Busman's Honeymoon

TO BE interrupted at a crisis had become so much a feature of daily life at Talboys that Harriet felt no surprise to see Bunter enter upon these words, as upon a cue. Behind him hovered the forms of Puffett and Crutchley.

  ‘If it will not inconvenience your lordship, the men are anxious to get these pieces of furniture out.’

  ‘You see,’ added Mr Puffett, stepping forward, ‘they works on contract. Now, if we could jest slip some of these ’ere things out to them – ’ He waved a fat hand persuasively towards the sideboard, which was a massive dresser, made all in one piece and extremely heavy.

  ‘All right,’ said Peter; ‘but be quick. Take them and go.’

  Bunter and Puffett seized upon the near end of the dresser, which came staggering away from the wall, its back festooned with cobwebs. Crutchley seized the far end and backed with it to the door.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Mr Goodacre, whose mind, once it fastened on anything, clung to it with the soft tenacity of a sea-anemone. ‘Yes. I suppose the old chain had become unsafe. This is an improvement. You get a much better idea of the cactus now.’

  The sideboard was moving slowly across the threshold; but the amateurs were not making too good a job of it, and it stuck. Peter, with sudden impatience, pulled off his coat.

  ‘How he hates,’ thought Harriet, ‘to see anything bungled.’

  ‘Easy does it,’ said Mr Puffett.

  Whether by good luck or superior management, no sooner had Peter set his hand to it than the top-heavy monstrosity abandoned the position and went sweetly through.

  ‘That’s done it!’ said Peter. He shut the door and stood before it, his face slightly flushed with exertion. ‘Yes, padre – you were saying about the chain. It used to be shorter?’

  ‘Why, yes. I’m positive it was. Quite positive. Let me see – the bottom of the pot used to come about here.’

  He raised his hand slightly above the level of his own tall head.

  Peter came down to him.

  ‘About four inches higher. You’re sure?’

  ‘Oh, yes, quite. Yes – and the—’

  Through the unguarded door came Bunter once more, armed with a clothes-brush. He made for Peter, seized him from behind and began to brush the dust from his trousers. Mr Goodacre, much interested, watched the process.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, dodging out of the way as Puffett and Crutchley came in to remove the settle nearest the window – ‘that’s the worst of those heavy old sideboards. It’s so difficult to clean behind them. My wife always complains about ours.’

  ‘That’ll do, Bunter. Can’t I be dusty if I like?’

  Bunter smiled gently and began on the other leg.

  ‘I am afraid,’ went on the vicar, ‘I should give your excellent man many hours of distress if I were his employer. I am always being scolded for my untidiness.’ Out of the tail of his eye he saw the door shut behind the other two men, and his mind, lagging behind his vision, made a sudden bound to catch up with it. ‘Wasn’t that Crutchley? We ought to have asked him—’

  ‘Bunter,’ said Peter, ‘you heard what I said. If Mr Goodacre likes, you can brush him. I will not be brushed. I refuse.’

  He spoke with more sharpness, under his light tone, than Harriet had ever heard him use. She thought: ‘For the first time since we were married he has forgotten my existence.’ She went over to the coat he had thrown off and began to search it for cigarettes; but she did not miss Bunter’s quick upward glance or the almost imperceptible jerk of Peter’s head.

  Bunter, without a word, went to brush the vicar, and Peter, released, walked straight up to the fireplace. Here he stopped, and his eye searched the room.

  ‘Well, really,’ said Mr Goodacre, with a refreshing delight in novelty. ‘Being valeted is quite a new experience for me.’

  ‘The chain,’ said Peter. ‘Now, where—?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mr Goodacre took up his thread again. ‘I was about to say, that is certainly a new chain. The old one was of brass to match the pot, whereas this—’

  ‘Peter!’ said Harriet, involuntarily.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know now.’ He seized upon the ornamental drain-pipe, tossed the pampas-grasses out of it and tilted it up, just as Crutchley came in – this time with the man Bill – and advanced upon the other settle.

  ‘If you don’t mind, guv’nor.’

  Peter jerked the pipe swiftly back and sat on it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished here. Take yourselves off. We must have something to sit on. I’ll make it right with your employer.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Bill. ‘Well – right y’are, guv’nor. But mind you, this job’s got to be done today.’

