The Rector, his glasses sliding down his long nose with excitement, pored over the paper as the pencil made its rapid way down the letters.
“‘He sitteth between’—it’s part of a verse from Psalm xcix—there, what did I tell you? ‘He sitteth between the Cherubims.’ Now, what can that mean? Oh, dear! there is some mistake—the next letter should be a B—‘be the earth never so unquiet.’”
“Well, it isn’t a B; it’s another T. There isn’t a B anywhere. Wait a moment. THE is coming—no, THEI—no, as you were. It’s THE ISLES. I can’t help it. Padre. It couldn’t come like that by accident. Just a second, and we’ll have it all sorted out and then you can say what you like.... Oy! what’s happened here at the end? Oh, dash it! I was forgetting. This must be the end of the lead. Yes”—he calculated rapidly—“it is, and we’ve got to make the 3rds and 4ths. There you are. Message complete; and what it means is more than I can tell you.”
The Rector polished his glasses and stared. “It’s verses from three psalms,” he said. “Most singular. ‘He sitteth between the cherubims; that’s Ps. xcix. i. Then ‘The isles may be glad thereof’; that’s Ps. xcvii. i. Both those psalms begin alike: ‘Dominus regnavit,’ ‘The Lord is King.’ And then we get, ‘as the rivers in the south.’ That’s Ps. cxxvi. 5, ‘In convertendo,’ ‘When the Lord turned the captivity of Sion.’ This is a case of obscurum per obscuriora—the interpretation is even more perplexing than the cipher.”
“Yes,” said Wimsey. “Perhaps the figures have something to do with it. We have 99. 1. 97. 1. 126. 5. Are they to be taken as one figure 9919711265? or to be left as they are? or re-divided? The permutations are almost endless. Or perhaps they ought to be added. Or converted into letters on some system we haven’t discovered yet. It can’t be a simple a=1 substitution. I refuse to believe in a message that runs IIAIGIABFE.I shall have to wrestle with this quite a lot more. But you have been simply marvellous. Padre. You ought to take to deciphering codes as a profession.”
“It was pure accident,” said Mr. Venables, simply, “and due entirely to my failing vision. That is a curious thing. It has given me the idea for a sermon about evil being over-ruled for good. But I should never have thought of the possibility that one might make a cipher out of change-ringing. Most ingenious.”
“It could have been done still more ingeniously,” said Wimsey. “I can think of lots of ways to improve it. Suppose—but I won’t waste time with supposing. The point is, what the dickens is one to do with 99.1.97.1 126.5?”
He clutched his head between his hands, and the Rector, after watching him for a few minutes, tiptoed away to bed.
I T H O U G H T
T O S E E T H E
F A I R I E S I
N T H E F I E L
D S B U T I SA
W O N L Y T H E
E V I L E L E P
H A N T S W I T
H T H E I R B L
A C K B AC K S
W O E H O W T H
A T S I G H T A
W E D M E T H E
E L V E S D A N
C E D A L L A R
O U N D A N D A
B O U T W H I L
E I H E A R D V
O I C E S C A L
L I N G C L E A
R L Y A H H O W
I T R I E D T O
S E E T H R O W
O F F T H E U G
L Y C L O U D B
U T N O B L I N
D E Y E O F A M
O R T A L W A S
P E R M I T T E
D T O S P Y T H
E M S O T H E N
C A M E M I N S
T R E L S H A V
I N G G O L D T
R U M P E T S H
A R P S A N D D
R U M S T H E S
E P L A Y E D V
E R Y L O U D L
Y B E S I D E M
E B R E A K I N
G T H A T S P E
L L S O T H E D
R E A M V A N I
S H E D W H E R
E A T I T H A N
K E D H E A V E
N I S H E D M A
N Y T E A R S B
E F O R E T H E
T H I N M O O N
R O S E U P F R
A I L A N D F A
I N T A S A S I
C K L E O F S T
R A W N O W T H
O U G H T H E E
N C H A N T E R
G N A S H H I S
T E E T H V A I
N L Y Y E T S H
A L L H E R E T
U R N A S T H E
S P R I N G R E
T U R N SO H W
R E T C H E D M
A N H E L L G A
P E S E R E B U
S N O W L I E S
O P E N T H E M
O U T H S O F D
E A T H W A I T
O N T H Y E N D
NOTE
[1] “Doubles” is the name given to a set of changes rung on 5 bells, the tenor (No. 6) being rung last or “behind” in each change.
