“Very good,” said Wimsey. “All according to Cocker.”
“The young person, my lord, then opened a species of safe or locker, and searched in it, and after the expiration of a considerable period, turned round with a letter in her hand and inquired what name I had said.”
“Yes? These girls are very bird-witted. It would have been more surprising if she hadn’t asked you to repeat the name.”
“Quite so, my lord. I said, as before, that the name was Stephen or Steve Driver, but at the same time I observed from where I was standing that the letter in her hand bore a blue stamp. There was only the counter between us, and, as you are aware, my lord, I am favoured with excellent sight.”
“Let us always be thankful for blessings.”
“I hope I may say that I always am, my lord. On seeing the blue stamp, I added quickly (calling to mind the circumstances of the case) that the letter had been posted in France.”
“Very good, indeed,” said Wimsey, nodding approval.
“The young person, my lord, appeared to be puzzled by this remark. She said, in a doubtful tone, that there was a letter from France which had been lying in the post-office for three weeks, but that it was addressed to another person.”
“Oh, hell!” said Wimsey.
“Yes, my lord; that thought passed through my own mind. I said, ‘Are you quite sure, miss, that you have not mistaken the handwriting?’ I am happy to say, my lord, that the young person—being young, and, no doubt, inexperienced, succumbed to this somewhat elementary strategy. She answered immediately, ‘Oh, no—it’s as plain as print: M. Paul Taylor.’ At that point—”
“Paul Taylor!” cried Wimsey, in sudden excitement, “Why, that was the name—”
“Precisely, my lord. As I was about to say, at that point it was necessary to act promptly. I said at once: ‘Paul Taylor? Why, that is the name of my chauffeur.’ You will excuse me, my lord, if the remark should appear to carry any disrespectful implication, seeing that you were at that moment in the car and might conceivably be supposed to be the person alluded to, but in the momentary agitation of my spirits, my lord, I was not in a position to think as quickly or as clearly as I should have wished.”
“Bunter,” said his lordship, “I warn you that I am growing dangerous. Will you say at once, yes or no, did you get that letter?”
“Yes, my lord, I did. I said, of course, that since the letter for my chauffeur was there, I would take it to him, adding some facetious observations to the effect that he must have made a conquest while we were travelling abroad and that he was a great man for the ladies. We were quite merry on the subject, my lord.”
“Oh, were you?”
“Yes my lord. At the same time, I said, it was exceedingly vexatious that my own letter should have gone astray, and I requested the young person to institute another search. She did so, with some reluctance, and in the end I went away, after remarking that the postal system in this country was very undependable and that I should certainly write to The Times about it.”
“Excellent. Well, it’s all very illegal, either way, but we’ll get Blundell to put it right for us—I’d have suggested his doing it himself, but it was such a shot at a venture that I didn’t think he’d cotton to it, and I hadn’t a devil of a lot of faith in it myself. And anyway”—here Wimsey was seized with an uprush of candour to the lips—“anyway, it was my jolly old idea and I wanted us to have the fun of it ourselves. Now, don’t start apologising any more. You were perfectly brilliant in two places and I’m as bucked as hell. What’s that? It mayn’t be the right letter? Rot! It is the right letter. It’s damn well got to be the right letter, and we’re going to go straight along to the Cat and Fiddle, where the port is remarkable and the claret not to be despised, to celebrate our deed of darkness and derring-do.”
Accordingly, within a very short time, Wimsey and his follower found themselves established in a dark old upper room, facing away from the square and looking out upon the squat, square church tower, with the rooks wheeling over it and the seagulls swooping and dipping among the gravestones. Wimsey ordered roast lamb and a bottle of the far from despicable claret and was soon in conversation with the waiter, who agreed with him that things were very quiet.