  ‘It will be,’ said Peter.

  George might have stood out; but Bill evidently possessed a more sensitively balanced temperament or a livelier eye to the main chance. He said submissively, ‘Right-ho, guv’nor,’ and went out, taking Crutchley with him.

  As the door shut, Peter lifted the drain-pipe. At the bottom of it lay a brass chain, curled together like a sleeping serpent.

  Harriet said: ‘The chain that came down the chimney.’

  Peter’s glance swept over her as though she had been a stranger.

  ‘A new chain was fixed up and the other one hidden up the chimney. Why?’ He lifted the chain and looked at the cactus as it hung centred over the radio cabinet. Mr Goodacre was deeply intrigued.

  ‘Now that,’ he said, taking the end of the chain in his hand, ‘looks remarkably like the original chain. See. It is darkened with soot, but it’s quite bright when you rub it.’

  Peter dropped his end of the chain, leaving it dangling in the vicar’s hand. He picked out Harriet from the rest and said to her, as though propounding a problem to the brightest-looking of a not-too-hopeful class:

  ‘When Crutchley had watered the cactus, which he had watered the week before and which should only be watered once a month—’

  ‘– in the colder weather,’ said Mr Goodacre.

  ‘– he was on the steps here. He wiped the pot. He got down. He put back the steps over here by the clock. He came back here to the cabinet. Can you remember what he did next?’

  Harriet shut her eyes, once more seeing the room as it had been on that strange morning.

  ‘I believe—’

  She opened them again. Peter laid his hands gently, one on each side of the cabinet.

  ‘Yes – he did. I know he did. He pulled the cabinet forward to bring it centrally under the pot. I was sitting quite close to him at the end of the settle – that’s why I noticed.’

  ‘I noticed it too. That’s the thing I couldn’t remember.’

  He pushed the cabinet gently back, moving forward with it so that the pot now hung directly over his head and about three inches above it.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Mr Goodacre, surprised to discover that something of importance was apparently going on, ‘this is all very mysterious.’

  Peter made no reply, but stood gently lifting and letting fall the lid of the radio cabinet. ‘Like this,’ he said, softly. ‘Like this . . . This is London calling.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m being very stupid,’ ventured the vicar again.

  This time Peter looked up and smiled at him.

  ‘Look!’ he said. He put up his hand and lightly touched the pot, setting it gently swinging at the end of its eight-foot chain. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘My God! it’s possible. Mr Noakes was about your height, wasn’t he, padre?’

  ‘Just about. Just about. I may have had the advantage of him by an inch, but not more.’

  ‘If I’d had more inches,’ said Peter, regretfully (for his height was a sensitive point with him), ‘I might have had more brains. Better late than never.’ His eye roamed the room, passed over Harriet and the vicar and rested on Bunter. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we’ve got the first and last terms of the progression – if we could fill in the middle terms.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ agreed Bunter, in a colourless voice. His he
art had leapt within him. Not the new wife this time, but the old familiar companion of a hundred cases – the appeal had been to him. He coughed. ‘If I might make a suggestion, it would be as well to verify the difference in the chains before we proceed.’

  ‘Quite right, Bunter. Clear as you go. Get the steps.’

  Harriet watched Bunter as he mounted and took the brass chain that the vicar mechanically handed to him. But it was Peter who heard the step on the stair. Before Miss Twitterton was in the room he was halfway across it, and when she turned from shutting the door after her, he stood at her elbow.

  ‘So that’s all seen to,’ said Miss Twitterton, brightly. ‘Oh, Mr Goodacre – I didn’t think I should see you again. It is nice to think you’re having Uncle William’s cactus.’

  ‘Bunter’s just coping with it,’ said Peter. He stood between her and the steps and his five-foot nine was an effectual screen to her four-foot eight. ‘Miss Twitterton, if you’ve really finished, I wonder if you would do something for me?’

  ‘But of course – if I can!’

