Ask a Policeman

by The Detection Club

  “I hope I haven’t done wrong in calling you up at this time, my lord,” said a gruff, but apologetic voice, “but we understood that you wished to be informed at any hour of the day or night, and our orders are to give you every facility.” “Quite right. Has the man got anything useful to say?”

  “I’m afraid nothing helpful regarding the Comstock case, my lord. His story is that he was cycling along the road, and there was a car ahead of him drawn up at the side. He drew out to pass it, but before he could do so the car went on. Before the man could regain his own side of the road, another car came out of the drive at Hursley Lodge, on its wrong side of the road, and passed him.”

  Hope-Fairweather’s, reflected Wimsey, with a prick of professional conscience that he had not thought of asking Sir Charles about the policeman.

  “Our man was again about to ride over to his own side of the road, when another car, which we know now was Major Littleton’s, came out of the same drive at very great speed and, of course, crashed into him.”

  “I see,” said Wimsey. “No, that doesn’t help much, does it? Did the man notice the car that was drawn up by the side of the road?” he added casually. “The driver might be able to substantiate part of his story, you see.”

  “He didn’t take a note of the number, my lord. He thinks it was a blue saloon, but he doesn’t seem very sure about that. He’s only a young chap, and I’m afraid he isn’t as observant yet as he might be, in spite of his training.”

  “And I suppose he didn’t notice the driver at all?”

  “It was a saloon car, my lord. I don’t think he even saw the driver. But in any case the car was out of sight by the time of the accident, so the driver couldn’t help us much either way, could he?”

  “Of course not,” said Wimsey.

  He went thoughtfully back to bed.

  “Nobody seems to know anything about this third pistol,” he mused, as he pulled the sheet up round his ear. “I wonder how Brackenthorpe got hold of it.”

  (VII)

  Wimsey sat in Sir Philip Brackenthorpe’s room at the Home Office. Sir Philip sat at his table, facing him.

  Wimsey smiled easily. “I’ve come to tell you, sir, that I’m retiring from the case.”

  “Oh?” Sir Philip did not sound very interested. “You could have sent me a note.”

  “I’m afraid you’re frightfully busy,” Wimsey said apologetically. “Sorry to be takin’ up your time, and all that, but there is one question I wanted to ask, and I thought it better to put it to you personally.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t think I’m interferin’, but-are you quite sure it’s all right about the pistol? I mean, it won’t be traced to you, and it’s safely out of the way now? Sorry to butt in, but I thought I’d better make sure.”

  Sir Philip had looked up sharply. “What pistol?” “Why,” said Wimsey innocently, “the pistol that you shot Comstock with.”

  Sir Philip drew a piece of paper towards him. He marked three dots on it, and then very carefully drew lines from dot to dot. When his triangle was completed he looked at it for a moment, apparently in deep admiration, and then embarked on a square.

  “Do I really understand you to say, Wimsey,” he remarked in a detached voice, “that you imagine that I shot Comstock?”

  “I’m afraid-something like that, you know,” said Wimsey deprecatingly. His narrow face looked more completely vacuous than one would have believed possible. He beamed inanely.

  “Preposterous!” observed Sir Philip absently, and tried his hand at a circle round the square. He frowned in a pained manner at the result’s lack of circularity.

  “My theories often are,” said Wimsey, unabashed. “At least, so Parker says. But then, of course, he has the job of disproving the things. That’s where the work lies. Anyone can make dashed silly suggestions. Like this one, you know. Do you think I’d better hand it over to Parker to disprove? I will if you’d rather, Sir Philip.”

  Sir Philip looked up. “What makes you think such a thing, Wimsey?”

  Wimsey told him.

  “But this is just guess-work,” was Sir Philip’s comment.

  “At present. That’s all a theory really is, you know. But if it’s right, I expect a whole lot of it could be proved. Whereas,” said Wimsey brightly, “if it’s wrong, I expect it couldn’t.”

  “You haven’t even traced the possession to me of one of those pistols.”

  “No,” Wimsey admitted. “That is the snag, of course.” His shining face took on an expression of interested inquiry. “How did you get hold of it?”