“But not so quiet as they used to be, sir. The men working on the Wash Cut make a difference to the town. Oh, yes, sir—the Cut’s nearly finished now, and they say it will be opened in June. It will be a good thing, so they say, and improve the draining very much. It’s hoped as it will scour the river out ten feet or more and take the tide up again to the head of the Thirty-foot Drain, like it was in the old days, by what they tell us. Of course, I don’t know about that, sir, for it seems that was in Oliver Cromwell’s time, and I’ve only been here twenty year, but that’s what the Chief Engineer says. They’ve brought the Cut to within a mile of the town now, sir, and there’s to be a great opening in June, with a gala and a cricket match and sports for the young people, sir. And they say as they’re asking the Duke of Denver to come down and open the Cut, but we haven’t heard yet if he’ll come.”
“He’ll come all right,” said Wimsey. “Dash it, he shall come. He does no work and it will do him good.”
“Indeed, sir?” said the waiter, a little dubiously, not knowing the cause of this certainty, but unwilling to offend. “Yes, sir, it would be much appreciated in the town if he was to come. Will you take another potato, sir?”
“Yes, please,” said Wimsey. “I’ll make a point of jogging old Denver up to do his duty. We’ll all come. Great fun. Denver shall present gold cups to all the winners and I will present silver rabbits to all the losers, and with luck somebody will fall into the river.”
“That,” said the waiter, seriously, “will be very gratifying.”
Not till the port (Tuke Holdsworth ’08) was set upon the table did Wimsey draw the letter from his pocket and gloat upon it. It was addressed in a foreign hand to “M. Paul Taylor, Poste Restante, Walbeach, Lincolnshire, Angleterre.”
“My family,” observed Lord Peter, “have frequently accused me of being unrestrained and wanting in self-control. They little know me. Instead of opening this letter at once, I reserve it for Superintendent Blundell. Instead of rushing off at once to Superintendent Blundell, I remain quietly at Walbeach and eat roast mutton. It is true that the good Blundell is not at Leamholt to-day, so that nothing would be gained if I did rush back, but still—it just shows you. The envelope bears a post-mark which is only half-decipherable, but which I make out to be something ending in y in the department of either Marne or Seine-et-Marne—a district endeared to many by the recollection of mud, blood, shell-holes and trench-feet. The envelope is of slightly worse quality than even the majority of French envelopes, and the writing suggests that it was carried out with what may be called a post-office pen and ink to match, by a hand unaccustomed to the exercise. The ink and pen mean little, for I have never yet encountered in any part of France a pen and ink with which any normal person could write comfortably. But the handwriting is suggestive, because, owing to the system of State education in that country, though all the French write vilely, it is rare to find one who writes very much more vilely than the rest. The date is obscure, but, since we know the time of arrival, we may guess the time of dispatch. Can we deduce anything further from the envelope?”
“If I may be allowed to say so, my lord, it is possibly a little remarkable that the name and address of the sender does not appear on the back.”
“That is well observed. Yes, Bunter, you may have full marks for that. The French, as you have no doubt often noticed, seldom head their letters with an address as we do in England, though they occasionally write at the foot some such useless indication as ‘Paris’ or ‘Lyon,’ without adding the number of the house and the name of the street. They do, however, frequently place these necessary indications on the flap of the envelope, in the hope that they may be thrown into the fire and irrecoverably lost before the letter is answered or even read.”
&
nbsp; “It has sometimes occurred to me, my lord, to be surprised at that habit.”
“Not at all, Bunter. It is quite logical. To begin with, it is a fixed idea with the French that the majority of letters tend to be lost in the post. They put no faith in Government departments, and I think they are perfectly right. They hope, however, that, if the post-office fails to deliver the letter to the addressee it may, in time, return it to the sender. It seems a forlorn hope, but they are again perfectly right. One must explore every stone and leave no avenue unturned. The Englishman, in his bluff, hearty way, is content that under such circumstances the post-office should violate his seals, peruse his correspondence, extract his signature and address from the surrounding verbiage, supply a fresh envelope and return the whole to him under the blushing pseudonym of ‘Hubbykins’ or ‘Dogsbody’ for the entertainment of his local postman. But the Frenchman, being decorous, not to say secretive, by nature, thinks it better to preserve his privacy by providing, on the exterior of the missive, all the necessary details for the proper functioning of this transaction. I do not say he is wrong, though I do think it would be better if he wrote the address in both places. But the fact that this particular letter provides no address for return does perhaps suggest that the sender was not precisely out for publicity. And the devil of it is, Bunter, that ten to one there will be no address on the inside, either. No matter. This is very excellent port. Be good enough to finish the bottle, Bunter, because it would be a pity to waste it and if I have any more I shall be too sleepy to drive.”
