Wimsey 006 - Five Red Herrings

  ‘I see. Well, perhaps we had better let it be known that there is a possibility of foul play – that we are not quite satisfied, and so on. But you’d better not tell anybody what the doctor says about the time of the death. I’ll be over presently and have a word with the Fiscal. And meanwhile I’ll get the Kirkcudbright police on to making a few inquiries.’

  ‘Ay, sir, ’twill be best for them to sort it their end. I’ve a report here fra’ Stranraer I’ll hae to deal wi’ masel’. They’ve detained a young fellow that was boardin’ the Larne boat . . . ay, weel, I’ll ring ye again later, Sir Maxwell.’

  The Chief Constable hung up the receiver, and confronted Wimsey with a dour smile.

  ‘It certainly looks as though you were right,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But,’ he added, more cheerfully, ‘now that they’ve traced the man at Stranraer, it will probably all be cleared up this morning.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Wimsey, ‘but I rather doubt whether the man who fixed that accident up so cleverly would be fool enough to give himself away by making a belated bolt to Ireland. Don’t you?’

  ‘That’s a fact,’ said Jamieson. ‘If he’d wanted to escape he could have taken yesterday morning’s boat. And if he wanted to play the innocent, he could do it better at home.’

  ‘H’m!’ said Wimsey. ‘I think, you know, the time has come to talk of many things with Farren and Gowan and Waters – only he’s disappeared – and, in fact, with all the good people of Kirkcudbright. A little tactful gossip, Sir Maxwell, by a cheerful, friendly, inquisitive bloke like myself, may do wonders in a crisis. Nothing unusual in my making my morning round of the studios, is there? Nobody minds me. Why, bless you, I’ve got some of ’em so tame, they’ll let me sit round and watch ’em paint. An official personage like you might embarrass them, don’t you know, but there’s no dignity about me. I’m probably the least awe-inspiring man in Kirkcudbright. I was born looking foolish and every day in every way I am getting foolisher and foolisher. Why, even you, Chief, let me come here and sit round on your official chairs and smoke a pipe and look on me as nothing more than an amiable nuisance – don’t you?’

  ‘There may be something in what you say,’ agreed Jamieson, ‘but you’ll be discreet, mind. There’s no need to mention the word murder.’

  ‘None whatever,’ said Wimsey. ‘I’ll let them mention it first. Well, toodle-oo!’

  Wimsey may not have been an awe-inspiring person to look at, but his reception at Farren’s house did not altogether justify his boast that ‘nobody marked him.’ The door was opened by Mrs. Farren, who at sight of him, fell back against the wall with a gasp which might have been merely surprise but sounded more like alarm.

  ‘Hullo!’ said Wimsey, breezing cheerily over the threshold, ‘how are you, Mrs. Farren? Haven’t seen you for an age – well, since Friday night at Bobbie’s, but it seems like an age. Is everything bright and blooming? Where’s Farren?’

  Mrs. Farren, looking like a ghost painted by Burne-Jones in one of his most pre-Raphaelite moments, extended a chill hand.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you. Hugh’s out. Er – won’t you come in?’

  Wimsey, who was already in, received this invitation in his heartiest manner.

  ‘Well – that’s very good of you. Sure I’m not in the way? I expect you’re cooking or something, aren’t you?’

  Mrs. Farren shook her head and led the way into the little sitting-room with the sea-green and blue draperies and the bowls of orange marigolds.

  ‘Or is it scarves this morning?’ Mrs. Farren wove hand-spun wool in rather attractive patterns. ‘I envy you that job, you know. Sort of Lady of Shalott touch about it. The curse is come upon me, and all that sort of thing. You promised one day to let me have a twirl at the wheel.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m being lazy today,’ said Mrs. Farren, with a faint smile. ‘I was just – I was only – excuse me one moment.’

