Clouds of Witness Read online

  ‘DEAR JERRY, – Here I am, the family sleuth on the trail, and it’s damned exciting—’

  The Colonel snored.

  Sunday afternoon. Parker had gone with the car to King’s Fenton, with orders to look in at Riddlesdale on the way and inquire for a green-eyed cat, also for a young man with a side-car. The Duchess was lying down. Mrs Pettigrew-Robinson had taken her husband for a brisk walk. Upstairs, somewhere, Mrs Marchbanks enjoyed a perfect communion of thought with her husband.

  Lord Peter’s pen gritted gently over the paper, stopped, moved on again, stopped altogether. He leaned his long chin on his hands and stared out of the window, against which there came sudden little swishes of rain, and from time to time a soft, dead leaf. The Colonel snored; the fire tinkled; the Hon. Freddy began to hum and tap his fingers on the arms of his chair. The clock moved slothfully on to five o’clock, which brought tea-time and the Duchess.

  ‘How’s Mary?’ asked Lord Peter, coming suddenly into the fire-light.

  ‘I’m really worried about her,’ said the Duchess. ‘She is giving way to her nerves in the strangest manner. It is so unlike her. She will hardly let anybody come near her. I have sent for Dr Thorpe again.’

  ‘Don’t you think she’d be better if she got up an’ came downstairs a bit?’ suggested Wimsey. ‘Gets broodin’ about things all by herself, I shouldn’t wonder. Wants a bit of Freddy’s intellectual conversation to cheer her up.’

  ‘You forget; poor girl,’ said the Duchess, ‘she was engaged to Captain Cathcart. Everybody isn’t as callous as you are.’

  ‘Any more letters, your grace?’ asked the footman, appearing with the post-bag.

  ‘Oh, are you going down now?’ said Wimsey. ‘Yes, here you are – and there’s one other, if you don’t mind waitin’ a minute while I write it. Wish I could write at the rate people do on the cinema,’ he added, scribbling rapidly as he spoke. ‘ “DEAR LILIAN – Your father has killed Mr William Snooks, and unless you send me £1,000 by bearer, I shall disclose all to your husband. – Sincerely, EARL OF DIGGLESBRAKE”. That’s the style; and all done in one scrape of the pen. Here you are, Fleming.’

  The letter was addressed to her grace the Dowager Duchess of Denver.

  From the Morning Post of Monday, November –, 19–

  ‘ABANDONED MOTOR-CYCLE

  ‘A singular discovery was made yesterday by a cattle-drover. He is accustomed to water his animals in a certain pond lying a little off the road about twelve miles south of Ripley. On this occasion he saw that one of them appeared to be in difficulties. On going to the rescue, he found the animal entangled in a motor-cycle, which had been driven into the pond and abandoned. With the assistance of a couple of workmen he extricated the machine. It is a Douglas, with dark-grey side-car. The number-plates and licence-holder have been carefully removed. The pond is a deep one, and the outfit was entirely submerged. It seems probable, however, that it could not have been there for more than a week, since the pond is much used on Sundays and Mondays for the watering of cattle. The police are making search for the owner. The front tyre of the bicycle is a new Dunlop, and the side-car tyre has been repaired with a gaiter. The machine is a 1914 model, much worn.’

  ‘That seems to strike a chord,’ said Lord Peter musingly. He consulted a time-table for the time of the next train to Ripley, and ordered the car.

  ‘And send Bunter to me,’ he added.

  That gentleman arrived just as his master was struggling into an overcoat.

  ‘What was that thing in last Thursday’s paper about a number-plate, Bunter?’ inquired his lordship.

  Mr Bunter produced, apparently by legerdemain, a cutting from an evening paper:

  ‘NUMBER-PLATE MYSTERY

  ‘The Rev. Nathaniel Foulis, of St. Simon’s, North Fellcote, was stopped at six o’clock this morning for riding a motor-cycle without number-plates. The reverend gentleman seemed thunderstruck when his attention was called to the matter. He explained that he had been sent for in great haste at 4 a.m. to administer the Sacrament to a dying parishioner six miles away. He hastened out on his motor-cycle, which he confidingly left by the roadside while executing his sacred duties. Mr Foulis left the house at 5.30 without noticing that anything was wrong. Mr Foulis is well known in North Fellcote and the surrounding country, and there seems little doubt that he has been the victim of a senseless practical joke. North Fellcote is a small village a couple of miles north of Ripley.’

  ‘I’m going to Ripley, Bunter,’ said Lord Peter.

  ‘Yes, my lord. Does your lordship require me?’

