Five Red Herrings Page 26

  ‘Try Who’s Who,’ suggested Wimsey – ‘it may throw some light on their hideous pasts. I must run away now. I’ve got two artists straining at the leash. Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war. It’s curious how blank verse seems to come natural to me today. It just shows how blank my mind is, I suppose.’

  On returning he found that Waters had supplied Graham with canvas, palette, knife and brushes and was arguing cheerfully with him about the rival merits of two different kinds of sketching easel.

  Wimsey stood Campbell’s sketch up on the table before them.

  ‘Oh, that’s the subject, is it?’ said Graham. ‘H’m. Very characteristic. Almost ultra-characteristic, don’t you think, Waters?’

  ‘That’s exactly what one expects from the Campbells of this world,’ said Waters. ‘The trick degenerates into a mannerism, and they paint caricatures of their own style. As a matter of fact, it’s apt to happen to anybody. Even Corot, for instance. I went to a Corot exhibition once, and ’pon my soul, after seeing a hundred or so Corots gathered together, I began to have my doubts. And he was a master.’

  Graham picked the canvas up and carried it across to the light. He frowned and rubbed the surface with a thoughtful thumb.

  ‘Funny,’ he said, ‘the handling isn’t altogether . . . How many people have seen this, Wimsey?’

  ‘Only myself and the police, so far. And the Fiscal, naturally.’

  ‘Ah! – well! Do you know, I should have said – if I didn’t know what it was—’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I should almost have thought I had done it myself. There’s a slight flavour of pastiche about it. And there’s a sort of – just look at those stones in the burn, Waters, and the shadow under the bridge. It’s rather more cold and cobalty than Campbell’s usual style.’ He held it away at arm’s length. ‘Looks as though he’d been experimenting. There’s a lack of freedom about it, somehow. Don’t you think so?’

  Waters came up and stared over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Graham. Yes, I see what you mean. It looks a bit fumbled here and there. No, not quite that. A little tentative. That’s not the word, either. Insincere. But that’s exactly what I complain of in all Campbell’s stuff. It makes its effect all right, but when you come to look into it, it doesn’t stand up to inspection. I call that a thoroughly Campbellish piece of work. A poor Campbell, if you like, but full of Campbellisms.’

  ‘I know,’ said Graham. ‘It reminds me of what the good lady said about Hamlet – that it was all quotations.’

  ‘G. K. Chesterton says,’ put in Wimsey, ‘that most people with a very well-defined style write at times what looks like bad parodies of themselves. He mentions Swinburne, for instance – that bit about “From the lilies and languors of virtue to the raptures and roses of vice.” I expect painters do the same. But of course I don’t know a thing about it.’

  Graham looked at him, opened his mouth to speak, and shut it again.

  ‘Well, chuck it here,’ said Waters. ‘If we’ve got to copy the beastly thing, we’d better start. Can you see all right there? I’ll put the paints on the table here. And please don’t throw them on the floor in your usual dirty way.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Graham, indignantly. ‘I collect them neatly in my hat, if I’m not wearing it, and if I am, I lay them handily in the grass. I’m not always fumbling about for them in a satchel among my sandwiches. It’s a miracle to me that you don’t eat your colours and put the bloater-paste on the canvas.’

  ‘I never keep sandwiches in my satchel,’ retorted Waters. ‘I put them in my pocket. The left-hand pocket. Always. You may think I’m not methodical, but I always know where to find everything. Ferguson puts tubes in his pockets, and that’s why his handkerchiefs always look like paint-rags.’

  ‘That’s better than going round with crumbs in your clothing,’ said Graham. ‘To say nothing of the time when Mrs. McLeod thought the drains were wrong, till she traced the stink to your old painting-coat. What was it? Liver-sausage?’

  ‘That was an oversight. You don’t expect me to go about like Gowan, carrying a sort of combined picnic-basket and sketching-box, with a partition for each colour and a portable kettle, do you?’

  ‘Oh, Gowan? That’s pure swank. Do you remember the day I pinched his box and filled all the partitions up with wee fush?’

  ‘That was a good riot,’ said Waters, reminiscently. ‘He couldn’t use the box for a week because of the fishy smell. And he had to stop painting, because it put him out to have his arrangements upset. Or so he said.’

