A Presumption of Death

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘One can always restore a garden later,’ said Peter.

  ‘If things ever get back to normal. Don’t suppose a bit of grass and sheep-shit does the flower-beds any harm. But I can’t see us setting up anything again that needs so much labour. Hasn’t been easy since before the last war, never mind this one.’ Gerald poured himself a sherry. ‘Thank God the old man isn’t around to see it,’ he said.

  ‘That’s been true for many centuries,’ said Peter.

  ‘What has?’

  ‘That there’s been an old man who wasn’t around to see it, whatever it was.’

  ‘Of course. I see. I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything of that son of mine, have you? Never comes home.’

  ‘Difficult for him, on active duty,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said the Duchess. ‘And, Gerald, be fair – he does telephone. He rang me only this morning and sent love to all the family.’

  ‘And it’s good of you to be looking after Mary’s brats,’ said Gerald. ‘Lots of work, I should think.’

  ‘Not as children go, really,’ said Harriet. ‘Besides, once one is looking after one or two, there’s nothing left to lose, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘How many have we got here, Mater?’ asked Gerald.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty, I think, dear,’ said the Duchess. ‘With teachers, of course. Weren’t you going to ask Peter about one of them?’

  ‘Yes, I was. One of the little perishers has taken a shine to the pictures, and is busy reading up art history and asking me a lot of stuff I don’t know about.’

  ‘I’m sure Helen would be outraged if she thought the library was being thrown open to all and sundry,’ offered the Duchess gleefully.

  Harriet cast a sideways glance at Peter to see if he was outraged himself, but he just said, ‘Well the incunabula and the really important books are all in the locked cases, Mother. I don’t suppose Gerald’s heart has melted enough to offer them the keys.’

  ‘No, of course not. But it’s a bit of a poser, don’t you know, when a snotty-nosed lad out of the East End starts asking about Caravaggio. Thing is, Peter, what should I do for him? If I wanted to give him a leg up.’

  ‘Are you serious, Gerald? Tell him if he passes the scholarship examination he could get into the Slade and study art. Offer him a fiver for getting into grammar school, and a hundred guineas if he makes it into a history of art course. Then stand back and wait and see. Oh, and leave him with the run of the library.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Gerald. ‘I just might. Don’t know what Helen would say about the money.’

  ‘Don’t tell Helen,’ said the Duchess. ‘Swear the dear little brute to secrecy.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gerald. ‘Look, do you mind if we turn on the news?’

  The bulletin announced the fall of the government. Chamberlain had resigned. Winston Churchill was the new Prime Minister. He offered nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

  Quietly they listened to his gravelly voice. ‘What is our policy? To wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. What is our aim? Victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory however hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.’

  A flustered Franklin in an apron announced that dinner was on the table.

  Next morning they set out on the last leg of the journey home. They left mid-morning, with the boot of Mrs Merdle stuffed with game – four pheasants and a hare, which Gerald and Peter had shot before breakfast – a pretty dress for Polly which had belonged to her mother, and which the Duchess had preserved in tissue paper, a battered dog on wheels for Paul, a train for Bredon, a doll for little Harriet, and a model aeroplane for Charlie, all of which had been disgorged from the endless cornucopia of the Denver attics. Somehow it was agreed that there would be no need to hurry, and the journey could take in numerous stops.

  As they drove across the fen, under a sunny sky, Harriet felt a strange elated combination of fear and a sort of determined happiness. The enormous arena of light and cloud that spread above the fen was bracing to the spirit.

  ‘Don’t drive too fast, Peter.’

  ‘Am I alarming you again?’

  ‘No; not that. It’s just that I’d like the journey to go on as long as possible.’

  ‘What dreadful prospect at home makes you wish so? Riotous children? Omnipresent Bunter? The ration-books? The chance of air-raids? Look, Harriet, I really don’t think the air-raid risk is very acute. People have to be prepared, of course; but Talboys is three miles from the nearest air-field, and it’s those that the enemy is gunning for at the moment. And if they changed tack they wouldn’t be dropping expensive bombs, dangerously delivered, on villages in Hertfordshire, it would be to go for militarily significant targets, or large cities where they can terrorise the population.’

