Striding Folly: A Collection of Mysteries Read online

  ‘No good. A little reflection shows that one cannot cross a nine-foot bed on a three-foot plank without shifting the plank, and that one cannot at the same time stand on the plank and shift it. You’re sure there’s only one? Yes? Then that’s washed out.’

  ‘Could ’e a’brought one with ’im?’

  ‘The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, even without the additional encumbrance of a nine-foot plank. Besides, I’m almost sure no plank has been used. I think, if it had, the edges would have left some mark. No, Puffett, nobody crossed this bed. By the way, doesn’t it strike you as odd that the thief should have left just one big peach behind? It’s pretty conspicuous. Was that done merely to point the joke? Or – wait a minute, what’s that?’

  Something had caught his eye at the back of the box border, some dozen feet to the right of where they were standing. He picked it up. It was a peach; firm and red and not quite ripe. He stood weighing it thoughtfully in his hand.

  ‘Having picked the peach, he found it wasn’t ripe and chucked it away in a temper. Is that likely, Puffett, do you think? And unless I am mistaken, there are quite a number of green leaves scattered about the foot of the tree. How often, when one picks a peach, does one break off the leaves as well?’

  He looked expectantly at Mr Puffett, who returned no answer.

  ‘I think,’ went on Peter, ‘we will go and have a look in the lane.’

  Immediately behind the wall ran a rough grass verge. Mr Puffett, leading the way to this, was peremptorily waved back, and was thereafter treated to a fine exposition of detective work in the traditional manner; his lordship, extended on his stomach, thrusting his long nose and long fingers delicately through each successive tuft of grass, Mr Puffett himself, stooping with legs well apart and hands on knees, peering anxiously at him from the edge of the lane. Presently the sleuth sat up on his heels and said:

  ‘Here you are, Puffett. There were two men. They came up the lane from the direction of the village, wearing hob-nailed boots and carrying a ladder between them. They set up the ladder here; the grass, you see, is still a little bent, and there are two deepish dents in the soil. One man climbed to the top and took the peaches, while the other, I think, stood at the foot to keep guard and receive the fruit in a bag or basket or something. This isn’t a case of larking youngsters, Puffett; from the length of the strides they were grown men. What enemies have you made in your harmless career? Or who are your chief rivals in the peach class?’

  ‘Well, there,’ said Mr Puffett, slowly. ‘There’s the Vicar shows peaches, and Dr Jellyband from Great Pagford, and Jack Baker – he’s the policeman, you know, came when Joe Sellon went off to Canada. And there’s old Critch; him and me had a dispute about a chimbley. And Maggs the blacksmith – ’e didn’t ’arf like it w’en I wiped ’is eye last year with me vegetable marrers. Oh, and Waggett the butcher, ’e shows peaches. But I dunno as any o’ them ’ud do me a turn like this ’ere. But ’ere, me lord, ’ow did they get the peaches? They couldn’t reach ’em from the top of the ladder, nor yet off the wall, let alone sitting on them there bottles. The top o’ the tree’s five foot below the top o’ the wall.’

  ‘That’s simple,’ said Peter. ‘Think of the broken leaves and the peach in the box border, and consider how you would have done it. By the way, if you want proof that the robbing was done from this side, get a ladder and look over. I’ll lay you anything you like, you’ll find that the one peach that was left is hidden by the leaves from anybody looking down on it, though it’s clearly enough seen from the garden. No, there’s no difficulty about how it was done; the difficulty is to put one’s hand on the culprits. Unfortunately, there’s no footprints clear enough to show the complete pattern of the hob-nails.’

  He considered a moment, while Mr Puffett watched him with the air of one confidently expecting a good conjuring trick.

  ‘One could make a house-to-house visitation,’ went on his lordship, ‘and ask questions, or search. But it’s surprising how things disappear, and how people dry up when asked direct questions. Children especially. Look here, Puffett, I’m not at all sure my prodigal son mightn’t be able to throw some light on this, after all. But leave me to conduct the examination, it may need delicate handling.’