  “We’re talking nonsense,” said Sir Philip briefly, and made a movement as if to get up.

  Wimsey leaned back and beamed at him. “You know, I had my suspicions about you from the beginning.”

  “From the beginning?” Sir Philip sat back again, abruptly.

  “Yes; when you called Scotland Yard off and put the amateurs on. That looked dashed fishy to me. But it was a clever move. Scotland Yard won’t catch up now. But you shouldn’t have given away the fact that you knew Comstock, you know; it would have come out, no doubt, but you needn’t have advertised it; because to know him, I imagine, was to loathe him. By the way, how did you get hold of the pistol?”

  Sir Philip looked at him.

  “I’m only asking for your own good,” Wimsey said plaintively. “I just want to make sure you haven’t done anything silly.”

  Sir Philip looked at him.

  “Am I to hand the theory over to Parker, then?” asked Wimsey. “I thought,” said Sir Philip slowly, “that you had come here to tell me you had retired from the case.” “I have. The only question now is whether I hand it over to Parker or whether I don’t.” There was a long silence. Sir Philip began to draw a most elaborate pattern, based on a rhomboid.

  He looked up from it. “The pistol was sent to me, fully loaded, by an anonymous correspondent, with a message inside which ran, if I remember rightly, ‘This is just one of a good many that are going to make you wish you’d never been born.’ I get a lot of things like that.”

  “And where is it now?”

  “At the bottom of the sea.”

  “Does anyone know you had it?”

  “No. It arrived just as I was setting off for Winborough. It was marked ‘Private and personal—urgent,’ so my butler gave it to me personally instead of handing it over with my other correspondence to my secretary. I opened it actually in the car. Nobody but myself has seen it.”

  “Then you ought to be all right,” said Wimsey cheerfully. Sir Philip extended one side of the rhomboid to form the base of a would-be isosceles triangle. “In a way,” he remarked, “it wasn’t really murder.” “Not at all,” Wimsey agreed politely. “It was a legitimate function of your office. A bit unconventional, perhaps, but none the worse for that.”

  “I’d been wondering on the way down,” Sir Philip pursued, “whether I’d stop at Hursley Lodge and have a word with Comstock myself. The man was becoming a public pest. The harm he had done to this country, abroad as well as at home, was already incalculable. For the national good he had to be silenced. I was meditating something in the nature of a personal appeal, backed by threats, before proceeding to sterner measures. I had already made up my mind that if he forced us to do so, we would deal with him on no less a count than high treason. I was anxious, however, that any interview I might have with him should be a complete secret, with no witnesses even as to my own arrival. I therefore stopped my car, as you deduced, by that wall, got out on the running-board, and looked over to see whether the place seemed deserted or not. I saw Comstock standing in a window, quite a short distance away from me. The pistol was in my pocket. I felt very strongly about the man, so strongly that I hardly realized the insane thing I was doing. I took out the pistol and had a shot at him. I can say quite truthfully that I had not the very faintest expectation of hitting him. Indeed, the idea of hitting him hardly occurred to me. I am not merely an indifferent shot wi
th a pistol, I have never even fired one before. The ridiculous idea in my mind, I think, was just to give him a severe fright. But I did hit him; and if I were a religious man I should sincerely believe that a divine guidance had directed that bullet. I saw him collapse, and continued to watch, in a sort of trance of horror. Then to my astonishment I recognized Littleton bending over the body. That brought me to myself. I got back into my car and drove off. I never saw the policeman you mention.”

  “You’re quite safe from him,” said Wimsey. “I don’t think anyone will connect that car with Comstock’s death for a time yet; and if they do then, the scent will be too cold.”

  Sir Philip smiled faintly. “You know, I can’t regret it.”

  “Regret it?” said Wimsey with indignation. “I should think not. If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, Sir Philip, it’s the best thing you ever did in your life. It’s a pity we can’t tell the world, so that you can go down in posterity and become a legend. With weepin’ and with laughter still is the story told, how well Sir Philip pipped his man in the brave days of old. But, alas! we must keep it under our hats.

