Clouds of Witness Read online

  ‘Very well. Let’s say there is nothing to show he was writing. Will that do? Well, then—’

  Lord Peter drew out a lens and scrutinised the surface of the armchair carefully before sitting down in it.

  ‘Nothing helpful there,’ he said. ‘To proceed, Cathcart sat where I am sitting. He wasn’t writing; he – you’re sure this room hasn’t been touched?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t smoking.’

  ‘Why not? He might have chucked the stub of a cigar or cigarette into the fire when Denver came in.’

  ‘Not a cigarette,’ said Peter, ‘or we should find traces somewhere – on the floor or in the grate. That light ash blows about so. But a cigar – well, he might have smoked a cigar without leaving a sign, I suppose. But I hope he didn’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, old son, I’d rather Gerald’s account had some element of truth in it. A nervy man doesn’t sit down to the delicate enjoyment of a cigar before bed, and cherish the ash with such scrupulous care. On the other hand, if Freddy’s right and Cathcart was feelin’ unusually sleek and pleased with life, that’s just the sort of thing he would do.’

  ‘Do you think Mr Arbuthnot would have invented all that, as a matter of fact?’ said Parker thoughtfully. ‘He doesn’t strike me that way. He’d have to be imaginative and spiteful to make it up, and I really don’t think he’s either.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lord Peter. ‘I’ve known old Freddy all my life, and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Besides, he simply hasn’t the wits to make up any sort of a story. But what bothers me is that Gerald most certainly hasn’t the wits either to invent that Adelphi drama between him and Cathcart.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Parker, ‘if we allow for a moment that he shot Cathcart, he had an incentive to invent it. He would be trying to get his head out of the – I mean, when anything important is at stake it’s wonderful how it sharpens one’s wits. And the story being so far-fetched does rather suggest an unpractised story-teller.’

  ‘True, O King. Well, you’ve sat on all my discoveries so far. Never mind. My head is bloody but unbowed. Cathcart was sitting here—’

  ‘So your brother said.’

  ‘Curse you, I say he was; at least, somebody was; he’s left the impression of his sit-me-down-upon on the cushion.’

  ‘That might have been earlier in the day.’

  ‘Rot. They were out all day. You needn’t overdo this Sadducee attitude, Charles. I say Cathcart was sitting here, and – hullo! hullo!’

  He leaned forward and stared into the grate.

  ‘There’s some burnt paper here, Charles.’

  ‘I know. I was frightfully excited about that yesterday, but I found it was just the same in several of the rooms. They often let the bedroom fires go out when everybody’s out during the day, and relight them about an hour before dinner. There’s only the cook, housemaid, and Fleming here, you see, and they’ve got a lot to do with such a large party.’

  Lord Peter was picking the charred fragments over.

  ‘I can find nothing to contradict your suggestion,’ he sadly said, ‘and this fragment of the Morning Post rather confirms it. Then we can only suppose that Cathcart sat here in a brown study, doing nothing at all. That doesn’t get us much further, I’m afraid.’ He got up and went to the dressing-table.

  ‘I like these tortoiseshell sets,’ he said, ‘and the perfume is “Baiser du Soir” – very nice too. New to me. I must draw Bunter’s attention to it. A charming manicure set, isn’t it? You know, I like being clean and neat and all that, but Cathcart was the kind of man who always impressed you as bein’ just a little too well turned out. Poor devil! And he’ll be buried at Golders Green after all. I only saw him once or twice, you know. He impressed me as knowin’ about everything there was to know. I was rather surprised at Mary’s takin’ to him, but, then, I know really awfully little about Mary. You see, she’s five years younger than me. When the war broke out she’d just left school and gone to a place in Paris, and I joined up, and she came back and did nursing and social work, so I only saw her occasionally. At that time she was rather taken up with new schemes for puttin’ the world to rights and hadn’t a lot to say to me. And she got hold of some pacifist fellow who was a bit of a stunner, I fancy. Then I was ill, you know, and after I got the chuck from Barbara I didn’t feel much like botherin’ about other people’s heart-to-hearts, and then I got mixed up in the Attenbury diamond case – and the result is I know uncommonly little about my own sister. But it looks as though her taste in men had altered. I know my mother said Cathcart had charm; that means he was attractive to women, I suppose. No man can see what makes that in another man, but mother is usually right. What’s become of this fellow’s papers?’

