Ask a Policeman

by Detection Club

  In the garden Wimsey sauntered round with apparent aimlessness. He paced across the lawn, had a look at the wall which divided the grounds from the road, examined the wall that separated the lawn from the kitchen garden and rattled the locked gate in it, strolled round the drive, and finally made his way to the garage.

  The chauffeur was there, washing the car, and appropriate reflections occurred to Wimsey regarding the unimportance of human life and the immutability of small jobs.

  “That a nice-looking bus,” he remarked, glancing over the Phantom Rolls with an expert eye.

  The chauffeur, a tall man in dark green breeches and gaiters, straightened himself and passed his forearm over his face to wipe the perspiration away. Evidently he was too used now to being interviewed by complete strangers even to start when one addressed him unexpectedly from behind.

  “Ah,” he agreed. “Beauty, eh? Never given a minute’s trouble since we got her.”

  For a few minutes they discussed the more notable points of the car’s excellence. Then Wimsey gently drew the conversation on to Comstock’s death. Chatting easily, he took care to win the other’s friendliness before he put the question for which he had sought him out. At last he began to lead up to it.

  “By the way, Scotney, I expect the police have asked you where you drove Lord Comstock the evening before, I suppose for dinner?”

  “No, sir; not the police. They haven’t asked me anything, not since yesterday afternoon. Another gentleman did, though, this morning.”

  Wimsey wondered which of his fellow-sleuths had forestalled him. “Yes, and you said …?”

  “I drove Lord Comstock to Maggioli’s restaurant, in Dean Street. He told me to come back at eleven, and I drove him home.”

  “I see.” Wimsey knew Maggioli’s quite well. The food there is famous. So are its private rooms. “Oh, and one other thing, Scotney.” As if casually he brought out his important question. “Major Littleton, the Assistant Commissioner, you know, told me how bright you’d been over the number of that car that was waiting in the drive. Deuced smart piece of work. You’re evidently an observant fellow. You’d recognize the lady in it if you saw her again, I expect?” At the last moment Wimsey had framed his question differently, and not asked merely if the chauffeur had seen the lady at all. One never knows, and a chauffeur may be chivalrous; the amended wording would not put so great a strain on any possible chivalry accruing to Scotney.

  Possibly Wimsey’s caution had been unnecessary, for the chauffeur replied without hesitation. “I’d know her all right. A chap doesn’t forget a proper good-looker like her in a hurry.”

  To pass on to the lady’s description was easy.

  She was exceptionally tall, it seemed, and slim, and not so much pretty as real handsome; no, not so young; about thirty-five, Scotney opined, but it was a job to tell nowadays, and that was a fact. What was she wearing? Well, she had a red hat on, of that Scotney was sure, and some sort of a dress—might have been blue or might have been black. Was she dark or fair? Well, there you had Scotney, but probably darkish, well, not fair, anyway; but they don’t show much hair under their hats nowadays, do they? And reely, Scotney wouldn’t like to say one way or the other.

  “Thanks very much,” said Wimsey, and rewarded Mr. Scotney in the recognized manner.

  As he was turning away, he put one more question. “By the way, how did you come to remember the car’s number? You must see a lot of cars in a day.”

  “I make a habit of it,” returned Mr. Scotney with pride. “Lord Comstock didn’t like me driving too fast, and when a fellow overtakes you at a corner or does the dirty on you some other way, Lord Comstock always liked to report him to the next A.A. man, and he used to blow hell out of me if I hadn’t got his number pat; so I made the habit of remembering the number of any car I notice. It comes easy after a bit, quite automatic.”

  “Ah,” said Wimsey, as if a doubt had been resolved, and took his departure.

  Parker was waiting for him on the steps of the house.

  “Finished here? “he asked gloomily.

  Wimsey nodded. “Why weep ye by the tide, laddie, why weep ye by the tide? I told you Mr. Mills would defeat you. It doesn’t matter. The important thing was that Mr. Mills should be made just a little worried by being asked that particular question.”

