was just in time to see Bright vanishing down the subway to the Underground.

At this moment, Bunter would have given much for his trusty bowler. He did his best, by again exchanging the cap for the hat as he ran across the yard, and struggling into the subfusc overcoat. It is not necessary to pursue the involved underground journey that occupied the next hour. At the end of it, hare and hound emerged in good order at Piccadilly, having boxed the compass pretty successfully in the interval The next move was to the Corner House, where Bright took the lift.

Now, at the Corner House there are three large floors, and each large floor has two doorways. Yet to get into the same lift as Bright was to challenge disaster. Bunter, like a baffled cat that sees its mouse vanish down a hole, stood and watched the ascending lift. Then he moved to the centre counter and stood, apparently inspecting the array of cakes and sweetmeats, but in reality keeping a sharp look-out on all the lift-doors and the two marble staircases. After ten minutes he felt that he might, assume Bright’s purpose to be genuinely that of getting refreshment. He made for the nearest staircase and went up it like a lamplighter. The lift passed him on a downward journey before he reached the first floor, and he was assailed by ‘a horrible conviction that it was bearing Bright away with it. No matter, the die was cast now. He pushed open the swing door on the first floor and began his slow stroll among the crowded tables.

The sight of bewildered customers looking for a seat is no unusual one in the Corner House. Nobody paid any attention to Bunter until he had made the circuit of the big room and satisfied himself that Bright was not among those present. He went out by the, farther door, where he was challenged by the inquiry whether he had been served. He replied that he was looking for a friend and ran on up to the second floor.

This room was the exact twin of the first, except that, instead of a male orchestra in evening dress playing My Canary has Circles under His Eyes, it possessed a female orchestra in blue playing excerpts from The Gondoliers. Bunter pushed his way slowly through the throng until his staid heart giving a sudden leap beneath the deplorable blue serge waistcoat — he caught sight of a familiar sandy head and crooked pair of shoulders. Bright was there, seated at a table containing three elderly women, and peacefully eating a grilled chop.

Bunter’ gazed desperately about him. At first it seemed hopeless to find a seat anywhere near, but at length he espied a girl making-up her face and dabbling at her hair: preparatory to leaving. He made a dart for the table and secured the, reversion of her chair. He was some time catching the eye of the waitress and ordering a cup of coffee; fortunately Bright seemed to be in no particular hurry with his chop. Bunter asked for the bill as soon as the coffee was brought, and sat patiently, his useful newspaper well spread out before him.

After what seemed an interminable delay, Bright finished his lunch, looked at his watch, called for his bill and rose. Bunter was four behind him in the queue at the pay-desk, and squeezed through the door in time to see the sandy head disappearing down the stairs. At this happy moment, the lift arrived.. Bunter bundled into it, and was shot out on the ground floor well ahead of the quarry. He watched Bright out, took up the trail and, after a few minutes of hectic traffic-dodging, found himself in a cinema in the Haymarket, purchasing a ticket for the stalls.

Bright took a seat in the third row of the three-and-sixpennies. Bunter, hastily whispering to the, attendant that he didn’t care to be too far forward, managed to slip in a couple of rows behind him. Now he could breathe again. From where he sat, he could see the top of Bright’s head, outlined against the comparative brightness at the foot of the screen. Ignoring the drama of Love and Passion which shimmered and, squeaked its mechanical way from the first misunderstanding to the last lingering kiss, Bunter fixed his eyes on that head with such concentration that the tears stole down his cheeks.

The film shuddered to its close. The lights went up. Bright stood suddenly upright and pushed his way out into the, gangway. Bunter prepared to follow, but Bright, instead of making for the nearest exit, merely walked across and passed behind a discreet curtain — over which was blazoned in blue fire the legend ‘GENTLEMEN.’

Bunter sank down again and waited. Other gentlemen passed in and out, but no Bright returned. Fear smote Bunter. Was there a way out through the cloak-room? The lights dimmed and blacked out, and a Comic started. Bunter.rose up, tripping over the feet of three sniggering girls and an irritable old man, and sneaked gently down the gangway.

As he did so the curtain leading to ‘GENTLEMEN’ was drawn aside and a man came out. Bunter stared at him as he passed in the soft, thick twilight, but the sharp peak of the silhouette told him that this was a bearded man. He passed Bunter with a muttered apology and went on up the gangway. Bunter proceeded on, his way down but, by some instinct, turned at the curtained door and looked back.

He saw the back of the bearded man, outlined against the sudden blue daylight, passing through an exit, and remembered how Wimsey had once said to him: Any fool can disguise his face, but it takes a genius to disguise a back.’ He had not followed that back through London for five days without knowing every line of it. In a moment he was hurrying up the gangway and out through the exit. Beard or no beard, this was his man.

Two more taxis and then a clear run out to Kensington. This time, Bright appeared to be really going somewhere. His taxi drew up at a neat house in a good, quarter; he got out and let himself in with a latch-key. Bunter went on to the next corner and there interrogated his driver.

‘Did you see the number of the house they stopped at?’

‘Yes, sir. Number 17’

Thanks.’

‘Divorce, sir?’ asked the man, with a grin.

‘Murder,’ said Bunter.

‘Crikey!’ This appeared to be the natural reaction to murder. ‘Well,’ said the taximan, ’ope ’e swings for it.’ and drove off.

Bunter glanced about him. He dared not pass Number 17. Bright, might still be on the watch, and both the cap and the felt hat were now, he felt, war-worn veterans of whom nothing more could be asked in the way of disguise. He saw a chemist’s shop and went in.

‘Can you tell me,’ he asked, ‘who lives at No. 17?’

‘Why, yes,’ said the chemist, ‘gentleman of the name of Morecambe.’

‘Morecambe?’ A great piece of jig-saw seemed to fall into place in Bunter’s mind with an almost audible click.

Littlish gentleman with one shoulder a bit higher than, the other?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Reddish hair.’

‘Yes, sir; reddish hair and beard.’

‘Oh, he wears a beard?’

‘Oh, yes sir. Gentleman in the City, he is. Lived here as long as I can remember. Very pleasant gentleman. Did you want to know—?’

‘Yes,’ said Bunter. ‘The fact is, I heard there-might be a vacancy for a gentleman’s personal attendant, at No. 17, and I thought I’d like to know what the family was like before applying for it.

‘Oh, I see. Yes, You’d find it a nice family. Quiet. No children. Mrs Morecambe is a nice lady. Good-looking in her time, I should say. Used to be on the stage, I’m told, but that must have been a good long time ago. Two maids kept and everything quite as you might wish to find it.’—

Bunter expressed his gratitude and left the shop to send a telegram to Lord Peter —

The chase was ended.

Chapter XXXI. The Evidence Of The Haberdasher’s Assistant

‘Ha! well! what next?

You are the cupbearer of richest joy—

But it was a report, a lie.’

— The Second Brother

Monday, 6 July

‘I Look at it this way,’ said Superintendent Glaisher. ‘If this here Bright is Morecambe, and Mrs Morecambe is in cahoots with Weldon, then, likewise, Weldon and Bright so to call him are in cahoots together.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Wimsey, ‘but if you think that this identification is going to make life one grand, sweet song for you, you are mistaken. All it has done so far is to bust up every conclusion we have so far come to.’

‘Yes, my lord; undoubtedly the thing still has a hitch in it. Still, every little helps, and this time we’ve got more than a little to go on with. Suppose we work out where we stand., First of all, if Bright is Morecambe, he isn’t a hairdresser; therefore he had no legitimate call to buy that razor; therefore his tale about the razor is all eyewash, like we always thought it was, therefore, humanly speaking there’s not much doubt that Paul Alexis didn’t commit suicide, but was murdered.’

‘Exactly,’ said Wimsey, ‘and since we have devoted a great deal of time and thought to the case on the assumption that it was a murder, it’s a convenience to know that the assumption is probably correct.’

‘So it is. Well, now, if Weldon and Morecambe are both in this together, it’s likely that the motive for the murder is what we.thought—,getting hold of Mrs W.’s money — or isn’t it?’

‘It’s likely,’ agreed Wimsey.

‘Then what’s all this Bolshevik business got to do with it?’ demanded Inspector Umpelty.

‘Lots,’ said Wimsey. ‘Look here; I’m going to offer you two more identifications. First of all, I suggest that Morecambe was the bearded friend who came to stay with Weldon at Fourways Farm at the end of February. And secondly, I suggest that Morecambe was the bearded gentleman who approached Mr Sullivan of Wardour Street and asked him for the photograph of a Russian-looking girl. It is interesting that Mr Horrock’s cultivated theatrical mind should have associated him immediately with Richard III.’

Inspector Umpelty looked puzzled, but the Superintendent smacked his hand on the table.

‘The hunchback!’ he cried.

‘Yes — but they seldom play, Richard as a real hunchback nowadays. A slight suggestion of crookedness is what they usually give you — just that scarcely perceptible twistiness of shoulder that Morecambe has about him.’

‘Of course, that’s plain enough, now we know about the beard,” said Glaisher. ‘But why the photograph?’

‘Let’s try and put the story together in the right order, as far as we’ve got it,’ suggested Wimsey. ‘First of all, here is Weldon, over head and ears in debt, and raising money against his expectations from his mother. Very well. Now, early this year, Mrs Weldon comes to Wilvercombe, and begins to take a great deal of interest in Paul Alexis. In February, she definitely announces that she means to marry Alexis, and possibly she is foolish enough to admit that, if she does marry him, she will leave him all her money. Almost immediately after this announcement, Morecambe comes to stay at Weldon’s farm. And within a week or two, the strange coded letters with the foreign stamps begin to arrive for Alexis.’

‘That’s clear enough.’

‘Now, Alexis has always hinted to people that there is a mystery about his birth. He fancies that he is of noble Russian descent. I suggest that the first letter-’

‘One minute, my lord. Who do you suppose wrote those letters?’

‘I think Morecambe wrote them, and got them posted by some friend in Warsaw. As I see it, Morecambe is the brains of the conspiracy. He writes his first letter, no doubt in plain English, hinting at Imperialist activities in Russia and grandiose prospects for Paul Alexis, if he can prove his descent — but, of course, there must be complete secrecy about the whole thing.’

‘Why the secrecy?’

To preserve the romantic atmosphere; Alexis, poor egg, swallows this, hook, line and sinker. He promptly writes back telling the so-called Boris everything he knows; or imagines about himself. The code is henceforth used, of course, to keep Alexis in the proper frame of mind and give him a nice toy to play with. Then, from the little bits of family tradition that Alexis supplies, Boris” (that is, Morecambe) builds up a, suitable genealogical fantasy to fit in with these data, and outlines a marvellous plot to place Alexis to break off with Mrs Weldon on the grounds that reads books about Russian history, and obligingly assists his murderer to bait and arm the trap. Eventually, Boris tells him that the conspiracy is nearly ready to take effect; and that is when we find Alexis indulging in mysterious hints and prophecies of his forthcoming apotheosis.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Glaisher. ‘I should have thought that the simplest way for Morecambe would have been to get Alexis to break off with Mrs Waldron on the grounds that he had to go to Russia and be a Tsar. Surely that would have attained the object of the plot without bumping off the poor little blighter.’

