Hangman's Holiday: A Collection of Short Mysteries

  ‘Right. Were you left-handed as a child?’

  ‘Well, yes, I was, at first. But mother broke me of it.’

  ‘And the tendency came back after the air-raid. And were you ever ill as a child? To have the doctor, I mean?’

  ‘I had measles once, when I was about four.’

  ‘Remember the doctor’s name?’

  ‘They took me to the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Do you remember the name of the barber in Holborn?’

  This question came so unexpectedly as to stagger the wits of Mr Duckworthy, but after a while he said he thought it was Biggs or Briggs.

  Wimsey sat thoughtfully for a moment, and then said:

  ‘I think that’s all. Except – oh, yes! What is your Christian name?’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘And you assure me that, so far as you know, you had no hand in this business?’

  ‘That,’ said the little man, ‘that I swear to. As far as I know, you know. Oh, my Lord! If only it was possible to prove an alibi! That’s my only chance. But I’m so afraid, you see, that I may have done it. Do you think – do you think they would hang me for that?’

  ‘Not if you could prove you knew nothing about it,’ said Wimsey. He did not add that, even so, his acquaintance might probably pass the rest of his life at Broadmoor.

  ‘And you know,’ said Mr Duckworthy, ‘if I’m to go about all my life killing people without knowing it, it would be much better that they should hang me and be done with it. It’s a terrible thing to think of.’

  ‘Yes, but you may not have done it, you know.’

  ‘I hope not, I’m sure,’ said Mr Duckworthy. ‘I say – what’s that?’

  ‘The police, I fancy,’ said Wimsey lightly. He stood up as a knock came at the door, and said heartily, ‘Come in!’

  The landlord, who entered first, seemed rather taken aback by Wimsey’s presence.

  ‘Come right in,’ said Wimsey hospitably. ‘Come in, sergeant; come in, officer. What can we do for you?’

  ‘Don’t,’ said the landlord, ‘don’t make a row if you can help it.’

  The police sergeant paid no attention to either of them, but stalked across to the bed and confronted the shrinking Mr Duckworthy.

  ‘It’s the man all right,’ said he. ‘Now, Mr Duckworthy, you’ll excuse this late visit, but as you may have seen by the papers, we’ve been looking for a person answering your description, and there’s no time like the present. We want—’

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ cried Mr Duckworthy wildly. ‘I know nothing about it—’

  The officer pulled out his note-book and wrote: ‘He said before any question was asked him, “I didn’t do it.”’

  ‘You seem to know all about it,’ said then sergeant.

  ‘Of course he does,’ said Wimsey; ‘we’ve been having a little informal chat about it.’

  ‘You have, have you? And who might you be – sir?’ The last word appeared to be screwed out of the sergeant forcibly by the action of the monocle.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Wimsey, ‘I haven’t a card on me at the moment. I am Lord Peter Wimsey.’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ said the sergeant. ‘And may I ask, my lord, what you know about this here?’

  ‘You may, and I may answer if I like, you know. I know nothing at all about the murder. About Mr Duckworthy I know what he has told me and no more. I dare say he will tell you, too, if you ask him nicely. But no third degree, you know, sergeant. No Savidgery.’

  Baulked by this painful reminder, the sergeant said, in a voice of annoyance:

  ‘It’s my duty to ask him what he knows about this.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Wimsey. ‘As a good citizen, it’s his duty to answer you. But it’s a gloomy time of night, don’t you think? Why not wait till the morning? Mr Duckworthy won’t run away.’

  ‘I’m not so sure of that.’

  ‘Oh, but I am. I will undertake to produce him whenever you want him. Won’t that do? You’re not charging him with anything, I suppose?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Splendid. Then it’s all quite friendly and pleasant, isn’t it? How about a drink?’

  The sergeant refused this kindly offer with some gruffness in his manner.

  ‘On the waggon?’ inquired Wimsey sympathetically. ‘Bad luck. Kidneys? Or liver, eh?’

  The sergeant made no reply.