They took the direct road back from Walbeach to Fenchurch, following the bank of the river.
“If this country had been drained intelligently and all of a piece,” remarked Wimsey, “by running all the canals into the rivers instead of the rivers into the canals, so as to get a good scour of water, Walbeach might still be a port and the landscape would look rather less like a crazy quilt. But what with seven hundred years of greed and graft and laziness, and perpetual quarrelling between one parish and the next, and the mistaken impression that what suits Holland must suit the Fens, the thing’s a mess. It answers the purpose, but it might have been a lot better. Here’s the place where we met Cranton—if it was Cranton. By the way I wonder if that fellow at the sluice saw anything of him. Let’s stop and find out. I love dawdling round locks.”
He twisted the car across the bridge and brought it to a standstill close beside the sluice-keeper’s cottage. The man came out to see what was wanted and was lured, without difficulty, into a desultory conversation, beginning with the weather and the crops and going on to the Wash Cut, the tides and the river. Before very long, Wimsey was standing on the narrow wooden foot-bridge that ran across the sluice, gazing down thoughtfully into the green water. The tide was on the ebb and the gates partly open, so that a slow trickle ran through them as the Wale water discharged itself sluggishly towards the sea.
“Very picturesque and pretty,” said Wimsey. “Do you ever get artists and people along here to paint it?”
The sluice-keeper didn’t know as he did.
“Some of those piers would be none the worse for a bit of stone and mortar,” went on Wimsey; “and the gates look pretty ancient.”
“Ah!” said the sluice-keeper. “I believe you.” He spat into the river. “This here sluice has been needing repairs—Oh! a matter of twenty year, now. And more.”
“Then why don’t they do it?”
“Ah!” said the sluice-keeper. He remained lost in melancholy thought for some minutes, and Wimsey did not interrupt him. Then he spoke, weightily, and with long years of endurance in his voice. “Nobody knows whose job this here sluice is, seemin’ly. The Fen Drainage Board, now—they say as it did oughter be done by the Wale Conservancy Board. And they say the Fen Drainage Board did oughter see to it. And now they’ve agreed to refer it, like, to the East Level Waterways Commission. But they ain’t made their report yet.” He spat again and was silent.
“But,” said Wimsey, “suppose you got a lot of water up this way, would the gates stand it?”
“Well, they might and they mightn’t,” replied the sluice-keeper. “But we don’t get much water up here these days. I have heard tell as it was different in Oliver Cromwell’s time, but we don’t get a great lot now.”
Wimsey was well used to the continual intrusion of the Lord Protector upon the affairs of the Fen, but he felt it to be a little unjustified in the present case.
“It was the Dutchmen built this sluice, wasn’t it?” he said. “Ah!” agreed the sluice-keeper.
“Yes, that’s who built this sluice. To keep the water out. In Oliver Cromwell’s time this country was all drownded every winter, so they say. So they built this sluice. But we don’t get much water up nowadays.”
“You will, though, when they’ve finished the New Wash Cut.”
“Ah! so they say. But I don’t know. Some says it won’t be no different. And some says as it’ll drown the land round about Walbeach. All I know, they’ve spent a sight of money, and where’s it coming from? To my mind, things was all very well as they was.”
“Who’s responsible for the Wash Cut? The Fen Drainage Board?”
“No, that’s the Wale Conservancy, that is.”
“But it must have occurred to them that it might make a difference to this sluice. Why couldn’t they do it all at the same time?”
The fenman gazed at Wimsey with a slow pity for his bird-witted feebleness of mind.
“Ain’t I telling yew? They don’t rightly know if it did oughter be paid for by the Fen Drainage or the Wale Conservancy. Why,” and a note of pride crept into his tone, “they’ve had five law actions about this here sluice. Ah! they took one on ’em up to Parliament, they did. Cost a heap of money, so they say.”