‘Well, would it?’ said Wimsey. ‘In the first place, I rather imagine that Mrs Weldon’s romantic reaction to a notion of that kind would have been to hand over large sums of money to Alexis for the Imperial war-chest; which would hardly have suited Messrs Weldon and Morecambe. Secondly, if Alexis did break off the engagement and they trusted to that what would happen next? They couldn’t go on for the remainder of all their lives writing code-letters about imaginary conspiracies. Some time or other, Alexis would wake up to the fact that the plot was never going to materialise. He would tell Mrs Weldon and in all probability the status quo would be restored. And the lady would be bound to talk, and they didn’t want talk. Whether her fiance really was the unacknowledged Tsar of all the Russias. No; the safest way was to tell Alexis to keep the whole thing absolutely secret, and then, when the time came, they could wipe him out finally and completely.’

‘Yes — I see that.’

‘Now we come to Leila Garland. I don’t think there is any doubt that Alexis deliberately pushed her off on to our conceited young friend, da Soto — though naturally neither da Soto nor she would admit that possibility for a moment. I fancy Antoine has got the right idea about that; he is probably an observer of considerable experience in these matters. Leila would be a very dangerous person if she were allowed to know anything about the pretended plot. She would be bound to talk, and they didn’t want talk. We’ve got to remember that the object of all this business was to stage a suicide. Young emperors, on the point of leading successful revolutions do not commit suicide. To tell Leila about the plot was to tell the world: therefore, Leila must be got rid of, because, if she remained closely in contact with Alexis, it would be almost impossible to keep her in ignorance.’

‘Sounds as though.young Alexis was a bit of a blackguard,’; said Inspector Umpelty. ‘First, he chucks his girl, Secondly, he leads poor old Mrs Weldon up the garden, by pretending to go in with an engagement he doesn’t mean to carry out.’

No,’ said Wimsey. ‘You don’t allow for the Imperial outlook. A prince in exile may form irregular attachments, but, when the call comes to him to take up his imperial station, all personal ties must be sacrificed to his public duty. A mere kept woman, like Leila, can be simply dismissed or handed over to somebody else. A person to whom he is bound by more honourable ties will also have to be sacrificed, but with more ceremony. We do not know, and we never shall know, exactly what Alexis meant to do about Mrs Weldon. We have her word for it that he tried to prepare her for some grand and surprising development in the near future, though, naturally, she put the wrong interpretation on the thing. I imagine that what Alexis intended to do was to write her a letter, after his departure for War saw, telling her what had happened to him and offering her his hospitality at his Imperial court; The whole affair would have been surrounded with a halo of romance and splendour and self-sacrifice, and no doubt Mrs Weldon would have enjoyed it down to the ground. There’s one thing:, although, before all this Russian business started, Alexis had Mrs Weldon completely under his thumb, he apparently always refused to take any large sums of money from her and that, I think, is greatly to his credit, and shows that he had the instincts of a gentleman, if not necessarily of a prince.’

‘That’s true,’ said Glaisher. ‘I suppose, if the plot had never been started, he would have married her.’

‘Oh, yes, I should think so. He’d have married her and done his duty by her according to his own lights, which were probably — well, continental.’ He would have been a charming husband to her and kept a mistress in a discreet and decent manner.’

Inspector Umpelty seemed disposed to quarrel with the term ‘decent,’ but Wimsey hurried on with his argument.

‘I fancy, too, that Alexis. may have shown a little reluctance to take this course with Leila and Mrs Weldon. He may have been really fond of Leila; or he may have felt uncomfortable about letting Mrs Weldon down. So that was why they invented Feodora.’

‘And who was Feodora.’

‘Feodora was no, doubt supposed to be the lady of lofty lineage destined. to be the bride of the new Tsar Pavlo Alexeivitch. What was easier than to go to a theatrical agent, find the photograph of a not-too-well-known lady of Russian extraction, and send it to Alexis as the portrait of the Princess Feodora, the lovely lady who was waiting and working for him in exile until the time should come for her to take her place beside him on the Imperial throne? Those blessed romances that Alexis was so fond of are full of that kind of thing. There would be letters, perhaps, from Feodora, full of tender anticipation. She would be already in love with the Grand-Duke Pavlo from all she had heard of him. The glamour of the whole idea would bewitch him. And besides, it would be his duty to his people to marry Feodora. How could he hesitate? A glance at that very beautiful face, crowned with its, regal head-dress of pearls—’

‘Oh!’ said Glaisher. ‘Yes, of course. That would be one reason why they hit on that particular photograph.’

‘Of course. No doubt the pearls were merely the best Woolworth, like the whole pathetic illusion, but these things serve their purpose, Glaisher, they serve their purpose. My God, Glaisher — when you think of that poor silly devil, going to his death on a lonely rock, with his brain spinning with the idea of being crowned Emperor—’

Wimsey broke off, shaken by an unwonted vehemence of feeling. The two policemen shuffled their feet sympathetic calls.

‘Well, it does seem a shame, my lord, and that’s a-fact,’ said Glaisher. ‘Let’s hope he died quick, without knowing any better.’

‘Ah!’ said Wimsey, ‘but; how did he die? That’s the snag, you know. Well, never mind that for the moment. What next? Oh, the three hundred pounds in gold. That’s a funny little incident, and very. nearly upset the conspiracy altogether.

‘I can’t believe that that was any part of the plot as originally worked out. Morecambe couldn’t have foreseen the opportunity of collecting that gold. I think that must have been Paul Alexis’ own contribution to the romance., He had probably, read in books about gold — about its passing current everywhere, and all that — and thought it would somehow be a fine thing to set out to conquer a throne with a beltful of gold. It was ridiculous, of course — an absurd little sum, bulky and awkward to carry about — but it was Gold. Gold has its glitter, you know. As somebody says, “the glitter is the gold”. That sounds like relativity physics, but it’s psychological fact. If you were a romantic young prince, Glaisher, or thought you were, would you rather pay your bills with a few dirty bits of paper, or with this?’

He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of gold sovereigns. They rolled ringing over the table as he threw them down, and Glaisher and Umpelty flung out eager hands to catch them as they spun away in the lamplight. They picked them up and weighed them in their palms; they held them between their fingers, passing inquisitive fingers along the milled edges and over the smooth relief of the gleaming George — and Dragon.

‘Yes,’ said Wimsey, ‘they feel pleasant, don’t they? There are ten of them there, and they’re worth no more than paper pounds, and to me they’re actually worth nothing, because, being a tom-fool, I can’t bring myself to spend them. But they’re gold. I wouldn’t mind possessing £300 worth of them, though they might weigh five pounds avoirdupois and be an infernal nuisance. But the queer thing is this — that that extra five pounds of weight just disturbed the very delicate balance between the corpse and the water. The specific gravity of a dead body is just less than sufficient to sink it — but only just. A very heavy pair of boots or a belt stuffed with gold is enough: to carry it down and, wedge it among the Grinder rocks as you know to your cost, Umpelty. It would have been uncommonly awkward for

The conspirators of Alexis had never been found. In time Mrs Weldon would have come to believe in his death, I daresay — but she might have squandered a fortune first, in hunting for him.’

‘It’s a queer story altogether,’ said Glaisher, ‘and what nobody that hadn’t been through it all from the beginning as you might say would hardly be disposed to believe. But now, my lord, allowing that it was all worked out as you say, how about the murder?’

‘Exactly. As regards the murder I frankly admit we’re not much further on than before. The preliminaries are, all easy enough. First of all, somebody must have come along to have a look at the place. I don’t quite know who that was, but I think I can guess, Somebody who already knew the lie of the land, from having stayed here before. Somebody who had a car to spin about the country in. Somebody who had a very good excuse for being in the neighbourhood and respectable friends whose guests were above suspicion.’

‘Mrs Morecambe!’

‘Just so. Mrs Morecambe. Possibly Mr Morecambe also. We can soon find out whether that delightful couple spent a week-end at Heathbury Vicarage any time within the last few months.’

‘Yes, they did,’ put in Umpelty. ‘The lady was here for a fortnight at the end of February and her husband came down for one weekend. They told us that when we made our inquiries, but we didn’t attach any importance to it at the time.’

‘Of course not. Very well. Then, at the moment when everything is ready to poop off, the rest of the gang arrive. Morecambe gets himself up as a hairdresser and establishes his identity round about the neighbourhood. He has to do that, because he wants to purchase a razor in a way which it is difficult to trace. You may say, why a razor at all, when they must have known that Alexis didn’t shave? Well, I can imagine why. It’s quieter than a pistol and it’s a typical suicide’s weapon. And it’s very safe and sure, and much handier, to carry about than, say, a carving-knife. And if any question was raised about it, Morecambe could always come forward with a convincing story about how he had given the razor to Alexis.’

‘Ah! I was thinking about that. Would he have come forward, do you suppose, if you hadn’t put that bit in the. paper?’

‘Difficult to say. But I imagine that he would have waited to see how things went. He would probably have attended the inquest, as a casual spectator, and then if the coroner showed any signs of not accepting the suicide theory, he would have risen up and put the matter beyond doubt with a few well-chosen words. You see, the beauty of his itinerant hairdresser impersonation was that it afforded him an excellent excuse for appearing and disappearing like a Cheshire cat, and also changing his name. By the way, I think we shall find that he really did live in Manchester at some time or another, and so knew just how much dope to dole out about derelict streets and departed hairdressers’ shops in that city.’

‘I take it, then, that he wears a beard in ordinary life.’

‘Oh, yes. He just shaved it off when he began his impersonation. Then, when he went back to London, he had only to get a false beard sent to him at a hotel under a different name, and wear it for the brief period of his taxi-ride to Kensington. If the attendant at the picture-palace happened to notice a gentleman putting on a false beard in the cloak-room which he may not have done it would not be his business to interfere and Morecombe had done his very best to throw off any shadowers. If Bunter hadn’t been uncommonly persevering and uncommonly quick, he’d have lost the trail twenty times over. As it was, he very nearly missed Morecombe in the cinema. Supposing Bunter had followed Morecambe into the cloak-room. Morecambe would have postponed the beard business and there would have been another chase, but by having the wits to keep outside, he gave Morecambe the impression that the coast was clear. Scotland Yard is keeping an eye on Morecambe’s house now, but I expect they will find that the gentleman is ill in bed, being attended by his devoted wife. When his beard has grown again, he will emerge; and meantime, Mrs Morecambe, who was an actress and knows something about make-up, will see to it that there is always a beard fit for inspection when the maid comes in to do the room.’

