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‘Oh, Peter! How marvellous! Let’s, dance or do some thing.’
‘Nonsense! Let’s get on with the job. None of your frivolling now. Start away. PR BF XA LI MK MG BF FY MG TS QJ — and let’s get too the bottom of this BF FY business, once and for all. I’ll read out the diagonals and you write ’em down.’
‘Very well. T — O — H — I—“To His Serene”—can that be right?’
‘It’s English. Hurry up — let’s get BFFY.’
“To His Serene Highness”—Peter! what is all this about?’
Lord Peter turned pale.
‘My God!’ he exclaimed, melodramatically, ‘can it be? Have we been wrong and the preposterous Mrs ‘ Weldon right? Shall I be reduced, at my time of life, to hunting for a Bolshevik gang? Read on!’
Chapter XXIX. The Evidence O F The Letter
‘In one word hear, what soon they, all shall hear:
A king’s a man, and I will be no man
Unless I am a king.’
— Death’s Jest-Book
Friday, 3 July
‘To His SERENE Highness GRAND-DUKE PAVLO ALEXANDREVITCH heir to the throne of the Romanovs.
‘Papers entrusted to us by your Highness now thoroughly examined and marriage of your illustrious ancestress to Tsar Nicholas First proved beyond doubt.’
Harriet paused. ‘What does that mean?’
‘God knows. Nicholas I was no saint, but I didn’t think he ever married anybody except Charlotte-Louise of, Prussia. Who the deuce is Paul Alexis’ illustrious ancestress?’
Harriet shook her head and went on reading.
‘All is in readiness. Your people groaning under oppression of brutal Soviets eagerly welcome return of imperial rule to Holy Russia.’
Wimsey shook his head.
‘If so, that’s one in the eye for my Socialist friends. I was told only the other day that Russian Communism was doing itself proud and that the Russian standard of living, measured in boot-consumption, had risen from zero to one pair of boots in three years per head of population. Still, there may be Russians so benighted as not to be content with that state of things.’
‘Alexis did always say he was of noble birth, didn’t he?’
‘He did, and apparently found somebody to believe him. Carry on.’’
‘Treaty with Poland happily concluded. Money and arms at your disposal. Your presence alone needed.’
‘Oho!’ said Wimsey. ‘Now we’re coming to it. Hence the. passport and the three hundred gold sovereigns.’
‘Spies at work. Use caution. Burn all papers all clues to identity.’
‘He obeyed that bit all right, blow him!’ interjected Wimsey. ‘It looks as though we were now getting down to brass tacks.’
‘On Thursday I8 June take train reaching Darley Halt ten-fifteen walk by coast-road to Flat-Iron Rock. There await Rider from the Sea who brings instruction for your journey to Warsaw. The word is Empire.’
‘The Rider from the Sea? Good gracious! Does that mean that Weldon — that the mare — that —’
‘Read on. Perhaps Weldon is the hero of the piece instead of the villain. But if so, why didn’t he tell us about it?’
Harriet read on.
‘Bring this paper with you. Silence, secrecy, imperative. Boris.’
‘Well!’ said Wimsey. ‘In all this case, from beginning to end, I only seem to have got one thing right. I said that the letter would contain the words: ‘Bring this paper with you” and it does. But the rest of it beats me. “Pavlo Alexeivitch, heir to the throne of the Romanovs.” Can your landlady produce anything in the shape of a drink?’
After an interval for refreshment, Wimsey hitched his chair closer to the table and sat staring at the decoded message.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s get this straight. One thing is certain. This is the letter that brought Paul Alexis to the Flat-Iron. Boris sent it, whoeever he is. Now, is Boris a friend or an enemy?’
He rumpled, his hair wildly, and went on, speaking slowly.
‘The first thing one is inclined to think is that Boris was a friend and that the Bolshevik spies mentioned in the letter, got to the Flat-Iron before he did and murdered Alexis and possibly Boris as well. In that case, what about Weldon’s mare? Did she bring the “Rider from the Sea” to his appointment? And was Weldon the rider, and the imperialist.friend of Alexis? It’s quite. possible, because — no, it isn’t. That’s funny, if you like.’
‘What?’
‘I was going to say, that in that case Weldon could have ridden to the Flat-Iron at twelve, o’clock, when Mrs Pollock heard the sound of hoofs. But he didn’t. He was in Wilvercombe. But somebody else may have done so — some friend to whom Weldon lent the mare.’
‘Then how did the murderer get there?’
‘He walked through the water and escaped the same way, after hiding in the niche till you had gone. It was only while Weldon or Bright or Perkins was supposed to be the murderer that the time-scheme presented any real difficulty. But who was the Rider from the Sea? Why does he not come forward and say: “I had an appointment with this man. I saw him alive at, such a time?’