  ‘Oh, Gowan’s a man of method,’ said Graham. ‘I’m like a Waterman pen – I function in any position. But he has to have everything just so. Never mind. Here I am, like a fish out of water. I don’t like your knife, I don’t like your palette and I simply loathe your easel. But you don’t imagine trifles like that are going to put me off. Not on your life. Have at it. Are you standing by with the stop-watch, Wimsey?’

  ‘Yes. Are you ready? One, two, three – go!’

  ‘By the way, I suppose we can’t expect you to tell us whether the object of all this is to incriminate us? I mean, do we get hanged for being quick or for being slow?’

  ‘I haven’t worked it out yet,’ said Wimsey, ‘but I don’t mind telling you that the less you dawdle the better I shall be pleased.’

  ‘It’s not altogether a fair test,’ said Waters, mashing up his blue and white to the colour of a morning sky. ‘Copying a canvas isn’t the same thing as painting direct. It’s bound to be rather quicker.’

  ‘Slower,’ said Graham.

  ‘Different, anyhow.’

  ‘It’s the technique that’s a nuisance,’ said Graham. ‘I don’t feel handy with so much knife-work.’

  ‘I do,’ said Waters. ‘I use the knife myself quite a lot.’

  ‘I used to,’ said Graham, ‘but I’ve chucked it lately. I suppose we needn’t follow every scratch and scrape exactly, Wimsey?’

  ‘If you try to do that,’ said Waters, ‘it will certainly make you slower.’

  ‘I’ll let you off that,’ said Wimsey. ‘I only want you to get somewhere about the same amount of paint on the canvas.’

  The two men worked on in silence for some time, while Wimsey fidgeted restlessly about the studio, picking things up and putting them down and whistling tuneless fragments of Bach.

  At the end of an hour, Graham was a little farther advanced than Waters, but the panel was still incomplete as compared with the model.

  After another ten minutes Wimsey took up his stand behind the painters and watched them with a maddening kind of intentness. Waters fidgeted, scraped out something he had done, put it in again, cursed and said:

  ‘I wish you’d go away.’

  ‘Nerves cracking up under the strain,’ commented Wimsey, dispassionately.

  ‘What’s the matter, Wimsey? Are we behind time?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Wimsey, ‘but very nearly.’

  ‘Well, you can reckon on another half-hour as far as I’m concerned,’ said Graham, ‘and if you flurry me it’ll probably be longer still.’

  ‘Never mind, do the thing properly. Even if you upset my calculations, it doesn’t matter. I shall probably be able to get round it somehow.’

  The half-hour dragged to an end. Graham, glancing from the model to the copy, said, ‘There, that’s the best I can make it,’ threw down his palette and stretched himself. Waters glanced across at his work and said, ‘You’ve beaten me on time,’ and painted on. He put in another fifteen minutes or so and announced that he had finished. Wimsey strolled over and examined the results. Graham and Waters rose and did likewise.

  ‘Not bad efforts, on the whole,’ suggested Graham, half-shutting his eyes and retiring suddenly on to Wimsey’s toes.

  ‘You’ve got that stuff on the bridge very well,’ said Waters. ‘Thoroughly Campbellian.’

  ‘Your burn is better than mine and better than Campbell’s, if it comes to that,�
�� replied Graham. ‘However, I take it that intrinsic artistic merit is not important in this particular case.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Wimsey. He seemed to have suddenly grown more cheerful. ‘I’m frightfully obliged to you both. Come and have a drink. Several drinks. I rather want to celebrate.’

  ‘What?’ said Waters, his face going very red and suddenly white again.

  ‘Why?’ said Graham. ‘Do you mean to say you’ve got your man? Is it one of us?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wimsey. ‘I mean. I think I’ve got the man. I ought to have known long ago. In fact, I never was in very much doubt. But now I know for certain.’

  GOWAN’S STORY

  ‘A call for you from London, sir,’ said the constable.

  Inspector Macpherson took up the receiver.

  ‘Is that Inspector Macpherson of Kirk-kud-brite?’ demanded London in ladylike tones.

  ‘Ay,’ said Inspector Macpherson.

  ‘One moment, please.’

  A pause. Then, ‘You’re through,’ and an official voice:

  ‘Is that Kirkcudbright Police Station? Is that Inspector Macpherson speaking? This is Scotland Yard. One moment, please.’