  ‘He left very little here,’ replied Parker. ‘There’s a cheque-book on Cox’s Charing Cross branch, but it’s a new one and not very helpful. Apparently he only kept a small current account with them for convenience when he was in England. The cheques are mostly to self, with an occasional hotel or tailor.’

  ‘Any pass-book?’

  ‘I think all his important papers are in Paris. He has a flat there, near the river somewhere. We’re in communication with the Paris police. He had a room in Albany. I’ve told them to lock it up till I get there. I thought of running up to town tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, you’d better. Any pocket-book?’

  ‘Yes; here you are. About £30 in various notes, a wine-merchant’s card, and a bill for a pair of riding-breeches.’

  ‘No correspondence?’

  ‘Not a line.’

  ‘No,’ said Wimsey, ‘he was the kind, I imagine, that didn’t keep letters. Much too good an instinct of self-preservation.’

  ‘Yes. I asked the servants about his letters, as a matter of fact. They said he got a good number, but never left them about. They couldn’t tell me much about the ones he wrote, because all the outgoing letters are dropped into the post-bag, which is carried down to the post-office as it is and opened there, or handed over to the postman when – or if – he calls. The general impression was that he didn’t write much. The housemaid said she never found anything to speak of in the waste-paper basket.’

  ‘Well, that’s uncommonly helpful. Walt a moment. Here’s his fountain-pen. Very handsome – Onoto with complete gold casing. Dear me! entirely empty. Well, I don’t know that one can deduce anything from that, exactly. I don’t see any pencil about, by the way. I’m inclined to think you’re wrong in supposing that he was writing letters.’

  ‘I didn’t suppose anything,’ said Parker mildly. ‘I daresay you’re right.’

  Lord Peter left the dressing-table, looked through the contents of the wardrobe, and turned over the two or three books on the pedestal beside the bed.

  ‘La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque, L’Anneau d’Améthyste, South Wind (our young friend works out very true to type), Chronique d’un Cadet de Coutras (tut-tut, Charles!), Manon Lescaut. H’m! Is there anything else in this room I ought to look at?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Where’d you like to go now?’

  ‘We’ll follow ’em down. Wait a jiff. Who are in the other rooms? Oh yes. Here’s Gerald’s room. Helen’s at church. In we go. Of course, this has been dusted and cleaned up, and generally ruined for purposes of observation?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I could hardly keep the Duchess out of her bedroom.’

  ‘No. Here’s the window Gerald shouted out of. H’m! Nothing in the grate, here, naturally – the fire’s been lit since. I say, I wonder where Gerald did put that letter to – Freeborn’s, I mean.’

  ‘Nobody’s been able to get a word out of him about it,’ said Parker. ‘Old Mr Murbles had a fearful time with him. The Duke insists simply that he destroyed it. Mr Murbles says that’s absurd. So it is. If he was going to bring that sort of accusation against his sister’s fiancé he’d want some evidence of a method in his madness, wouldn’t he? Or was he one of those Roman br
others who say simply: “As the head of the family I forbid the banns and that’s enough”?’

  ‘Gerald,’ said Wimsey, ‘is a good, clean, decent, thorough-bred public schoolboy, and a shocking ass. But I don’t think he’s so mediaeval as that.’

  ‘But if he has the letter, why not produce it?’

  ‘Why, indeed? Letters from old college friends in Egypt aren’t, as a rule, compromising.’

  ‘You don’t suppose,’ suggested Parker tentatively, ‘that this Mr Freeborn referred in his letter to any old – er – entanglement which your brother wouldn’t wish the Duchess to know about?’

  Lord Peter paused, while absently examining a row of boots.

  ‘That’s an idea,’ he said. ‘There were occasions – mild ones, but Helen would make the most of them.’ He whistled thoughtfully. ‘Still, when it comes to the gallows—’

  ‘Do you suppose, Wimsey, that your brother really contemplates the gallows?’ asked Parker.

