Ask a Policeman

by Detection Club

  “Gentlemen, an experiment. Something new in broadcast plays. Scene, the interior of the late Lord Comstock’s study at Hursley Lodge. Time 11.35 a.m. on the day before yesterday.”

  There was a disconcerted rustling among the audience. The Archbishop of the Midlands was heard to make inarticulate sounds. There was a moment’s silence. Then, from the direction of the wireless receiving-set, an arresting voice, harsh and resonant, said angrily:

  “And to what, sir, am I, indebted for this pleasure?”

  The editor of the Evening Clarion, cursed with the imagination of a film-fan, swore under his breath in a scared manner. His more experienced colleague grunted and half-laughed. But both were silenced by the second voice, smooth, ecclesiastical, and cool:

  “Ah, Comstock, forgive me if I interrupt your work—”

  Then the voice of Sir John Saumarez broke the spell.

  “Gentlemen, the conversation you are going to hear is not the conversation which did actually and indeed take place between the late Lord Comstock and his Grace the Archbishop of the Midlands on that fatal day.”

  Sir John permitted the rubber stamp remark to emerge unchallenged by his critical faculty.

  “What are we going to hear?” It was the voice of the dramatist asking a pre-arranged question. Sir John replied courteously:

  “Pardon me. That will be for you all to say when you have heard it.”

  There was a long pause, while the peculiar ticking of the wireless set, indicative of the fact that the broadcasting station was active but that the programme was held up for the moment, tautened the nerves of the susceptible and imaginative editor of the Evening Clarion. He was about to whisper a remark to his colleague of the Daily Bugle for the sake of breaking the tension when the ticking noise ceased abruptly, and the announcer’s voice said winningly:

  “Hallo, everybody. This is the Daventry National Programme. We are going to broadcast an imaginary dialogue between the late Lord Comstock, who was murdered by an unknown assailant at his country residence, Hursley Lodge, probably between the hours of noon and one-fifteen p.m. on the day before yesterday, and the Most Reverend William Anselm Pettifer, D.D., Archbishop of the Midlands. This dialogue is the first of a series of talks between great men in differing walks of life, putting the points of view of each before the public. Our aim—the aim of the B.B.C.—is to give you an opportunity of hearing arguments in favour of and against such varying modes of living as those of an Archbishop of the English Church and a peer who made most of his fortune out of “stunt” attacks on that Church and, indeed, on all the forces of law and order, through the medium of privately owned but very widely circulated newspapers.”

  There was another pause, of shorter duration this time, and then the two sentences which had preceded Sir John Saumarez’s last remark were repeated, and were followed straight away by the promised Imaginary Conversation.

  “And to what, sir, am I indebted for this visit?”

  “Ah, Comstock, forgive me if I interrupt your work. You received my letter, I think?”

  “Letter? I received no letter. And I’m busy.”

  “You received no letter? Then, my dear fellow, a thousand pardons for coming upon you so unceremoniously. You must forgive me, Comstock, but, believe me, it is for your own sake that I have come. May I sit down? Over here by the door? Admirable.” The silky voice faded. There was a slight pause before Lord Comstock’s harsh tones came over again.

  “Say what you’ve come to say, sir, if you please. I really am extremely pushed for time.”

  “Of course, of course, my dear fellow,” the Archbishop’s voice said soothingly. “I will come to the point at once. Comstock, for your own sake, stop printing your newspaper attacks on the Church.”

  “I am not attacking the Church. Why the devil don’t you read intelligently?” The grating tones caused the rough words to sound positively belligerent.

  “My good boy—” The silky tones took on the exasperated note of flouted authority.