  “Not,” added Wimsey thoughtfully,” that you’re in any real danger, because if the worst came to the worst and they did nab you for it, you could always give yourself a reprieve, couldn’t you? Or couldn’t you? It’s a nice legal point. I must remember to put it to Murbles next time I see him.”

  1 An elastic adjective. I was born in 1890 and wore a dear little sailor suit in the year of the Diamond Jubilee. Eheu, alas I how fast the dam fugaces,to quote the Austin Freeman.—P.W.

  1 See footnote, p. 172.

  1 I cannot account for my having used this vulgar abbreviation, unless it was the result of studying the Comstock Press, which swarms with American journalese and has a regrettable habit of referring to royal personages and female tennis stars by their Christian names, without indication of rank or civil status. But I seem to have been talking at random. I know many Church of England prelates, and nothing could be farther from their truly established minds than a serious belief in Antichrist.—P. W.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE CONCLUSIONS OF MR. ROGER SHERINGHAM

  RECORDED BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS

  “IT’S not a bit of good, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” said Chief Inspector Moresby. “I have put you in possession of the facts as notified to me for that purpose, and further than that I cannot go. Indeed.” he added, with an air of aggressive virtue, “further than that I am not permitted to go. My instructions being, Mr. Sheringham, that the amateurs are to have a free field, entirely unhampered by the incompetent conjectures of the police.”

  “Yes, but, dash it,” lamented Roger Sheringham, “I don’t know how to start on a job like this. It’s so inhuman-all this grisly great bunch of documents. I’ve never met any of these birds. You know my methods, Moresby—how can I buzz round and be my bright, inquisitive self among people like the Archbishop of the Midlands and Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather?”

  “You have your authority, sir, same as one of us,” the Chief Inspector pointed out austerely.

  “That’s not the same thing,” said Roger.

  “Possibly not, Mr. Sheringham, and possibly that may account to some extent for this official blundering that we hear so much about. A great many of our inquiries, when you come to think of it, lie among people who aren’t exactly disposed to be chatty and communicative. However, the Home Secretary seems to have made up his mind that a gentleman like yourself, with a public-school education and all that, ought to make a better job at tackling archbishops and such than a common or garden bobby. And no doubt,” added Moresby, “he is very right.”

  “Now you are being bitter, Moresby.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Sheringham. I only meant that these educational advantages must be good for something or other. Beyond, of course, making it easier to obtain money under false pretences, and write begging letters and so forth. And even then, the judge usually makes some remark about its being a peculiarly bad case, on account of accused having wasted the advantages which ought to have taught him better, and adds a bit on to his sentence for luck, as you might say. Why, only the other day, Mr. Sheringham, we pulled a young fellow in for running a bogus charity. An old Harrovian he was, and been up to Oxford and everything, and he was posing as a clergyman, if you please-said he had been chaplain to the Suffragan Bishop of Balham, and wheedled the money out of the old ladies like—”

  “Muggleton-Blood! cried Roger triumphantly.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Sheringham?” The Chief Inspector, having caught the syllables imperfectly, took them for an expletive, and was mildly astonished.

  “I said Muggleton-Blood, meaning that you are right, as you always are. There are advantages, and one of them is that I had the honour of being at school with the Rev. Hilary Muggleton-Blood. One of the Shropshire Muggleton-Bloods, Moresby, but quite a decent fellow, for all that.”

  “And what,” inquired Mr. Moresby, “has the Rev.

  Mr. Muggleton-Blood to do with the case?”

  “He enjoys the responsible but dignified post of chaplain to the Archbishop of the Midlands,” replied Roger, “and while His Grace himself is, perhaps, a cut above us, it is not impossible that the Rev. Hilary may be induced to unbend a little, if I approach him arrayed in humility and an old school tie. It is, at any rate, worth trying-though I must admit that, on the occasion of our last personal encounter, he chastised me severely because my person was not meticulously cleansed as to the ears. He was a robust lad at that time and I remember the incident very clearly.”

  “No doubt you do, sir,” said Moresby, with a grin.