  ‘No,’ said Lord Peter, ‘but – who has been lady’s maiding my sister, Bunter?’

  ‘Ellen, my lord – the housemaid.’

  ‘Then I wish you’d exercise your powers of conversation on Ellen.’

  ‘Very good, my lord.’

  ‘Does she mend my sister’s clothes, and brush her skirts, and all that?’

  ‘I believe so, my lord.’

  ‘Nothing she may think is of any importance, you know, Bunter.’

  ‘I wouldn’t suggest such a thing to a woman, my lord. It goes to their heads, if l may say so.’

  ‘When did Mr Parker leave for town?’

  ‘At six o’clock this morning, my lord.’

  Circumstances favoured Mr Bunter’s inquiries. He bumped into Ellen as she was descending the back stairs with an armful of clothing. A pair of leather gauntlets was jerked from the top of the pile, and, picking them up, he apologetically followed the young woman into the servants’ hall.

  ‘There,’ said Ellen, flinging her burden on the table, ‘and the work I’ve had to get them, I’m sure. Tantrums, that’s what I call it, pretending you’ve got such a headache you can’t let a person into the room to take your things down to brush, and, as soon as they’re out of the way, ’opping out of bed and trapesing all over the place. ’Tisn’t what I call a headache, would you, now? But there! I daresay you don’t get them like I do. Regular fit to split, my head is sometimes – couldn’t keep on my feet, not if the house was burning down. I just have to lay down and keep laying – something cruel it is. And gives a person such wrinkles in one’s forehead.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t see any wrinkles,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘but perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough.’ An interlude followed, during which Mr Bunter looked hard enough and close enough to distinguish wrinkles. ‘No,’ said he, ‘wrinkles? I don’t believe I’d see any if I was to take his lordship’s big microscope he keeps up in town.’

  ‘Lor’ now, Mr Bunter,’ said Ellen, fetching a sponge and a bottle of benzine from the cupboard, ‘what would his lordship be using a thing like that for, now?’

  ‘Why, in our hobby, you see, Miss Ellen, which is criminal investigation, we might want to see something magnified extra big – as it might be handwriting in a forgery case, to see if anything’s been altered or rubbed out, or if different kinds of ink have been used. Or we might want to look at the roots of a lock of hair, to see if it’s been torn out or fallen out. Or take bloodstains, now; we’d want to know if it was animal’s blood or human blood, or maybe only a glass of port.’

  ‘Now is it really true, Mr Bunter,’ said Ellen, laying a tweed skirt out upon the table and unstoppering the benzine, ‘that you and Lord Peter can find out all that?’

  ‘Of course, we aren’t analytical chemists,’ Mr Bunter replied, ‘but his lordship’s dabbled in a lot of things – enough to know when anything looks suspicious, and if we’ve any doubts we send to a very famous scientific gentleman.’ (He gallantly intercepted Ellen’s hand as it approached the skirt with a benzine-soaked sponge.) ‘For instance, now, here’s a stain on the hem of this skirt, just at the bottom of the side-seam. Now, supposing it was a case of murder, we’ll say, and the person that had worn this skirt was suspected, I should examine that stain.’ (Here Mr Bunter whipped a lens out of his pocket.) ‘Then I might try it at one edge with a wet handkerchief.’ (He suited the action to the word.) ‘An
d I should find, you see, that it came off red. Then I should turn the skirt inside-out, I should see that the stain went right through, and I should take my scissors’ (Mr Bunter produced a small, sharp pair) ‘and snip off a tiny bit of the inside edge of the seam, like this’ (he did so) ‘and pop it into a little pill-box, so’ (the pill-box appeared magically from an inner pocket), ‘and seal it up both sides with a wafer, and write on the top “Lady Mary Wimsey’s skirt,” and the date. Then I should send it straight off to the analytical gentleman in London, and he’d look through his microscope, and tell me right off that it was rabbit’s blood, maybe, and how many days it had been there, and that would be the end of that,’ finished Mr Bunter triumphantly, replacing his nail-scissors and thoughtlessly pocketing the pill-box with its contents.

  ‘Well, he’d be wrong, then,’ said Ellen, with an engaging toss of the head, ‘because it’s bird’s blood, and not rabbit’s at all, because her ladyship told me so; and wouldn’t it be quicker just to go and ask the person than get fiddling round with your silly old microscope and things?’

  ‘Well, I only mentioned rabbits for an example,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘Funny she should have got a stain down there. Must have regularly knelt in it.’

