The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery

by Israel Zangwill

  ‘An alibi!’ gasped Wimp. ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was with his wife, you know. She’s my woman of all work, Jane. She happened to mention his being with her.’

  Jane had done nothing of the kind. After the colloquy he had overheard, Grodman had set himself to find out the relation between his two employees. By casually referring to Denzil as ‘your husband’, he so startled the poor woman that she did not attempt to deny the bond. Only once did he use the two words, but he was satisfied. As to the alibi he had not yet troubled her; but to take its existence for granted would upset and discomfort Wimp. For the moment that was triumph enough for Wimp’s guest.

  ‘Pa,’ said Wilfred Wimp, ‘what’s a alleybi? A marble?’

  ‘No, my lad,’ said Grodman, ‘it means being somewhere else when you’re supposed to be somewhere.’

  ‘Ah, playing truant,’ said Wilfred self-consciously; his schoolmaster had often proved an alibi against him. ‘Then Denzil will be hanged.’

  Was it a prophecy? Wimp accepted it as such; as an oracle from the gods bidding him mistrust Grodman. Out of the mouths of little children issueth wisdom; sometimes even when they are not saying their lessons.

  ‘When I was in my cradle, a century ago,’ said Wimp’s grandmother-in-law, ‘men were hanged for stealing horses.’

  They silenced her with snapdragon performances.

  Wimp was busy thinking how to get at Grodman’s factotum.

  Grodman was busy thinking how to get at Wimp’s domestic.

  Neither received any of the usual messages from the Christmas Bells.

  The next day was sloppy and uncertain. A thin rain drizzled languidly. One can stand that sort of thing on a summer Bank Holiday; one expects it. But to have a bad December Bank Holiday is too much of a bad thing. Some steps should surely be taken to confuse the weather clerk’s chronology. Once let him know that Bank Holiday is coming, and he writes to the company for more water. Today his stock seemed low and he was dribbling it out; at times the wintry sun would shine in a feeble, diluted way, and though the holiday-makers would have preferred to take their sunshine neat, they swarmed forth in their myriads whenever there was a ray of hope. But it was only dodging the raindrops; up went the umbrellas again, and the streets became meadows of ambulating mushrooms.

  Denzil Cantercot sat in his fur overcoat at the open window, looking at the landscape in water-colours. He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and spoke of the Beautiful. Crowl was with him. They were in the first floor front, Crowl’s bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was livelier than the parlour with its outlook on the backyard. Mrs Crowl was an anti-tobacconist as regards the best bedroom; but Peter did not like to put the poet or his cigarette out. He felt there was something in common between smoke and poetry, over and above their being both Fads. Besides, Mrs Crowl was sulking in the kitchen. She had been arranging for an excursion with Peter and the children to Victoria Park. She had dreamed of the Crystal Palace, but Santa Claus had put no gifts in the cobbler’s shoes. Now she could not risk spoiling the feather in her bonnet. The nine brats expressed their disappointment by slapping one another on the staircases. Peter felt that Mrs Crowl connected him in some way with the rainfall, and was unhappy. Was it not enough that he had been deprived of the pleasure of pointing out to a superstitious majority the mutual contradictions of Leviticus and the Song of Solomon? It was not often that Crowl could count on such an audience.

  ‘And you still call Nature beautiful?’ he said to Denzil, pointing to the ragged sky and the dripping eaves. ‘Ugly old scarecrow!’

  ‘Ugly she seems today,’ admitted Denzil. ‘But what is Ugliness but a higher form of Beauty? You have to look deeper into it to see it; such vision is the priceless gift of the few. To me this wan desolation of sighing rain is lovely as the sea-washed ruins of cities.’

  ‘Ah, but you wouldn’t like to go out in it,’ said Peter Crowl. As he spoke the drizzle suddenly thickened into a torrent.

  ‘We do not always kiss the woman we love.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, Denzil. I’m only a plain man, and I want to know if Nature isn’t a Fad. Hallo, there goes Mortlake! Lord, a minute of this will soak him to the skin.’

  The labour leader was walking along with bowed head. He did not seem to mind the shower. It was some seconds before he even heard Crowl’s invitation to him to take shelter. When he did hear it he shook his head.