‘So much for Morecambe,’ said Glaisher. ‘Now, how about Weldon? We’d pretty well put him out of the thing. Now we’ve got to bring him back. He comes along in his Morgan, two days before the murder is due to take place, and he camps in Hinks’s Lane, which somebody’s been good enough, to find out all about beforehand. Mrs Morecambe, I suppose — very good. He accounts for his presence on the scene by a cock-and-bull tale about keeping an eye on his mother’s love-affairs. All right. But what I want to know is, why did he come and, mix himself up in the thing at all, taking all those — risks? He wasn’t there to do the murder, because we know where he was at 1.30, if not at 1.55, and we can’t fit the times in. anyhow, even supposing Perkins is a liar, which we can’t prove. And he wasn’t there to ride the mare down to the Flat-Iron, because we know where he was at twelve o’clock

‘Do we?’ said Harriet, gently.

She had joined the committee-meeting half-way, through the session, and had been sitting quietly in an armchair, smoking, with her hat on her knee.

‘Yes, we do said Wimsey. ‘We thought we did when Mrs Morecambe was supposed to be an unimpeachable witness, but do we now? I think I see a gleam in Miss Vane’s eye that suggests she is about to, put one over on us. Speak. I am bound to hear what has Robert Templeton been discovering?’

‘Mr Weldon,’ said Harriet, was not doing anything nefarious in Wilvercombe on Thursday, 18th. He wasn’t doing anything, in Wilvercombe. He never was in Wilvercombe. He didn’t buy collars. He didn’t go to the Winter, Gardens. Mrs Morecambe arrived alone and she left alone, and there’s no evidence that Mr Weldon was with her at any point of the journey.’

‘O my prophetic soul! There goes my reputation! I said that the two o’clock alibi would be broken, and it’s standing like the Flat-Iron Rock. I said the Wilvercombe alibi would stand, and it has broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel. I’ll go no more a-sleuthing with you, fair maid. O, now, for ever farewell the tranquil mind!. Farewell content! Farewell, Othello’s occupation’s gone. Are you sure about it?’

‘Pretty well. I went to the men’s outfitting and asked for collars like the ones my husband bought on the 18th. Had I the bill? No. What kind of collars? Well, collars, just ordinary collars. What was my: husband like? I described Henry Weldon and his dark spectacles. Nobody remembered him. Would they look up the day-book? Well, they looked up the paper thing that twizzles round in the till, and found the item. Oh, yes — the assistant remembered those collars. Sold to a lady. A lady? Oh, yes, my sister-in-law, no doubt. I described Mrs Morecambe. Yes, that was the lady. Was that the only sale of collars that morning? It was. Then those must be the collars. So I bought six of them — here they are — and asked whether the gentleman had been outside in the car. Gentlemen are so funny about going into shops. No, no gentleman. The assistant had taken the parcel out to the car, which was empty. So then I went to the Winter Gardens. I knew, of course, that they had been asked about Weldon, but I asked them about Mrs Morecambe, and I found an attendant who remembered her by her appearance and getup, and by the fact that she had taken notes of the programme. For Weldon, naturally. After that I tried the bobby on point-duty in the Market Square. Such a nice intelligent bobby. He remembered the car, because of the funny number, and he’d noticed that there was no one in it except the lady who was driving. He’d noticed it again when it came away: still only the lady in it. So that’s that. Of course, Mrs Morecambe may have dropped Henry Weldon at some point between Darley and Wilvercombe, but as for being in Wilvercombe — that I’ll swear he wasn’t; at any rate, he didn’t arrive in the Square with her, as he said.’

‘No,’ said Glaisher. ‘And it’s pretty clear now where he was. He was riding that damned mare along the beach out at eleven o’clock and back at 12.30, or thereabouts. But why?’

“That’s clear, too. He was the Rider from the Sea. But he still didn’t kill Paul Alexis. Who did?’

Well my lord,’ said Umpelty, ‘we’ll have to go back to our first idea. Weldon brought bad news about this here conspiracy, and Alexis killed himself.’

‘With Morecambe’s razor? No, it’s all wrong, Inspector. It’s all wrong:’

‘Hadn’t we better ask Weldon what he knows about it all? If we confront him with what we know about — Morecambe and the letter and all that, he may come clean. If he was along there at 12.15, he must have seen Alexis, anyhow.’

Wimsey shook his head.

‘Deep waters,’ he said, ‘deep waters. Look here! I’ve an idea we’ve been working this thing from the wrong end, If only we knew more about those papers that Alexis sent to “Boris”, they might tell us something. Where do you suppose they are? You may say, in Warsaw — but I don’t think so. I fancy Warsaw was only an accommodation address. Everything that went there probably came back to Morecambe.’

‘Then perhaps we’ll find them in London,’ suggested Glaisher, hopefully.

‘Very much perhaps. The man who planned this show is no fool. If he told Alexis to destroy all his papers, he’ll hardly have risked keeping anything of that sort himself. But we could try. Have we enough evidence against him to justify a search-warrant?’

‘Why, yes.’ Glaisher pondered. ‘If Morecambe’s identified as Bright, then he’s been giving false information to the police. We could detain him on suspicion and go through his place in Kensington. The London fellows are keeping tabs on him now, but we didn’t want to be in too much of a hurry. We thought, maybe, the real murderer might be getting in touch with hint. You see, there must be another party to the business — the chap who did the actual job, and we don’t know who he is from Adam. But of course, there’s this to it — the longer we leave Morecambe to himself, the more time he’s got to make away with the evidence.

It may be you’re right, my lord, and we ought to pull him in. Only you’ll bear in mind, my lord, that if we do detain him, we’ll have to make a charge. There’s such a thing as Habeas Corpus.’

‘All the same,’ said Wimsey, ‘I think’ you’ll have to risk that. I don’t suppose you’ll find any papers, but you may find something else. The paper and ink used to write the letters, perhaps, and books of reference about Russia. Books aren’t as easy to get rid of as papers. And we’ve got to find out the exact connection between Morecambe and Weldon.’

‘They’re working on that now, my lord.’

‘Good. After all, people don’t conspire to commit murder for the fun of the thing. Does Mrs Weldon know anything about the Morecambes?’

‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘I asked her. She’s never heard of them.’

‘Then the connection won’t go too far back. It’ll belong to London or Huntingdonshire. What is Morecambe, by the way?’

‘Described as a Commission Agent, my lord.’

‘Oh, is he? That’s a description that hides a multitude of sins. Well, go to it, Superintendent. As for me, I’ll have to do something drastic to restore my self-respect. Seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Harriet, grinner impishly. ‘When Lord Peter gets these fits of quotation he’s usually on to something.’

‘Sez you,’ retorted Wimsey. ‘I am going, straight away, to make love to Leila Garland.’

‘Well, look out for da Soto.’

‘I’ll chance da Soto,’ said Wimsey, Bunter!’

‘My lord?’

Bunter emerged from Wimpeys’ bedroom, looking as prim as though„he had never sleuthed in a bad bowler through the purlieus of South London.

‘I wish to appear in my famous impersonation of the perfect Lounge Lizard — imitation tres dificile.’

‘very good, my lord. I suggest the fawn-coloured suit we do not care for, with the autumn-leaf socks and our outsized amber cigarette-holder.’

‘As you will, Bunter; as you, will. We must stoop to conquer.’

He kissed his band gallantly to the assembly and vanished into his inner chamber.

Chapter XXXII. The Evidence Of The Family Tree

‘A hundred years hence, or, it may be, more,

I shall return and take my dukedom back.’

— Death’s Jest-Book

Monday, 6 July

THE conquest of Leila Garland followed the usual course. Wimsey pursued her into a tea-shop, cut her out neatly from the two girl-friends who accompanied her, fed her, took her to the pictures and carried her off to the Bellevue for a cocktail.

The young lady showed an almost puritanical discretion in clinging to the public rooms of that handsome hotel, and drove Wimsey almost to madness by the refinement of her table-manners. Eventually, however, he manoeuvred her into an angle of the lounge behind a palm-tree, where they could not be overlooked and where they were far enough from the orchestra to hear each other speak. The orchestra was one of the more infuriating features of the Bellevue, and kept up an incessant drivel of dance-tunes from four in the afternoon till ten at night. Miss Garland awarded it a moderate approval, but indicated that it did not quite reach the standard of the orchestra in which Mr da Soto played a leading part.

Wimsey gently led the conversation to the distressing publicity which Miss Garland had been obliged to endure in connection with the death of Alexis. Miss Garland agreed it had not been very pleasant at all. Mr da Soto had been very much upset. A gentleman did not like his girl-friend to have to undergo so much unpleasant questioning.

Lord Peter Wimsey commended Miss Garland on the discretion she had shown throughout.

Of course, said Leila,’ Mr Alexis was a dear boy, and always a perfect gentleman. And most devoted to her. But hardly a manly man. A girl could not help preferring manly men, who had done something Girls were like that! Even though a man might be of very good family and not obliged. to do anything, he might still do things, might he not? (Languishing glance at Lord Peter.) That was the kind of man Miss Garland liked. It was, she thought, much finer to be a noble-born person who did things than a nobly-born person who only talked about nobility.

‘But was Alexis nobly born?’ inquired Wimsey.

‘Well, he said he was — but how is a girl to know? I mean, it’s easy to talk, isn’t it? Paul — that is, Mr Alexis — used to tell wonderful stories about himself, but it’s my belief he was making it all up. He was such a boy for romances and storybooks. But I said to him, “What’s the good of it?” I said. “Here you are,” I said, “not earning half as much money as some people I could name, and what good does it do, even if you’re the Tsar of Russia?” I said.’

‘Did he say he was the Tsar of Russia?’

‘Oh, no — he only said that if his great-great-grandmother or somebody had married somebody he might have been somebody very important, but what I said was, “What’s the good of saying If,’ I said. “And anyhow,” I said, “they’ve done away with all these royalties now,” I said, “so what are you going to get out of it anyway?” He made me tired, talking about his great-grandmother, and in the end he shut up and didn’t say anything more about it. I suppose he tumbled to it that a girl couldn’t be terribly interested in people’s great-grandmothers.’

‘Who did he think his great-grandmother was, then?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. He did go on so. He wrote it all down for me one day, but I said to him, “You; make my head ache,” I said, “and besides, from what you say, none of your people were any better than they should have been,” I said, “so I don’t see what you’ve got to boast about. It doesn’t sound very respectable to, me,” I said, “and if princesses with plenty of money can’t keep respectable,” I said, “I don’t see why anybody should put any blame on girls who have to earn their own living.” That’s what I told him.’

‘Very true indeed,’ said, Wimsey. ‘He must have had a bit of a mania about it.’

‘Loopy,’ said Miss Garland, allowing the garment of refinement to slip aside for a’ moment. ‘I mean to say, I think he must have been a little silly about it, don’t you?’