  ‘Well, we are charmed to have had the pleasure of seeing you,’ pursued Wimsey. ‘You’ll look us up in the morning, won’t you? I’ve got to get back to town fairly early, but I’ll drop in at the police-station on my way. You will find Mr Duckworthy in the lounge, here. It will be more comfortable for you than at your place. Must you be going? Well, good night, all.’

  Later, Wimsey returned to Mr Duckworthy, after seeing the police off the premises.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m going up to town to do what I can. I’ll send you up a solicitor first thing in the morning. Tell him what you’ve told me, and tell the police what he tells you to tell them and no more. Remember, they can’t force you to say anything or to go down to the police-station unless they charge you. If they do charge you, go quietly and say nothing. And whatever you do, don’t run away, because if you do, you’re done for.’

  Wimsey arrived in town the following afternoon, and walked down Holborn, looking for a barber’s shop. He found it without much difficulty. It lay, as Mr Duckworthy had described it, at the end of a narrow passage, and it had a long mirror in the door, with the name Briggs scrawled across it in gold letters. Wimsey stared at his own reflection distastefully.

  ‘Check number one,’ said he, mechanically setting his tie to rights. ‘Have I been led up the garden? Or is it a case of fourth dimensional mystery? “The animals went in four by four, vive la compagnie! The camel he got stuck in the door.” There is something intensely unpleasant about making a camel of one’s self. It goes for days without a drink and its table-manners are objectionable. But there is no doubt that this door is made of looking-glass. Was it always so, I wonder? On, Wimsey, on. I cannot bear to be shaved again. Perhaps a haircut might be managed.’

  He pushed the door open, keeping a stern eye on his reflection to see that it played him no trick.

  Of his conversation with the barber, which was lively and varied, only one passage is deserving of record.

  ‘It’s some time since I was in here,’ said Wimsey. ‘Keep it short behind the ears. Been redecorated, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Looks quite smart, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The mirror on the outside of the door – that’s new, too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. That’s been there ever since we took over.’

  ‘Has it? Then it’s longer ago than I thought. Was it there three years ago?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. Ten years Mr Briggs has been here, sir.’

  ‘And the mirror too?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir.’

  ‘Then it’s my memory that’s wrong. Senile decay setting in. “All, all are gone, the old familiar landmarks.” No, thank you, if I go grey I’ll go grey decently. I don’t want any hair-tonics today, thank you. No, nor even an electric comb. I’ve had shocks enough.’

  It worried him, though. So much so that when he emerged, he walked back a few yards along the street, and was suddenly struck by seeing the glass door of a tea-shop. It also lay at the end of a dark passage and had a gold name written across it. The name was ‘The Bridget Tea-shop’, but the door was of plain glass. Wimsey looked at it for a few moments and then went in. He did not approach the tea-tables, but accosted the cashier, who sat at a little glass desk inside the door.

  Here he went straight to the point and asked whether the young lady remembered the circumstances of a man’s having fainted in the doorway some years previously.

  The cashier could not say; she had only been there three months, but she thought one of the waitresses might remember. The waitress was produced, and after some
consideration, thought she did recollect something of the sort. Wimsey thanked her, said he was a journalist – which seemed to be accepted as an excuse for eccentric questions – parted with half a crown, and withdrew.

  His next visit was to Carmelite House. Wimsey had friends in every newspaper office in Fleet Street, and made his way without difficulty to the room where photographs are filed for reference. The original of the ‘J. D.’ portrait was produced for his inspection.

  ‘One of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, no. Sent out by Scotland Yard. Why? Anything wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing. I wanted the name of the original photographer, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh! Well, you’ll have to ask them there. Nothing more I can do for you?’

  ‘Nothing, thanks.’

  Scotland Yard was easy. Chief-Inspector Parker was Wimsey’s closest friend. An inquiry of him soon furnished the photographer’s name, which was inscribed at the foot of the print. Wimsey voyaged off at once in search of the establishment, where his name readily secured an interview with the proprietor.