  “If he was,” said Parker, shoe-homing himself into Mrs. Merdle, “he certainly didn’t show it. Mills, Farrant, Hope-Fairweather—we seem to be going round in circles.”

  Wimsey pressed the self-starter. “Meaning that the murderer isn’t among them? Nay, my fair coz, oh, wish not one man more. For she was there. …”

  “Who was there?”

  “My hope, my joy, my own dear Genevieve. Which way do we go for Winborough, right or left?”

  “Right. What are we going to Winborough for?”

  “To visit a sick. I thought it would be a nice friendly act to ask after that constable whom Littleton ran down so brutally. It was just about here that the deed was done, wasn’t it?”

  They had turned out of the drive gates, and Wimsey brought Mrs. Merdle to a halt at the side of the road, while he looked carefully up and down the road.

  “What are you looking for here?” Parker asked.

  “He hunted high, he hunted low, he also hunted round about him. Gore, Charles. Spot where the body was found marked by gore. But there’s no gore, so that doesn’t help us.” Wimsey got out of the car and walked slowly up the road and back again.

  “Are you seriously looking for blood?” asked Parker, as he climbed back again into the driving-seat.

  “Well, not seriously, perhaps. But I should have liked to see where the accident happened. I’m blest if I can understand, you see, why that bobby was on his wrong side of the road.”

  “These country police,” said Parker, with correct scorn.

  Wimsey drove on.

  In Winborough it was learnt that the unfortunate constable was still unconscious. Wimsey asked to be notified as soon as the man was fit to be interviewed.

  Superintendent Easton was not at the station. A by-election was in progress, and he was busy with the Chief Constable. The two examined the pistols and the other exhibits with a proper show of interest, but seemed to learn nothing from them.

  “I suppose, though,” Wimsey remarked, as they drove back again towards London, “that it’s inevitable that the bullet was fired from a pistol of that type? I’m not much of a whale on firearms. There couldn’t be any other kind of weapon that would fire a bullet of that size?”

  “Hardly a rifle,” Parker said doubtfully. “It’s a lot smaller than a 22, you see. I can ask our expert, if you like.”

  “Yes, you might. I don’t suppose there’s anything in the idea, but I’m puzzled how to account for another of these little pistols being at Hursley Lodge that day, when you tell me there probably aren’t more than a dozen of ’em in England altogether. In fact, there are quite a lot of things that puzzle me in this case. I think I’ll give up sleuthin’ and buy a farm. Alas, what boots it with uncessant care to tend the homely, slighted sleuther’s trade and strictly meditate the thankless corpse? Were it not jolly well better done, Charles, as others use, to sport with Amaryllis in the shade? Upon my soul, sometimes I think it were. Exit Hawkshaw the detective through concealed trap-door; enter Corydon, singing and dancing and covered with straw. Poetry.”

  The way back to London took them again past Hursley Lodge. To Parker’s surprise Wimsey once more insisted on stopping the car, this time against the boundary wall of the Lodge, and mounting on the seat, peered long and earnestly across the lawn at the house.

  “I want to have one more look at those angles,” he explained. “One last fond look, and then farewell. One gets rather a good view from here. Oh, for the eye, for the eye of a bird. Not that a bird’s eye is really needed. Funny thing about plans, isn’t it? They never prepare you for what a place really looks like. Now I’d taken it for granted that the lawn here was about
a hundred feet across, and it’s not much more than thirty. The plan told me that, of course, but I hearkened not to its pleading. Whisper and I shan’t hear; that’s the motto for plans. Well, well.” He climbed down again, fitted his long form neatly into the narrow seat, and slipped in the gear.

  From Hursley Lodge to Piccadilly Wimsey spoke only once; Between two trams on the outskirts of Mitcham he lifted both hands from the wheel in a gesture of triumph, and exclaimed:

  “I’ve got it!”