‘Why, because he is afraid that the man who murdered Alexis will murder him too. But it’s all very confusing. We’ve now got two unknown people to look for instead of one: the Rider from the Sea, who stole the mare and was at the Flat-Iron about midday, and the murderer; who was there at two o’clock.,
‘Yes. How difficult it all is. At any rate, all, this explains Weldon and Perkins. Naturally they said nothing about the mare, because she had gone — and come again long before either of them was at the camping-ground. Wait a moment, though; that’s odd. How did the Rider from the Sea know that Weldon was going to be away in Wilvercombe that morning? It seems to have been pure accident.’
‘Perhaps the Rider damaged Weldon’s car on purpose.’
‘Yes, but even then, how could he be sure that Weldon would go away? On the face of it, it was far more likely that Weldon would be there, tinkering with his car.’
‘Suppose he knew that Weldon meant to go to Wilvercombe that morning in, any case. Then the damaged H.T., lead would be pure bad luck for him, and the fact that Weldon did, after all, get to Wilvercombe, a, bit of compensating good luck.’
‘And how did he know about Weldon’s plans?’
‘Possibly he knew nothing about Weldon at all. Weldon only arrived at Darley on the Tuesday, and all this business was planned long before that, as the date of the letter shows. Possibly whoever it was was horrified to find Weldon encamped in Hinks’s Lane and frightfully relieved to see him barge off on the Thursday morning.’
Wimsey shook his head.
‘Talk’ about coincidence! Well, maybe so. Now let’s go on and see what happened. The Rider made the appointment with Alexis, who would get to the Flat-Iron about 11.45. The Rider met him there, and gave him his instructions — verbally, we may suppose. He then rode back to Darley, loosed the mare and went about his business. Right. The whole thing may have been over by 12.30 or 12.45, and
it must have been over by 1.30, or Weldon would, have
seen him on his return. Meanwhile, what does Alexis do? Instead of getting up and going about his business, he sits peacefully on the rock, waiting for someone: to come along and murder him at two o’clock’
‘He may have been told to sit on a bit, so as not to leave at the same time as the Rider. Or here’s a better. idea. When the Rider has gone, Alexis waits for a little bit — say five minutes — at any rate, till his friend is well out of reach. Then up pops the murderer from the niche in the rock, where he has been eavesdropping, and has an interview with Alexis.’ At two o’clock, the interview ends in murder. Then I
turn up, and the murderer pops back into hiding. How’s that? The murderer didn’t show himself while the Rider was there, because he didn’t feel equal to tackling two men at once.’
‘That seems to cover the facts. I only wonder though, that he didn’t murder you too, while he was about it.’
‘That would make it look much less like suicide.’
‘Very true. But how was it you didn’t see these two people talking animatedly on the Flat-Iron when you arrived and looked over the cliff at one o’clock?’
‘Goodness knows! But if, the murderer was standing on the seaward side of the rock — or if they both were — I shouldn’t have seen anything. And they may have been, because it was quite low tide then and the sand would have been dry.’
‘Yes, so it would. And as, the discussion prolonged itself, they saw the tide turn, so they scrambled up on to the rock to keep their feet dry. That would be while you were asleep. But I wonder you didn’t hear the chattage and talkery going on while you were having your lunch. Voices carry well by the sea-shore.’
‘Perhaps they heard me scrambling down the cliff and shut up.’
‘Perhaps. And then the murderer, knowing that you were there, deliberately committed his murder under your very nose, so to speak.’
‘He may have thought I had gone. He knew I couldn’t see him at the moment, because he couldn’t see me.’
‘And Alexis yelled, and you woke up, and he had to hide.’
‘That’s about it. It seems to hang together reasonably well.
And that means we’ve got to look for a quite new murderer who had an opportunity of knowing about the appointment between Boris and Alexis. And,’ added Harriet, hopefully, ’it needn’t be a Bolshevik. It might be somebody with a private motive for doing away with Alexis. How; about the da Soto gentleman who got the reversion of Leila Garland? Leila may have told him some nasty story about Alexis.’
Wimsey was silent; his thoughts seemed to be wandering. Presently he said
‘Yes. Only we happen to know that da Soto was playing at the Winter Gardens all that time. But now I want to look at the thing from a quite different point of view. What about this letter? Is it genuine? It’s written on ordinary sort of paper, without a watermark, which might come from anywhere, so that proves nothing, but if it really comes from a foreign gentleman of the name of Boris, why is it written in English? Surely Russian would be safer and more likely, if Boris was really a Russian imperialist. Then again all that opening stuff about brutal Soviets and Holy Russia is so vague and sketchy. Does it look like the letter of a serious conspirator doing a; real job of work? No names mentioned; no details about the Treaty with Poland; and, on the other hand, endless wasted words about an “illustrious ancestress” and “His Serene Highness”. It doesn’t ring true. It doesn’t look like business. It looks like somebody with a very sketchy idea of the way revolutions really work, trying to flatter that poor boob’s monomania about’ his birth.’