  ‘Would we do the same to them?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t like that much, Harriet, but I suppose we have been provoked.’

  ‘Yes indeed. And what puts me off the prospect of arriving home is none of the items on your list, but the depressing prospect of wrestling with that unsolved murder.’

  ‘Odd of you, Harriet. An unsolved murder is just what I like to get my pulses racing. Three before breakfast would suit me best. But I rather think we haven’t got even one.’

  ‘What? What are you telling me, Peter?’

  ‘Nothing you don’t already know. Wendy Percival: murder method clear from the start. Murder opportunity gradually established by elimination, done mostly by you, Harriet, and very good careful work too. It’s only that devil motive that prevented you from arresting Brinklow. The missing motive.’

  ‘And if Kirk had arrested him . . .’

  ‘You would have saved him from a nasty end, by the look of it.’

  ‘But as far as I can see the motive is still missing, Peter.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’m guessing,’ said Peter. ‘But it’s something you said that put me on to it. You said – remember? – didn’t the real Brinklow have a life of his own? Couldn’t he have had an enemy of his own?’

  ‘And he did, if you would count Quarley as an enemy.’

  ‘So take it one more step: there was, after all, someone real impersonating Brinklow . . .’

  ‘And that real person also had a past! Oh, Peter, how weird! But you must be right!’

  ‘Is it weird?’ he asked, turning the car towards March.

  ‘It’s a strange inversion, Peter. He tried to kill Quarley, because Quarley would not have recognised him; would have known it wasn’t him—’

  ‘And mightn’t he have killed Wendy because she did recognise him; not as Brinklow, of course, but as Helmut or Hans or Werner or whoever.’

  ‘She had been abroad, quite a bit. Oh, glory, Peter, and one of her friends said that one doesn’t get murdered for having a degree in Modern Languages.’

  ‘I’ve looked at the list of foreign parts she had visited in Miss Climpson’s letter to you,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mention Germany, but if we ask her parents I expect we’ll find she was there. It fits beautifully with what the dentist heard.’

  ‘Mrs Spright?’

  ‘At the inquest. Your notes say she said she heard Wendy say, “Great heavens. What are you doing here?” You hardly ask that of a complete stranger. And then what could he do? His cover is blown. He could flee; but if he intends to stay put and do what he came for, he must silence her. Completely. Immediately. He can’t risk letting her have a single conversation with another living soul.’

  Harriet thought about it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You could be right. That would make sense. And it would be a relief in a way. That it was, after all, a war-crime.’

  ‘Murders happen, as we both know, in peace-time too,’ he said.

  ‘Yes; but somehow a private murder in a time of common danger would have seemed particularly foul,’ she said. ‘A blotch on all we are fighting for.’

  ‘Certa
inly we are fighting for a young woman’s right to walk in safety,’ he said. ‘But I’m not sure that being killed by an enemy agent ennobles her death, Harriet.’

  ‘It means her death was part of the common danger.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re right. And it must have been a war-related matter that brought pseudo-Brinklow to Paggleham. I heartily wish we knew what that was.’

  Eighteen

  The youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity.

  Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, 1845

  ‘So what will happen now?’ asked Harriet, as they drove through Broxford, and into the familiar, tangled lanes towards Paggleham.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About pseudo-Brinklow.’

  ‘Kirk will need to get the body out of his morgue. Do you think Fred Lugg could organise a discreet burial?’

  ‘We bury him darkly at dead of night?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘We raise not a stone and we carve not a line?’

  ‘He was a brave, if ruthless man,’ said Peter. ‘I think after the war I might shell out for a headstone.’

  ‘Peter, are you really going to pay for a headstone for a spy? Spying is so loathsome.’

  ‘Heart’s lady, what do you think I was doing, all those weeks abroad?’

  ‘That’s different!’ she said at once.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. His tone was light, but edged.

  ‘Because of the cause being served.’