  There is one drawback about retreating to a really small place in the country and leaving behind you the stately publicity of town life in a house with ten servants. When you have tucked in yourselves, and your three children, and your indispensable man and your one equally indispensable and devoted maid, both time and space become rather fully occupied. You may, by taking your husband into your own room and accommodating the two elder boys in his dressing-room, squeeze in an extra person who, like Miss Quirk, has been wished upon you; but it is scarcely possible to run after her all day to see that she is not getting into mischief. This is more particularly the case if you are a novelist by profession, and if moreover, your idea of a happy holiday is to dispose as completely and briskly as possible of children, book, servants and visitor, so as to snatch all the available moments for playing the fool with a congenial, but admittedly distracting, husband. Harriet Wimsey, writing for dear life in the sitting-room, kept one eye on her paper and the other on Master Paul Wimsey, who was disembowelling his old stuffed rabbit in the window-seat. Her ears were open for a yell from young Roger, whose rough-and-tumble with the puppy on the lawn might at any moment end in disaster. Her consciousness was occupied with her plot, her sub-consciousness with the fact that she was three months behind on her contract. If she gave an occasional vague thought to her first-born, it was only to wonder whether he was hindering Bunter at his work, or merely concocting, in his own quiet way, some more than usually hideous shock for his parents. Himself was the last person he ever damaged; he was a child with a singular talent for falling on his feet. She had no attention to spare for Miss Quirk.

  Miss Quirk had tried the woodshed, but it was empty, and among its contents she could find nothing more suspicious than a hatchet, a saw, a rabbit-hutch, a piece of old carpet and a wet ring among the sawdust. She was not surprised that the evidence had been removed; Bredon had been extraordinarily anxious to leave the breakfast-table, and his parents had shut their eyes and let him go. Nor had Peter troubled to examine the premises; he had walked straight out of the house with that man Puffett, who naturally could not insist upon a search. Both Peter and Harriet were obviously burking inquiry; they did not want to admit the consequences of their wickedly mistaken system of training.

  ‘Mummy! come out an’ play wiv’ me an’ Bom-bom!’

  ‘Presently, darling. I’ve only got a little bit to finish.’

  ‘When’s presently, Mummy?’

  ‘Very soon. In about ten minutes.’

  ‘What’s ten minutes, Mummy?’

  Harriet laid down her pen. As a conscientious parent, she could not let this opportunity pass. Four years old was said to be too early, but children differed and you never knew.

  ‘Look, darling. Here’s the clock. When this long hand gets to that, that’ll be ten minutes.’

  ‘When this gets to that?’

  ‘Yes, darling. Sit quiet just for a little bit and look after it and tell me when it gets there.’

  An interval. Miss Quirk had by this time searched the garage, the greenhouse and the shed that housed the electric plant.

  ‘It isn’t moving, Mummy.’

  ‘Yes, it is, really, only it goes very, very slowly. You’ll have to keep a very sharp eye on it.’

  Miss Quirk had reached the back parts of the house itself. She entered by the back door, and passed through the scullery into a passage, containing, among other things, the door of the boot-hole. In this retreat, she discovered a small village maiden, cleaning a pair of very youthful boots.

  ‘Have you seen –?’ began Miss Quirk. Then her eye fell on the boots. ‘Are those Master Bredon’s boots?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ said the girl, with the startled look peculiar to young servants wh
en suddenly questioned by strangers.

  ‘They’re very dirty,’ said Miss Quirk. She remembered that Bredon had worn clean sandals when he came in to breakfast. ‘Give those to me for a moment,’ said Miss Quirk.

  The small maid looked round with a gasp for advice and assistance, but both Bunter and the maid seemed to be occupied elsewhere, and one could not refuse a request from a lady staying in the house. Miss Quirk took charge of the boots. ‘I’ll bring them back presently,’ she said, with a nod, and passed on. Fresh, damp earth on Bredon’s boots, and something secret brought home in a pail – it scarcely needed a Peter Wimsey to put two and two together. But Peter Wimsey was refusing to detect in the right place. Miss Quirk would show him.

  Miss Quirk went on along the passage and came to a door. As she approached it, it opened and Bredon’s face, very dirty, appeared round the edge. At sight of her, it popped in again like a bolting rabbit.