  A shorter pause. Then:

  ‘Is that Inspector Macpherson? Oh, good morning, Inspector. This is Parker – Chief Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thank you, sir. An’ hoo’s yersel’?’

  ‘Blooming, thanks. Well, Inspector, we’ve found your man for you. He’s come across with quite an entertaining story, but it’s not quite the story you want. It’s certainly important. Will you come and have a look at him or shall we send him up to you, or shall we just send the story and keep an eye on him?’

  ‘Well, what does he say?’

  ‘He admits meeting Campbell on the road that night and fighting with him, but he says he didn’t kill him.’

  ‘That’s only tae be expectit. What does he say he did wi’ him?’

  A long chuckle rippled over the four hundred miles of wire.

  ‘He says he didn’t do anything with him. He says you’ve got it all wrong. He says he was the dead body in the car.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says he was the body – Gowan was.’

  ‘Och, tae hell wi’ ’t!’ exclaimed the Inspector, oblivious of etiquette, Parker chuckled again.

  ‘He says Campbell knocked him out and left him there.’

  ‘Does he so, sir? Weel, I’m thinkin’ it’ll be best I should come an’ see him. Can ye keep him till I come?’

  ‘We’ll do our best. You don’t want him charged?’

  ‘No, we’d better no charge him. The Chief Constable has thocht o’ a new theory a’tegither. I’ll be takin’ the next train.’

  ‘Good. I don’t think he’ll object to waiting for you. As far as I can make out, there’s only one thing he’s really scared of, and that’s being sent back to Kirkcudbright. Right; we’ll expect you. How’s Lord Peter Wimsey?’

  ‘Och, he’s jist awfu’ busy wi’ yin thing an’ anither. He’s a bright lad, yon.’

  ‘You can trust his judgment, though,’ said Parker.

  ‘I ken that fine, sir. Will I bring him with me?’

  ‘We’re always glad to see him,’ said Parker. ‘He’s a little ray of sunshine about the old place. Invite him by all means. I think he would like to see Gowan.’

  But Lord Peter Wimsey refused the invitation.

  ‘I’d adore to come,’ he said, ‘but I feel it would be mere self-indulgence. I fancy I know what story he’s going to tell.’ He grinned. ‘I shall be missing something. But I can really be more useful – if I’m useful at all, that is – this end. Give old Parker my love, will you, and tell him I’ve solved the problem.’

  ‘Ye’ve solved the problem?’

  ‘Yes. The mystery is a mystery no longer.’

  ‘Wull ye no tell me what ye’ve made o’t?’

  ‘Not yet. I haven’t proved anything. I’m only sure in my own mind.’

  ‘An’ Gowan?’

  ‘Oh, don’t neglect Gowan. He’s vitally important. And remember to take that spanner with you.’

  ‘Is’t Gowan’s spanner to your way of thinkin’?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘An’ them marks on the corpse?’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s all right. You can take it those marks come from the spanner.’

  ‘Gowan says—’ began the Inspector.

  Wimsey looked at his watch.

  ‘Away with you and catch your train,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘There’s a surprise waiting for you at the end of the journey.’

  When Inspector Macpherson was shown into Parker’s room, there was a dejected-looking man seated on a chair in the corner. Parker, after greeting the Inspector warmly, turned to this person and said:

  ‘Now, Mr. Gowan, you know Inspector Macpherson, of course. He’s very anxious to hear your story from yourself.’

  The man raised a face like the face of a sulky rabbit, and Inspector Macpherson, wheeling suddenly round upon him, fell back with a startled snort.

  ‘Him? Yon’s no the man.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ said Parker. ‘He says he is, anyhow.’

  ‘It’s no Gowan,’ said Macpherson, ‘nor anything like him. I never saw yon ferrety-faced fellow in my life.’

  This was more than the gentleman in question could put up with.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Macpherson,’ he said.

  At the sound of his voice, the Inspector appeared to suffer a severe internal upheaval. The man got up and came forward into the light. Macpherson gazed in speechless bewilderment at the cropped black hair, the strong nose, the dark eyes, which gazed with an expression of blank astonishment from beneath a forehead denuded of eyebrows, the small, pinched mouth, with the upper teeth protruding over the lower lip, and the weak little chin which ran helplessly away to a long neck with a prominent Adam’s-apple. The whole appearance of the apparition was not improved by a ten days’ growth of black beard, which imparted a suggestion of seediness and neglect.

