by Nine Tailors
The Superintendent jerked his thumb in the general direction of the churchyard.
Wimsey groaned.
“It makes no sense, Super, it makes no sense! If this man Cobbleigh joins up in the first year of the War, how on earth could he have been elaborately in league with Deacon, who went to Maidstone in 1914? There was no time. Damn it! You don’t get a man out of quod in a few spare hours spent on leave. If Cobbleigh had been a warder—if he’d been a fellow-convict—if he’d been anything to do with the prison, I could understand it. Had he a relation in the gaol or anything of that sort? There must have been something more to it than that.”
“Must there? Look here, my lord, how’s this? I’ve been working this thing out coming over, and this is what I make out of it. Deacon bust away from a working-party, didn’t he? He was found still wearing his prison dress, wasn’t he? Doesn’t that show his escape wasn’t planned out elaborately beforehand? They’d have found him fast enough, if he hadn’t gone and pitched down that denehole, wouldn’t they? Now, you listen to this, and see if it don’t hold water. I can see it plain as a pikestaff. Here’s this Cobbleigh—a hard nut, by all accounts. He’s walking through the wood on the way from his mother’s cottage, to take the train at Dartford for wherever he might be going to join up with the troops going back to France. Somewhere on that moor he finds a chap lurking about. He collars him, and finds he’s pinched the escape convict that everybody’s looking for. The convict says, ‘Let me go, and I’ll make you a rich man,’ see? Cobbleigh’s got no objection to that. He says, ‘Lead me to it. What is it?’ The convict says, ‘The Wilbraham emeralds, that’s what it is.’ Cobbleigh says, ‘Coo! tell us some more about that. How’m I to know you ain’t kidding me? You tell us where they are and we’ll see about it.’ Deacon says, ‘No fear—catch me telling you, without you helps me first.’ Cobbleigh says, ‘You can’t help yourself,’ he says, ‘I only got to give you up and then where’ll you be?’ Deacon says, ‘You won’t get much out o’ that. You stick by me and I’ll put hundreds of thousands of pounds in your hands.’ They go on talking, and Deacon, like a fool, lets out that he’s made a note of the hiding-place and has it on him. ‘Oh, have you?’ says Cobbleigh, ‘then you damn well take that.’ And lams him over the head. Then he goes over him and finds the paper, which he’s upset to find he can’t make head or tail of. Then he has another look at Deacon and sees he’s done him in good and proper. Oh, hell!’ says he, ‘that’s torn it. I better shove him out of the way and clear off.’ So he pops him down the hole and makes tracks for France. How’s that, so far?”
“Fine, full-blooded stuff,” said Wimsey. “But why should Deacon be carrying a note of the hiding-place about with him? And how did it come to be written on foreign paper?”
“I don’t know. Well, say it was like you said before. Say he’d given the paper to his wife. He spills his wife’s address, like a fool, and then it all happens the way I said. Cobbleigh goes back to France, deserts, and gets taken care of by Suzanne. He keeps quiet about who he is, because he don’t know whether Deacon’s body’s been found or not and he’s afraid of being had up for murder if he goes home. Meanwhile, he’s stuck to the paper—no, that’s wrong. He writes to Mrs. Deacon and gets the paper out of her.”
“Why should she give it up?”
“That’s a puzzler. Oh, I know! I’ve got it this time. He tells her he’s got the key to it. That’s right. Deacon told him, ‘My wife’s got the cipher, but she’s a babbling fool and I ain’t trusted her with the key. I’ll give you the key and that’ll show you I know what I’m talking about.’ Then Cobbleigh kills him, and when he thinks it’s safe he writes over to Mary and she sends him the paper.”
“The original paper?”
“Why, yes.”
“You’d think she’d keep that and send him a copy.”
“No. She sends the original, so that he can see it’s in Deacon’s writing.”
“But he wouldn’t necessarily know Deacon’s writing.
“How’s she to know that? Cobbleigh works out the cipher and they help him to get across.”
“But we’ve been into all that and decided the Thodays couldn’t do it.”