  She went out, and Wimsey heard her speaking to somebody at the back of the house – the girl, no doubt, who came in to do the rough work. He glanced round the room, and his quick eye noted its curiously forlorn appearance. It was not untidy, exactly; it told no open tale of tumult; but the cushions were crushed, a flower or two here and there was wilted; there was a slight film of dust on the window-sill and on the polished table. In the houses of some of his friends this might have meant mere carelessness and a mind above trifles like dust and disorder, but with Mrs. Farren it was a phenomenon full of meaning. To her, the beauty of an ordered life was more than a mere phrase; it was a dogma to be preached, a cult to be practised with passion and concentration. Wimsey, who was imaginative, saw in those faint traces the witness to a night of suspense, a morning of terror; he remembered the anxious figure at the door, and the man – yes. There had been a man there, too. And Farren was away. And Mrs. Farren was a very beautiful woman, if you liked that style of thing, with her oval face and large grey eyes and those thick masses of copper-coloured hair, parted in the middle and rolled in a great knot on the nape of the neck.

  A step passed the window – Jeanie, with a basket on her arm. Mrs. Farren came back and sat down in a high, narrow-backed chair, looking out and past him like a distressed beggar-maid beginning to wonder whether Cophetua was not something of a trial in family life.

  ‘And where,’ said Wimsey, with obtuse tactlessness, ‘has Farren disappeared to?’

  The large eyes shadowed suddenly with fear or pain.

  ‘He’s gone out – somewhere.’

  ‘The gay dog,’ said Wimsey. ‘Or is he working?’

  ‘I – don’t quite know.’ Mrs. Farren laughed. ‘You know what this place is. People go off, saying they’ll be back to dinner, and then they meet a man, or somebody says the fish are rising somewhere, and that’s the last you see of them.’

  ‘I know – it’s shameful,’ said Wimsey, sympathetically. ‘Do you mean he didn’t even come home to his grub?’

  ‘Oh – I was only speaking generally. He was home to dinner all right.’

  ‘And then barged out afterwards, saying he wanted some cigarettes and would be back in ten minutes, I suppose. It’s disheartening, isn’t it, the way we behave? I’m a shocking offender myself, though my conscience is fairly easy. After all, Bunter is paid to put up with me. It’s not as though I had a devoted wife warming my slippers and looking out of the front-door every five minutes to see if I ’m going to turn up.’

  Mrs. Farren drew in her breath sharply.

  ‘Yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Terrible. No, I mean it. I do think it’s unfair. After all, one never knows what may happen to people. Look at poor Campbell.’

  This time there was no doubt about it. Mrs. Farren gave a gasp of terror that was almost a cry; but she recovered herself immediately.

  ‘Oh, Lord Peter, do tell me, what really has happened? Jeanie came in with some dreadful story about his being killed. But she gets so excited and talks such broad Scotch that I really couldn’t make it out.’

  ‘It’s a fact, I’m afraid,’ said Wimsey, soberly. ‘They found him lying in the Minnoch yesterday afternoon, with his head bashed in.’

  ‘With his head bashed in? You don’t mean—’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to say quite how it happened. The river is full of rocks just there, you see—’

  ‘Did he fall in?’

  ‘It looks like it. He was in the water. But he wasn’t drowned, the doctor says. It was the blow on the head that did it.’

  ‘How dreadful!’

  ‘I wonder you hadn’t heard about it before,’ said Wimsey. ‘He was a great friend of yours, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Well – yes – we knew him very well.’ She stopped, and Wimsey thought she was going to faint. He sprang up.

  ‘Look here – I’m afraid this has been too much of a shock for you. Let me get some water.’

  ‘No – no—’ She flung out a hand to restrain him, but he had already darted across the passage into the studio, wher
e he remembered to have seen a tap and a sink. The first thing he noticed there was Farren’s sketching-box, standing open on the table, the paints scattered about and the palette flung down higgledy-piggledy among them. An old painting-coat hung behind the door, and Wimsey inspected it inside and out with some care, but seemed to find nothing in it worthy of attention. He filled a cup at the tap, with his eyes roving about the room. The studio-easel stood in its place with a half-finished canvas upon it. The small sketching-easel was propped against the sink, strapped up. Farren had not gone out to paint, evidently.

  The water, splashing on his hand, reminded him of what he was supposed to be there for. He wiped the cup and turned to leave the studio. As he did so, he caught sight of Farren’s fishing-tackle standing in the corner behind the door. Two trout-rods, a salmon-rod, net, gaff, creel and waders. Well, there might be a fourth rod, of course, and one can fish without creel or waders. But, standing there so quietly, the things had a look of settled completeness.

