“Hadn’t Mrs. Wilbraham locked her door?”
“No. She never did, on principle — afraid of fire, or something. He said he shouted loudly to alarm the house, and then the old lady woke up and saw him at the window. In the meantime the thief had climbed down by the ivy and got away. So he rushed off downstairs and found the footman just coming out of the back door. There was a bit of confusion about the back door part of the story, because Deacon didn’t explain, first go-off, how he happened to be in Mrs. Wilbraham’s bedroom at all. His very first tale, to Sir Charles, had been that he went straight out when he heard the noise in the garden, but by the time the police got him, he’d managed to fit the two accounts together, and said that he’d either been too upset at the time to explain himself clearly or else that everybody else had been too upset to understand what he said. Well, that was all right, until they started to unearth all the history of his having met Cranton before, and the telegram and so on. Then Cranton, seeing that the game was up, told his tale in full, and of course, that made it pretty awkward for Deacon. He couldn’t deny it altogether, so he now admitted knowing Cranton, but said it was Cranton who had tried to tempt him into stealing the emeralds, while he had been perfectly sea-green incorruptible. As for the telegram, he denied that altogether, and put it on Elsie. And he denied the £50 altogether, and it’s a fact that they never traced it to him.
“Of course, they cross-examined him pretty fiercely. They wanted to know, first, why he hadn’t warned Sir Charles about Cranton and secondly, why he’d told a different tale at first. He declared that he thought Cranton had given up all idea of the theft, and he didn’t want to frighten anybody; but that when he heard noises in the garden, he guessed what was happening. He also said that afterwards he was afraid to own up to knowing Cranton for fear he should be accused of complicity. But it sounded a pretty thin story, and neither the judge nor the jury believed a word of it. Lord Bramhill spoke very severely to him after the verdict, and said that if it hadn’t been his first offence, he’d have given him the heaviest sentence it was in his power to bestow. He called it aggravated larceny of the very worst type, being committed by a servant in a position of trust, in a dwelling-house and his master’s dwelling-house at that, and accompanied by the opening of a window, which made it into burglary, and then he had violently resisted arrest, and so forth and so on; and in the end he gave Deacon eight years’ penal servitude and told him he was lucky to get off with that. Cranton was an old offender and might have got a lot more, but the judge said he was unwilling to punish him much more heavily than Deacon, and gave him ten years. So that was that. Cranton went to Dartmoor, and served his full time as a perfectly good old lag, without giving much trouble to anybody. Deacon, being a first offender, went to Maidstone, where he set up to be one of those model prisoners — which is a kind you always want to look out for, because they are always up to some mischief or other. After nearly four years — early in 1918, it was — this nice, refined, well-conducted convict made a brutal attack on a warder and broke prison. The warder died, and of course the whole place was scoured for Deacon, without any success. I daresay, what with the War and one thing and another, they hadn’t as many men to carry on the job as they ought to have had. Anyhow, they didn’t find him, and for two years he enjoyed the reputation of being about the only man who had ever broken prison successfully. Then his bones turned up in one of those holes — dene-holes, I think they call them, in a wood in North Kent so they found it was one up to the prison system after all He was still in his convict clothes and his skull was all smashed in, so he must have tumbled over during the night — probably within a day or two of his escape. And that was the end of him.”
“I suppose there’s no doubt he was guilty.”
“Not the slightest. He was a liar from beginning to end, and a clumsy liar at that. For one thing, the ivy on the Red House showed clearly enough that nobody had climbed down by it that night — and in any case, his final story was as full of holes as a sieve. He was a bad lot, and a murderer as well, and the country was well rid of him. As for Cranton, he behaved pretty well for a bit after he came out. Then he got into trouble again for receiving stolen goods, or goods got by false pretences or something, and back he went into quod. He came out again last June, and they kept tabs on him till the beginning of September. Then he disappeared, and they’re still looking for him. Last seen in London — but I shouldn’t be surprised if we’d seen the last of him today. It’s my belief, and always was, that Deacon had the necklace, but what he did with it, I’m damned if I know. Have another spot of beer, my lord. It won’t do you any harm.”
“Where do you think Cranton was, then, between September and January?”
“Goodness knows. But if he’s the corpse, I should say France, at a guess. He knew all the crooks in London, and if anybody could wangle a forged passport, he could.”
“Have you got a photograph of Cranton?”
“Yes, my lord, I have. It’s just come. Like to have a look at it?”
“Rather!”
The Superintendent brought out an official photograph from a bureau which stood, stacked neatly with documents, in a corner of the room.
Wimsey studied it carefully.
“When was this taken?”
“About four years ago, my lord, when he went up for his last sentence. That’s the latest we have.”
“He had no beard then. Had he one in September?”
“No, my lord. But he’d have plenty of time to grow one in four months.”
“Perhaps that’s what he went to France for.”
“Very likely indeed, my lord.”
“Yes — well — I can’t be dead positive, but I think this is the man I saw on New Year’s Day.”
“That’s very interesting,” said the Superintendent. “Have you shown the photograph to any of the people in the village?”
Mr. Blundell grinned ruefully.
“I tried it on the Wilderspins this afternoon, but there! Missus said it was him, Ezra said ’twas nothing like him — and a bunch of neighbours agreed heartily with both of them. The only thing is to get a beard faked on to it and try ’em again. There’s not one person in a hundred can swear to a likeness between a bearded face and one that’s clean-shaven.”
“H’m, too true. Defeat thy favour with an usurped beard… And of course you couldn’t take the body’s fingerprints, since he had no hands.”
“No, my lord, and that’s a sort of an argument, in a way, for it’s being Cranton.”
“If it is Cranton, I suppose he came here to look for the necklace, and grew a beard so that he shouldn’t be recognised by the people that had seen him in court.”
“That’s about it, my lord.”
“And he didn’t come earlier simply because he had to let his beard grow. So much for my bright notion that he might have received some message within the last few months. What I can’t understand is that stuff about Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul. I’ve been trying to make out something from the inscriptions on the bells, but I might as well have left it alone. Hear the tolling of the bells, iron bells, — though I’d like to know when church bells were ever made of iron — what a world of solemn thought their monody compels! Was Mr. Edward Thorpe at his brother’s wedding, do you know?”