  ‘I know I can’t offer you a drawing-room with duchesses stuck about it,’ said Peter, vexed.

  Tom turned the handle of the shop door and went in. There was nothing in the world which now galled him more than the suspicion that he was stuck-up and wished to cut old friends. He picked his way through the nine brats who clung affectionately to his wet knees, dispersing them finally by a jet of coppers to scramble for. Peter met him on the stairs and shook his hand lovingly and admiringly, and took him into Mrs Crowl’s bedroom.

  ‘Don’t mind what I say, Tom. I’m only a plain man, and my tongue will say what comes uppermost! But it ain’t from the soul, Tom, it ain’t from the soul,’ said Peter, punning feebly, and letting a mirthless smile play over his sallow features. ‘You know Mr Cantercot, I suppose? The poet.’

  ‘Oh, yes; how do you do, Tom? Seen the New Pork Herald lately? Not bad, those old times, eh?’

  ‘No,’ said Tom, ‘I wish I was back in them.’

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Peter, in much concern. ‘Look at the good you are doing to the working man. Look how you are sweeping away the Fads. Ah, it’s a grand thing to be gifted, Tom. The idea of your chuckin’ yourself away on a composin’ room! Manual labour is all very well for plain men like me, with no gift but just enough brains to see into the realities of things—to understand that we’ve got no soul and no immortality, and all that—and too selfish to look after anybody’s comfort but my own and mother’s and the kid’s. But men like you and Cantercot—it ain’t right that you should be peggin’ away at low material things. Not that I think Cantercot’s gospel’s any value to the masses. The Beautiful is all very well for folks who’ve got nothing else to think of, but give me the True. You’re the man for my money, Mortlake. No reference to the funds, Tom, to which I contribute little enough, Heaven knows; though how a place can know anything, Heaven alone knows. You give us the Useful, Tom; that’s what the world wants more than the Beautiful.’

  ‘Socrates said that the Useful is the Beautiful,’ said Denzil.

  ‘That may be,’ said Peter, ‘but the Beautiful ain’t the Useful.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Denzil. ‘What about Jessie—I mean Miss Dymond? There’s a combination for you. She always reminds me of Grace Darling. How is she, Tom?’

  ‘She’s dead!’ snapped Tom.

  ‘What?’ Denzil turned as white as a Christmas ghost.

  ‘It was in the papers,’ said Tom; ‘all about her and the lifeboat.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Grace Darling,’ said Denzil, visibly relieved. ‘I meant Miss Dymond.’

  ‘You needn’t be so interested in her,’ said Tom, surlily. ‘She don’t appreciate it. Ah, the shower is over. I must be going.’

  ‘No, stay a little longer, Tom,’ pleaded Peter. ‘I see a lot about you in the papers, but very little of your dear old phiz now. I can’t spare the time to go and hear you. But I really must give myself a treat. When’s your next show?’

  ‘Oh, I am always giving shows,’ said Tom, smiling a little. ‘But my next big performance is on the twenty-first of January, when that picture of poor Mr Constant is to be unveiled at the Bow Break o’ Day Club. They have written to Gladstone and other big pots to come down. I do hope the old man accepts. A non-political gathering like this is the only occasion we could both speak at, and I have never been on the same platform with Gladstone.’

  He forgot his depression and ill-temper in the prospect, and spoke with more animation.

  ‘No, I should hope not, Tom,’ said Peter. ‘What with his Fads about the Bible being
a Rock, and Monarchy being the right thing, he is a most dangerous man to lead the Radicals. He never lays his axe to the root of anything—except oak trees.’

  ‘Mr Cantycot!’ It was Mrs Crowl’s voice that broke in upon the tirade. ‘There’s a gentleman to see you.’ The astonishment Mrs Crowl put into the ‘gentleman’ was delightful. It was almost as good as a week’s rent to her to give vent to her feelings. The controversial couple had moved away from the window when Tom entered, and had not noticed the immediate advent of another visitor who had spent his time profitably in listening to Mrs Crowl before asking to see the presumable object of his visit.

  ‘Ask him up if it’s a friend of yours, Cantercot,’ said Peter. It was Wimp. Denzil was rather dubious as to the friendship, but he preferred to take Wimp diluted. ‘Mortlake’s upstairs,’ he said. ‘Will you come up and see him?’