  “And I’m not your good boy! I was your good boy at school, but I’m nobody’s good boy now.” Lord Comstock’s voice was rising to a yell. “All this blasted clap-trap about good boys—I’m free of you, I tell you, free!” The word echoed through the room, a triumph of barbarianism. “And I tell you, too, I’ll have all your churches in ruins about your ears before I’ve finished with you! It’s not the Church that I’m attacking! It’s the whole foundation of the Church, Christianity itself—”

  “Comstock, beware of what you say!” There was a cutting edge to the warning words. The schoolmaster was reaching for his cane. “There is such blasphemy as, even to-day, in this material age, God punishes. I am no prophet to bring fire from heaven! I am a weak old man, unworthy, even in mine own sight, but this I swear. The wages of sin is death! Death, Comstock! And you, boy, are unfit to die!” The headmaster had eclipsed the archbishop for the moment. Comstock, an angry boy, raged furiously. “I am not a boy! Clap-trap! Clap-trap! I’m not afraid of death! Death is nothing! That’s why I’m not afraid of it! Get out of here, you damned old hypocrite! You whited sepulchre! And that’s out of your own book of clap-trap barley sugar! When I was a kid I had to listen to all that sort of poppycock! But I’m damned if I’ll listen any longer!” There was a crash, as of a table being thumped.

  “Yes, you will listen, Comstock. Shall I tell you something?” The voice was smooth again. It had regained its gentleness, like steel re-sheathed in velvet.

  “Get farther away then!” Comstock was petulant. “I can’t breath with you standing over me like a blessed Solomon Eagle! Why the devil don’t you sit down! If you’ve got anything to say, say it, man! You don’t seem to have the guts of a flea!”

  “What are you afraid of, Comstock?” the gentle voice, surcharged with tenderness, inquired.

  “I’m not afraid! What the hell have I got to be afraid of? But I want air, man, air!” It was the voice of a man fighting Fate.

  “There is little enough air in the grave, Comstock. But I will sit down if you wish it, my boy. Listen, Comstock!” Persuasion and irony were so nicely blent in the voice of the Archbishop as to be almost indistinguishable.

  “I don’t want to listen, I tell you! Shut up and get out of here! I’ll ring the bell and have you chucked out, dammit!”

  “Listen, Comstock.” The soft voice was inexorable. “‘When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things.’ You remember, Comstock? I know it was in your last term that I preached a sermon in the big school hall, with that as my text. You do remember, Comstock?”

  “Oh, clap-trap! Twaddle! Poppycock!” It was the shout of a boy shouting down his own fears of the dark. The audience stirred uncomfortably.

  “I think not, my boy. You see, my dear Comstock, you never have put away childish things. Have you ever watched a little tiny boy with a hammer, Comstock? No, you wouldn’t, because your adventures do not lead you into lovingly watching children at their play.”

  “You old swine! Shut up! Mind your own business, and be damned!” The voice was hoarse now, rough with hate, indescribably coarsened.

  “A little boy with a hammer wants to smash things, Comstock. You want to smash things, too. Poor little boy, Comstock! Poor destructive little boy! But a grown man, conscious of his manhood, also uses a hammer to subdue things to his will. It helps him, Comstock, to mend and make—”

  “Like a schoolmaster uses a cane, eh, Doctor?” The sneering voice was ugly.

  “As you will, Comstock, as you will. The loveliest and most prolific plants require the stoutest canes, Comstock. Your gardener, I am sure, would bear me out in that.”

  “The lazy hound! No flowers on show! Well, practically none! He got the rough side of my tongue, confound him!”

  “Don’t change the subject, Comstock.”

  “Who’s changing the subject, Pettifer!”

  “You are, my dear fellow. It is usually
a sign of fear, I believe.”

  “Fear! Tchah! I don’t believe I know the meaning of the word!”

  “Unfortunate boy!”

  “Oh, to hell with you and your ‘boys.’ I am not a boy, I tell you! And I’ll smash you! You and your Church! You and your religion! And your twaddle! And your superstition! And your damned idol-worship! You shan’t lead the people by the nose! You shan’t promise them heaven! You shan’t threaten them with hell! I’ve got the tabs on you! You’re done for! Germany’s gone Nudist already! England—”

  “What signifies the Nudist Movement, Comstock? Adam and Eve, the first Nudists, fell from grace by putting on clothing, not by taking it off.” The voice was amusedly tolerant, as of untutored wit.

  “Oh, you can laugh! You can jest! Nero fiddled while Rome burned, didn’t he?”

  “Perhaps the wisest thing he could do under the circumstances, Comstock.”

  “At any rate, ‘Back to Paganism’ is my slogan, Doctor. The thought of it makes me better-tempered already! Christianity is outworn! It’s dead! We want a creed with good red blood in it!”