‘I’ll tell you what it does look like,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s like the kind of thing I should put into a detective story if I didn’t know a thing about Russia and. didn’t care much, and only wanted to give a general idea that somebody was a conspirator.’
‘That’s it!’ said Wimsey. ‘You’re absolutely right, It might have come straight out of one of those Ruritanian romances that Alexis was so fond of.’
‘Of course and now we know why he was fond of them.
No wonder! They were all part of the mania. I suppose we ought to have guessed all that.’
‘And here’s another thing. Do you notice that the first two paragraphs of the letter are very casually coded. The sentences are all run together anyhow, as though the writer didn’t much care whether Alexis got them right or wrong. But the minute the good Boris gets down to specific instructions, he starts marking off the ends of his sentences with extra Q’s and X’s, so as to make sure there will be no mistake in decoding. The Flat-Iron loomed much larger in his mind than Holy Russia and disgruntled Poland.’
‘In fact, you think the letter looks like a lure:’
‘Yes. But it’s difficult to be quite sure, even then, who sent it and why. If Weldon is at the bottom of it, as we originally thought, then we are still bothered by all these alibis. If it isn’t Weldon, who is it? If we’re really investigating a political plot, then who was Alexis? Why should anybody want to get rid of him? Unless, of course, he genuinely was somebody important, which seems, hard to believe. He can’t even have imagined himself to be one of the Russian Imperial house — his age is all wrong. I know we’re always hearing tales about the Tsarevitch’s having survived the Revolution, but his name was Alexei Nicholavitch, not Pavlo Alexeivitch. And his age would be quite different — and besides, there never was any doubt about his descent from Nicholas I. There isn’t any note in any of Alexis’ books anywhere, is there? — that would tell us who he imagined he might have been.’
‘Not a thing.’’
Wimsey gathered up the papers from the table and rose to his feet.
‘I shall hand these over to Glaisher,’ he said. ‘They will give him something to think about. I like to see other people doing a spot of work from time to time. Do you realise that it’s nearly tea-time and we haven’t had any lunch?’
‘Time passes when one is pleasantly occupied,’ said Harriet, sententiously.
Wimsey put his hat and papers down on the table, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, took up his belongings again and marched to the door.
‘Cheerio!’ he said, amiably.
‘Cheerio!’ replied Harriet.
He went out. Harriet sat looking at the closed door.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘thank goodness he’s given up asking me to marry him. It’s much better he should put it out of his mind.’
She must have felt strongly about it, for she repeated the remark several times.
Wimsey absorbed, an anomalous meal in the Grill Room, went round to the police-station, handed the decoded letter to the Superintendent, whom; it surprised very much, and then ran his car out to Darley. He was still worried by the coincidence about Weldon and, his absence from Hinks’s Lane during the, crucial period. He approached Mr Polwhistle.
‘Why, yes, my lord,’ said that worthy. ‘The fault was in the H.T. leads all right. We tried the mag, and she was working top-hole, and there wasn’t nothing wrong with the plugs, so after we’d fiddled about a bit more, young Tom here says, “Well,” he says, “only: thing I can think of is the leads,” he says. Didn’t you, Tom?’
‘That’s right. Me having a motor-bike, and having had trouble with the leads before, on account of the insulation having got worked through, like, against the radiator-fins, I said, “How about the H.T. leads?” And Mr Martin, he says, “That’s an idea,” and before I could say “knife” he whips the leads out of the clip and gets them off. “Let’s have a look, sir,” I says. “Never mind looking at the blasted things,” he says, “you can’t do no bloody good” begging your pardon—“by looking at ’em,” he, says. Shove a new pair in and look smart.” So I got a bit of H. T. wire out of my bag and I fixes up a new pair of leads and connects ’em up, and no sooner I done so than up she starts, sweet as a nut. What I think, my lord, there must have been a fault in the insulation, see? — what were giving an intermittent short the day before when Mr Martin complained of bad — running and starting, and somehow or other the wires might ha’ got fused together, and that made a dead short on the Thursday.’
‘Very likely,’ said Wimsey, ‘Did you actually examine the leads afterwards?’
Tom scratched his head:
‘Now you ask me,’ he said, ‘I don’t rightly know what happened to them leads. I recollect seem of Mr Martin a-dangling of them in his hand, but whether he took, ’em away or whether he left ’em I couldn’t say for certain.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Polwhistle, triumphantly, ‘but I can, though. When Mr Martin went to start up the engine, he pushed them leads into
his pocket, careless-like, and when he pulled out his, handkerchief to wipe the oil off of his fingers, them leads falls out on the grass. And I picks ’em up, — seeing as he wasn’t likely to be a-wantin’ of ’em and I drops ’em into my little bag, what I always carried, being a tidy-minded man and thinkin’ as a bit on ’em might come in useful one day for a motor-bike or such-like. And there they lays; to this day, if they ain’t been used for nothin’ since.’
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