  ‘Ah!’ said Miss Quirk. She pushed the door briskly. But even a child of six, if he can reach it and is determined, can make proper use of a bolt.

  ‘Roger, darling, no! Shaking won’t make it go any faster. It’ll only give the poor clock tummyache. Oh, look, what a dreadful mess Paul’s made with his rabbit. Help him pick up the bits, dear, and then you’ll see, the ten minutes will be up.’

  Peter, returning from Mr Puffett’s garden, found his wife and two-thirds of his family rolling vigorously about the lawn with Bom-bom. Being invited to roll, he rolled, but with only half his attention.

  ‘It’s a curious thing,’ he observed plaintively, ‘that though my family makes a great deal of noise and always seems to be on top of me’ (this was, at the moment, a fact), ‘I never can lay hands on the bit of it I want at the moment. Where is the pest, Bredon?’

  ‘I haven’t dared to ask.’

  Peter rose up, with his youngest son clinging, leech-like, to his shoulder, and went in search of Bunter, who knew everything without asking.

  ‘Master Bredon, my lord, is engaged at present in an altercation with Miss Quirk through the furnace-room door.’

  ‘Good God, Bunter! Which of them is inside?’

  ‘Master Bredon, my lord.’

  ‘I breathe again. I feared we might have to effect a rescue. Catch hold of this incubus, will you, and hand him back to her ladyship.’

  All Miss Quirk’s coaxing had been impotent to lure Bredon out of the furnace-room. At Peter’s voice she turned quickly.

  ‘Oh, Peter! Do get the child to come out. He’s got those peaches in there, and I’m sure he’ll make himself ill.’

  Lord Peter raised his already sufficiently surprised eyebrows.

  ‘If your expert efforts fail,’ said he, ‘will my brutal threats have any effect, do you suppose? Besides, even if he were eating peaches, ought we, in this peremptory way, to suppress that natural expression of his personality? And whatever makes you imagine that we keep peaches in the furnace-room?’

  ‘I know he’s got them there,’ said Miss Quirk. ‘And I don’t blame the child. If you beat a boy for stealing, he’ll steal again. Besides, look at these boots he went out in this morning – all covered with damp mould.’

  Lord Peter took the boots and examined them with interest.

  ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. But allow me to suggest that some training is necessary, even for the work of a practical domestic detective. This mould is not the same colour as the mould in Puffett’s garden, and in fact is not garden mould at all. Further, if you take the trouble to look at the flower-beds, you will see that they are not wet enough to leave as much mud as this on a pair of boots. Thirdly, I can do all the detective work required in this family. And fourthly, you might realise that it is rather discourteous of you to insist that my son is a liar.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Miss Quirk, a little red in the face. ‘Fetch him out of there, and you’ll see.’

  ‘But why should I fetch him out, and implant a horrible frustration-complex around the furnace-room?’

  ‘As you like,’ said Miss Quirk. ‘It’s no business of mine.’

  ‘True,’ said Peter. He watched her stride angrily away, and said:

  ‘Bredon! You can come out. She’s gone.’

  There was a sound of the sliding of iron, and his son slithered out like an eel, pulling the door carefully to behind him.

  ‘You’re not very clean, are you?’ said his father, dispassionately. ‘It looks to me as though the furnace-room needed dusting. I’m not very clean myself, if it comes to that. I’ve been crawling in the lane behind Mr Puffett’s garden, trying to find out who stole his peaches.’

  ‘She says I did.’

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Bredon. Grown-up people don’t always know everything, though they try to pretend they do. That is called “prestige” and is responsible for most of the wars that devastate the continent of Europe.’

  ‘I think,’ said Bredon, who was accustomed to his father’s meaningless outbursts of speech, ‘she’s silly.’

  ‘So do I; but don’t say I said so.’

  ‘And rude.’

  ‘And rude. I, on the other hand, am silly, but seldom rude. Your mother is neither rude nor silly.’

  ‘Which am I?’

  ‘You are an egotistical extravert of the most irrepressible type. Why do you wear boots when you go mud-larking? It’s much less trouble to clean your feet than your boots.’

  ‘There’s thistles and nettles.’