  ‘I expect the man we are talking about would have said he acted for his country.’

  ‘For his country’s ruthless, murderous aggrandisement. We are acting in self-defence. The same argument you applied to Jeff Quarley; they attacked us, and we have a right to defend ourselves by any means available.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They have turned Europe into a pig-shed full of blood in which we will blunder against each other in the dark. But I prefer blood, toil, tears and sweat with Churchill to peace in our time with Chamberlain.’

  ‘So what would a headstone say?’

  ‘You’re the writer.’

  ‘Here lies an unknown enemy, who died for the cause he served?’

  ‘That would do nicely.’ A mile further down the road he said, ‘I do wish we knew why it was worth their while to plant a spy in Paggleham. What were they after?’

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, now.’

  ‘That’s what’s so galling,’ said Peter.

  A riotous welcome home awaited them at Talboys. The children came running out to greet them, and hung round them all talking at once. Except Charlie, Harriet noticed. As so often he seemed older than his years, and hung back. He looked rather tense.

  ‘So what’s the news, tribe?’ asked Peter.

  ‘An air-raid!’ they cried. ‘We had an air-raid! A real one!’

  ‘You were in one of the shelters, I hope?’ said Harriet, gathering Bredon and Polly in a two-armed hug.

  ‘We couldn’t, Mummy,’ said Bredon. ‘The siren didn’t go!’

  ‘That’s bad,’ said Peter. ‘Is this true, Bunter?’ For Bunter had appeared from the house.

  ‘Quite true, my lord. No warning. A single enemy aircraft. It dropped a string of bombs in the field behind the house, my lord, in broad daylight.’

  ‘Any damage, Bunter?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, my lord. It knocked off one of our chimney pots, and broke it on the driveway. And I’m afraid in falling the chimney killed two of Miss Twitterton’s hens, that were boarded with us, so to speak, to take advantage of kitchen scraps.’

  ‘Two dead hens?’ asked Harriet. ‘Dinner?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Bunter mournfully. ‘Those wretched evacuee boys arrived before we did. They got the birds.’

  ‘It was Bunter’s fault,’ said Polly, slipping her hand in Harriet’s as they went indoors.

  ‘In my long experience of Bunter,’ observed Lord Peter, ‘things are seldom his fault, Polly.’

  ‘He wouldn’t let us out of the coal cellar for ages!’ said Polly. ‘He wouldn’t let us go and see what was happening. So there was this big crash, and we just waited. And the Marbleham boys got the chickens, and we just saw them running away when we got out.’

  ‘They can’t half run!’ said Charlie admiringly.

  The news took them right through tea-time, and bath-time, to be superseded by joy at the Duchess’s presents, and it was nine o’clock before Peter and Harriet could settle in the living-room. Peter was playing to Harriet while she knitted. Something by Bach. ‘Do you mind, Harriet?’

  ‘I love to hear you play.’

  ‘I find myself deeply consoled by the continuo,’ he said.

  They were interrupted. Charlie in his pyjamas stood in the doorway.

  ‘Uncle Peter?’

  ‘Come in and close the door behind you, Charlie, before Bunter or Sadie catches you,’ said Peter. ‘What is it? Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘I need some help, Uncle Peter. It’s so difficult. And it might be important, and Daddy isn’t here!’ cried Charlie. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages!’

  ‘All right, old man. Don’t get upset. Let’s see what your wicked uncle can do for you.’

  ‘It’s all this,’ said Charlie, unbuttoning his pyjama jacket and letting reams and reams of paper fall out on to the floor. He picked up a handful and spread it out on the piano. Peter closed the lid on the keyboard and came to look. He put his monocle in his eye and peered closely at Charlie’s paperwork.

  ‘What is it, Charlie?’ Peter asked. ‘It doesn’t seem to me to make a lot of sense.’