‘He seems to have given more thought to the thing than it was worth. Wrote it all down, did he?’

‘Yes, he did. And then, one day he came bothering about it again. Asked me if I’d still got the paper he’d written. “I’m sure I ‘don’t know? I said. “I’m not so frightfully interested in it as all that” I said.. “Do you think I keep every bit of your.handwriting?” I said, “like the heroines in storybooks?” I said. “Because,” I said, “let me tell you I don’t, I said. “Anything that’s worth keeping, I’ll keep, but not rubbishing bits of paper.”

Wimsey remembered that Alexis had offended Leila towards the end of, their connection by a certain lack of generosity.

“If you want things, kept,” I said, “why don’t you give them: to that old woman that’s so struck on you?” I said. “If you’re going to marry her,” I said, “she’s the right person to give things to,” I said, “if you want them kept,” And he said he particularly didn’t want the paper kept, and I said, “Well, then, what are you worrying about?” I said. So he said, if I hadn’t kept it, that was all right, then, and I said I really didn’t know if I’d kept it or not, and he said, yes, but he wanted the paper burnt and I wasn’t to tell anybody about what he’d said — about his great-grandmother, I mean — and I said. “if you think I’ve nothing better to talk to my friends about than you and your great-grandmother,” I said, “you’re mistaken,” I said. Only fancy! Well, of course,’ after that, we weren’t’ such friends as we had been — at least, I wasn’t, though I will say he always was very fond of me. But I couldn’t stand the way he went on. Silly, I call it.’

‘And had you burnt the paper?’

‘Why, I’m sure I don’t know. You’re nearly as bad as he is, going on about the paper. What does the stupid paper matter, anyhow?’

‘Well,’ said Wimsey, ‘I’m inquisitive about papers. Still, if you’ve burnt it, you’ve burnt it. It’s a pity. If you could have found that paper, it might be worth-’

The beautiful eyes of Leila directed their beams upon him like a pair of swivelling head-lamps rounding a corner on a murky night.

‘Yes?’ breathed Leila.

‘It might be worth having a look at,’ replied Wimsey, coolly. ‘Perhaps if you had a hunt among your odds-and-ends, you know

Leila shrugged her shoulders. This sounded troublesome. ‘I can’t see what you want that old bit of paper for.’ ‘Nor do I, till I-see it. But we might have a shot at looking for it, eh, what?’

He smiled. Leila smiled. She felt she had grasped the idea.

‘What? You and me? Oh, well! but I don’t see that I could exactly take you round to, my place, could I? — I mean to say—’

‘Oh, — that’ll be all right,’ said Wimsey, swiftly. ‘You’re surely not afraid of me. You see, I’m trying to do something, and I want your help.’

‘I’m sure, anything I can do — provided it’s nothing Mr da Soto would object to. He’s a terribly jealous boy, you know.’

‘I should be just the same in his place. Perhaps he would like to come too and help hunt for the paper?’

Leila smiled and said she did not think that would be necessary, and the interview ended, where it was in any case doomed to end, in Leila’s crowded and untidy apartment.

Drawers, bags, boxes, overflowing with intimate and multifarious litter which piled itself on the bed, streamed over the chairs and swirled ankle-deep, upon the floor. Left to herself, Leila would have wearied of the search in ten minutes, but Wimsey, bullying, cajoling, flattering, holding out golden baits, kept her remorselessly to her task. Mr da Soto, arriving suddenly to find Wimsey holding an armful of lingerie, while Leila ferreted among a pile of crumpled bills and picture postcards which had been bundled into the bottom of a trunk, thought the scene was set for a little genteel blackmail and started to bluster Wimsey told him curtly not to be a fool, pushed the lingerie into his reluctant hands and started to hunt through a pile of magazines and gramophone records.

Curiously enough, it was da Soto who found the paper. Leila’s interest in the business seemed rather to cool after his arrival — was it possible that she had had other designs upon Lord Peter, with which Luis’ sulky presence interfered? — whereas da Soto, suddenly tumbling to the notion that the production of the paper might turn out to be of value to somebody, gradually became more and more interested.

‘I wouldn’t be that surprised, honey-bunch,’ he observed, ‘If you left it in one of those story-books you’re always reading, same like you always do with your bus-tickets.’

‘That’s an idea,’ said Wimsey, eagerly.

They turned their attention to a shelf stacked with cheap fiction and penny novelettes. The volumes yielded quite a surprising collection, not only of bus-tickets, but also of cinema-ticket counterfoils, bills, chocolate-papers, envelopes, picture-cards, cigarette-cards and other assorted book markers, and at length da Soto, taking The Girl who gave All by the spine and administering a brisk shake, shot out from between its passionate leaves a folded sheet of writing-paper.

‘What do you say to that?’ he inquired, picking it up quickly. ‘If that isn’t the fellow’s handwriting you can call me a deaf-and-dumb elephant with four left feet’

Leila grabbed the paper from him.

‘Yes, that’s it, all right,’ she observed.’

‘A lot of stuff, if you ask me. I never could make head or tail of it, but if it’s any good to you, you’re welcome to it.’

Wimsey cast a rapid glance at the spidery lines of the family tree which sprawled from top to bottom of the sheet.

‘So that’s who he thought he was. Yes — I’m glad you didn’t chuck this away, Miss Garland. It may clear things up quite a lot.’

Here Mr da Soto was understood to say something about dollars.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Wimsey. ‘It’s lucky it’s me and not Inspector Umpelty, isn’t it? Umpelty might run you in for suppressing important evidence.’ He grinned in da Soto’s baffled face. ‘But I won’t say — seeing that Miss Garland has turned her place upside-down to oblige me — that she mightn’t get a new frock out of it if she’s a good girl. Now, listen to me, my child. When did you say Alexis gave you this?’

‘Oh, ages ago. When him and me were first friends. I can’t remember exactly. But I know it’s donkey’s years; since I read that silly old book.’

‘Donkey’s years being, I take it, rather less than a, year ago — unless you knew Alexis before he came-to Wilvercombe.’

That’s right. Wait a minute. Look! Here’s a bit of a cinema-ticket stuck in at another page, with the date on it. Ooh, yes! November 15th that’s right. I remember now. We went to the pictures and then Paul came round to see me afterwards and told me a lot about himself. It was the same evening. He expected me to be terribly excited about it all.’

‘November; you’re sure?’

‘Yes, sure.’

‘At any rate, it was some time before those funny letters started to come for him?’

‘Oh, yes, ages. And after the letters started to come, he shut up about it, and wanted his silly old paper back. I told you that before.’

‘I know you did. All right. Now, sit down. I want to look at this.’

This was the paper:

Francis Josias

D. of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1678—735)

|

Charles Marie Levannier = Anastasia (illegitimate)

(of the French Legation) b. 1728

|

Nicholas I = Charlotte, b. 1770

Tsar of Russia (youngest of seven children)

(morganatically in

1815)

|

Nicolaevna (Nicole) = Gaston, natural son of

Louis-Philippe,

b. 1820, m.1847

|

Capt. Stefan; Ivanovitch Krasky = Louise, b. 1848

m. 1871

|

Alexis Gregorovitch Vorodin = Melanie, b. 1883

|

Pavlo Alexeivitch Vorodin, b. 1909

‘H’m!’ said. Wimsey. ‘I wonder where he got this from. I never knew that Nicholas I married anybody but Charlotte-Louise of Prussia.’

‘I remember about that,’ said Leila. ‘Paul said that that marriage couldn’t be proved. He kept on about that. He said, if only it could be proved he’d be a prince or something. He was always worrying over that Charlotte person, horrid old wretch she must have been, too. Why, she was forty-five if she was a day, and then she went and had a baby. I wonder it didn’t kill her. It ought; to have, I’m sure.’

‘Nicholas I must have been quite a, kid at the time. Let’s see—1815 that would be when he was in Paris after the Waterloo business. Yes, I see — Charlotte’s father was something to do with the French legation; that fits in all right. I suppose he had this illegitimate daughter of Duke Francis pushed off on to him when he was in Saxe-Coburg. She went back and lived with him in Paris and had seven children, and the youngest of them was Charlotte, who, I suppose, somehow got hold of the young Emperor and cradle-snatched him.’

‘The old beast!” I said to Paul, when he took up with this Mrs Weldon. “Well,” I said, “marrying old hags must run in your family,” I said. But he wouldn’t hear anything against Great-Great-Grandma Charlotte. She was something quite out of the way, by his account of it. A sort of what’s-her-name.’

‘Ninon de l’Enclos?’

‘Yes, I daresay if that’s the old wretch who went on having lovers till she was about a hundred and fifty. I don’t think it’s nice at all. I can’t think what the men were thinking about. Potty, they must have been, if you ask me. Anyway, what you, said is about right. She was a widow several times over — Charlotte, I mean. She married some Count or other or General Somebody — I forget — and had something to do with politics.’

‘Everybody in Paris in 1815 had to do with politics,’ said Wimsey. ‘I can see Charlotte all right, playing her cards carefully among the new, nobility. Well, this elderly beauty marries, or doesn’t marry, the young Tsar and produces a daughter and calls her Nicolaevna after her illustrious papa. Being in France, they call the child Nicole. What happens next? Old Charlotte goes on playing her cards well, and, having tasted royal blood, so to speak, thinks she’ll worm herself in on the Bourbons. There are no legitimate princes she can bag for her daughter, but’ she thinks the wrong side of the blanket better than being left out in the cold, and marries the girl off to some little accident of Louis Phillippe’s.’

‘A nice set of people they must have been in those days!’

‘So-so. I daresay Charlotte may really have thought she was married. to Nicholas, and been frightfully disappointed at finding her claims set aside. They must have been one too many for her there — Nicholas and his diplomats. Just when she thought he had hooked her fish so well — the fading beauty, with her wit and charm, pulling off the biggest, coup of her life — making herself Empress. France was in confusion, the Empire broken, and those who had climbed to power on the eagle’s wings falling with his fall — who knew what would happen to the intriguing widow of one of Napoleon’s counts or generals? — but Russia! The double-headed eagle still had all his pinions—’

‘How you do go on!’ said Miss Garland, impatiently. ‘It doesn’t sound a bit likely to me. If you ask me, I think Paul made it all up out of those books he was so fond of.’

‘Very probably,’ admitted Wimsey. ‘I only mean that it was a good story. Colourful, vivid stuff, with costume effects and plenty of human interest. And it fits in reasonably well from the historical point of view. You’re quite sure you heard all about it in November?’

‘Yes, of course I’m sure.’