  ‘True, O King! Yes, I know the place now. Down by the stream, at the far end of the paddock … Is that the Secret you’ve got in the furnace-room?’

  Bredon nodded, his mouth obstinately shut.

  ‘Can’t you let me in on it?’

  Bredon shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he explained candidly. ‘You see, you might feel you ought to stop it.’

  ‘That’s awkward. It’s so often my duty to stop things. Miss Quirk thinks I oughtn’t ever to stop anything, but I don’t feel I can go quite as far as that. I wonder what the devil you’ve been up to. We’ve had newts and frogs and sticklebacks, and tadpoles are out of season. I hope it isn’t adders, Bredon, or you’ll swell up and turn purple. I can stand for most livestock, but not adders.’

  ‘’Tisn’ tadders,’ replied his son, with dawning hope. ‘Only very nearly. An’ I don’t know what it lives on. I say, if you will let me keep it, d’you mind coming in quick, ’cos I ’spect it’s creeped out of the bucket.’

  ‘In that case,’ said his lordship, ‘I think we’d better conduct a search of the premises instantly. My nerves are fairly good; but if it were to go up the flue and come out in the kitchen –’

  He followed his offspring hastily into the furnace-room.

  ‘I wish,’ said Harriet, a little irritably, for she strongly disliked being lectured about her duties and being thus prevented from attending to them, ‘you wouldn’t always talk about “a” child, as if all children were alike. Even my three are all quite different.’

  ‘Mothers always think their own children are different,’ said Miss Quirk. ‘But the fundamental principles of child-psychology are the same in all, I have studied the subject. Take this question of punishment. When you punish a child –’

  ‘Which child?’

  ‘Any child – you harm the delicate mechanism of its reaction to life. Some become hardened, some become cowed, but in either case you set up a feeling of inferiority.’

  ‘It’s not so simple. Don’t take any child – take mine. If you reason with Bredon, he gets obstinate. He knows perfectly well when he’s been naughty, and sometimes he prefers to be naughty and take the consequences. Roger’s another matter. I don’t think we shall ever whip Roger, because he’s sensitive and easily frightened and rather likes having his feelings appealed to. But he’s already beginning to feel a little inferior to Bredon, because he isn’t allowed to be whipped. I suppose we shall have to persuade him that whipping is part of the eldest son’s prerogative. Which will be all right
provided we don’t have to whip Paul.’

  There were so many dreadful errors in this speech, that Miss Quirk scarcely knew where to begin.

  ‘I think it’s such a mistake to let the younger ones fancy that there is anything superior in being the eldest. My little nephews and nieces –’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘But one’s got to prepare people for life, hasn’t one? The day is bound to come when they realise that all Peter’s real property is entailed.’

  Miss Quirk said she so much preferred the French custom of dividing all property equally. ‘It’s so much better for the children.’

  ‘Yes; but it’s very bad for the property.’

  ‘But Peter wouldn’t put his property before his children!’

  Harriet smiled.

  ‘My dear Miss Quirk! Peter’s fifty-two, and he’s reverting to type.’

  Peter at that moment was not looking or behaving like fifty-two, but he was rapidly reverting to a much more ancient and early type than the English landed gentleman. He had, with some difficulty, retrieved the serpent from the ash-hole, and now sat on a heap of clinker, watching it as it squirmed at the bottom of the bucket.

  ‘Golly, what a whopper!’ he said, reverently. ‘How did you catch him, old man?’

  ‘Well, we went to get minnows, and he came swimming along, and Joey Maggs caught him in his net. And he wanted to kill him along of biting, but I said he couldn’ bite, ’cos you told us the difference between snakes. And Joe bet me I wouldn’t let him bite me, an’ I said I didn’ mind and he said, is it a dare ? an’ I said, Yes, if I can have him afterwards, so I let him bite me, only of course he didn’ bite an’ George helped me bring him back in the bucket.’

  ‘So Joey Maggs caught him in his net, did he?’

  ‘Yes, but I knew he wasn’t a nadder. And please, sir, will you give me a net, ’cos Joe’s got a lovely big one, only he was awfully late this morning and we thought he wasn’t coming, and he said somebody had hidden his net.’