  ‘Yes. Bled a lot, hasn’t it, poor thing? Somebody must ‘a’ been shootin’ careless-like. ’Twasn’t his grace, nor yet the Captain, poor man. Perhaps it was Mr Arbuthnot. He shoots a bit wild sometimes. It’s a nasty mess, anyway, and it’s so hard to clean off, being left so long. I’m sure I wasn’t thinking about cleaning nothing the day the poor Captain was killed; and then the Coroner’s inquest – ’orrid, it was – and his grace being took off like that! Well, there, it upsets me. I suppose I’m a bit sensitive. Anyhow, we was all at sixes and sevens for a day or two, and then her ladyship shuts herself up in her room and won’t let me go near the wardrobe. “Ow !” she says, “do leave that wardrobe door alone. Don’t you know it squeaks, and my head’s so bad and my nerves so bad I can’t stand it,” she says. “I was only going to brush your skirts, my lady”, I says. “Bother my skirts”, says her ladyship, “and do go away, Ellen. I shall scream if I see you fidgeting about there. You get on my nerves”, she says, Well, I didn’t see why I should go on, not after being spoken to like that. It’s very nice to be a ladyship, and all your tempers coddled and called nervous prostration. I know I was dreadfully cut up about poor Bert, my young man what was killed in the war – nearly cried my eyes out, I did; but, law! Mr Bunter, I’d be ashamed to go on so. Besides, between you and I and the gate-post, Lady Mary wasn’t that fond of the Captain. Never appreciated him, that’s what I said to cook at the time, and she agreed with me. He had a way with him, the Captain had. Always quite the gentleman, of course, and never said anything as wasn’t his place – I don’t mean that – but I mean as it was a pleasure to do anythink for him. Such a handsome man as he was, too, Mr Bunter.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Bunter. ‘So on the whole her ladyship was a bit more upset than you expected her to be?’

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth, Mr Bunter, I think it’s just temper. She wanted to get married and away from home. Drat this stain! It’s regular dried in. She and his grace could never get on, and when he was away in London during the war she had a rare old time, nursing officers, and going about with all kinds of queer people his grace didn’t approve of. Then she had some sort of a love-affair with some quite low-down sort of fellow, so cook says; I think he was one of them dirty Russians as wants to blow us all to smithereens – as if there hadn’t been enough people blown up in the war already! Anyhow, his grace made a dreadful fuss, and stopped supplies, and sent for her ladyship home, and ever since then she’s been just mad to be off with somebody. Full of notions, she is. Makes me tired, I can tell you. Now, I’m sorry for his grace. I can see what he thinks. Poor gentleman! And then to be taken up for murder and put in gaol, just like one of them nasty tramps. Fancy!’

  Ellen, having exhausted her breath and finished cleaning off the bloodstains, paused and straightened her back.

  ‘Hard work it is,’ she said, ‘rubbing; I quite ache.’

  ‘If you would allow me to help you,’ said Mr Bunter, appropriating the hot water, the benzine bottle, and the sponge.

  He turned up another breadth of the skirt.

  ‘Have you got a brush handy,’ he asked, ‘to take this mud off?’

  ‘You’re as blind as a bat, Mr Bunter,’ said Ellen, giggling. ‘Can’t you see it just in front of you?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said the valet. ‘But that’s not as hard a one as I’d like. Just you run and get me a real hard one, there’s a dear good girl, and I’ll fix this for you.’

  ‘Cheek!’ said Ellen. ‘But,’ she added, relenting before the admiring gleam in Mr Bunter’s eye, ‘I’ll get the clothesbrush out of the hall for you. That’s as hard as a brick-bat, that is.’

  No sooner was she out of the room than Mr Bunter produced a pocket-knife and two more pill-boxes. In a twinkling of an eye he had scraped the surface of the skirt in two places and written two fresh labels:

  ‘Gravel from Lady Mary’s skirt, about 6 in. from hem.’

  ‘Silver sand from hem of Lady Mary’s skirt.’

  He added the date, and had hardly pocketed the boxes when Ellen returned with the clothes-brush. The cleaning process continued for some time, to the accompaniment of desultory conversation. A third stain on the skirt caused Mr Bunter to stare critically.

  ‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘Her ladyship’s been trying her hand at cleaning this herself.’

  ‘What?’ cried Ellen. She peered closely at the mark, which at one edge was smeared and whitened, and had a slightly greasy appearance.

  ‘Well, I never,’ she exclaimed, ‘so she has! Whatever’s that for, I wonder? And her pretending to be so ill, she couldn’t raise her head off the pillow. She’s a sly one, she is.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been done before?’ suggested Mr Bunter.