‘My opinion of Paul Alexis’ powers of invention is going up. Romantic fiction should have been his line. Anyhow, we’ll pass all that. Here’s Charlotte, still clinging to this idea about morganatic marriages and thrones, and marrying her daughter Nicole to this Bourbon fellow, Gaston. Nothing unlikely about that. He’d come in between the Prince de Joinville and the Duc d’Aumale as regards age, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. Now, what happens to Nicole?? She has a daughter — the family seems to have run to daughters — called Melanie. I wonder what happened to Gaston and Nicole under the second Empire. Nothing is said about Gaston’s profession. Probably he accepted the fait accompli and kept his royalist leanings and origin quiet. At any rate, in 1871, his daughter Louise marries a Russian — that’s a throw-back to the old stock. Let’s see—1871. What do I connect with 1871? Of course — the Franco-Prussian War, and Russia’s behaving rather unkindly to France about the Treaty of Paris. Alas! I fear Louise went over, horse, foot and artillery, to the enemy! Possibly this Stefan Ivanovitch came to Paris in some diplomatic connection about the time of the Treaty of Berlin. Goodness knows!’

Leila Garland yawned dreadfully.

‘Louise has a daughter, anyhow,’ pursued Wimsey, wrapped up in his speculation. ‘And she marries another Russian. Presumably they are living in, Russia again now. Melanie is the daughter’s name, and the husband is Alexis Gregorovitch, and they are the parents of Paul Alexis, otherwise Goldschmidt, who is rescued from the Russian revolution, brought over to England and naturalised, becomes a hotel gigolo and is murdered on the Flat-Iron Rock — why?’

‘Goodness knows,’ said Leila, and yawned again.

Wimsey, making sure that Leila had really told him all she knew, gathered up his precious piece of paper and carried the whole problem away to Harriet.

‘But it’s simply silly,’ said that practical young woman when she saw it. ‘Even if Alexis’ great-great-grandmother had been married to Nicholas I fifty times over, he wouldn’t have been the heir to the throne. Why, there are heaps and heaps of people nearer than he was — the Grand-Duke Dimitri, for instance, and all sorts of people.’

‘Oh? Of course. But you can always persuade people into believing what they want to you know. Some sort of tradition about it must have been handed down in the family from old Charlotte — you know what people are when they get these genealogical bugs in their heads. I know a fellow who’s a draper’s assistant in Leeds; who very earnestly told me once that he ought really to be King’ of England, if he could only find the record of somebody’s marriage to Perkin Warbeck. The trifling accident of a few intervening changes of dynasty didn’t worry him at all. He really thought he had only to state his case in the House of Lords to have the crown handed to him on a gold plate. And as for all the other claimants, Alexis would probably be told that they’d all abdicated in his favour. Besides, if he really believed in this family tree of his, he’d say that his claim was better than theirs, and that his great-great-grandmother was the only legitimate descendant of Nicholas I. 1 don’t think there, was a Salic Law in Russia to prevent his claiming through the female line. Anyhow, it’s perfectly clear now how the trap was baited. If only we could get hold of the papers that Alexis sent to “Boris” But they’ll have been destroyed, as sure as eggs is eggs.’

Inspector Umpelty, accompanied by Chief Inspector Parker, of Scotland Yard, rang the bell at No. 17 Popcorn Street, Kensington, and was admitted without difficulty. It was obliging of Chief Inspector Parker to be taking a personal interest in the matter, though Umpelty felt he could have done with a less distinguished escort — but the, man was Lord Peter’s brother-in-law and no doubt felt a peculiar interest in the case. At any rate, Mr Parker seemed disposed to leave the provincial inspector a free hand with his inquiries

Mrs Morecambe tripped into the room, smiling graciously.

‘Good morning. Won’t you sit down? Is it something, about this Wilvercombe business again?’

‘Well, yes, madam. There appears to be some slight misunderstanding.’ The Inspector brought out a notebook and cleared his throat. ‘About this gentleman, Mr Henry Weldon, to whom you gave a lift on the Thursday morning. I think you said that you drove him in to the Market’ Square?’

‘Why, yes. It is the Market Square, isn’t it? Just outside the town, with a sort of green and a building with a clock on it?’

‘Oh!’ said Umpelty, disconcerted. ‘No; that’s not the Market Square — it’s the fair-ground, where they have the football matches and the flower show. Was that where you put him down?’

‘Why, yes. I’m sorry. I quite thought it was the Market Square.’

‘Well, it’s called the Old Market. But what they call the Market Square now is the square in the centre of the town, where the point-constable stands.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, I’m afraid I’ve been giving you misleading information.’ Mrs Morecambe smiled. ‘Is that a very dreadful offence?’

‘It might have serious consequences, of course,’ said the Inspector, ‘but nobody can’t help a genuine mistake. Still, I’m glad to have it cleared up. Now, just as a matter of routine, madam, what did you yourself do that morning in Wilvercombe?’

Mrs Morecambe considered, with her head on one side.

‘’Oh, I did some shopping, and I went to the Winter Gardens, and I had a cup of coffee at the Oriental Cafe nothing very special.’

‘Did you happen to buy any gentleman’s collars?’

‘Collars?’ Mrs Morecambe looked surprised. Really, Inspector, you seem to have been going ‘into my movements very thoroughly.’ Surely I’m not suspected of anything?’

‘Matter of routine, madam,’ replied the Inspector, stolidly; he licked his pencil.

‘Well, no, I didn’t buy any collars. I looked at some.’

‘Oh, you looked at some.

‘Yes; but they hadn’t the sort my husband wanted.’

‘Oh, I see. Do, you remember the name of the shop?’

‘Yes—. Rogers & something — Rogers & Peabody, I think.’

‘Now, madam.’ The Inspector looked up from his note-book and stared sternly, at her. ‘Would it surprise you to learn that the assistant at Rogers & Peabody’s says that a lady dressed in the same style as yourself and answering your description, bought the collars there that morning and had the parcel taken out to the car?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all. He was a very stupid_ young man. He did take a parcel out to the car, but it wasn’t collars. It was ties. I went in twice — once for the ties, and then I remembered the collars and went back; but as they hadn’t got what I wanted, I left them. That would be about half-past twelve-I think, if the time is of any importance.’

The Inspector hesitated. It might — it might just be true. The most honest witness makes a mistake sometimes. He decided to let it go for the moment.

‘And you picked Mr Weldon up at the Old Market again?’

‘Yes. But when you say it was this Mr Weldon, Inspector, you’re putting, words into my mouth. I picked up somebody — a man with dark spectacles — but I didn’t know his name till he told me, and I didn’t recognise the man afterwards when I saw him without the spectacles. In fact I thought then, and I still think, that the man I picked up, had dark hair. The other man’s voice sounded much the same — but, after all, that isn’t a lot to go upon. I thought it must be he, because; he seemed to remember all about it, and knew the number of my car, but of course, if it came to swearing to his identity well!’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Quite so, madam.’ It was clear enough to the Inspector what was happening. Since the discovery of the real time of the murder had made the morning alibi more dangerous than useful, it was being ruthlessly jettisoned. More trouble, he thought sourly, and more checking-up of times and places. He thanked the lady politely for her helpful explanation, and then asked whether he might have a word with Mr Morecambe.

‘With my husband?’ Mrs Morecambe registered surprise. ‘I don’t think he will be able to tell you anything. He was not staying at Heathbury at the time, you know.’

The Inspector admitted that he was aware of the fact, and added, vaguely, that this was a purely, formal inquiry. ‘Part of our system,’ he explained, and obscurely connected with the fact that Mr Morecambe was the legal owner of the Bentley.

Mrs Morecambe smiled graciously. Well, Mr Morecambe was at home, as it happened. He had not, been very well, lately, but no doubt he would be ready to, assist the Inspector if it was really necessary. She would ask him to come down.

Inspector Umpelty indicated that this was not really necessary. He would be happy to accompany Mrs Morecambe to her husband’s room. At which precaution Chief Inspector Parker smiled: any necessary arrangements; between the Morecambes would surely have been perfected by this time.

Mrs Morecambe led the way to the door, followed by Mr Umpelty. She glanced round as though expecting Parker to follow, but he kept his seat. After a momentary hesitation, Mrs Morecambe went out, leaving her second guest to his own devices. She went upstairs, with the Inspector padding behind her, murmuring apologies and trying to keep his boots from making a noise.

The room they entered on the first floor was furnished as a study, and beyond it, another door, half-open, led into a bedroom. At a table in the study sat a small, red-bearded man, who turned sharply to face them at their entrance.

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Morecambe, ‘this is Inspector Umpelty of the Wilvercombe police. He wants to know something about the car.’

‘Oh, yes, Inspector, what is it?’ Mr Morecambe spoke genially, but his geniality was as nothing compared to the genially of the Inspector.’

‘Hullo, Bright, my man!’ said he. ‘Risen a bit in the world since I last saw you, haven’t you?’

Mr Morecambe raised his eyebrows, glanced at his wife, and then broke into a hearty laugh.

‘Well done, Inspector!’ said he. ‘What did’ I tell you, dear? You can’t deceive our fine British police-force. With his usual acumen,’ the man has spotted me! Well, sit down, Inspector and have a drink, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

Umpelty cautiously lowered his large form into a chair and accepted a whisky-and-soda.

‘First of all, congratulations on your sleuthing,’ said ‘Mr Morecambe, cheerfully. ‘I thought I’d got rid of that fellow in Selfridge’s, but I suppose the other fellow with the quick change headgear managed to keep on the scent, in spite of my artistic camouflage in the Cinema. Well, now, I suppose you want to know why Alfred Morecambe, commission-agent of London, was going about at Wilvercombe disguised as William Bright, that seedy and unsatisfactory tonsorial artist. I don’t blame you. I daresay it does look queerish. Well, to start with — here’s the explanation.’

He gathered up a number of sheets of paper from his writing-table and pushed them across to Umpelty.

‘I’m writing a play for my wife,’ he said. ‘You have no doubt discovered that she was the famous Tillie Tulliver before she,married. I’ve written a play or two before, under the name of Cedric St Denis spare-time work; you know — and this new one deals with the adventures of an itinerant hairdresser. The best way to pick up local colour, is to go and get it personally.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘I ought to have told you all this at the time,’ said Mr Morecambe, with a frank air of apology, ‘but it really didn’t seem necessary. As a matter, of fact, I felt it would make me look a bit of a fool in the City. I was supposed to be taking a holiday for my health, you see, and if my partner had known what I was really up to, he might; have been a little annoyed. In any case, you had my evidence, which was all that was really necessary — and I must admit that I rather enjoyed playing the ne’er-do-well to all you people. I did it rather well, don’t you think? Thanks to my wife’s coaching, of course.’

‘I see, sir.’ Inspector Umpelty fastened promptly on the salient point of all this. ‘Your account of your meeting with Paul Alexis was a fact, then?’