THE NINTH PART
EMILY TURNS BUNTER FROM BEHIND
Let the bell that the Treble turns from behind make thirds place, and return behind again.
Rules for Change-Making on Four Bells.
“I should like,” panted Emily between her sobs, “to give my week’s warning.”
“Good gracious, Emily!” cried Mrs. Venables, pausing as she passed through the kitchen with a pail of chickenfeed, “what on earth is the matter with you?”
“I’m sure,” said Emily, “I ain’t got no fault to find with you and Rector as has always been that kind, but if I’m to be spoken to so by Mr. Bunter, which I’m not his servant and never want to be and ain’t no part of my duties, and anyway how was I to know? I’m sure I’d have cut my right hand off rather than disoblige his lordship, but I did ought to have been told and it ain’t my fault and so I told Mr. Bunter.”
Mrs. Venables turned a little pale. Lord Peter presented no difficulties, but Bunter she found rather alarming. But she was of the bulldog breed, and had been brought up in the knowledge that a servant was a servant, and that to be afraid of a servant (one’s own or anybody else’s) was the first step to an Avernus of domestic inefficiency. She turned to Bunter, standing white and awful in the background.
“Well now, Bunter,” she said, firmly. “What is all this trouble about?”
“I beg your pardon, madam,” said Bunter in a stifled manner. “I fear that I forgot myself. But I have been in his lordship’s service now for going on fifteen years (counting my service under him in the War), and such a thing has never yet befallen me. In the sudden shock and the bitter mortification of my mind, I spoke with considerable heat. I beg, madam, that you will overlook it. I should have controlled myself better. I assure you that it will not occur again.”
Mrs. Venables put down the chicken-pail.
“But what was it all about?”
Emily gulped, and Bunter pointed a tragic finger at a beer-bottle which stood on the kitchen table. “That bottle, madam, was entrusted to me yesterday by his lordship. I placed it in a cupboard in my bedroom, with the intention of photographing it this morning, before despatching it to Scotland Yard. Yesterday evening, it seems that this young woman entered the room during my absence, investigated the cupboard and removed the bottle. Not content with removing it, she dusted it.”
“If you please ’m,” said Emily, “how was I to know it was wanted? A nasty, dirty old thing. I was only a-dusting the room, ’m, and I see this old bottle on the cupboard shelf, and I says to myself, ‘Look at that dusty old bottle, why, however did that get there? It must have got left accidental.’ So I takes it down and when Cook see it she says, ‘Why, whatever have you got there, Emily? That’ll just do,’ she says, ‘to put the methylated.’ So I gives it a dust—”
“And now the finger-prints have all gone,” concluded Bunter in a hollow tone, “and what to say to his lordship I do no
t know.”
“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” said Mrs. Venables, helplessly. Then she seized on the one point of domestic economy which seemed to call for inquiry. “How did you come to leave your dusting so late?”
“If you please ’m, I don’t know how it was. I got all behind yesterday, somehow, and I said to myself, ‘Better late than never,’ and I’m sure if I’d only have known—”
She wept loudly, and Bunter was touched.
“I am sorry I expressed myself with so much acerbity,” he said, “and I take blame to myself for not removing the key from the cupboard door. But you will understand my feelings, madam, when I think of his lordship innocently waking to a new day, if I may say so, and not knowing of the blow which is in store for him. It goes to my heart, if you will pardon my mentioning the organ in such a connection. There, madam, is his morning tea, only waiting for my hand to put the boiling water to it, and I feel, madam, as though it were the hand of a murderer which no perfumes of Arabia—supposing such to be suitable to my situation—could sweeten. He has rung twice,” added Bunter, in desperate tones, “and he will know by the delay that something of a calamitous nature has occurred—”
“Bunter!”