  He returned to the sitting-room. Mrs. Farren waved the cup impatiently aside.

  ‘Thank you – I don’t need it. I told you I didn’t. I’m quite all right.’ Her worried and sleepless eyes belied her. Wimsey felt that he was being a brute, but somebody would be asking questions soon enough. As well he as the police, he thought.

  ‘Your husband ought to be here soon,’ he said. ‘The news will be all over the country by now. It’s surprising, really, he hasn’t got back already. You don’t know at all where he is?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘I mean, I’d gladly take a message or do anything like that.’

  ‘Why should you? Thank you all the same. But really, Lord Peter, you talk as though the death were in my family. We knew Mr. Campbell very well, of course, but after all, there’s no reason for me to be so prostrated as all that . . . I’m afraid I may sound callous—’

  ‘Not at all. I only thought you looked a bit upset. I’m very glad you’re not. Perhaps I misunderstood—’

  ‘Perhaps you did,’ she said in an exhausted voice. Then she seemed to gather up her spirits a little, and turned upon him almost eagerly.

  ‘I was sorry for Mr. Campbell. He was a bitterly unpopular man, and he felt that more than people ever realised. He had a perpetual grudge against everybody. That’s unattractive. And the more you hate everybody for hating you, the more unattractive you grow and the more they go on hating you. I understood that. I don’t like the man. One couldn’t. But I tried to be fair. I daresay people did misunderstand. But one can’t stop going what’s right because people misunderstand, can one?’

  ‘No,’ said Wimsey. ‘If you and your husband—’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Hugh and I understood one another.’

  Wimsey nodded. She was lying, he thought. Farren’s objections to Campbell had been notorious. But she was the kind of woman who, if once she set out to radiate sweetness and light, would be obstinate in her mission. He studied the rather full, sulky mouth and narrow, determined forehead. It was the face of a woman who would see only what she wished to see – who would think that one could abolish evils from the world by pretending that they were not there. Such things, for instance, as jealousy or criticism of herself. A dangerous woman, because a stupid woman. Stupid and dangerous, like Desdemona.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said lightly. ‘Let’s hope the truant will turn up soon. He promised to show me some of his stuff. I’m very keen to have a look at it. I daresay I shall meet him as I buzz about the country. On his bike, as usual, I suppose?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s got his bicycle with him.’

  ‘I think there are more bicycles per head of the population in Kirkcudbright than in any town I ever struck,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘That’s because we’re all so hardworking and poor.’

  ‘Just so. Nothing is so virtuous as a bicycle. You can’t imagine a bicyclist committing a crime, can you? – except of course, murder or attempted murder.’

  ‘Why murder?’

  ‘Well, the way they rush about in gangs on the wrong side of the road and never have any brakes or bells or lights. I call it murder, when they nearly have you into the ditch. Or suicide.’

  He jumped to his feet with an exclamation of concern. This time Mrs. Farren had really fainted.

  GRAHAM

  Lord Peter Wimsey, having rendered first aid to Mrs. Farren, left her comfortably reclining on the couch in the sitting-room and went in search of Jeanie. He discovered her in the fishmonger’s and dispatched her home with the tidings that her mistress was unwell.

  ‘Ay,’ said Jeanie, philosophically. ‘I’m no surprised. She’s troubled in her mind about Mr. Farren. And nae wonder, wi’ him mekkin’ a’ that disturbance and gaein’ aff that gate an’ never comin’ back for twa nichts.’

  ‘Two nights?’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Ay. Nicht before last it was he went aff on his bicycle, swearin’ somethin’ awfu’ an’ nae ward tae say whaur he was gaein’ nor what he was gaein’ to du.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t at home last night for dinner?’

  ‘Him? Hame for’s denner? ’Deed no, nor ony time o’ the day. Monday nicht it was he come back an’ fund Campbell i’ the hoose an’ sent him packin’, an’ after that there was sic a collie-shangie it nigh frighted my brither’s wife into a fit an’ her verra near her time, tu. An’ out he gaes and away, wi’ Mistress Farren runnin’ oot o’ the door after him wi’ the tears fallin’ doon her cheeks. I dinna ken for why she takes on so aboot the man. I’d let him gae an’ be daumed tae him, wi’ his jealousies an’ his tempers.’

