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 heart 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 sittingroom, 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 bind, I says…’