  ‘Well, she might have been at it between the day the Captain was killed and the inquest,’ agreed Ellen, ‘though you wouldn’t think that was a time to choose to begin learning domestic work. She ain’t much hand at it, anyhow, for all her nursing. I never believed that came to anything.’

  ‘She’s used soap,’ said Mr Bunter, benzining away resolutely. ‘Can she boil water in her bedroom?’

  ‘Now, whatever should she do that for, Mr Bunter?’ exclaimed Ellen, amazed. ‘You don’t think she keeps a kettle? I bring up her morning tea. Ladyships don’t want to boil water.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘and why didn’t she get it from the bathroom?’ He scrutinised the stain more carefully still. ‘Very amateurish,’ he said; ‘distinctly amateurish. Interrupted, I fancy. An energetic young lady, but not ingenious.’

  The last remarks were addressed in confidence to the benzine bottle. Ellen had put her head out of the window to talk to the gamekeeper.

  The Police Superintendent at Ripley received Lord Peter at first frigidly, and later, when he found out who he was, with a mixture of the official attitude to private detectives and the official attitude to a Duke’s son.

  ‘I’ve come to you,’ said Wimsey, ‘because you can do this combin’-out business a sight better’n an amateur like myself. I suppose your fine organisation’s hard at work already, what?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said the Superintendent, ‘but it’s not altogether easy to trace a motor-cycle without knowing the number. Look at the Bournemouth Murder.’ He shook his head regretfully and accepted a Villar y Villar.

  ‘We didn’t think at first of connecting him with the number-plate business,’ the Superintendent went on in a careless tone which somehow conveyed to Lord Peter that his own remarks within the last half hour had established the connection in the official mind for the first time. ‘Of course, if he’d been seen going through Ripley without a number-plate he’d have been noticed and stopped, whereas with Mr Foulis’s he was as safe as – as the Bank of England,’ he concluded in a burst of ori
ginality.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Wimsey. ‘Very agitatin’ for the parson, poor chap. So early in the mornin’, too. I suppose it was just taken to be a practical joke?’

  ‘Just that,’ agreed the Superintendent, ‘but, after hearing what you have to tell us, we shall use our best efforts to get the man. I expect his grace won’t be any too sorry to hear he’s found. You may rely on us, and if we find the man or the number-plates—’

  ‘Lord bless us and save us, man,’ broke in Lord Peter with unexpected vivacity, ‘you’re not goin’ to waste your time lookin’ for the number-plates. What d’you s’pose he’d pinch the curate’s plates for if he wanted to advertise his own about the neighbourhood? Once you drop on them you’ve got his name and address; s’long as they’re in his trousers pocket you’re up a gum-tree. Now, forgive me, Superintendent, for shovin’ along with my opinion, but I simply can’t bear to think of you takin’ all that trouble for nothin’ – draggin’ ponds an’ turnin’ over rubbish-heaps to look for number-plates that ain’t there. You just scour the railway stations for a young man six foot one or two with a No. 10 shoe, and dressed in a Burberry that’s lost its belt, and with a deep scratch on one of his hands. And look here, here’s my address, and I’ll be very grateful if you’ll let me know anything that turns up. So awkward for my brother, y’know, all this. Sensitive man; feels it keenly. By the way, I’m a very uncertain bird – always hoppin’ about; you might wire me any news in duplicate, to Riddlesdale and to town – 110 Piccadilly. Always delighted to see you, by the way, if ever you’re in town. You’ll forgive me slopin’ off now, won’t you? I’ve got a lot to do.’

  Returning to Riddlesdale, Lord Peter found a new visitor seated at the tea-table. At Peter’s entry he rose into towering height, and extended a shapely, expressive hand that would have made an actor’s fortune. He was not an actor, but he found this hand useful, nevertheless, in the exploitation of dramatic moments. His magnificent build and the mobility of his head and mask were impressive; his features were flawless; his eyes ruthless. The Dowager Duchess had once remarked: ‘Sir Impey Biggs is the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him.’ He was, in fact, thirty-eight, and a bachelor, and was celebrated for his rhetoric and his suave but pitiless dissection of hostile witnesses. The breeding of canaries was his unexpected hobby, and besides their song he could appreciate no music but revue airs. He answered Wimsey’s greeting in his beautiful, resonant, and exquisitively controlled voice. Tragic irony, cutting contempt, or a savage indignation were the emotions by which Sir Impey Biggs swayed court and jury; he prosecuted murderers of the innocent, defended in actions for criminal libel, and, moving others, was himself as stone. Wimsey expressed himself delighted to see him in a voice, by contrast, more husky and hesitant even than usual.