  Wimsey began to see why Jeanie had been sent out on an errand in such a hurry. It was foolish, though, for nobody could expect the girl to hold her tongue over so fine a piece of gossip. Sooner or later, the tale would have to come out to somebody. Even now he observed that curious glances were following them down the street.

  He asked a few more questions. No. Jeanie’s brother’s wife could not say exactly what the quarrel was about, but she had witnessed it from her bedroom window. Mr. Campbell had been in about 6 o’clock, and then Mr. Farren had come in and Mr. Campbell had gone away almost immediately. She could not say there had been any dispute between Farren and Campbell. But then Mr. and Mrs. Farren had talked about an hour in the sitting-room and Mr. Farren had walked about the room and waved his hands a great deal, and Mrs. Farren had cried. Then there had been a shouting and a kind of a skelloch, and Mr. Farren had run out of the door cramming his hat over his eyes, and had snatched up his bicycle. And Mrs. Farren had run out to stop him and he had shaken her roughly off and ridden away. Nor had he been home syne, for Jeanie’s brother’s wife had kept a look-out for him, being interested to see what might happen.

  That was Monday and this was Wednesday; and on the Tuesday, Campbell had been found dead up at the Minnoch.

  Wimsey said good-bye to Jeanie, with a caution against talking too much about her employer’s affairs, and turned in the direction of the police-station. Then he changed his mind. No need to make trouble before it was wanted. There might be other developments. It would not be a bad idea to run over to Gatehouse. There was a question he wanted to ask Mrs. Green who did the charing for Campbell. Also, something might have been found at Campbell’s house – letters, papers or what-not. In any case, a wee run in the car would do him no harm.

  Passing over the bridge at Gatehouse, with these intentions, he was arrested by the sight of a tall man standing outside the Anwoth Hotel in conference with the local constable. The man, who was very shabbily dressed in an ancient burberry, dilapidated plus-fours, disreputable boots and leggings and a knapsack, waved a hand in violent greeting. Wimsey pulled up with reckless haste, nearly slaying the hotel cat, and waved violently back.

  ‘Hullo – ullo – ullo!’ he cried. ‘Where d’you spring from, you old ruffian?’

  ‘That’s just what everybody seems anxious to know,’ said the untidy man, extending a large, raw-boned hand. ‘I don?
??t seem to be allowed to go away on a little private matter without a hue and cry. What’s it all about?’

  Wimsey glanced at the constable, who shook his head mysteriously.

  ‘Having received order,’ he began, ‘to make an inquiry—’

  ‘But you haven’t received orders to make a mystery, have you?’ said the untidy man. ‘What’s the matter? Am I supposed to have committed a crime? What is it? Drunk and disorderly, eh? or riding a push-bike without a tail-light? or driving to the public danger, or what?’

  ‘Weel, now, Mr. Graham, sir – in the matter of the bicycle, I wad be glad to know—’

  ‘Not guilty this time,’ said Mr. Graham promptly. ‘And in any case borrowing isn’t stealing, you know.’

  ‘Have you been borrowing push-bikes?’ asked Wimsey, with interest. ‘You shouldn’t. It’s a bad habit. Push-bikes are the curse of this country. Their centre of gravity is too high, for one thing, and their brakes are never in order.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mr. Graham, ‘it’s shameful. Every bicycle I borrow is worse than the last. I often have to speak quite firmly about it. I nearly broke my neck the other day on young Andy’s.’

  ‘Oh!’ said the landlord, who had come up during this conversation, ‘it’s ye, is’t, Mr. Graham, that’s got the lad’s bicycle? Ye’re welcome eneugh tae’t. I’m no sayin’ the contrary, but the lad’s been a bit put out, not knowin’ whaur it had disappeared tae.’

  ‘It’s gone again, has it?’ said Mr. Graham. ‘Well, I tell you it’s not me this time. You can tell Andy I’ll never borrow his miserable machine again till he has the decency to put it in order. And whoever did take it, God help him, that’s all I can say, for he’ll probably be found dead in a ditch.’

  ‘That may be, Mr. Graham,’ said the constable, ‘but I’d be glad if ye wad tell me—’