it must have been over by 1.30, or Weldon would, have
seen him on his return. Meanwhile, what does Alexis do? Instead of getting up and going about his business, he sits peacefully on the rock, waiting for someone: to come along and murder him at two o’clock’
‘He may have been told to sit on a bit, so as not to leave at the same time as the Rider. Or here’s a better. idea. When the Rider has gone, Alexis waits for a little bit — say five minutes — at any rate, till his friend is well out of reach. Then up pops the murderer from the niche in the rock, where he has been eavesdropping, and has an interview with Alexis.’ At two o’clock, the interview ends in murder. Then I turn up, and the murderer pops back into hiding. How’s that? The murderer didn’t show himself while the Rider was there, because he didn’t feel equal to tackling two men at once.’
‘That seems to cover the facts. I only wonder though, that he didn’t murder you too, while he was about it.’
‘That would make it look much less like suicide.’
‘Very true. But how was it you didn’t see these two people talking animatedly on the Flat-Iron when you arrived and looked over the cliff at one o’clock?’
‘Goodness knows! But if, the murderer was standing on the seaward side of the rock — or if they both were — I shouldn’t have seen anything. And they may have been, because it was quite low tide then and the sand would have been dry.’
‘Yes, so it would. And as, the discussion prolonged itself, they saw the tide turn, so they scrambled up on to the rock to keep their feet dry. That would be while you were asleep. But I wonder you didn’t hear the chattage and talkery going on while you were having your lunch. Voices carry well by the sea-shore.’
‘Perhaps they heard me scrambling down the cliff and shut up.’
‘Perhaps. And then the murderer, knowing that you were there, deliberately committed his murder under your very nose, so to speak.’
‘He may have thought I had gone. He knew I couldn’t see him at the moment, because he couldn’t see me.’
‘And Alexis yelled, and you woke up, and he had to hide.’
‘That’s about it. It seems to hang together reasonably well.
And that means we’ve got to look for a quite new murderer who had an opportunity of knowing about the appointment between Boris and Alexis. And,’ added Harriet, hopefully, ’it needn’t be a Bolshevik. It might be somebody with a private motive for doing away with Alexis. How; about the da Soto gentleman who got the reversion of Leila Garland? Leila may have told him some nasty story about Alexis.’
Wimsey was silent; his thoughts seemed to be wandering. Presently he said
‘Yes. Only we happen to know that da Soto was playing at the Winter Gardens all that time. But now I want to look at the thing from a quite different point of view. What about this letter? Is it genuine? It’s written on ordinary sort of paper, without a watermark, which might come from anywhere, so that proves nothing, but if it really comes from a foreign gentleman of the name of Boris, why is it written in English? Surely Russian would be safer and more likely, if Boris was really a Russian imperialist. Then again all that opening stuff about brutal Soviets and Holy Russia is so vague and sketchy. Does it look like the letter of a serious conspirator doing a; real job of work? No names mentioned; no details about the Treaty with Poland; and, on the other hand, endless wasted words about an “illustrious ancestress” and “His Serene Highness”. It doesn’t ring true. It doesn’t look like business. It looks like somebody with a very sketchy idea of the way revolutions really work, trying to flatter that poor boob’s monomania about’ his birth.’
‘I’ll tell you what it does look like,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s like the kind of thing I should put into a detective story if I didn’t know a thing about Russia and. didn’t care much, and only wanted to give a general idea that somebody was a conspirator.’
‘That’s it!’ said Wimsey. ‘You’re absolutely right, It might have come straight out of one of those Ruritanian romances that Alexis was so fond of.’
‘Of course and now we know why he was fond of them.
No wonder! They were all part of the mania. I suppose we ought to have guessed all that.’
‘And here’s another thing. Do you notice that the first two paragraphs of the letter are very casually coded. The sentences are all run together anyhow, as though the writer didn’t much care whether Alexis got them right or wrong. But the minute the good Boris gets down to specific instructions, he starts marking off the ends of his sentences with extra Q’s and X’s, so as to make sure there will be no mistake in decoding. The Flat-Iron loomed much larger in his mind than Holy Russia and disgruntled Poland.’
‘In fact, you think the letter looks like a lure:’
‘Yes. But it’s difficult to be quite sure, even then, who sent it and why. If Weldon is at the bottom of it, as we originally thought, then we are still bothered by all these alibis. If it isn’t Weldon, who is it? If we’re really investigating a political plot, then who was Alexis? Why should anybody want to get rid of him? Unless, of course, he genuinely was somebody important, which seems, hard to believe. He can’t even have imagined himself to be one of the Russian Imperial house — his age is all wrong. I know we’re always hearing tales about the Tsarevitch’s having survived the Revolution, but his name was Alexei Nicholavitch, not Pavlo Alexeivitch. And his age would be quite different — and besides, there never was any doubt about his descent from Nicholas I. There isn’t any note in any of Alexis’ books anywhere, is there? — that would tell us who he imagined he might have been.’
‘Not a thing.’’
Wimsey gathered up the papers from the table and rose to his feet.
‘I shall hand these over to Glaisher,’ he said. ‘They will give him something to think about. I like to see other people doing a spot of work from time to time. Do you realise that it’s nearly tea-time and we haven’t had any lunch?’
‘Time passes when one is pleasantly occupied,’ said Harriet, sententiously.
Wimsey put his hat and papers down on the table, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, took up his belongings again and marched to the door.
‘Cheerio!’ he said, amiably.
‘Cheerio!’ replied Harriet.
He went out. Harriet sat looking at the closed door.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘thank goodness he’s given up asking me to marry him. It’s much better he should put it out of his mind.’
She must have felt strongly about it, for she repeated the remark several times.
Wimsey absorbed, an anomalous meal in the Grill Room, went round to the police-station, handed the decoded letter to the Superintendent, whom; it surprised very much, and then ran his car out to Darley. He was still worried by the coincidence about Weldon and, his absence from Hinks’s Lane during the, crucial period. He approached Mr Polwhistle.
‘Why, yes, my lord,’ said that worthy. ‘The fault was in the H.T. leads all right. We tried the mag, and she was working top-hole, and there wasn’t nothing wrong with the plugs, so after we’d fiddled about a bit more, young Tom here says, “Well,” he says, “only: thing I can think of is the leads,” he says. Didn’t you, Tom?’