  As he had expected, Scotland Yard had been there before him. All information at the disposal of the firm had already been given. It amounted to very little. The photograph had been taken a couple of years previously, and nothing particular was remembered about the sitter. It was a small establishment, doing a rapid business in cheap portraits, and with no pretensions to artistic refinements.

  Wimsey asked to see the original negative, which, after some search, was produced.

  Wimsey looked it over, laid it down, and pulled from his pocket the copy of the Evening News in which the print had appeared.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said.

  The proprietor looked, then looked back at the negative,

  ‘Well, I’m dashed,’ he said. ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘It was done in the enlarging lantern, I take it,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Yes. It must have been put in the wrong way round. Now, fancy that happening. You know, sir, we often have to work against time, and I suppose – but it’s very careless. I shall have to inquire into it.’

  ‘Get me a print of it right way round,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Yes, sir, certainly, sir. At once.’

  ‘And send one to Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Queer it should have been just this particular one, isn’t it, sir? I wonder the party didn’t notice. But we generally take three or four positions, and he might not remember, you know.’

  ‘You’d better see if you’ve got any other positions and let me have them too.’

  ‘I’ve done that already, sir, but there are none. No doubt this one was selected and the others destroyed. We don’t keep all the rejected negatives, you know, sir. We haven’t the space to file them. But I’ll get three prints off at once.’

  ‘Do,’ said Wimsey. ‘The sooner the better. Quick-dry them. And don’t do any work on the prints.’

  ‘No, sir. You shall have them in an hour or two, sir. But it’s astonishing to me that the party didn’t complain.’

  ‘It’s not astonishing,’ said Wimsey. ‘He probably thought it the best likeness of the lot. And so it would be – to him. Don’t you see – that’s the only view he could ever take of his own face. That photograph, with the left and right sides reversed, is the face he sees in the mirror every day – the only face he can really recognise as his. “Wad the gods and giftie gie us”, and all that.’

  ‘Well, that’s quite true, sir. And I’m much obliged to you for pointing the mistake out.’

  Wimsey reitereated the need for haste, and departed. A brief visit to Somerset House followed; after which he called it a day and went home.

  Inquiry in Brixton, in and about the address mentioned by Mr Duckworthy, eventually put Wimsey on to the track of persons who had known him and his mother. An aged lady who had kept a small greengrocery in the same street for the last forty years remembered all about them. She had the encyclopaedic memory of the almost illiterate, and was positive as to the date of their arrival.

  ‘Thirty-two years ago, if we lives another month,’ she said. ‘Michaelmas it was they come. She was a nice-looking young woman, too, and my daughter, as was expecting her first, took a lot of interest in the sweet little boy.’

  ‘The boy was not born here?’

  ‘Why, no, sir. Born somewheres on the south side, he was, but I remember she never rightly said where – only that it was round about the New Cut. She was one of the quiet sort and kep’ herself to herself. Never one to talk, she wasn’t. Why even to my daughter, as might ’ave good reason for bein’ interested, she wouldn’t say much about ’ow she got through ’er bad time. Chlorryform she said she ’ad, I know, and she disremembered about it, but it’s my belief it ’ad gone ’ard with ’er and she didn’t care to think overmuch about it. ’Er ’usband – a nice man ’e was, too – ’e says to me, “Don’t remind ’er of it, Mrs ’Arbottle, don’t remind ’er of it.” Whether she was frightened or whether she was ’urt by it I don’t know, but she didn’t ’ave no more children. “Lor!” I says to ’er time and again, “you’ll get used to it, my dear, when you’ve ’ad nine of ’em same as me,” and she smiled, but she never ’ad no more, none the more for that.’

  ‘I suppose it does take some getting used to,’ said Wimsey, ‘but nine of them don’t seem to have hurt you, Mrs Harbottle, if I may say so. You look extremely flourishing.’

  ‘I keeps my ’ealth, sir, I am glad to say, though stouter than I used to be. Nine of them does ’ave a kind of spreading action on the figure. You wouldn’t believe, sir, to look at me, as I ’ad a eighteen-inch waist when I was a girl. Many’s the time me pore mother broke the laces on me, with ’er knee in me back and me ’olding on to the bed-post.’

