“Mine is Friday,” added Hannah, “and every other Sunday. If you should be Evangelical, Mr. Bunter, the Rev. Crawford in Judd Street is a beautiful preacher. But maybe you’ll be going out of town for Christmas.”
Mr. Bunter replied that the season would undoubtedly be spent at Duke’s Denver, and departed in a shining halo of vicarious splendour.
CHAPTER X
“Here you are, Peter,” said Chief Inspector Parker, “and here is the lady you are anxious to meet. Mrs. Bulfinch, allow me to introduce Lord Peter Wimsey.”
“Pleased, I am sure,” said Mrs. Bulfinch. She giggled, and dabbed her large, blonde face with powder.
“Mrs. Bulfinch, before her union with Mr. Bulfinch, was the life and soul of the saloon bar at the Nine Rings in Grays Inn Road,” said Mr. Parker, “and well known to all for her charm and wit.”
“Go on,” said Mrs. Bulfinch, “you’re a one, aren’t you? Don’t you pay no attention to him, your lordship. You know what these police fellows are.”
“Sad dogs,” said Wimsey, shaking his head. “But I don’t need his testimonials, I can trust my own eyes and ears, Mrs. Bulfinch, and I can only say that, if I had had the happiness to make your acquaintance before it was too late, it would have been my life-time’s ambition to wipe Mr. Bulfinch’s eye.”
“You’re every bit as bad as he is,” said Mrs. Bulfinch, highly gratified, “and what Bulfinch would say to you I don’t know. Quite upset, he was, when the officer came round to ask me to pop along to the Yard. ‘I don’t like it, Gracie,’ he says, ‘we’ve always bin respectable in this house and no trouble with disorderlies nor drinks after hours, and once you get among them fellows you don’t know the things you may be asked.’ ‘Don’t be so soft,’ I tells him, ‘the boys all know me and they haven’t got nothing against me, and if it’s just to tell them about the gentleman that left the packet behind him at the Rings, I haven’t no objection to tell them, having nothing to reproach myself with. What’d they think,’ I said, ‘if I refused to go? Ten to one they’d think there was something funny about it.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m coming with you.’ ‘Oh, are you?’ I says, ‘and how about the new barman you was going to engage this morning? For,’ I said, ‘serve in the jug and bottle I will not, never having been accustomed to it, so you can do as you like.’ So I came away and left him to it. Mind you, I like him for it. I ain’t saying nothing against Bulfinch, but police or no police, I reckon I know how to take care of myself.”
“Quite so,” said Parker, patiently. “Mr. Bulfinch need feel no alarm. All we want you to do is to tell us, to the best of your recollection, about that young man you spoke of and help us to find the white-paper packet. You may be able to save an innocent person from being convicted, and I am sure your husband could not object to that.”
“Poor thing!” said Mrs. Bulfinch, “I’m sure when I read the account of the trial I said to Bulfinch -”
“Just a moment. If you wouldn’t mind beginning at the beginning, Mrs. Bulfinch, Lord Peter would understand better what you have to tell us.”
“Why, of course. Well, my lord, before I was married I was barmaid at the Nine Rings, as the Chief-Inspector says. Miss Montague I was then – it’s a better name than Bulfinch, and I was almost sorry to say good-bye to it, but there! a girl has to make a lot of sacrifices when she marries and one more or less is nothing to signify. I never worked there but in the saloon bar, for I wouldn’t undertake the four ale business, it not being a refined neighbourhood, though there’s a lot of very nice legal gentlemen drops in of an evening on the saloon side. Well, as I was saying, I was working there up to my marriage, which was last August Bank Holiday, and I remember one evening a gentleman coming in -”
“Could you remember the date, do you think?”
“Not within a day or so I couldn’t, for I wouldn’t wish to swear to a fib, but it wasn’t far off the longest day, for I remember making that same remark to the gentleman for something to say, you know.”
“That’s near enough,” said Parker. “Round about June 20th, or 21st, or something like that?”
“That’s right, as near as I can speak to it. And as to the time of night, that I can tell you – knowing how keen you ’tecs always are on the hands of the clock.” Mrs. Bulfinch giggled again and looked archly round for applause. “There was a gentleman sitting there – I didn’t know him, he was a stranger to the district – and he asked what was our closing hour and I told him 11 o’clock, and he said, ‘Thank God! I thought I was going to be turned out at 10.30,’ and I looked at the clock and said, ‘Oh, you’re all right, anyhow, sir; we always keep that clock a quarter of an hour fast.’ The clock said twenty past, so I know it must have been five past ten really. So we got talking a bit about these prohibitionists and the way they had been trying it on again to get our licensing-hour altered to half-past ten, only we had a good friend on the Bench in Mr. Judkins, and while we was discussing it, I remember so well, the door was pushed open hurried-like and a young gentleman comes in, almost falls in, I might say, and he calls, ‘Give me a double brandy, quick.’ Well, I didn’t like to serve him all at once, he looked so white and queer, I thought he’d had one or two over the eight already, and the boss was most particular about that sort of thing. Still, he spoke all right – quite clear and not repeating himself nor nothing, and his eyes, though they did look a bit funny, weren’t fixed-like, if you understand me. We get to size folks up pretty well in our business, you know. He sort of held on to the bar, all scrunched up together and bent double, and he says, ‘Make it a stiff one, there’s a good girl, I’m feeling awful bad.’ The gentleman I’d been talking to, he says to him, ‘Hold up,’ he says, ‘what’s the matter?’ and the gentleman says, ‘I’m going to be ill.’ And he puts his hands across his waistcoat like so!”
Mrs. Bulfinch clasped her waist and rolled her big blue eyes dramatically.
“Well, then I see he wasn’t drunk, so I mixed him a double Martell with just a splash of soda and he gulps it down, and says, ‘That’s better.’ And the other gentleman puts his arm round him and helps him to a seat. There was a good many other people in the bar, but they didn’t notice much, being full of the racing news. Presently the gentleman asks me for a glass of water, and I fetched it to him, and he says: ‘Sorry if I frightened you, but I’ve just had a bad shock, and it must have gone to my inside. I’m subject to gastric trouble,’ he says, ‘and any worry or shock always affects my stomach. However,’ he says, ‘perhaps this will stop it.’ And he takes out a white paper packet with some powder in it, and drops it into the glass of water and stirs it up with a fountain-pen and drinks it off.”
“Did it fizz or anything?” asked Wimsey.
“No; it was just a plain powder, and it took a bit of a time to mix. He drank it off and said, ‘That settles it,’ or ‘That’ll settle it,’ or something of that sort. And then he says, ‘Thanks very much. I’m better now and I’d better get home in case it takes me again.’ And he raised his hat – he was quite the gentleman – and off he goes.”
‘How much powder do you think he put in?”
“Oh, a good dollop. He didn’t measure it or anything, just shot it in out of the packet. Near a dessert spoonful it might have been.”
“And what happened to the packet?” prompted Parker.
“Ah, there you are.” Mrs. Bulfinch took a glance at Wimsey’s face and seemed pleased with the effect she was producing.
“We’d just got the last customer out – about five past eleven, that would be, and George was locking the door, when I see something white on the seat. Somebody’s handkerchief I thought it was, but when I picked it up, I see it was the paper packet. So I said to George, ‘Hullo! the gentleman’s left his medicine behind him.’ So George asked what gentleman, and I told him, and he said, ‘What is it?’ and I looked, but the label had been torn off. It was just one of them chemist’s packets, you know, with the ends turned up and the label stuck across, but there wasn’t a bit of the label left.”