“My lord!” cried Bunter, in a voice like prayer.
“What the devil has happened to my tea? What the—? Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Venables. Excuse my language and my bath-robe, won’t you? I didn’t know you were here.”
“Oh, Lord Peter!” exclaimed Mrs. Venables, “such a dreadful thing’s happened. Your man is so terribly upset, and this silly girl—she meant well of course and it’s all a mistake—but we’ve dusted all the finger-prints off your bottle!”
“Wah-ha-ha!” sobbed Emily. “O-Oh! Wah-ha-ha! I did it. I dusted it. I didn’t know—ho-ho.”
“Bunter,” said his lordship, “what is the verse about the struck eagle stretched upon the plain, Never through something clouds to soar again? It expresses my feelings exactly. Take up my tea and throw the bottle in the dustbin. What’s done cannot be undone. In any case the finger-prints were probably of no importance. William Morris once wrote a poem called The Man Who Never Laughed Again. If the shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast, should never again be heard upon my lips, you will know why. My friends will probably be devoutly thankful. Let it be a warning to you never to seek for happiness out of a bottle. Emily, if you cry any more, your young man won’t know you on Sunday. Don’t worry about the bottle, Mrs. Venables—it was a beastly bottle, anyhow, and I always loathed the sight of it. It is a beautiful morning for early rising. Allow me to carry the chicken-pail. I beg you will not give another thought to the bottle, or Emily either. She’s a particularly nice girl, isn’t she? What is her surname, by the way?”
“Holliday,” said Mrs. Venables. “She’s a niece of Russell’s, the undertaker, you know, and some sort of relation to Mary Thoday, though of course everybody is, in this village, related to somebody or the other, I mean. It comes of being such a small place, though now that they all have motor-bicycles and the ’buses running twice a week it isn’t so bad, and there won’t be so many unfortunate creatures like Potty Peake. All the Russells are very nice, superior people.”
“Just so,” said Lord Peter Wimsey. He did a certain amount of thinking as he spooned out mash into the chicken trough.
* * *
He spent the early part of the morning in fresh unavailing study of the cryptogram, and as soon as he thought the pubs would be open, went round to the Red Cow for a pint of beer.
“Bitter, my lord?” inquired Mr. Donnington with his hand upon the tap.
Wimsey said No, not to-day. He would have a bottle of Bass for a change.
Mr. Donnington produced the Bass, observing that his lordship would find it in very nice condition.
“Condition is nine-tenths of the bottle,” said Wimsey, “and a lot of it depends upon the bottling. Who are your bottlers?”
“Griggs of Walbeach,” said Mr. Donnington. “Very sound people they are, too; I’ve got no complaints to make. Just you try for yourself—though you can tell by the look of it, if you see what I mean. Clear as a bell—though, of course, you have to be able to trust your cellarman. I had a chap once that never could be taught not to pack his Bass ’ead down in the basket, same as if it was stout. Now stout will stand being stood on its ’ead, though it’s not a thing I ever would do myself and I don’t recommend it, but Bass must be stood right ways up and not shook about if you’re to do justice to the beer.”
“Very true indeed,” said Wimsey. “There’s certainly nothing wrong with this. Your health. Won’t you take something yourself?”
“Thank you, my lord, I don’t mind if I do. Here’s luck. Now, that,” said Mr. Donnington, raising the glass to the light, “is as nice a glass of Bass as you could wish to see.”
Wimsey asked whether he did much with quart bottles.
“Quarts?” said Mr. Donnington. “No. Not with quarts, I don’t. But I believe Tom Tebbutt down at the Wheatsheaf does a bit. Griggs bottles for him, too.”
“Ah!” said Wimsey.