  Wimp had intended a duologue, but he made no objection, so he, too, stumbled through the nine brats to Mrs Crowl’s bedroom. It was a queer quartet. Wimp had hardly expected to find anybody at the house on Boxing Day, but he did not care to waste a day. Was not Grodman, too, on the track? How lucky it was that Denzil had made the first overtures, so that he could approach him without exciting suspicion.

  Mortlake scowled when he saw the detective. He objected to the police—on principle. But Crowl had no idea who the visitor was, even when told his name. He was rather pleased to meet one of Denzil’s high-class friends, and welcomed him warmly. Probably he was some famous editor, which would account for his name stirring vague recollections. He summoned the eldest brat and sent him for beer (people would have their Fads), and not without trepidation called down to ‘Mother’ for glasses. ‘Mother’ observed at night (in the same apartment) that the beer money might have paid the week’s school fees for half the family.

  ‘We were just talking of poor Mr Constant’s portrait, Mr Wimp,’ said the unconscious Crowl; ‘they’re going to unveil it, Mortlake tells me, on the twenty-first of next month at the Bow Break o’ Day Club.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Wimp, elated at being spared the trouble of manoeuvring the conversation; ‘Mysterious affair that, Mr Crowl.’

  ‘No; it’s the right thing,’ said Peter. ‘There ought to be some memorial of the man in the district where he worked and where he died, poor chap.’ The cobbler brushed away a tear.

  ‘Yes, it’s only right,’ echoed Mortlake a whit eagerly. ‘He was a noble fellow, a true philanthropist. The only thoroughly unselfish worker I’ve ever met.’

  ‘He was that,’ said Peter; ‘and it’s a rare pattern is unselfishness. Poor fellow, poor fellow. He preached the Useful, too. I’ve never met his like. Ah, I wish there was a Heaven for him to go to!’ He blew his nose violently with a red pocket-handkerchief.

  ‘Well, he’s there, if there is,’ said Tom.

  ‘I hope he is,’ added Wimp fervently; ‘but I shouldn’t like to go there the way he did.’

  ‘You were the last person to see him, Tom, weren’t you?’ said Denzil.

  ‘Oh, no,’ answered Tom quickly. ‘You remember he went out after me; at least, so Mrs Drabdump said at the inquest.’

  ‘That last conversation he had with you, Tom,’ said Denzil. ‘He didn’t say anything to you that would lead you to suppose—’

  ‘No, of course not!’ interrupted Mortlake impatiently.

  ‘Do you really think he was murdered, Tom?’ said Denzil.

  ‘Mr Wimp’s opinion on that point is more valuable than mine,’ replied Tom, testily. ‘It may have been suicide. Men often get sick of life—especially if they are bored,’ he added meaningly.

  ‘Ah, but you were the last person known to be with him,’ said Denzil.

  Crowl laughed. ‘Had you there, Tom.’

  But they did not have Tom there much longer, for he departed, looking even worse-tempered than when he came. Wimp went soon after, and Crowl and Denzil were left to their interminable argumentation concerning the Useful and the Beautiful.

  Wimp went West. He had several strings (or cords) to his bow, and he ultimately found himself at Kensal Green Cemetery. Being there, he went down the avenues of the dead to a grave to note down the exact date of a death. It was a day on which the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sodden sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet spongy soil, the reeking grass—everything combined to make one long to be in a warm, comfortable grave, away from the leaden ennuis of life. Suddenly the detective’s keen eye caught sight of a figure that made his heart throb with sudden excitement. It was that of a woman in a grey shawl and a brown bonnet standing before a railed-in grave. She had no umbrella. The rain plashed mournfully upon her, but left no trace on her soaking garments. Wimp crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to him. Her eyes were lowered to the grave, which seemed to be drawing them toward it by some strange morbid fascination. His eyes followed hers. The simple headstone bore the name: ‘ARTHUR CONSTANT’.

  Wimp tapped her suddenly on the shoulder. ‘How do you do, Mrs Drabdump?’

  Mrs Drabdump went deadly white. She turned round, staring at Wimp without any recognition.

  ‘You remember me, surely,’ he said. ‘I’ve been down once or twice to your place about that poor gentleman’s papers.’ His eye indicated the grave.