  ‘I think Murbles put it to him pretty straight,’ said Lord Peter.

  ‘Quite so. But does he actually realise – imaginatively – that it is possible to hang an English peer for murder on circumstantial evidence?’

  Lord Peter considered this.

  ‘Imagination isn’t Gerald’s strong point,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose they do hang peers? They can’t be beheaded on Tower Hill or anything?’

  ‘I’ll look it up,’ said Parker; ‘but they certainly hanged Earl Ferrers in 1760.’

  ‘Did they, though?’ said Lord Peter. ‘Ah well, as the old pagan said of the Gospels, after all, it was a long time ago, and we’ll hope it wasn’t true.’

  ‘It’s true enough,’ said Parker; ‘and he was dissected and anatomised afterwards. But that part of the treatment is obsolete.’

  ‘We’ll tell Gerald about it,’ said Lord Peter, ‘and persuade him to take the matter seriously. Which are the boots he wore Wednesday night?’

  ‘These,’ said Parker, ‘but the fool’s cleaned them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lord Peter bitterly. ‘M’m! a good heavy lace-up boot – the sort that sends the blood to the head.’

  ‘He wore leggings, too,’ said Parker; ‘these.’

  ‘Rather elaborate peparations for a stroll in the garden. But, as you were just going to say, the night was wet. I must ask Helen if Gerald ever suffered from insomnia.’

  ‘I did. She said she thought not as a rule, but that he occasionally had toothache, which made him restless.’

  ‘It wouldn’t send one out of doors on a cold night, though. Well, let’s get downstairs.’

  They passed through the billiard-room, where the Colonel was making a sensational break, and into the small conservatory which led from it.

  Lord Peter looked gloomily round at the chrysanthemums and boxes of bulbs.

  ‘These damned flowers look jolly healthy,’ he said. ‘Do you mean you’ve been letting the gardener swarm in here every day to water ’em?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Parker apologetically, ‘I did. But he’s had strict orders only to walk on these mats.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lord Peter. ‘Take ’em up, then, and let’s get to work.’

  With his lens to his eye he crawled cautiously over the floor.

  ‘They all came through this way, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Parker. ‘I’ve identified most of the marks. People went in and out. Here’s the Duke. He comes in from outside. He trips over the body.’ (Parker had opened the outer door and lifted some matting, to show a trampled patch of gravel, discoloured with blood.) ‘He kneels by the body. Here are his knees and toes. Afterwards he goes into the house, through the conservatory, leaving a good impression in black mud and gravel just inside the door.’

  Lord Peter squatted carefully over the marks.

  ‘It’s lucky the gravel’s so soft here,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. It’s just a patch. The gardener tells me it gets very trampled and messy just here owing to his coming to fill cans from the water-trough. They fill the trough up from the well every so often, and then carry the water away in cans. It got extra bad this year, and they put down fresh gravel a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Pity they didn’t extend their labours all down the path while they were about it,’ grunted Lord Peter, who was balancing himself precariously on a small piece of sacking. ‘Well, that bears out old Gerald so far. Here’s an elephant been over this bit of box border. Who’s that?’

  ‘Oh, that’s a constable. I put him at eighteen stone. He’s nothing. And this rubber sole with a patch on it is Craikes. He’s all over the place. This squelchy-looking thing is Mr Arbuthnot in bedroom slippers, and the goloshes are Mr Pettigrew-Robinson. We can dismiss all those. But now here, just coming over the threshold, is a woman’s foot in a strong shoe. I make that out to be Lady Mary’s. Here it is again, just at the edge of the well. She came out to examine the body.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Peter; ‘and then she came in again, with a few grains of red gravel on her shoes. Well, that’s all right. Hullo!’

  On the outer side of the conservatory were some shelves for small plants, and, beneath these, a damp and dismal bed of earth, occupied, in a sprawling and lackadaisical fashion, by stringy cactus plants and a sporadic growth of maidenhair fern, and masked by a row of large chrysanthemums in pots.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ inquired Parker, seeing his friend peering into this green retreat.