“All right, then. The Thodays bring Cranton into it. Cobbleigh comes over, anyhow, under the name of Paul Taylor, and he comes along to Fenchurch and they get the emeralds. Then Thoday kills him, and he takes the emeralds. Meanwhile, along comes Cranton to see what’s happening and finds they’ve been ahead of him. He clears off and the Thodays go about looking innocent till they see we’re getting a bit close on their trail. Then they clear.”
“Who did the killing, then?”
“Any one of them, I should say.”
“And who did the burying?”
“Not Will, anyhow.”
“And how was it done? And why did they want to tie Cobbleigh up? Why not kill him straight off and with a bang on the head? Why did Thoday take £200 out of the bank and put it back again? When did it all happen? Who was the man Potty Peake saw in the church on the night of the 30th? And, above all, why was the cipher found in the belfry, of all places?”
“I can’t answer everything at once, can I? That’s the way it was done between ’em, you can take it from me. And now I’m going to have Cranton charged, and get hold of those precious Thodays, and if I don’t put my hand on the emeralds among them, I’ll eat my hat.”
“Oh!” said Wimsey, “that reminds me. Before you came, we were just going to look at the place where Deacon hid those jolly old emeralds. The Rector solved the cipher——”
“Him?”
“He. So, just for fun, and by way of shutting the stable door after the steed was stolen, we’re going to climb up aloft and have a hunt among the cherubims. In fact the Rector is down at the church, champing his bit at this very moment. Shall we go?”
“Sure—though I haven’t a lot of time to waste.”
“I don’t suppose it will take long.”
The Rector had procured the sexton’s ladder and was already up in the South aisle roof, covering himself with cobwebs as he poked about vaguely among the ancient oak.
“The servants sat just about here,” he said, as Wimsey came in with the Superintendent. “But now I come to think of it, we had the painters up here last year, and they ought to have found anything there was to be found.”
“Perhaps they did,” said Wimsey; and Mr. Blundell uttered a low moan.
“Oh, I hope not. I really think not. They are most honest men.” Mr. Venables came down from the ladder. “Perhaps you had better try. I am not clever about these things.”
“Beautiful old work this is,” said his lordship. “All pegged together. There’s a lot of this old rafter work down at Duke’s Denver, and when I was a kid I made rather a pretty cache for myself in a corner of the attic. Used to keep tiddley-winks counters in it and pretend it was a pirate’s hoard. Only it was a dickens of a job getting them out again. I say! Blundell! do you remember that wire hook you found in the corpse’s pocket?”
“Yes, my lord. We never made out what that was for.”
“I ought to have known,” said Wimsey. “I made a thing very like it for the pirate’s hoard.” His long fingers were working over the beams, gently pulling at the thick wooden pegs which held them together. “He must have been able to reach it from where he sat. Aha! what did I tell you? This is the one. Wriggle her gently and out she comes. Look!”
He wrenched at one of the pegs, and it came out in his hand. Originally, it had passed right through the beam and must have been over a foot in length, tapering from the size of a penny-piece at one end to something over half-an-inch at the other. But at some time it had been sawn off about three inches from the thick end.
“There you are,” said Wimsey. “An old schoolboy cache originally, I expect. Some kid got pushing it from the other end and found it was loose. Probably shoved it clean out. At least, that’s what I did, up in the attic. Then he took it home and sawed six inches o
r so out of the middle of it. Next time he comes to church he brings a short rod with him. He pushes the thin end back again into place with the rod, so that the hole doesn’t show from the other side. Then he drops in his marbles or whatever he wanted to hide, and plugs up the big end again with this. And there he is, with a nice little six-inch hidey-hole where nobody would ever dream of looking for it. Or so he thinks. Then—perhaps years afterwards-along comes friend Deacon. He’s sitting up here one day, possibly a little bored with the sermon (sorry, padre!). He starts fidgeting with the peg, and out it comes—only three inches of it. Hullo! says he, here’s a game! Handy place if you wanted to pop any little thing away in a hurry. Later on, when he does want to pop his little shiners away in a hurry, he thinks of it again. Easy enough. Sits here all quiet and pious, listening to the First Lesson. Puts his hand down at his side, slips out the plug, slides the emeralds out of his pocket, slips them into the hole, pops back the plug. All over before his reverence says ‘Here endeth.’ Out into the sunshine and slap into the arms of our friend the Super here and his merry men. ‘Where are the emeralds?’ they say. ‘You can search me,’ says he. And they do, and they’ve been searching ever since.”