  ‘One must suffer to be beautiful,’ said Wimsey politely. ‘How old was the baby, then, when Mrs Duckworthy came to live in Brixton?’

  ‘Three weeks old, ’e was, sir – a darling dear – and a lot of ’air on ’is ’ead. Black ’air it was then, but it turned into the brightest red you ever see – like them carrots there. It wasn’t so pretty as ’is ma’s, though much the same colour. He didn’t favour ’er in the face, neither, nor yet ’is dad. She said ’e took after some of ’er side of the family.’

  ‘Did you ever see any of the rest of the family?’

  ‘Only ’er sister, Mrs Susan Brown. A big, stern, ’ard-faced woman she was – not like ’er sister. Lived in Evesham she did, as well I remembers, for I was gettin’ my grass from them at the time. I never sees a bunch o’ grass now but what I think of Mrs Susan Brown. Stiff, she was, with a small ’ead, very like a stick o’ grass.’

  Wimsey thanked Mrs Harbottle in a suitable manner and took the next train to Evesham. He was beginning to wonder where the chase might lead him, but discovered, much to his relief, that Mrs Susan Brown was well known in the town, being a pillar of the Methodist Chapel and a person well respected.

  She was upright still, with smooth, dark hair parted in the middle and drawn tightly back – a woman broad in the base and narrow in the shoulder – not, indeed, unlike the stick of asparagus to which Mrs Harbottle had compared her. She received Wimsey with stern civility, but disclaimed all knowledge of her nephew’s movements. The hint that he was in a position of some embarrassment, and even danger, did not appear to surprise her.

  ‘There was bad blood in him,’ she said. ‘My sister Hetty was softer by half than she ought to have been.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Wimsey. ‘Well, we can’t all be people of strong character, though it must be a source of great satisfaction to those that are. I don’t want to be a trouble to you, madam, and I know I’m given to twaddling rather, being a trifle on the soft side myself – so I’ll get to the point. I see by the register at Somerset House that your nephew, Robert Duckworthy, was born in Southwark, the son of Alfred and Hester Duckworthy. Wonderful system they have there. But of course – being only human – it breaks down now and again – doesn
’t it?’

  She folded her wrinkled hands over one another on the edge of the table, and he saw a kind of shadow flicker over her sharp dark eyes.

  ‘If I’m not bothering you too much – in what name was the other registered?’

  The hands trembled a little, but she said steadily:

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry. Never was good at explaining myself. There were twin boys, weren’t there? Under what name did they register the other? I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but it’s really rather important.’

  ‘What makes you suppose that there were twins?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose it. I wouldn’t have bothered you for a supposition. I know there was a twin brother. What became – at least, I do know more or less what became of him—’

  ‘It died,’ she said hurriedly.

  ‘I hate to seem contradictory,’ said Wimsey. ‘Most unattractive behaviour. But it didn’t die, you know. In fact, it’s alive now. It’s only the name I want to know, you know.’

  ‘And why should I tell you anything, young man?’

  ‘Because,’ said Wimsey, ‘if you will pardon the mention of anything so disagreeable to a refined taste, there’s been a murder committed and your nephew Robert is suspected. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that the murder was done by the brother. That’s why I want to get hold of him, don’t you see. It would be such a relief to my mind – I am naturally nice-minded – if you would help me to find him. Because, if not, I shall have to go to the police, and then you might be subpoena’d as a witness, and I shouldn’t like – I really shouldn’t like – to see you in the witness-box at a murder trial. So much unpleasant publicity, don’t you know. Whereas, if we can lay hands on the brother quickly, you and Robert need never come into it at all.’

  Mrs Brown sat in grim thought for a few minutes.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I will tell you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Wimsey to Chief-Inspector Parker a few days later, ‘the whole thing was quite obvious when one had heard about the reversal of friend Duckworthy’s interior economy.’