  Parker shudderingly averted his eyes from the imminent death that was bearing down upon him. “Got what?”

  “Whom Mills reminds me of,” said Wimsey, grasping the wheel again just in time to curvet away from the bows of the approaching tram. “William Palmer, the poisoner.”

  (V)

  “The question is,” said Wimsey moodily “is a woman justified in shooting her blackmailer, or is she not?”

  He was sitting in Miss Katherine Climpson’s little drawing-room. Having stowed Mrs. Merdle away and sent Parker about his business, he had put through two telephone calls, and one of them had been to Miss Climpson to ask whether he might come and drink a late cup of tea at her flat, a proposal which had received an enthusiastic assent.

  “Personally,” he added,” I hold that she is. Strongly.”

  Miss Climpson helped herself to another piece of wafer-thin bread and butter before replying. The long gold chain round her neck, hung with an assortment of small ornaments, jangled in unison with the numerous bangles which encircled her thin, lace-covered wrists.

  “Well, really that is a very difficult problem, isn’t it?” she said, sitting very upright in her chair. “We are taught quite clearly that murder is wicked, but then blackmailing is wicked too. Outrageously wicked. Really, Lord Peter, as you know I am not a violent woman, but when I hear, as I sometimes do, of the misery that has been caused by blackmailers, it makes my blood positively boil. Even I,” said Miss Climpson, her sallow face growing a little pink, “feel that I could do simply anything to them. But whether one ought to shoot them or not—well, don’t you think that depends?”

  “Yes, I do. But supposing it is a case where she ought to shoot him, and supposing some interfering busybody of an amateur sleuth finds out that she did shoot him, and supposing she’ll get away with it if he holds his tongue and get hanged if he doesn’t. … Oh, hell. I beg your pardon.”

  “Not at all,” said Miss Climpson with energy. “I always think it quite right for a man to swear occasionally, when he feels it warranted. It is a male prerogative. So long as he keeps within reasonable bounds, of course, and I know, Lord Peter, you would always do that. I remember an uncle of mine would invariably ejaculate ‘Assouan!’ when he was deeply moved, which as you know is the largest dam in the world, or was then, and he was a dean.”

  “Where the dean clucks, there cluck I,” said Wimsey, with a ghastly smile.

  “And I am afraid, dear Lord Peter,” said Miss Climpson, the ornaments on her gold chain clinking agitatedly, “that you are deeply moved too. Do please let me give you another cup of tea. Tea is really so soothing in times of mental stress. At least, I know I always find it so, though men, I know, pretend to despise it; but I’m afraid I haven’t any whisky. Don’t you think,” said Miss Climpson all in a rush, “that you had better tell me all about it? A trouble shared, they say, is a trouble halved. But not, of course, if you think it inadvisable; because you mustn’t think …”

  “I think,” said Wimsey, taking his cup of tea, “that you’re a darling, Miss Climpson; and I am going to tell you all about it. My theory, you see, is that she shot him from the near side of the window while his head was turned towards the farther side of the room—the door, we’ll say, of Mills’s office. She could have done it quite safely. The gardener had his back turned, and the pistol made no more noise than a breaking stick, which is quite the kind of noise one would expect to hear in a garden.”

  “Did you ask the gardener if he heard a stick break after the lady had gone past him?” asked Miss Climpson acutely.

  “No, I did not,” Wimsey answered, with a kind of restrained violence. “Because I don’t want to know if the gardener heard a noise like that or not. This is only a theory, remember. I can’t prove it, and I don’t want to prove it. But the devil of it is that I’ve already proved to Parker, or as near as dash it, that the shot must have come from outside the house, because of the times; and it doesn’t need a man from Scotland Yard to work out, from the upward direction of the wound and the height above ground of the window (Littleton himself called it a goodish drop), that the firing-point might have been pretty close to the window. And it certainly doesn’t take Scotland Yard to know,” Wimsey concluded bitterly, “that the only person pretty close to the window just then was Hope-Fairweather’s girl friend.”