  “Blasphemer! Pause! Think!” The voice had changed. “I beseech you, Comstock, in the name of your own brilliant boyhood; in the name of the sacrifices your dear father made for you, so that you should become, as he said to me, a gentleman. Dear Comstock, pause and consider. With your gifts you could right wrongs, Comstock. With your wealth you could do great kindness, Comstock. With your personality, your grit, your magnetism, you could affect great numbers of your fellow-creatures, and for good, not evil. I beseech you, hear me—”

  “I won’t hear you! Damn it, sit down, man! Don’t come hovering here! Get away from the table! Leave that gun alone! Don’t meddle with my things! And leave me alone! You needn’t think that poppycock gets anywhere with me! It doesn’t, I tell you; it doesn’t!”

  “Comstock, do you ever read Rudyard Kipling?”

  “Get out of here!”

  “There is a story about schoolboys—you were a schoolboy once—and about a very brave headmaster. Once I was a headmaster. You remember, Comstock?”

  “I remember a prating old fool!”

  “This headmaster saved a boy’s life, Comstock—”

  “Oh, dry up with your ‘Comstock, Comstock’! I know my own name, don’t I?”

  “I don’t know, Comstock, I’m sure. You see, we haven’t used your own name yet, have we?”

  “Given me by my godfathers and my godmother and all that bunkum, I suppose?”

  “No. I meant your father’s name. The name he kept respectable and respected, Comstock. Not a purchased name—for services rendered, Comstock.”

  “Damn you, shut up! I’ll not be insulted in my own house!”

  “This headmaster, Comstock, saved a boy’s life by sucking diphtheria infection out of his throat through a tube.”

  “More fool he!”

  “You think so, Comstock? I’m going to be a bigger fool than that!”

  “You can’t be a bigger fool than to risk your life!”

  “Oh yes. Quite easily. You can risk your soul, Comstock.”

  “I don’t believe in souls!”

  “Nevertheless, you have one, and so have I. And I am going to risk mine to save yours, Comstock. Yes, I’m going farther off. … Yes, get up, Comstock. … Ah, the chair’s going over. … Now, Comstock. …”

  There was the crash of a falling chair, and, at the same instant, the flash of a discharged revolver, but no sound of a shot. Several of the audience leapt to their feet. At the same time the lights went up, and Sir John Saumarez, smiling but jaded, blinked in the sudden glare, and said, deprecatingly:

  “A poor thing, gentlemen. But mine own.”

  “Good God, Johnny! That was never you imitating those two voices,” exclaimed the more important of the dramatic critics. Sir John, looking white and tired, bowed his acknowledgment of the compliment.

  In the second row, the Archbishop of the Midlands blinked. Everybody elaborately avoided looking at him. He rose, and walked out to Sir John. The audience, conscious that the most dramatic moment was at hand and had not yet been staged, looked curious yet uncomfortable, as though the play was over and they were eavesdropping upon a dressing-room scene more tense than the play but no business of theirs.

  The Archbishop linked his arm in that of Sir John. Magnificently master of himself, especially when his old eyes grew accustomed to the light, he said:

  “Dear John, I am in your hands. I can only say, my dear fellow, that I wish to God I had conducted myself one-half as well. As a matter of fact, I lost my temper at the interview. Lost it completely. Poor Comstock! But you’ve proved your point magnificently.”

  The audience was filing out. Nobody was speaking; but, decorously, as though in the presence of death, three editors, two dramatic critics, a Chief Whip (dazed), an Assistant Commissioner (temporarily suspended and softly swearing), and a famous dramatist (shaking his head as though over some dubious course of action), made irreproachable exeunt through the high door of Sir John’s drawing-room and were shown out into the street by an impeccable manservant. Once away from the precincts they broke into a conversation more excited by far than that which was going on in the room they had lately left.

  “I found that you had started a branch of the O.T.C. at Blackminster,” Sir John was saying. “And, of course, the dramatic instinct is strongly implanted in you; fostered by your vocation.”

  “Johnny!” Martella called.

  “Just coming,” Sir John replied. “Pardon me. I won’t be more than”—he was meticulous in such matters—“five minutes.”