  ‘I think I must have dropped my fountain-pen somewhere in the bedroom, and I’m rather afraid one of those fellows up there may put his foot on it. If I might trouble you—’

  ‘Why, with pleasure!’ cried Miss Twitterton, delighted that the task was not beyond her powers. ‘I’ll run up and look for it at once. I always say I’m remarkably good at finding things.’

  ‘It’s extraordinarily kind of you,’ said Peter. He manoeuvred her gently to the door, opened it for her, and shut it after her. Harriet said nothing. She knew where Peter’s pen was, for she had seen it in the inner breast pocket of his coat when she was looking for cigarettes, and she felt a cold weight at the pit of her stomach. Bunter, who had slipped quickly down from the steps, stood, chain in hand, as though ready to put the gyves on a felon when he heard the word. Peter came back with urgency in his step.

  ‘Four inches difference, my lord.’

  His master nodded.

  ‘Bunter – no, I shall want you.’ He saw Harriet and spoke to her as though she had been his footman. ‘Here, you, go and fasten the door at the top of the back stair. Don’t let her hear you if you can help it. Here are the house-keys. Lock the doors, front and back. Make sure that Ruddle and Puffett and Crutchley are all inside. If anyone says anything, those are my orders. Then bring the keys back – do you understand? . . . Bunter, take the steps and see if you can find anything in the way of a hook or a nail in the wall or ceiling on that side of the chimney-place.’

  Harriet was out of the room, and tip-toeing along the passage. Voices in the kitchen and a subdued clinking told her that lunch was being got ready – and probably eaten. Through the open door she glimpsed the back of Crutchley’s head – he was tilting a mug to his lips. Beyond him stood Mr Puffett, his wide jaws moving slowly on a large mouthful. She could not see Mrs Ruddle, but in a moment her voice came through from the scullery. ‘. . . See it was that there Joe, plain as the nose on ’is face, and goodness knows that’s big enough, but there! ’e’s too much taken up with ’is good lady . . .’ Somebody laughed. Harriet thought it was George. She scurried past the kitchen, ran up the Privy Stair, locking the back door as she went, and found herself, panting, more with excitement than haste, at the door of her own room. The key was on the inside. She turned the handle softly and crept in. Nothing was there but her own boxes, packed and waiting, and the component parts of what had been the bed, stacked ready for removal. In the next room she could hear little scuffling sounds, and then Miss Twitterton chirping agitatedly to herself (like the White Rabbit, thought Harriet): ‘Oh, dear, oh, dear! what has become of it?’ (or was it, ‘what will become of me?’). For a flash of time Harriet stood, her hand already on the key. If she were to go in and say, ‘Miss Twitterton, he knows who killed your uncle, and . . .’ Like the White Rabbit – a white rabbit in a cage . . .

  Then she was out and locking the door behind her.

  Back in the passage now . . . and quietly past that open door. Nobody seemed to take any notice. She locked the front door, and the house was fast, as it had been on the night of the murder.

  She returned to the sitting-room, and found she had been so quick that Bunter was still on the steps by the fireplace, searching the dark beams with a pocket-torch.

  ‘A cup-hook, my lord, painted black and screwed into the beam.’

  ‘Ah!’ Peter measured the distance with his eye, from the hook to the cabinet and back again. Harriet held out the keys to him and he pocketed them absent-mindedly without so much as a nod.

  ‘Proof,’ he said. ‘Proof of something at last. But where is the—?’

  The vicar, who seemed to have been putting two and two carefully together in his mind, cleared his throat:

  ‘Do I understand,’ he said, ‘that you have discovered a – what they call a clue to the mystery?’

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘We’re looking for that. The clue. Ariadne’s clue of thread – the little ball of twine to thread the labyrinth – the – yes, twine. Who said twine? Puffett, by jove! He’s our man!’

  ‘Tom Puffett!’ exclaimed the vicar. ‘Oh, I should not like to think that Puffett—’

  ‘Fetch him here,’ said Peter.

  Bunter was off the steps before he spoke. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said, and was gone like lightning. Harriet’s eye fell on the chain, which lay, where Bunter had left it, on top of the cabinet. She picked it up and the clink of the links caught Peter’s ear.

  ‘Best get rid of that,’ he said. ‘Give it me.’ He scanned the room for a hiding-place – then, with a sort of chuckle, made for the chimney.