  ‘That’s just it!’ cried Charlie, his voice shaking slightly. ‘It’s just too hard for us! Sam said we mustn’t tell any grown-up, because we don’t know who is a spy, but you couldn’t be a spy, Uncle Peter, and I thought if I asked you not to tell . . .’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die? I’m not an enemy spy, Charlie, no. But look here, old chap, you seem a bit upset. Why don’t I get Bunter to fix you up a mug of Horlicks, and you sit in that armchair opposite your aunt, and tell us all about it.’

  Charlie came across the room, looking anxiously at Harriet, until she smiled at him. ‘Would you rather have Bournville?’ she asked.

  He nodded sadly. ‘I know Horlicks is good for you,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think it’s good enough for you to constitute an excuse for the taste,’ said Harriet. Bunter appeared in response to Peter’s ring, and the Bournville was duly ordered.

  ‘You see, at first we thought – me and Sam thought – my crystal set wasn’t working properly. We kept getting noises instead of the Home Service.’

  ‘They are the devil to tune, those things,’ said Peter.

  ‘But it wasn’t that. It would go wrong and right and wrong again, and we kept trying and then we realised it wasn’t the set. We were picking up something. It was Morse code. So we went and got a book about it. We found out a lot about it.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Peter. ‘What did you find out?’

  ‘We found a book about how to read it properly, first,’ said Charlie. ‘Mr Smith – that’s our scout-master, Uncle Peter – was teaching us all wrong. He was making us write it down letter by letter.’

  Bunter appeared with his hot drink, and on Peter’s eye-signal to him, he stood quietly behind Charlie, listening.

  ‘We were trying to write it down, dah didit dah dah didit,’ said Charlie, ‘but it was too fast for us. The book said don’t write down dah didits, just listen and learn the shape of the letters, and then you would be able to hear sentences and write those down. But we couldn’t, because it didn’t make sentences.’

  ‘It would have been in code?’

  ‘Must of been. So we had to write down the letters and try to break the code later.’

  ‘I see. So let me have a look at what you’ve got.’ Peter spread out Charlie’s jottings on the piano top, and he and Bunter looked at them together.

  ‘
This is certainly a bit obscure,’ said Peter. But Charlie, having once got launched into his story, was now talking eagerly on.

  ‘We got another book that said if you wound the aerial round a shoe box or something, and turned it round and round you could find the direction the messages were coming from. When they were loudest, you were pointing straight at them.’

  ‘So where were they coming from?’

  ‘From the village. Somewhere by the church,’ said Charlie. ‘It was quite close. That’s why it cut across the National Service.’

  The three adults in the room were hanging on his every word. ‘So Sam said, we’d got to crack this code and find out who is sending it. And then it stopped. Suddenly we can get Henry Hall and the BBC dance orchestra all the time, and no dahdidits at all. And we just can’t understand these letters we wrote down. And when the bomb came I was scared, Uncle Peter, and so I’ve told you, whatever Sam says. He’ll be cross,’ added Charlie sorrowfully, ‘and he’s my best friend ever.’

  ‘When do you reckon it stopped, Charlie?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘About three weeks ago. We did wonder if it was a black-marketer. About that unlicensed pig. It went away round about then.’

  ‘Did it, by God?’ said Peter.

  ‘If I may say so, my lord,’ said Bunter, ‘these letters look odd to me. I think they must be a substitution code – not enough Es for English, and too many Zs.’

  ‘It’s scrambled German, I think, Bunter,’ said Peter. ‘But I think there’s enough of it to give our wizards a chance at cracking it. However did you have the patience to write down so much of it, Charlie? Weren’t you bored?’

  ‘It was exciting when we thought it was spies,’ said Charlie. ‘But it was boring too. I didn’t know things could be boring and exciting,’ he added plaintively. ‘We took turns.’

  ‘Look, Charlie, I’m going to have to tell somebody else about this. May I have your permission?’

  Charlie nodded. Peter went to the telephone in the hall, leaving the door ajar, and they heard his voice pitched excitedly. ‘Bungo, I think I’ve got something for you. You won’t guess what in a hundred years . . . an intercept. My nephew and his friend. He’s ten. Yes, yes, ten years old. Okay, you’re the boss.’