  ‘It’s Gowan’s voice, right enough,’ admitted the Inspector.

  ‘I think,’ said Parker, smothering his amusement, ‘that you find the removal of the beard and moustache a little misleading. Put on your hat, Mr. Gowan, and wrap your scarf about your chin. Then, perhaps—’

  The Inspector gazed with a kind of horror, as this metamorphosis was accomplished.

  ‘Ay,’ he said, ‘ay, ye’re right, sir, an’ I’m wrang. But losh! – I beg your pardon, sir, but I couldna’ ha’ believed—’

  He stared hard, and walked slowly round the captive as if still unable to credit his own eyes.

  ‘If you’ve quite finished making an ass of yourself, Macpherson,’ said Mr. Gowan coldly, ‘I’ll tell you my story and get away. I’ve other things to do than fool around in police-stations.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said the Inspector. He would not have spoken in that tone to the great Mr. Gowan of Kirkcudbright, but for this unkempt stranger he felt no sort of respect. ‘Ye have given us an awfu’ deal o’ trouble, Mr. Gowan, an’ them servants o’ yours will find theirsel’s afore the Fiscal for obstructin’ the pollis in the performance o’ their duty. Noo I’m here tae tak’ yer statement and it is ma duty tae warn ye—’

  Gowan waved an angry hand, and Parker said:

  ‘He has been already cautioned, Inspector.’

  ‘Verra gude,’ said Macpherson, who by now had regained his native self-confidence. ‘Noo, Mr. Gowan, wull ye please tell me when an’ where ye last saw Mr. Campbell that’s deid, an’ for why ye fled fra’ Scotland in disguise?’

  ‘I don’t in the least mind telling you,’ said Gowan, impatiently, ‘except that I don’t suppose you’ll be able to hold your tongue about it. I’d been fishing up on the Fleet—’

  ‘A moment, Mr. Gowan. Ye wull be speakin’ o’ the events of the Monday, I’m thinkin’.’

  ‘Of course. I’d been fishing up on the Fleet
, and I was driving back from Gatehouse to Kirkcudbright at about a quarter to ten when I nearly ran into that damned fool Campbell at the S-bend just beyond the junction of the Kirkcudbright road with the main road from Castle Douglas to Gatehouse. I don’t know what the man thought he was doing, but he had got his car stuck right across the road. Fortunately it wasn’t at the most dangerous bit of the bend, or there would probably have been a most unholy smash. It was on the second half, where the curve is less abrupt. There’s a stone wall one side and a sunk wall the other.’

  Inspector Macpherson nodded.

  ‘I told him to get out of the way and he refused. He was undoubtedly drunk and in a very nasty mood. I’m sorry, I know he’s dead, but it doesn’t alter the fact that he always was one of Nature’s prize swine, and that night he was at his very worst. He got out of his car and came up to me, saying that he was just about ready for a row, and if I wanted one I could have one. He jumped on my running-board and used the foulest language. I don’t know now what it was all about. I had done nothing to provoke him, except to tell him to take his cursed car out of the way.’

  Gowan hesitated for a moment.

  ‘I want you to understand,’ he went on, ‘that the man was drunk, dangerous and – as I thought at the moment – half off his rocker. He was a great, broad-shouldered, hefty devil, and I was jammed up behind the steering-column. I had a heavy King Dick spanner beside me in the pocket of the car and I grabbed hold of it – purely in self-defence. In fact, I only meant to threaten him with it.’

  ‘Is this the spanner?’ interjected Macpherson, producing the instrument from his coat pocket.

  ‘Very likely,’ said Gowan. ‘I don’t profess to know one spanner from another as a shepherd knows his sheep, but it was a similar spanner at any rate. Where did you find that?’

  ‘Go on with your statement, please, Mr. Gowan.’

  ‘You’re very cautious. Campbell had got the door of the car open, and I wasn’t going to sit there to be hammered into a jelly without defending myself. I pushed out from behind the wheel into the passenger’s seat and stood up, with the spanner in my hand. He aimed a blow at me and I landed him one with the spanner. It caught him on the cheek-bone, but not very heavily, because he dodged it. I should think it must have marked him, though,’ added the speaker, with appreciation.