“Amazing!” said the Rector. Mr, Blundell uttered a regrettable expression, remembered his surroundings and coughed loudly.
“So now we see what the hook was for,” said Wimsey. “When Legros, or Cobbleigh, whichever you like to call him, came for the loot—”
“Stop a minute,” objected the Superintendent. “That cipher didn’t mention anything about a hole, did it? It only mentioned cherubims. How did he know he needed a hook to get necklaces out of cherubims?”
“Perhaps he’d had a look at the place first. But of course, we know he did. That must have been what he was doing when Potty Peake saw him and Thoday in the church. He spotted the place then, and came back later. Though why he should have waited five days I couldn’t tell you. Possibly something went wrong. Anyway, back he came, armed with his hook, and hitched the necklace out. Then, just as he was coming down the ladder, the accomplice took him from behind, tied him up, and—and then—and then did away with him by some means we can’t account for.”
The Superintendent scratched his head.
“You’d think he might have waited for a better place to do it in, wouldn’t you, my lord? Putting him out here in the church, and all that bother of burying him and what not. Why didn’t he go while the going was good, and shove Cobbleigh into the dyke or something on the way home?”
“Heaven knows,” said Wimsey. “Anyhow, there’s your hiding-place and there’s the explanation of your hook.” He thrust the end of his fountain pen into the hole. “It’s quite a deep—no, by jove, it’s not! it’s only a shallow hole after all, not much longer than the peg. We can’t, surely, have made a mistake. Where’s my torch? Dash it! (Sorry, padre.) Is that wood? or is it——? Here, Blundell, find me a mallet and a short, stout rod or stick of some kind—not too thick. We’ll have this hole clear.”
“Run across to the Rectory and ask Hinkins,” suggested Mr. Venables, helpfully.
In a few minutes’ time, Mr. Blundell returned, panting, with a short iron bar and a heavy wheel-spanner. Wimsey had shifted the ladder and was examining the narrow end of the oaken peg on the east side of the beam. He set one end of the bar firmly against the peg and smote lustily with the spanner. An ecclesiastical bat, startled from its resting-place by the jar, swooped out with a shriek, the tapered end of the peg shot smartly through the hole and out at the other side, and something else shot out with it—something that detached itself in falling from its wrapping of brown paper and cascaded in a flash of green and gold to the Rector’s feet.
“Bless my heart!” cried Mr. Venables.
“The emeralds!” yelled Mr. Blundell. “The emeralds, by God! And Deacon’s fifty pounds with them.”
“And we’re wrong, Blundell,” said Lord Peter. “We’ve been wrong from start to finish. Nobody found them. Nobody killed anybody for them. Nobody deciphered the cryptogram. We’re wrong, wrong, out of the hunt and wrong!”
“But we’ve got the emeralds,” said the Superintendent.
II
A SHORT TOUCH OF STEDMAN’S TRIPLES
(FIVE PARTS)
840
By the Part Ends
5 6 1 2 3 4
3 4 1 5 6 2
6 2 1 3 4 5
4 5 1 6 2 3
2 3 1 4 5 6
Treble the observation.
Call her the last whole turn, out quick, in slow, the second half turn and out slow. Four times repeated.
(TROYTE)
THE FIRST PART
THE QUICK WORK
The work of each bell is divided in three parts, viz. the quick work, dodging, and slow work.
TROYTE ON CHANGE-RINGING
LORD PETER WIMSEY PASSED a restless day and night and was very silent the next day at breakfast.
At the earliest possible moment he got his car and went over to Leamholt.
“Superintendent,” he said, “I think I have been the most unmitigated and unconscionable ass that ever brayed in a sleuth-hound’s skin. Now, however, I have solved the entire problem, with one trivial exception. Probably you have done so too.”