“Well, it seems ridiculous,” said Wimsey. “And with all this unemployment about, too. Do you get many of the unemployed tramping round this way?”
“Times we do, times we don’t.”
“I remember meeting a chap along the Bank last time I was down here—on New Year’s Day. I thought he looked a bit of a tough nut.”
“Oh, him? Yes. He got took on at Ezra Wilderspin’s place, but he soon had enough o’ that. Didn’t want to do no work. Half on ’em don’t. He came along askin’ for a cup o’ tea, but I told him to get out. It wasn’t tea he was lookin’ for. Not him. I know his sort.”
“I suppose he’d come from Walbeach.”
“I suppose he had. He said so, anyhow. Said he’d been trying to get work on the Wash Cut.”
“Oh? He told me he was a motor mechanic.”
“Ah!” The sluice-keeper spat once more into the tumbling water. “They’d say anything.”
“He looked to me as though he’d worked a good bit with his hands. Why shouldn’t there be work for men on the Cut? That’s what I was saying.”
“Yes, sir, it’s easy to say them things. But with plenty o’ skilled men out of a job, they don’t need to go taking on the like of him. That’s where it is, you see.”
“Well,” said Wimsey, “I still think that the Drainage Board and the Conservancy Board and the Commission between them ought to be able to absorb some of these men and give you a fresh set of gates. However, it’s not my business, and I’ll have to be pushing along.”
“Ah!” said the sluice-keeper. “New gates? Ah!”
He remained hanging on the rail and spitting thoughtfully into the water till Wimsey and Bunter had regained the car. Then he came hobbling after them.
“What I says is,” he observed, leaning so earnestly over the door of the Daimler that Wimsey hurriedly drew back his feet, thinking that the usual expectoration was about to follow, “what I says is. Why don’t they refer it to Geneva? See? Why don’t they refer it to Geneva? Then we might get it, same time as they gets disarmament, see?”
“Ha, ha!” said Wimsey, rightly supposing this to be irony. “Very good! I must tell my friends about that. Good work, what? Why don’t they refer it to Genev
a? Ha, ha!”
“That’s right,” said the sluice-keeper, anxious that the point of the jest should not be lost. “Why don’t they refer it to Geneva? See?”
“Splendid!” said Wimsey. “I won’t forget that. Ha, ha, ha!”
He gently released the clutch. As they moved away, he glanced back and saw the sluice-keeper convulsed by the remembrance of his own wit.
* * *
Lord Peter’s misgivings about the letter were duly confirmed. He honourably submitted it, unopened, to Superintendent Blundell, as soon as the latter returned from attendance at the Quarter Sessions where he had been engaged all day. The Superintendent was alarmed by Wimsey’s unorthodox raid on the post-office, but pleased by his subsequent discretion, and readily allowed him full credit for zeal and intelligence. Together they opened the envelope. The letter, which bore no address, was written on thin paper of the same poor quality as the envelope, and began:
“Mon cher mari—”
“Hey!” said Mr. Blundell. “What’s that mean? I’m not much of a French scholar, but doesn’t mari mean ‘husband’?”
“Yes. ‘My dear husband,’ it begins.”
“I never knew that Cranton—dash it!” exclaimed Mr. Blundell. “Where does Cranton come into this? I never heard of his having any wife at all, let alone a French one.”
“We don’t know that Cranton comes into it at all. He came to St. Paul and asked for a Mr. Paul Taylor. This presumably, is addressed to the Paul Taylor he asked for.”
“But they said Paul Taylor was a bell.”
“Tailor Paul is a bell, but Paul Taylor may be a person.”
“Who is he, then?”
“God knows. Somebody with a wife in France.”
“And the other chap, Batty Something—is he a person ?”
“No, he’s a bell. But he may be a person, too.”
“They can’t both be persons,” said Mr. Blundell, “it’s not reasonable. And where is this Paul Taylor, anyhow?”
“Perhaps he was the corpse.”
“Then where’s Cranton? They can’t,” added the Superintendent, “both be the corpse. That’s not reasonable, either.”