“What the devil do you want. Potty?” demanded the Superintendent.
“Oh, nothing,” replied Potty. “I don’t want nothing. Who’ve you goin’ to hang with that there, mister? That’s a rope, that is. They’ve got eight on ’em hanging up the tower there—” he added, confidentially. “Rector don’t let me go up there no more, because they don’t want nobody to know. But Potty Peake knows. One, two, three, four, five, six seven, eight — all hung up by the neck. Old Paul, he’s the biggest — Tailor Paul — but there did ought to be nine tailors by rights. I can count, you see; Potty can count. I’ve counted ’em over time and again on my fingers. Eight. And one is nine. And one is ten — but I ain’t telling you his name. Oh, no. He’s waiting for the nine tailors — one, two, three, four—”
“Here, you, hop it!” cried the Superintendent, exasperated. “And don’t let me catch you hanging round here again.”
“Who’s a-hanging? Listen — you tell me, and I’ll tell you. There’s Number Nine a-coming, and that’s a rope to hang him, ain’t it, mister? Nine of ’em, and eight’s there already. Potty knows. Potty can say. But he won’t. Oh, no! Somebody might be listening.” His face changed to its usual vacant look and he touched his cap. “Good-day, sir. Good-day, mister. I got to feed the pigs, that’s Potty’s work. Yes, that’s right. They pigs did ought to be fed. ’Morning, sir; ’morning, mister.”
He slouched away across the fields towards a group of out-houses some distance away.
“There!” said Mr. Blundell, much vexed. “He’ll go telling everybody about this rope. He’s got hanging on the brain, ever since he found his mother hanging in the cowhouse when he was a kid. Over at Little Dykesey, that was, a matter of thirty year back. Well, it can’t be helped. I’ll get these things taken along to the station, and come back later on for Will Thoday. It’ll be past his lunchtime now.”
“It’s past mine, too,” said Wimsey, as the clock chimed the quarter past one. “I shall have to apologise to Mrs. Venables.”
* * *
“So you see, Mrs. Thoday,” said Superintendent Blundell, pleasantly, “if anybody can help us over this awkward business it’s you.”
Mary Thoday shook her head. “I’m sure I would if I could, Mr. Blundell, but there I how can I? It’s right enough to say I was up all night with Will. I hardly had my clothes off for a week, he was that bad, and the night after they laid poor Lady Thorpe to rest, he was just as bad as could be. It turned to pneumonia, you know, and we didn’t think as we should ever pull him through. I’m not likely to forget that night, nor the day neither. Sitting here, listening to old Tailor Paul and wondering if he was going to ring for Will before the night was out.”
“There, there!” said her husband, embarrassed, and sprinkling a great quantity of vinegar on his tinned salmon, “it’s all over now, and there’s no call to get talking that way.”
“Of course not,” said the Superintendent. “Not but what you had a pretty stiff time of it, didn’t you, Will? Delirious and all that kind of thing, I’ll lay. I know what pneumonia is, for it carried off my old mother-in-law in 1922. It’s a very trying thing to nurse, is pneumonia.”
“So ’tis,” agreed Mrs. Thoday. “Very bad he was, that night. Kept on trying to get out of his bed and go to church. He thought they was ringing the peal without him, though I kept on telling him that was all rung and finished with New Year’s Day. A terrible job I had with him, and nobody to help me, Jim having left us that very morning. Jim was a great help while he was here, but he had to go back to his ship. He stayed as long as he could, but of course he’s not his own master.”
“No,” said Mr. Blundell. “Mate on a merchantman, isn’t he? How’s he getting along? Have you heard from him lately?”
“We had a postcard last week from Hong Kong,” said Mary, “but he didn’t say much. Only that he was well and love to the children. He hasn’t sent nothing but postcards this voyage, and he must be terrible busy, for he’s such a man for writing letters as a rule.”
“They’ll be a bit shorthanded, maybe,” said Will. “And it’s an anxious time for men in his line of business, freights being very scarce and hard to come by. It’ll be all this depression, I suppose.”
“Yes, of course. When do you expect him back?”
“Not for I don’t know when,” replied Will. The Superintendent looked sharply at him, for he seemed to detect a note almost of satisfaction in the tone. “Not if trade’s decent, that is. You see, his ship don’t make regular trips. She follows cargo, as they call it, tramping round from port to port wherever there’s anything to be picked up.”
“Ah, yes, of course. What’s the name of the ship, again?”
“The Hannah Brown. She belongs to Lampson & Blake of Hull. Jim is doing very well, I’m told, and they set great store by him. If anything happened to Captain Woods, they’d give the ship to Jim. Wouldn’t they, Will?”
“So he says,” replied Thoday uneasily. “But it don’t do to count on anything these days.”
The contrast between the wife’s enthusiasm and the husband’s lack of it was so marked, that Mr. Blundell drew his own conclusions. “So Jim’s been making trouble between ’em, has he?” was his unspoken comment. “That explains a lot. But it doesn’t help me much. Better change the subject.”
“Then you didn’t happen to see anything going on at the church that night?” he said. “No lights moving about? Nothing of that kind?”
“I didn’t move from Will’s bedside all night,” replied Mrs. Thoday, with a hesitating glance at her husband. “You see, he was so ill, and if I left him a minute, he’d be throwing the clothes off and trying to get up. When it wasn’t the peal that was in his mind, it was the old trouble — you know.”
“The old Wilbraham affair?”
“Yes. He was all muddled up in his head, thinking the — the — that dreadful trial was on and he had to stand by me.”
“That’ll do!” cried Thoday, suddenly, pushing his plate away so violently that the knife and fork clattered from the plate upon the table. “I won’t have you fretting yourself about that old business no more. All that’s dead and buried. If-it come up in my mind when I wasn’t rightly in my senses, I can’t help that. God knows, I’d be the last to put you in mind of it if I’d been able to help myself. You did ought to know that.”
“I’m not blaming you, Will.”
“And I won’t have nothing more said about it in my house. What do you want to come worrying her this way, Mr. Blundell? She’s told you as she don’t know a thing about this chap that was buried, and that’s all there is to it. What I may have said and done, when I was ill, don’t matter a hill of beans.”
“Not a scrap,” admitted the Superintendent, “and I’m very sorry such an allusion should have come up, I’m sure. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. You can’t assist me and that’s all there is to it. I’m not saying it isn’t a disappointment, but a policeman’s job’s all disappointments, and one must take the rough with the smooth. Now I’ll be off and let the youngsters come back to their tea. By the way, what’s gone with the parrot?”