  ‘Lor! I remember you now,’ said Mrs Drabdump.

  ‘Won’t you come under my umbrella? You must be drenched to the skin.’

  ‘It don’t matter, sir. I can’t take no hurt. I’ve had the rheumatics this twenty year.’

  Mrs Drabdump shrank from accepting Wimp’s attentions, not so much perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs Drabdump liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not contaminate their skirts by contact with the lower castes. ‘It’s set wet, it’ll rain right into the new year,’ she announced. ‘And they say a bad beginnin’ makes a worse endin’.’ Mrs Drabdump was one of those persons who give you the idea that they just missed being born barometers.

  ‘But what are you doing in this miserable spot, so far from home?’ queried the detective.

  ‘It’s Bank Holiday,’ Mrs Drabdump reminded him in tones of acute surprise. ‘I always make a hexcursion on Bank Holiday.’

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE New Year brought Mrs Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman with a long grey beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr Constant, and lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms—or rooms that ought to be haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect—are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The whole Irish problem might be solved if the spirits of ‘Mr Balfour’s victims’ would only depreciate the value of property to a point consistent with the support of an agricultural population. But Mrs Drabdump’s new lodger paid so much for his rooms that he laid himself open to a suspicion of special interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a member of the Psychical Society. The neighbourhood imagined him another mad philanthropist, but as he did not appear to be doing any good to anybody it relented and conceded his sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally stumbled across him in the passage, did not trouble himself to think about him at all. He was too full of other troubles and cares. Though he worked harder than ever, the spirit seemed to have gone out of him. Sometimes he forgot himself in a fine rapture of eloquence—lashing himself up into a divine resentment of injustice or a passion of sympathy with the sufferings of his brethren—but mostly he plodded on in dull, mechanical fashion. He still made brief provincial tours, starring a day here and a day there, and everywhere his admirers remarked how jaded and overworked he looked. There was talk of starting a subscription to give him a holiday on the Continent—a luxury obviously unobtainable on the few pounds allowed him per week. The new lodger would doubtless have been pleased to subscribe, for he seemed quite to like occupying Mortlake’s chamber the nights he was absent, though he was thoughtful enough not to disturb the hard-worked landlady in the adjoining room by unseemly noise. Wimp was always a quiet man.

  Meantime the 21st of the
month approached, and the East End was in excitement. Mr Gladstone had consented to be present at the ceremony of unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown donor to the Bow Break o’ Day Club, and it was to be a great function. The whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in pestering the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies. As the committee desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the applications for admission had to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. The committee agreed among themselves to exclude the fair sex altogether as the only way of disposing of their womankind who were making speeches as long as Mr Gladstone’s. Each committeeman told his sisters, female cousins and aunts that the other committeemen had insisted on divesting the function of all grace; and what could a man do when he was in a minority of one?

  Crowl, who was not a member of the Break o’ Day Club, was particularly anxious to hear the great orator whom he despised; fortunately Mortlake remembered the cobbler’s anxiety to hear himself, and on the eve of the ceremony sent him a ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of possession when Denzil Cantercot returned, after a sudden and unannounced absence of three days. His clothes were muddy and tattered, his cocked hat was deformed, his cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes were bloodshot. The cobbler nearly dropped the ticket at the sight of him. ‘Hullo, Cantercot!’ he gasped. ‘Why, where have you been all these days?’

  ‘Terribly busy!’ said Denzil. ‘Here, give me a glass of water. I’m dry as the Sahara.’

  Crowl ran inside and got the water, trying hard not to inform Mrs Crowl of their lodger’s return. ‘Mother’ had expressed herself freely on the subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would have commended themselves to the poet’s fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler, who had run away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might be quite sure he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs Crowl was wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr Crowl felt no sense of victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to utter that ‘See! didn’t I tell you so?’ which is a greater consolation than religion in most of the misfortunes of life. Unfortunately, to get the water, Crowl had to go to the kitchen; and as he was usually such a temperate man, this desire for drink in the middle of the day attracted the attention of the lady in possession. Crowl had to explain the situation. Mrs Crowl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr Crowl followed in dismay, leaving a trail of spilled water in his wake.