  He glanced at the open door and then at His Grace. It might be said by those who did not know him that he winked. Then he went out to his wife.

  “Johnny, you can’t!”

  Sir John affected to consider the point. Then he said: “You’re a wonderful woman, Martella.”

  “Am I?” She smiled at him.

  “And you’re right. Utterly right.” He remained pensive for a moment. Then the front door slammed. “I appreciate your point.” He paused. The footlights glared. The curtain prepared to descend. “And I believe,” said Sir John, still pensive, “that the Archbishop has appreciated mine.”

  He walked to the window. The ecclesiastical gaiters were almost out of sight.

  CHAPTER III

  LORD PETER’S PRIVY COUNSEL

  BY ANTHONY BERKELEY

  Note.—I was fortunate enough to induce Lord Peter Wimsey to add one or two footnotes to the narrative supplied by Mr. Anthony Berkeley.—M. K.

  (I)

  “WELL, the secretary, Mills, had orders not to disturb him, but—”

  “My dear Charles,” interrupted the young1 man with the monocle peevishly, “I do wish you wouldn’t do this. I keep telling you it’s no good. Never tell thy love, but let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, feed on thy damask cheek. We are not interested.”

  “I’ve never known you not interested in a case of murder before,” grumbled Detective Chief-Inspector Parker.

  “But this isn’t murder. Dash it, Charles, you can’t look on the wiping out of a thing like Comstock as murder. If you really want to know, I’m jolly glad somebody’s shot him at last. It ought to have been done years ago. The man was a public nuisance. Well, requiescat, I suppose, in pace. Good-night, sweet merchant-prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. But here’s to the man who put you to sleep.” And the young2 man with the monocle drained his glass of Chevalier Montrachet 1915 in one regrettable gulp.

  “Don’t you understand, Peter, that it’s your plain duty to take the case up?” pursued Parker doggedly.

  “It isn’t your plain duty to eat caviare if you don’t really like it, you know,” said the young man with the monocle kindly.

  “I don’t mind it,” said Detective Chief-Inspector Parker.

  Lord Peter Wimsey looked pained, but heroically refrained from speech. He did, however, nod towards the waiter.<
br />
  The waiter contrived to remove the Chief-Inspector’s caviare, and, almost in the same gesture, present for Lord Peter’s inspection a dish of sole bonne femme. Wimsey adjusted his monocle, but his examination was only perfunctory. At the Bon Bourgeois one can trust the sole bonne femme.

  “Clear the old palate with an olive, Charles,” Wimsey suggested, pushing the little plate across to his companion as the waiter served the fish and took away the half-bottle of Montrachet. “Who knows? It might clear your mind as well of such distressin’ subjects as dead millionaires. Too many dead millionaires spoil a dinner, don’t you think? De mortuis nil nisi bonum, no doubt, but at a dinner-table to omit even the bonum is a sound working rule before the savoury. Oh no, we never mention them, their names are never heard. Do have an olive.”

  “Why are you so anxious for me to have an olive?” asked Parker suspiciously.

  “I’m only trying to do you a good turn, dear old thing,” said Lord Peter plaintively. “I want to get this morbid taste of corpses out of your mouth. We’re going on to something really rather special in the matter of hocks in a minute, and you can’t judge wine if your mind is on other flavours.”

  Parker grunted.

  Wimsey consumed a couple of mouthfuls of the sole with an air of close attention, before his expression relaxed.

  “You know, Charles, just to show you what sort of a man Comstock was, I’ll tell you that with my own eyes I once saw him grab a piece of preserved ginger after dinner and shove it into his beastly mouth just before taking his first sip of a ’63 port. Preserved ginger! Did I say the man was a public nuisance? He was a private one, and that’s a whole lot worse. Shooting’s a jolly sight too peaceful an end for a man who could do a thing like that.”

  “You knew Comstock, then?” Parker inquired.

  “One meets all sorts nowadays,” said Lord Peter with resignation. “And that’s quite enough of Comstock for this evening. I don’t want to spoil my digestion entirely. Let Comstock and his kind take wing, ‘tis not of them I’m going to sing.”