  Miss Climpson nodded her iron-grey head. “I see. Poor thing! How dreadful she must have felt to do such a terrible thing. But Lord Peter, let us look on the bright side, as my dear father used to say. Perhaps she didn’t do it. We don’t know, you see; do we? And I always think it is so much better not to be quite certain of the truth about anything really dreadful. Where ignorance is bliss, you know. But, of course, in this case it isn’t bliss, is it?” added Miss Climpson rather lamely, with a glance at Wimsey’s anything but blissful face.

  “I shall drop out of the case,” Wimsey said savagely. “I don’t care a hang about the Home Secretary, or anyone else. It’s the only decent thing to do.”

  “You’re quite certain it was blackmail, then?” asked Miss Climpson, a little timidly.

  Wimsey told her about the missing document.

  “And the joke is,” he said, brightening a little, “that Mills and Farrant each think the other’s got it. They’re both of them hedging on their stories now, because there’s a partnership in the air to pool the paper and split results; but each of them still believes the other’s got it.”

  “And who has got it?” Miss Climpson asked.

  “Hope-Fairweather, of course,” said Wimsey.

  Miss Climpson buttered a second scone with deliberation. “Then do you know what I should do? I should go to Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather and have a talk with him.”

  “Miss Climpson,” said Wimsey with enthusiasm, “doesn’t it ever give you a pain in the head, a kind of swelling pain, being always right?”

  (VI)

  The idea of seeking an interview with Sir Charles had, of course, been in Wimsey’s mind already. He had put it aside, because he had no wish to drag out of that unfortunate man a truth which he would much prefer to leave unconfirmed. Now he saw that things could not be left quite as they were. The best thing would be to see Sir Charles, drop a hint or two about what he knew, and at the same time mention his decision to retire from the case, and then drop another hint or two about what he might do were he in Sir Charles’s place. For Wimsey not only had every sympathy with Sir Charles, he had every sympathy, too, with the lady whom he had referred to as Sir Charles’s girl friend. If people will go a-blackmailing, and in a particularly dirty way, they must be prepared to be shot; and Wimsey was not going to lift a finger against their executioners. On that point his determination was now firm.

  Wimsey had not been quite so open with Miss Climpson as to be indiscreet. He had told her very little more than what she was bound to learn shortly from the newspapers. Not for a moment had he let her guess that the name of Sir Charles’s girl friend was perfectly well-known to him, as indeed was the lady herself.

  Already, on the chauffeur’s description, he had had his suspicions; the second of the two telephone calls which he had put through on reaching his flat, had confirmed them. It had been to Maggioli’s restaurant. Maggioli’s had the reputation of being extremely discreet. But discretion does not always pay, and a successful restaurant proprietor is not he who knows how to be discreet, but he who knows when not to be discreet. Maggioli was a very successful restaurant-proprietor. He knew all about Lord Peter Wimsey; and
he had not the least hesitation in informing his lordship, in the strictest confidence, that the lady with whom Lord Comstock had dined, in a private room, the night before his death, was Mrs. Arbuthnot. And Mrs. Arbuthnot was not only Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather’s niece, but she was the sister-in-law of Freddie Arbuthnot; and if the other had not settled it, that did.

  Wimsey saw Sir Charles late that evening, when he got back from the House. He had been waiting in the big library in Eaton Place for over an hour, and with every minute he disliked more the interview ahead of him. But Miss Climpson had been perfectly right. It was one of those things which have to be done.

  Sir Charles came in just before midnight. He looked tired, and Wimsey thought the lines on his face more deeply incised than when he had seen him last. Quite obviously he was not too pleased to see his visitor.

  “Ah, Wimsey. You want to see me? Not been waiting long, I hope. You’ve got a drink? It’s about this Comstock business, I suppose.”

  Wimsey nodded. “’Fraid so, Sir Charles. Sorry to bother you, and all that.”