‘Absolutely true in every particular. Except, of course, that I never really had the slightest intention of committing suicide. As a matter of fact, the: idea of passing the night in one of the lodging-houses appropriate to my impersonation didn’t greatly; appeal to me at that moment, and I was putting off the evil hour as long as. possible. It’s quite true that I made up a hard-luck story for Alexis — though I didn’t. actually take any, money from the poor fellow. I drew, the line at that. The pound-note I paid out that night was my own — But you nearly tied me up over that business about the tide. I rather over-reached myself there with all that picturesque detail.’ He laughed again.

‘Well, well,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’ve led us a fine dance, sir.’ He glanced at the manuscript sheets in his hands, which appeared, so far as he could make out, to substantiate Morecambe’s story. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t take us into your confidence, sir. We could probably have arranged for nothing — to come out about it in the press. However — if I take a fresh statement from you now, that will clear that up all right.’

He cocked his head for a moment as though listening, and then went on rapidly:

‘I take it, that statement will just confirm the evidence you gave at the inquest? Nothing to add to it in any way?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘You never, for instance, came across this Mr Henry Weldon at any time?’

‘Weldon?’’

‘The man I gave the lift to,’ prompted Mrs Morecambe, ‘whose mother was engaged to the dead man.’

‘Oh him? Never saw him in my, life. Don’t suppose I’d recognise him now if I saw him. He didn’t give evidence, did’ he?’

‘No, sir. Very good, then. If you like, I will take a statement from you now. I’ll just call in my colleague, if you don’t mind, to witness it’

The Inspector threw open the door. Chief Inspector Parker must have been waiting on the landing, for he marched in at once, followed by a respectable-looking working-woman and a large, stout man smoking a cigar. The Inspector kept his eye on the Morecambes. The wife looked merely surprised, but Morecambe’s face changed.

‘Now, Mrs Sterne,’ said Parker, ‘have you ever seen this gentleman before?’

‘Why, yes, sir; this is Mr Field, as was staying with Mr Weldon down at Fourways in February. I’d know him any where.’

‘That’s who he is, is he?’ said the stout gentleman. ‘I thought it might be Potts or Spink. Well, Mr Maurice Vavasour, did you give the little Kohn girl a show after all?’

Mr Morecambe opened his mouth, but no sound came. Inspector Umpelty consulted the Scotland Yard man by a glance, cleared his throat, took his courage in both hands, and advanced upon his prey:

‘Alfred Morecambe,’ he said, ‘alias William Bright, alias William Simpson, alias Field, alias Cedric St Denis, alias Maurice Vavasour, I arrest you for being concerned in the murder of Paul Alexis Goldschmidt, otherwise Pavlo Alexeivitch, and I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence at your trial:’

He wiped his forehead.

Alibi or no alibi, he had burnt his boats.

Chapter XXXIII. The Evidence Of What Should Have Happened

‘Now see you how this dragon egg of ours

Swells with its ripening plot?’

— Death’s Jest-Book

Wednesday, 8 July

‘Turning my hair grey, that’s what it is,’ said Inspector Umpelty.;

‘Not a book, not a scrap of paper; not as much as a line on the blotting pad.

‘No, not even a bottle of purple ink.

‘He’s an artful one if you like. Always posted his own letters, or so the girl says ‘Yes, I know, it’s all very well saying he must have been up to mischief the job is to prove, it. You know what juries are….

Weldon’s the fool of the two, but he’s not talking. And we shan’t find anything at his, place — Morecambe never trusted him with anything….’

‘No; we haven’t traced his friend in Warsaw — not yet….’

‘Oh, I know; but meantime we’ve got to charge them with something that looks like something. And do it quick. There’s such a thing as Habeas Corpus….

‘It’s absolutely positive that neither of them could have been at the Flat-Iron cutting throats, nor yet the lady. And it’s a bit awkward to fetch up three people, and charge ’em with being accomplices to a murder which you can’t even prove is a murder….’

‘Thank you, my lord, I don’t mind if I do.’

‘I freely admit,’ said Wimsey, ‘that it’s the queerest case I ever struck. We’ve got all the evidence — at least, not all, but overwhelming evidence of an elaborate conspiracy to do something or the other, And we’ve got a corpse which looks like the victim of a conspiracy to murder. But when we come to put the two together, they don’t fit. Everything in the garden is lovely except the melancholy, fact that none of the people engaged in the conspiracy could possibly have done the murder. Harriet! It’s your business to work out problems of this sort — how do you propose to tackle this one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet. ‘I can only suggest a few methods and precedents. There’s the Roger Sheringham method, for instance. You prove elaborately and in detail that A did the murder; then you give the story one final shake, twist it round a fresh corner, and find that the real murderer is B — the person you suspected first and then lost sight of.’

That’s no good; the cases aren’t parallel. We can’t even plausibly fix anything on A, let alone B.’

‘No; well, there’s the Philo Vance method. You shake your head and say: “There’s worse yet to come,” and then the murderer kills five more people, and that thins the suspects out a bit and you spot who it is.

‘Wasteful, wasteful,’ said Wimsey. ‘And too slow.’

True. There’s the Inspector French method — you break the unbreakable alibi.’

Wimsey groaned.

‘If anybody says “Alibi” to me again, I’ll — I’ll..’

‘All right. There are plenty of methods left. There’s the Thorndyke type of solution, which, as Thorndyke himself; says, can be put in a nut-shell. “You have got the wrong man, you have got the wrong box, and you have got the wrong body.” Suppose, for instance, that Paul Alexis is really —’

‘The Emperor of Japan! Thank you.’

Well, that might not be so far off. He thought he was an Emperor, or next door to it, anyhow. Though even if he had fifty kinds of Imperial blood in his veins instead of only two or three, it wouldn’t help us to explain how he managed to get killed with nobody near him. The real difficulty—’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Wimsey. ‘Say that again.’

Harriet said it again. ‘The real difficulty,’ she persisted, ’is that one can’t see how anybody — let alone Morecambe or Henry Weldon — could have done the murder. Even if Pollock—,

‘The real difficulty,’ interrupted Wimsey, in a suddenly high-pitched and excited voice, ’is the time of the death, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Of course it is. If it wasn’t for that, we could explain everything.’ He laughed. ‘You know, I always thought it was funny, if Henry Weldon did the murder, that he shouldn’t seem to know what time he did, it at. Look! Let’s pretend we’ve planned this murder ourselves and have timed it for twelve o’clock, shall we?’

‘What’s the good of that? We know it wasn’t actually done till two o’clock. You can’t get round that, my, lord.’

‘Ah! but I want to look at the original murder, as it was planned: It’s true that the murderers later on found themselves faced with an unexpected alteration in the time-scheme, but just for the moment’ we’ll work out the time-scheme as it originally stood. Do you mind? I want to.’

The Inspector grunted, and Wimsey sat for a few minutes, apparently thinking hard. Then he spoke, without any trace of his former excitement.

‘It’s February,’ he said. ‘You’re Henry Weldon. You have just heard that your, elderly and foolish mother is going to marry a dancing dago thirty-five years younger than herself, and disinherit you. You are badly in need of money and you want to stop this at all costs. You make yourself unpleasant, but you find it’s no good: you’ll only lose all the money instead of only part. You are not an inventive man yourself, but you consult — yes, why, do you consult Morecambe, Inspector?’

‘Well, my lord, it seems that when Weldon came down here to see his mother, he picked up with Mrs Morecambe somewhere, or other. He’s a great man with the ladies, and she probably thought there was money to be made out of him, seeing his mother was a rich woman. He pretty soon put her right about that, I fancy, and she got the idea of bringing her husband in on the job. That’s all speculative, as you might say, though, we’ve checked up that Mrs M. was staying at Heathbury about the time Weldon was in Wilvercombe. Anyhow, we have made sure of one thing, and that is that Morecambe’s “Commission Agency” is a pretty vague, sort of affair and uncommonly rocky on its pins. Our idea was that the lady brought the two men together, and that Morecambe promised to do what he could for Weldon on a fifty-fifty basis.’

‘Fifty-fifty of what?’ asked Harriet.

‘Of his mother’s money — when he raked it in.’

But that wouldn’t be till she died.’

‘No, miss, it wouldn’t.’

‘Oh — do you think—? ‘

‘I think those two might have been in it for what they could get out of it, miss,’ said the, Inspector, stolidly.

‘I agree,’ said Wimsey, ‘Anyway, the next thing that happens is that Mr Morecambe, goes to Leamhurst and stays a few days with Weldon. All through this business, Morecambe has been far too smart to put anything on paper, except, all that rubbish in cipher, so I imagine the plot was more or less worked out then. Weldon mentions to Morecambe the romantic tale of Alexis’ Imperial descent, and that gives them the idea for luring their victim to the Flat-Iron. Immediately after this, the mysterious letters begin to go out. I wonder, by the way, what was the excuse for not writing that first letter in Russian. Because, of course, that must have gone out in clear and not in code.’

‘I’ve got an idea about that,’ said Harriet. ‘Didn’t you say you knew of an English novel that had an explanation of the Playfair cipher?’’

‘Yes one of John Rhode’s. Why?’

‘I, suggest that the first letter merely gave the title of the book and the chapters concerned and added the code-word for the next message. Since the book was English it would be quite natural to make the whole message English.’

‘Ingenious beast,’ said Wimsey. ‘Meaning you. But it’s quite a possible explanation. We needn’t go into all that story again. Obviously, Mrs Morecambe. was the source of information about the topography and fauna of Wilvercombe and Darley. Weldon was chosen to do the throat-cutting and horse-riding part of it, which needed brawn only, while Morecambe buzzed about despatching letters and photographs and working Alexis up to he top-notch of excitement. Then, when everything is about ready, Morecambe goes off to take up his role of travelling hairdresser.’

‘But why all that incredible elaboration?’—demanded Harriet.’

‘Why didn’t they just buy an ordinary razor or knife in an ordinary way? Surely it would be less traceable.’

‘You’d think so. In fact, I daresay it might have been. But it’s surprising how things do get traced. Look at Patrick Mahon and the chopper, for instance. The plan was to make the thing really impregnable by double and triple lines of defence. First, it was to look like suicide; secondly, if that was questioned and the razor traced, there was to be a convincing origin for the razor, thirdly, if by any chance Morecambe’s disguise was seen through, there was to be an explanation for that.’

‘I see. Well, go on. Morecambe had the courage of his own convictions, anyhow he did the, thing very thoroughly.’

‘Wise man. I admit that he took me in, absolutely. Well, now Weldon. He had his character of Haviland Martin all ready to slip into. Acting under instructions, he hired a Morgan, crammed it uncomfortably with a small tent and his personal belongings, and went to camp at Darley, next door to Farmer Newcombe’s field. Morecambe arrived at Wilvercombe the same day. Whether and when those two met I don’t know. It’s my impression, that the whole thing was scheduled beforehand as far as possible, and that there was next to no communication after the plot had once got going.’

‘Very likely,’ said Umpelty. That would account for its getting hitched-up over the times.’