  ‘We’ll put it back where it came from,’ he said, as he dived under the cowl. ‘Safe bind, safe find, as Puffett is fond of observing.’ He emerged again, dusting his hands.

  ‘There’s a ledge, I suppose,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes. The gun dislodged the chain. If Noakes had kept his chimneys swept, his murderer might have been safe, What’s that, padre, about doing evil that good may come?’

  Mr Goodacre was spared discussion of this doctrinal point by the arrival of Mr Puffett with Bunter at his elbow.

  ‘Did you want me, my lord?’

  ‘Yes, Puffett. When you were clearing up this room on Wednesday morning after we’d loosened the soot, do you remember picking up a bit of string from the floor?’

  ‘String?’ said Mr Puffett. ‘If it’s string you’re looking for, I reckon you’ve come to the right place for it. When I sees a bit o’ string, my lord, I picks it up and puts it away, ’andy when wanted.’ He pulled up his sweaters with a grunt and began to produce rolls of string from his pockets as a conjuror produces coloured paper. ‘There’s all sorts ’ere, you can take your choice. As I says to Frank Crutchley, safe bind, safe find, I says . . .’

  ‘That was about a piece of string, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Puffett, extracting with some difficulty a thick piece of small-cord. ‘I picks up a piece of string off this very floor, and I says to him – alloodin’ to that there forty pound of his – I says to him—’

  ‘I thought I saw you pick some up. I suppose you can’t tell by this time which piece it was?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mr Puffett, enlightened. ‘I get you now, me lord. You was wantin’ that pertickler bit o’ string. Well, now, I dunno as I could rightly say which was that identical piece of string. Not the string, I couldn’t. Not but what it was a good bit of string, too – a good thick piece, reckon it might be a yard long without knots. But whether it was this piece now, or that piece I wouldn’t pretend to say.’

  ‘A yard long?’ said Peter. ‘It must have been more than that.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Puffett. ‘Not the string – well, it might a-been four foot, not more. There was a rare good bit o’ black fishin’-line, mebbe twenty feet or so – but it’s string you’re lookin’ for.’

  ‘I made a mistake,’ said Peter. ‘I ought, of course, to have said fish
ing-line. Naturally, it would be fishing-line. And black. It had to be. Have you got that on you?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mr Puffett, ‘if it’s fishin’-line you’re after, w’y didn’t you say so? Safe bind—’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter. He whipped the roll of black line deftly from the sweep’s slow fingers. ‘Yes. That’s it. That would hold a twenty-pound salmon. And I’ll bet you there’s a sinker at each end. I thought so – yes.’

  He threaded one end of the line through one of the rings at the lip of the pot, brought the two ends with their sinkers together and handed them to Bunter, who took them without a word, mounted the steps and passed the double line over the hook in the ceiling.

  ‘Oh!’ said Harriet. ‘I see now. Peter, how horrible!’

  ‘Haul up,’ said Peter, unheeding. ‘Take care you don’t foul the line.’

  Bunter hauled on the line, grunting a little as it cut into his fingers. The pot, steadied from below by Peter’s outstretched hand, stirred, lifted, moved up and away out of his reach, rising in a great semicircle at the end of the iron chain.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Peter. ‘The plant won’t fall out. It’s a dead tight fit – as you know. Haul steady.’

  He went to take the slack of the line as it came down over the hook. The pot now lay level, strung out flat below the rafters, the cactus emerging sideways, so that it looked in the dimness like a monstrous hermit crab clawing out greedily from its shell.

  The vicar, peering up at it, ventured a remonstrance.

  ‘Pray, be careful, my man. If that thing was to slip and come down it might easily kill somebody.’

  ‘Very easily,’ said Peter. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’ He walked backwards towards the radio cabinet, keeping the double string taut in his hand.

  ‘It must weigh getting on for fourteen pound,’ said Bunter.

  ‘I can feel it,’ said Peter, grimly. ‘How did you come not to notice its weight when you and Kirk were examining it? It’s been loaded with something – lead shot from the feel of it. This must have been planned some time ago.’

  ‘So that,’ said Harriet, ‘is how a woman could have broken a tall man’s head. A woman with strong hands.’