  Mr. Roger Sheringham found no difficulty in obtaining. an interview with the Rev. Hilary Muggleton-Blood. The latter, whom Roger recollected as a brawny youth in the first Rugger XV, had turned into a stout, florid ecclesiastic of vigorous middle-age, with a muscular handshake and a throaty intonation.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed, wringing Roger’s fingers in a painful grip, “ha! Whom have we here? If it isn’t Snotty Sheringham I This is an unexpected pleasure. And what have you been doing with yourself all this long time, young Snotty? Sit down, sit down,”

  “Well, well, well,” said Mr. Sheringham, annoyed. He had, until that moment, forgotten his own nickname, but he did distinctly remember that the Lower School had called the Rev. Hilary “Bloody-Mug.” With a great effort he refrained from recalling this circumstance aloud; he felt that it would be hardly politic. All the same, he was hurt that Mr. Muggleton-Blood should require information about his, Roger’s, recent activities. He had thought—but no matter. He modestly mentioned his criminological interests and his connection with the crime at Hursley Lodge.

  “It just occurred to me,” he said, “that his Grace might have mentioned to you some little point or other which might throw light on the mystery. No doubt he would tell you a great deal more than he would tell the ordinary inquirer.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” agreed the Rev. Hilary. He leaned back in his chair, placed his plump hands finger-tip to finger-tip across his well-rounded clerical waistcoat, and beamed pleasantly at Mr. Sheringham. “What sort of thing exactly did you want to know?”

  “Well, for one thing,” said Roger, to whom this point had occurred early in the investigation and proved very puzzling, “how did the old bird come to go down to Hursley Lodge all by his little self? I thought you never let Archbishops stray about the country un-chaperoned.”

  “Nor do we,” replied Mr. Muggleton-Blood, “nor do we. I myself accompanied His Grace as far as Winborough, where I had a small matter of purely diocesan interest to discuss with Canon Pritchard. The Archbishop preferred to go on from there alone, thinking that this might give his visit a less formal and more friendly appearance.”

  “I see,” said Roger. “Then you knew all about this visit beforehand?”

  “Naturally,” said Mr. Muggleton-Blood, opening his rather gooseberry eyes very wide. “My good Snotty, you surely do not suppo
se that an Archbishop can make unexpected and surreptitious excursions without the knowledge of his entourage. His Grace is an extremely busy man—every moment in his time-table is allotted weeks beforehand. It was really with great difficulty that I was able to squeeze in this little expedition, and then only at the cost of putting off a deputation from the United Christian Fellowship for the Preservation of the Rubric. And I must admit,” added the chaplain, with a touch of human feeling, “that I heartily wish now that we had preserved the Rubric and given the New Paganism a miss. However, as Dr. Pettifer was extremely earnest in the matter, and I was able to obtain the appointment, and the United Christian Fellowship were prepared to adjourn their deputation till the following week, I felt bound to respect His Grace’s wishes.”

  “What did you say?” cried Roger. “You made an appointment?”

  “Of course I made an appointment. Dr. Pettifer’s time is, as I have explained, very valuable. One would hardly expect him to sacrifice the greater part of the morning merely on the chance of seeing this fellow Comstock.”

  “But—” gasped Roger. “With whom did you make the appointment?”

  “With the secretary—I forget his name-Pills, or Squills, or something of that kind.”

  “With Mills? But Mills says that the Archbishop’s arrival was totally unexpected, and that Lord Comstock had given strict injunctions that no visitors were to be admitted.”

  “Ah!” said the Rev. Hilary. He smiled, with an expression which was almost sly. “I fear that is not altogether correct. Not altogether. And perhaps I expressed myself a little ambiguously. Yes—I must confess to a slight suppressio veri, though it scarcely, I think, amounts to a suggestio falsi. I said, I made the appointment with Mr.—ah—Mills; I made no mention of Lord Comstock. The fact is that, when I rang up Hursley Lodge, the secretary informed me that Lord Comstock was, if I may so express it, in retreat, but would be at home upon the morning in question, and that, if His Grace cared to call, he himself would undertake to bring about a meeting between them. He suggested, however, that it would be better if His Grace’s visit appeared to be entirely unpremeditated, and indeed, insisted upon a promise that his obliging interference should not be mentioned to Lord Comstock. His Grace fell in with this suggestion.”