‘Possibly. Well, on the Thursday, Alexis starts off for the Flat-Iron according to instructions. By the way, it was necessary that the body should be found and recognised hence, I fancy, the fact that Alexis was told to go openly to the rock by the-coast-road. In case the body got lost, there would be witnesses to say that he had been last seen going in that direction, and to suggest a possible area for search. It would never have done for him simply to disappear like snow upon the desert’s dusty face.

‘So Alexis goes off to look for a crown. Meanwhile, Henry Weldon has run a needle through the H.T. leads of the Morgan, so as to provide a very good reason for asking for a lift into Wilvercombe. And now you see why a Morgan. It had to be something with only two cylinders, if the whole ignition was to be put out of action with one needle: that is a Morgan, a Belsize-Bradshaw or a motor-bike. He probably avoided the bike on the ground of exposure to weather, and chose the Morgan as the next most handy and numerous two-cylinder bus.’

Inspector Umpelty smacked his thigh, and then, remembering that none of all this did away with the central snag in the case, blew his nose mournfully.

‘Shortly after: ten o’clock, along comes Mrs Morecambe in the Bentley with the conspicuous number-plate. That number-plate was pure bunce for them — they can scarcely have picked or wangled it on purpose, but it came in very convenient as a means of identifying the bus. What more natural than that Weldon, if questioned, should remember a number so screamingly funny as that? Oi, oi, oi! Highly humorous, wasn’t it, Inspector?’

‘Where did she put him down, then?’ asked Umpelty, scowling.

‘Anywhere, out of sight of the village and the passing throng. At some point where he can cut across the fields to the shore again. The road turns in rather sharply from the coast between Darley and Wilvercombe, which doubtless accounts for their having left him so much time for his walk back. In any case, by, say, 11.15, he has walked back to Darley and is cocking an eye over the fence at Farmer Newcombe’s bay mare. He pulls a stake out of the hedge and goes into the field, with oats in one hand and a rope-bridle in the-other.’.

‘What did he want to take oats for?’ Surely the horse would have come up to him if he just said “Coop” or whatever it is and shaken his hat about? It seems silly of him to scatter oats; all over the place like that.’

‘Yes, my child,’ said Wimsey. ‘But there was a reason for that. I think the oats he scattered were from the day before, when he first started to make friends with the mare. Teach an animal to come for food once and it’ll come twice as fast the second time; but once disappoint it, and it won’t come at all.’

‘Yes, of course. You’re quite right.’

‘Now,’ said Wimsey, ‘I think, I can’t prove it, but I think, our hero left most of his clothes behind him. I’m not certain, but it seems an obvious precaution. At any, rate, he bridled the mare and mounted her and rode off. You’ve got to remember that between Darley and Pollock’s cottage the shore is hidden from the road, so that the only risk he ran of being seen was by somebody straying on the edge of the cliff itself. And they would probably not worry much about a man exercising a horse along the shore. His real awkward moment was the passing of the cottages, but he had carefully chosen the very time when the working-classes have their dinner. I fancy he went past there just before midday.’

‘They heard hoofs about that time.’

‘Yes. And a little later, Paul Alexis heard them too, as he sat on his rock and dreamed of the Imperial Purple. He looked and saw the Rider from the Sea.’

‘Quite so,’ said Umpelty, unmoved. ‘And what, then?’

‘Ah! — you recollect that we are merely describing an. ideal crime, in which everything works out as planned.’

‘Oh, yes — of course.’

‘Then — in the ideal crime Weldon rides up to the rock through the water — and by the way, you will bear in mind that it is fully an hour before low tide and.that there is a foot and a half of water at the foot of the Flat-Iron: He ties the mare close by the head to the ring-bolt put there the day before, and he climbs up on to the rock. Alexis may or may not have recognised him. If he did.’

Wimsey paused, and his eyes grew angry.

‘Whether he did or not, he hadn’t much time for disappointment. Weldon asked him to sit down, I think; emperors sit, while respectful commoners stand behind them, you see. Weldon asked for the letter, and Alexis gave him the decoded translation. Then he leaned over him from behind with the razor.

‘Weldon, of course, was a fool. He did everything wrong that he could do. He ought to have removed those gloves, and he ought to have seen to it that he had the original letter. Perhaps he ought to have searched the body. But I think that would have been worse still. It might have destroyed the suicidal appearance. Once move a body and you never can, recapture the first, fine, careless rapture, don’t you know. And besides, the mare was struggling and nearly breaking away. That would have been fatal…’

‘Do you know, I rather take my hat off to Weldon about this. Ever seen a horse that has suddenly had fresh blood splashed all over it? Not pretty. Definitely not. Cavalry horses have to get used to it, of course but the bay mare could never have smelt blood before. When I realise that Weldon had to mount that squealing, plunging, terrified brute bareback from the top of a rock, and ride her away without letting her once plunge on to the sand, I tell you, I take off my hat.’

‘You mean, you would have had to, if it had happened that thick way.’

‘Exactly. A man who could seriously contemplate bringing that scheme off knew something about horses. He may even have known too much. I mean… there are ways and ways of subduing violent animals, and some ways are crueller than others….’

‘We’ll suppose he did it. ‘That he somehow got the mare untied from the rock and forced her straight out to sea. That would be the best way. That would tire her out, and at the same time wash the blood away. Then, having got control of her, he rides back as he came. But she has loosened a shoe in her frantic plunging and kicking, and on the way back she wrenches it off, altogether. Probably he doesn’t notice that. He rides on past his camp to wherever he left his clothes, looses the mare, gets dressed and hurries out to flag the Bentley on the return journey. I don’t suppose he gets there much before, say 12.55. He’s picked up and set down at the Feathers at one o’clock. Here we leave romance and come back to the facts. Then, after lunch, he goes down to his own place, burns the rope-bridle, which is bloody, and kicks out our friend Perkins, who seems disposed to take too much interest in the rope.’

‘He hadn’t the rope with him at the Feathers, had he?’

‘No; I expect he threw it down inn some handy, spot on his way back from the Flat-Iron — somewhere near the stream, I should imagine. Well, all he has to do after that is to get Polwhistle to come along and deal with the Morgan. He made another mistake there, of course. When he was putting those leads in his pocket he should have put them in his pocket and seen that they stayed put.

‘But you see that he, too, was intended to have three lines of defence.; First, of course, thee death was to look like suicide; secondly, the camper at Darley Halt was to be Mr Martin of Cambridge, having no connection with anybody; and thirdly, if Mr Martin was proved to be Henry Weldon, there was the alibi in Wilvercombe, with all the details about Bach and shirt-collars, and an absolutely independent witness in a Bentley car to swear to the story.’

‘Yes, but said Umpelty.

‘I know, I know — bear with me. I know the plan went all wrong, but I want you to realise what it was meant to be. Suppose all this had worked properly — what would have happened? The body would have been left on the rock at about noon, with the razor lying below it. By 12–30, the

murderer was well away, nearly at Darley. By one o’clock, he was at the. Feathers, eating and drinking, with a witness to swear that he had spent the whole morning in Wilvercombe. If the body was found before the tide turned, there would be no footprints, other than those of the corpse, and suicide would probably be presumed without a second thought — especially when the razor turned up. If the body was not found till: later, the footprints would be less important, but the medical evidence would probably establish the time of death, and then the alibi would come in.

‘It sounds a very risky plan, but it sounds riskier than it was. Its boldness was its strength. From the Flat-Iron and for a mile or more before you come to it the coast-road is visible from the shore. He could keep an eye on it and bide his time. If it looked dangerous, he could put it off to a more convenient season. Actually, the only real risk he ran was of being seen at the very moment of the murder and chased by car along the, coast. Otherwise, even if it turned out later that a horseman had been, seen on the shore about noon, who could prove who the horseman was? It could certainly not be Mr Haviland Martin, who had no connection with anybody and had spent the morning musically in Wilvercombe. And in any case, how many people did pass along that road? What were the odds that the body would be discovered under a few hours? Or that the death would be supposed to be anything except suicide?’

‘What are the odds now that it wasn’t suicide?’ said Inspector. Umpelty. ‘By your own showing it can’t have been anything else. But I see what you mean, my lord. You mean that all this plan was made out, and then, when Weldon got along to the Flat-Iron, something made him, change his mind.’ How’s this? When Alexis sees his Rider from the Sea, he recognises Weldon and asks him to explain, Weldon tells him how they’ve made a fool of him and somehow gets him to promise to chuck Mrs Weldon. Maybe he threatens him with the razor, Then Weldon goes away and Alexis is so disappointed that, after thinking it over a bit, he cuts his throat’

‘Weldon having thoughtfully armed him with the razor for that purpose?’

‘Well, yes — I suppose so.’

‘And what did the bay mare see?’ asked Harriet.

‘Ghosts,’ replied Inspector Umpelty, with a snort of in credulity. ‘Anyhow, you can’t put horses in the witness-box.’

‘Weldon made a mistake afterwards in coming to Wilvercombe,’ went on Wimsey. ‘With that identification mark on his arm, he should have kept away, mother or no mother. But he had to poke his nose in and see what was happening. and Morecambe — well, his possible appearance as a witness was foreseen, of course. I wonder, though, if he was really wise to answer that advertisement of ours. I suppose it was the best thing he could do but he ought to have smelt the trap, I think. But my private impression is that he wanted to keep an eye on Weldon, who was blundering about all over the place.’

‘Excuse me, my lord,’ said Inspector Umpelty, ‘but we’ve wasted a good hour now speculating about what these people might have done or meant to do. That’s very interesting to you, no doubt, but meanwhile we’re no nearer to knowing what they did do, and here’s three people in prison for doing something they can’t have done. If Alexis cut his own throat, we’ve either got to release these people with apologies, or get up a case against them for conspiring to procure by menaces or something. If some accomplice of theirs killed him, we’ve got to find that accomplice. In either case, I mustn’t waste any more time about it. ‘I only wish I’d never touched the bleeding case.’

But you’re so hasty, Inspector,’ bleated Wimsey. ‘I only said the plan went wrong; I never said they didn’t carry it out.’

Inspector Umpelty looked sadly at Wimsey, and his lips silently formed the word ‘loopy’. But aloud he merely observed:

‘Well, my lord, whatever they did, they didn’t murder Alexis at, two o’clock, because they weren’t there to do it; and they didn’t murder him at twelve o’clock, because he didn’t die till two. Those are facts, aren’t they?’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘You mean, one or other of them was there at two o’clock?’ ‘No’

‘You mean, they did murder Alexis at twelve o’clock?’ ‘Yes’

‘By cutting his throat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right through?’

‘Right through’

‘Then how is it he didn’t die till two o’clock?’

‘We have no evidence at all,’ said Wimsey, ’as to the time Alexis died.’