  Lord Peter withdrew his long nose from between two pots and said ‘Who put what down here?’

  Parker hastened to the place. There, among the cacti, was certainly the clear mark of some oblong object, with corners, that had been stood out of sight on the earth behind the pots.

  ‘It’s a good thing Gerald’s gardener ain’t one of those conscientious blighters that can’t even let a cactus alone for the winter,’ said Lord Peter, ‘or he’d’ve tenderly lifted these little drooping heads – oh! damn and blast the beastly plant for a crimson porcupine! You measure it.’

  Parker measured it.

  ‘Two and a half feet by six inches,’ he said. ‘And fairly heavy, for it’s sunk in and broken the plants about. Was it a bar of anything?’

  ‘I fancy not,’ said Lord Peter. ‘The impression is deeper on the farther side. I think it was something bulky set up on edge, and leaned against the glass. If you ask for my private opinion I should guess that it was a suitcase.’

  ‘A suitcase!’ exclaimed Parker. ‘Why a suitcase?’

  ‘Why indeed? I think we may assume that it didn’t stay here very long. It would have been exceedingly visible in the daytime. But somebody might very well have shoved it in here if they were caught with it – say at three o’clock in the morning – and didn’t want it to be seen.’

  ‘Then when did they take it away?’

  ‘Almost immediately, I should say. Before daylight, anyhow, or even Inspector Craikes could hardly have failed to see it.’

  ‘It’s not the doctor’s bag, I suppose?’

  ‘No – unless the doctor’s a fool. Why put a bag inconveniently in a damp and dirty place out of the way when every law of sense and convenience would urge him to pop it down handy by the body? No. Unless Craikes or the gardener has been leaving things about, it was thrust away there on Wednesday night by Gerald, by Cathcart – or, I suppose, by Mary. Nobody else could be supposed to have anything to hide.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Parker, ‘one person.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The Person Unknown.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  For answer Mr Parker proudly stepped to a row of wooden frames, carefully covered with matting. Stripping this away, with the air of a bishop unveiling a memorial, he disclosed a V-shaped line of footprints.

  ‘These,’ said Parker, ‘belonged to nobody – to nobody I’ve ever seen or heard of, I mean.’

  ‘Hurray!’ said Peter.

  ‘Then downwards from the steep hill’s edge

  They tracked the footma
rks small

  (only they’re largish).’

  ‘No such luck,’ said Parker. ‘It’s more a case of:

  ‘They followed from the earthy bank

  Those footsteps one by one,

  Into the middle of the plank;

  And farther there were none!’

  ‘Great poet, Wordsworth,’ said Lord Peter; ‘how often I’ve had that feeling. Now let’s see. These footmarks – a man’s No. 10 with worn-down heels and a patch on the left inner side – advance from the hard bit of the path which shows no footmarks; they come to the body – here, where that pool of blood is. I say, that’s rather odd, don’t you think? No? Perhaps not. There are no footmarks under the body? Can’t say, it’s such a mess. Well, the Unknown gets so far – here’s a footmark deeply pressed in. Was he just going to throw Cathcart into the well? He hears a sound; he starts; he turns; he runs on tiptoe – into the shrubbery, by Jove!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Parker, ‘and the tracks come out on one of the grass paths in the wood, and there’s an end of them.’

  ‘H’m! Well, we’ll follow them later. Now where did they come from?’

  Together the two friends followed the path away from the house. The gravel, except for the little patch before the conservatory, was old and hard, and afforded but little trace, particularly as the last few days had been rainy. Parker, however, was able to assure Wimsey that there had been definite traces of dragging and bloodstains.

  ‘What sort of bloodstains? Smears?’

  ‘Yes, smears mostly. There were pebbles displaced, too, all the way – and now here is something odd.’

  It was the clear impression of the palm of a man’s hand heavily pressed into the earth of a herbaceous border, the fingers pointing towards the house. On the path the gravel had been scraped up in two long furrows. There was blood on the grass border between the path and the bed, and the edge of the grass was broken and trampled.

  ‘I don’t like that,’ said Lord Peter.