“Yes. There’s one or two prefers quarts. Though, mind you, most of the business about here is draught. But there’s a farmer here and there as likes the quarts delivered at their homes. Ah! in the old days they all did their own brewing—there’s plenty farms now with the big brewing coppers still standing, and there’s a few as still cures their own sides of bacon—Mr. Ashton’s one on ’em, he won’t have nothing new-fangled. But what with these chain stores and their grocery vans, and the girls all wanting to be off to the pictures in their silk stockings and so many things coming in tins, it’s not many places where you can see a bit of real home-cured. And look at the price of pig-feed. What I say is, the farmers did ought to have some protection. I was brought up a Free Trader myself, but times has changed. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of these things, my lord. They may not come your way. Or—there—I’m forgetting. Maybe you sit in the ’Ouse of Lords, now. Harry Gotobed will have it that that’s so, but I said as he was mistook—but there I you’ll know better than me about that.”
Wimsey explained that he was not qualified to sit in the House of Lords. Mr. Donnington observed with pleasure that in that case the sexton owed him half a crown, and while he made a note of the fact on the back of an envelope, Wimsey escaped and made his way to the Wheatsheaf.
Here, by exercising a certain amount of tact, he obtained a list of those households to which Bass was regularly supplied in quarts. Most of the names were those of farmers in outlying places, but as an afterthought, Mrs. Tebbutt mentioned one which made Wimsey prick up his ears.
“Will Thoday, he had a few while Jim was at home—a dozen or so, it might be. He’s a nice chap, is Jim Thoday—makes you laugh by the hour telling his tales of foreign parts. He brought back that there parrot for Mary, though as I says to her, that bird ain’t no proper example for the children. How it do go on, to be sure. I’m sure, if you’d heard what it said to Rector the other day! I didn’t know where to look. But it’s my belief. Rector didn’t understand half of it. He’s a real gentleman, is Mr. Venables, not like old parson. He was a kind man, too, but different from Rector, and they say he used to swear something surprising in a clergyman. But there, poor man! He had a bit of a weakness, as they say. ‘Do as I say, don’t do as I do’—that’s what he used to say in his sermons. Terrible red in the face he were, and died sudden, of a stroke.”
Wimsey tried in vain to steer the conversation back to Jim Thoday. Mrs. Tebbutt was fairly launched into reminiscences of Old Rector, and it was half an hour before he was able to make his way out of the Wheatsheaf. Turning back towards the Rectory, he found himself at Will Thoday’s gate. Glancing up the path, he saw Mary, engaged in hanging out washing. He suddenly determined on a frontal attack.
“I hope you’ll forgive me, Mrs. Thoday,” he said, when he had announced himself and been invited to enter, “if I take your mind back to a rather painful
episode. I mean to say, bygones are bygones and all that and one hates digging anything up, what? But when it comes to dead bodies in other people’s graves and so on, well, sometimes one gets wondering about them and all that sort of thing, don’t you know.”
“Yes, indeed, my lord. I’m sure if there’s anything I can do to help, I will. But as I told Mr. Blundell, I never knew a thing about it, and I can’t imagine how it came there. That was the Saturday night he was asking me about, and I’m sure I’ve thought and thought, but I couldn’t call to mind as I’d seen anything.”
“Do you remember a man who called himself Stephen Driver?”
“Yes, my lord. Him that was at Ezra Wilderspin’s. I remember seeing him once or twice. They said at the inquest that the body might have been him.”
“But it wasn’t,” said Wimsey.
“Wasn’t it, my lord?”
“No. Because we’ve found this chap Driver and he’s still alive and kicking. Had you ever seen Driver before he came here?”
“I don’t think so, my lord; no, I can’t say as I ever did.”
“He didn’t remind you of anybody?”
“No, my lord.”
She appeared to be answering quite frankly, and he could not see any signs of alarm in voice or expression.
“That’s odd,” said Wimsey, “because he says that he ran away from St. Paul because he thought you had recognised him.”
“Did he? Well, that’s a strange thing, my lord.”
“Did you ever hear him speak?”
“I don’t think I ever did, my lord.”
“Suppose he hadn’t been wearing a beard, now—would he remind you of anybody?”
Mary shook her head. Like most people, she found the effort of imagination beyond her.
“Well, do you recognise this?”
Wimsey 009 - The Nine Tailors Page 23