Chapter XXXIV. The Evidence Of What Did Happen

‘Take thou this flower to strew upon his grave,

A lily’ of the valley; it bears bells,

For even the plants, it seems, must have their fool, —

So universal is the spirit of folly;

And whisper, to the nettles of his grave,’

“King Death hath asses’ ears.”“

— Death’s Jest-Book

Wednesday, 8 July

‘Do you mean to say,’ demanded Inspector Umpelty, with slow indignation, ‘that the young lady finds herself mistaken all this time?’

Harriet shook her head, and Wimsey said, ‘NO.’

‘Well, my lord, I don’t think you can. go against the doctor. I’ve asked other doctors about it, and they say there’s no doubt about it.’

‘You didn’t tell them the whole of the facts,’ said Wimsey. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he added, kindly, ‘I’ve only just thought of the rest of the facts myself. Something you said about blood put it in my head, Harriet. Suppose we put down a few things we know about this supposed heir of the Romanovs.’

1. He is known to have been very ill as a child, through being knocked down in the playground.

2. At the age of twenty-one he wore a beard, and had never used a razor. He was also

3. Extraordinarily timid about using sharp weapons or visiting the dentist.

4. Moreover, he had had at least one molar crowned the last resort to avoid extraction.

5. On Thursday 18th, when scrambling over rocks, he wore gloves.

6. Periodic pains in the joints, caused him acute suffering.

7. He used antipyrin to relieve this condition.

8. In no circumstances would he see a doctor, though he anticipated that the trouble would eventually cripple him.

9. Lack of the usual post-mortem stains were remarked on at the inquest.

10. Inquest also established that the great vessels were almost completely drained of blood.

11. And, finally, one may inherit other things besides Imperial crowns through the female line.

Harriet and the Inspector stared at this for a moment or two. Then Harriet laughed:

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘I thought, your style was a little laboured in places! But as an impromptu effort it’s creditable.’

‘I don’t see what you get from all that,’ said Umpelty. And then, suspiciously: ‘Is it a joke? Is it another of these ciphers?’ He snatched up the paper and ran a large thumb down the lines, ‘Here!’ he said, ‘what are you playing at? Is it a riddle?’

‘No, it’s the answer,’ said Harriet. ‘You’re right, Peter, you’re right you must be. It would explain such a lot. Only I didn’t know about antipyrin.’

‘I’m almost sure that is right; I remember reading about it somewhere.’

‘Did it come through the Romanovs?’

‘Possibly. It doesn’t prove that he really, was a Romanov, if you mean that. Though he may have been, for young Simons recognised something familiar m his face, which may have been a family resemblance: But it may quite likely have been the other way: the fact that he had it may have lent colour to the tradition. It often occurs spontaneously.’ ‘What is all this?’ asked the Inspector.

‘Don’t tease him, Peter. Try the initial letters, Mr Umpelty.’

‘Ah — oh! You will have your fun, my lord! H, A, E — Haemophilia. What in the name of blazes is that, when it’s at home?’

‘It’s a condition of the blood,’ said Wimsey, ‘due to a lack — of something-or-the-other, calcium or what not. It is inherited, like colour-blindness, through the female, and shows itself only, or practically only, in the male, and then only in alternate generations. That is to say, it might lie hidden in generation after generation of daughters, and then, by some malignant chance, pop suddenly up in a son born of a perfectly healthy father and an apparently quite healthy mother. And so far as is known it is incurable.’

‘And what is it? And why do you think Alexis had it? And what does it matter if he’ did?’

‘It’s a, condition in which the blood doesn’t clot properly; if you get even a tiny little scratch, you may, bleed to death from it. You may die of having a tooth drawn or from cutting your chin with a razor, unless you know how to deal with it and in any ease, you will go on bleeding like a stuck pig for hours. And if you get a fall or a blow, you have internal bleeding, which comes out in great lumps and swellings and is agonisingly painful. And even if you are terribly careful, you may get internal bleeding at the joints for no reason at all. It comes on from time to time and is horribly painful and gives you a hell of a fever. Hence, if I remember rightly, the antipyrin. And what’s more, it generally ends up by ankylosing your joints and making you a permanent cripple.’

‘The Tsarevitch has it, of course,’ and Harriet. ‘I read about it in those books of Alexis — but like a fool, I never thought about it in connection with the murder.’

‘I don’t know that I see it now,’ said the Inspector, ‘except that it explains why Alexis was such a namby-pamby and all that. Do you mean it proves that Alexis really was a royalty of sorts and that the Bolshies—?’

‘It may or may not prove any of that,’ said Wimsey. ‘But don’t you see, my dear old goat, that it completely busts up and spifflicates the medical evidence? We timed the death for two o’clock because the blood hadn’t clotted — but if Alexis was a haemophilic, you might wait till Kingdom Come, and his blood would never clot at all. Therefore, he may have died at noon or dawn for all we know. As a matter of fact, the blood might end by clotting very slightly after some hours — it depends how badly he had the disease — but as evidence for the time of death, the blood is a simple washout.’

‘Good lord!’ said Umpelty.

He sat open-mouthed.

‘Yes,’ he said, when he’d recovered himself a little, ‘but here’s a snag. If he might have died any time, how are we to prove he died at twelve o’clock?’

‘Easy. First of all, we know it must have been then, because that’s the time these people have an alibi for. As Sherlock Holmes says somewhere: “Only a man with a criminal enterprise desires to establish an alibi.” I must say, this case is really unique in one thing. It’s the only one I have ever known in which a murderer didn’t know the time he was supposed to have done the murder at. No wonder the evidence at the inquest gave Henry Weldon such a jolt!’

‘Yes but—’ the Inspector seemed worried. ‘That’s all right for us, but I mean to say, that doesn’t prove it was a murder — I mean, you’ve got to prove it was a murder first, before you prove anything else. I mean to say—’

‘Quite right,’ said Wimsey. ‘Unlike Mr Weldon, you can spot the petitio elenchi. But look here, if Alexis was seen alive on the road between half-past ten and half-past eleven and was dead at two o’clock, then he must have died during the period covered by the alibis; that’s certain. And I think we can get it down a bit closer. Jem Pollock and his grandad puzzled us by saying that they thought they saw the man lying down on the rock well before two o’clock. In that case, he was probably dead already. We now know that they were in all likelihood speaking the truth, and so we need not now imagine them to be accomplices in the crime. You can whittle the period during which death must have occurred down to about two hours — say from 11.30, when Alexis could have reached the rock, to about 1.30, when the Pollocks first set eyes on the body. That ought to be near enough for you — especially as you can trace the weapon quite definitely to the hands of one of the accomplices. I suppose you can’t find that the razor was sent anywhere by post for Weldon to get hold of?’

‘We’ve tried that, but we couldn’t find anything.’

‘No. I shouldn’t wonder if Weldon’s trip to Wilvercombe on the Wednesday was made for the purpose of picking up, the razor. It could so easily have been left somewhere for him. Of course, Morecambe took good care not to be in Wilvercombe that day himself, the cunning devil — but what could be easier than to deposit a little parcel at a tobacconist’s or somewhere to be called for by his friend Mr Jones? I suggest that you look, into that, Inspector.’

‘I will, my lord. There’s just one thing. I can’t see why Weldon and Morecambe should have been so surprised about the inquest evidence. Wouldn’t Alexis have told them about this disability of his? If he thought it proved his descent from the Romanovs, you’d think he’d have mentioned it first thing!

‘Oh, no, you wouldn’t. It’s pretty clear that Alexis disguised that little matter very jealously. It’s not a recommendation to — a man who wants to lead a successful revolution that he is liable to be laid up at any moment by a painful and incurable disease. Nor would it be exactly an inducement to ‘Feodora” to marry him, if he was known to be a “bleeder”. No, poor devil, he must have been terrified the whole time for fear they should find it out.’

‘Yes, I see. It’s natural, when you come to think of it.”

‘If you exhume the body,’ said Wimsey, ‘you will very likely find the characteristic thickening of the joints that accompanies; haemophilia. And I daresay you might get conclusive evidence by inquiring among the people who knew Alexis in London and America. I’m pretty sure he had the disease.’

‘It’s funny,’ said Harriet, ‘the way all this worked out for Weldon & Co. They had such good luck in one way and such bad luck in another. I mean: first of all they laid a fairly good plot, which turned on an alibi and a disguise. Then I came along unexpectedly and bust up the disguise. That was bad luck, But at the same time I produced a lot of unnecessary cleverness and observation which gave them a far better alibi for a totally different time, which was good luck. Then they lost the body, owing to the £300 in gold, which would have been a beastly nuisance for them. But again I barged in with evidence and photographs, and so drew attention to the death, and got the body found again. Then, when, to their horror, their original lovely alibi turned out to be useless and dangerous, along comes poor little Perkins — who of course is as innocent as any sucking-pig — to give them a cast-iron alibi for the wrong time. We found the horseshoe, which would have pretty well cooked their goose, but for the astonishing bit of luck over the bloodclotting affair. And so on. It’s been an incredible muddle. And it’s all my, fault, really. If I hadn’t been so bright and brainy nobody would ever have known anything about the condition of the blood at all, and we should have taken it for granted that Alexis had died long before I came on the scene. It’s so complicated, I really don’t know whether my being there helped or hindered.’

‘It’s so complicated,’ said the Inspector with a groan, ‘that I don’t believe we’ll get any jury to believe it. Besides there’s the Chief Constable. I’ll bet you anything you like he’ll pooh-pooh the whole thing. He’ll still say that after all we haven’t proved it wasn’t suicide, and we’d better let it go at that. He’s as mad as a dog with us for arresting those people anyhow, and if I come along with this story about haemo— what-you-call, he’ll have fifty thousand fits. See here, my lord, if we do prosecute, d’you really think we’ve a hope in Hades?’

‘I’ll tell you this,’ said Harriet: ‘Last night, Mrs Weldon consented to dance with M. Antoine, and Henry didn’t like it at all. If you let Henry Weldon and Morecambe loose again, what premium would you take on those two lives — Antoine’s and Mrs Weldon’s?’

There was silence after the Inspector left them..

‘Well!’ said Harriet at last.

‘Well,’ said Wimsey, ‘isn’t that a damned awful, bitter, bloody farce? The old fool who wanted a lover and the young fool who wanted an empire. One throat cut and three people hanged, and £130,000 going begging for the next man who likes to sell his body and soul for it. God! What a jape! King Death has asses’ ears with a vengeance.’

He got up.

‘Let’s clear out of this,’ he said. ‘Get your things packed and leave your address with the police and come on up to town. I’m fed to the back teeth.’

‘Yes, let’s go. I’m terrified of meeting Mrs; Weldon. I don’t want to see Antoine. It’s all frightening and disgusting. We’ll go home.’

‘Right-ho! We’ll go home. We’ll: dine in Piccadilly. Damn it,’ said Wimsey, savagely, ‘I always, did hate watering-places!’

The End