“I’ll buy it,” said Mr. Blundell. “I’m like you, my lord, I’m doing no more guessing. What’s the bit you haven’t solved, by the way?”
“Well, the murder,” said his lordship, with an embarrassed cough. “I can’t quite make out who did that, or how. But that, as I say, is a trifle. I know who the dead man was, why he was tied up, where he died, who sent the cryptogram to whom, why Will Thoday drew £200 out of the bank and put it back again, where the Thodays have gone and why and when they will return, why Jim Thoday missed his train, why Cranton came here, what he did and why he is lying about it and how the beer bottle got into the belfry.”
“Anything else?” asked Mr. Blundell.
“Oh, yes. Why Jean Legros was silent about his past, what Arthur Cobbleigh did in the wood at Dartford, what the parrot was talking about and why the Thodays were not at Early Service on Sunday, what Tailor Paul had to do with it and why the face of the corpse was beaten in.”
“Excellent,” said Mr. Blundell. “Quite a walking library, aren’t you, my lord? Couldn’t you go just a step further and tell us who we’re to put the handcuffs on?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do that. Dash it all, can’t I leave one little tit-bit for a friend?”
“Well,” said Mr. Blundell, “I don’t know that I ought to complain. Let’s have the rest of it and perhaps we’ll be able to do the last bit on our own.”
Lord Peter was silent for a moment.
“Look here, Super,” he said at last. “This is going to be a dashed painful sort of story. I think I’d like to test it a bit before I come out with it. Will you do something yourself, first? You’ve got to do it in any case, but I’d rather not say anything till it is done. After that, I’ll say anything you like.”
“Well?”
“Will you get hold of a photograph of Arthur Cobbleigh and send it over to France for Suzanne Legros to identify?”
“That’s got to be done, naturally. Matter of routine.”
“If she identifies it, well and good. But if she’s stubborn and refuses, will you give her this note, just as it is, and watch her when she opens it?”
“Well, I don’t know about doing that personally, my lord, but I’ll see that this Monsieur Rozier does it.”
“That will do. And will you also show her the cryptogram?”
“Yes, why not? Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Wimsey, more slowly. “The Thodays. I’m a little uncomfortable about the Thodays. You’re trailing them, I suppose?”
“What do you think?”
“Exactly. Well, when you’ve put your hands on them, will you let me know before you do anything drastic? I’d rather like to be there when you question them.”
“I’ve no
objection to that, my lord. And this time they’ll have to come across with some sort of story, judge’s rules or no judge’s rules, even if it breaks me.”
“You won’t have any difficulty about that,” said Wimsey. “Provided, that is, you catch them within a fortnight. After that, it will be more difficult.”
“Why within a fortnight?”
“Oh, come!” expostulated his lordship. “Isn’t it obvious? I show Mrs. Thoday the cipher. On Sunday morning neither she nor her husband attends Holy Communion. On Monday they depart to London by the first train. My dear Watson, it’s staring you in the face. The only real danger is——”
“Well?”
“The Archbishop of Canterbury. A haughty prelate, Blundell. An arbitrary prince. But I don’t suppose they’ll think about him, somehow. I think you may risk him.”
“Oh, indeed! And how about Mr. Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan?”
“Negligible. Negligible,” replied his lordship, with a Wave of the hand. “Likewise the Bishop of Rome. But get on to it, Blundell, get on to it.”
“I mean to,” said Mr. Blundell, with emphasis. “They’ll not get out of the country, that’s a certainty.”
“So it is, so it is. Of course, they’ll be back here by tomorrow fortnight, but that will be too late. How soon do you expect Jim Thoday back? End of the month? Be sure he doesn’t give you the slip. I’ve an idea he may try to.”
“You think he’s our man?”
“I don’t know, I tell you. I don’t want him to be. I rather hope it’s Cranton.”
“Poor old Cranton,” said the Superintendent, perversely, “I rather hope it isn’t. I don’t like to see a perfectly good jewel-thief stepping out of his regular line, so to speak. It’s disconcerting, that’s what it is. Besides, the man’s ill. However, we shall see about that. I’ll get on to this Cobbleigh business and settle it.”