“Dear me,” said Wimsey. “What exactly did she see?”
“No more than a light, by what Polly could make out. That was one of the nights Will Thoday was very bad, and it seems Rosie was up and about helping her mother — for she’s a good, handy child, is Rosie — and she looks out o’ the window and sees the light just a-rising out of where the grave would be.”
“Did she tell her mother and father?”
“Not then, she didn’t. She didn’t like to, and I remember well, as a child I was just the same, only with me it was a funny sort of thing that used to groan in the wash-house, which I took to be bears — but as to telling anybody, I’d ha’ died first. And so would Rosie, only that night her father wanted her to go a message to the Rectory and she tried everything to get off doing it, and at last he got angry and threatened to take a slipper to her. Not that he meant it, I don’t suppose,” said Mrs. Ashton, “for he’s a kind man as a rule, but he hadn’t hardly got over his illness and he was fratchety, like, as sick people will be. So then Rosie made up her mind to tell him what she seen. Only that made him angrier still, and he said she was to go and no more nonsense, and never to speak about ghosts, and such like to him again. If Mary had been there, she’d a-gone, but she was out getting his medicine from Dr. Baines, and the ’bus don’t come back till half-past seven and Will wanted the message sent particular, though I forget now what it were. So Polly told Rosie it couldn’t have been Lady Thorpe’s spirit, for that was at rest, and if it had been, Lady Thorpe wouldn’t do harm to a living soul; and she said Rosie must a-seen Harry Gotobed’s lantern. But it couldn’t well a-been that, for by what the child said it was one o’clock in the morning past that Rosie see the light. Dear me an’ all! I’m sure if I’d a-known then what I know now, I’d a-paid more attention to it.”
Superintendent Blundell was not best pleased when this conversation was repeated to him. “Thoday and his wife had better be careful,” he observed.
“They told you the exact truth, you know,” said Wimsey.
“Ah!” said Mr. Blundell. “I don’t like witnesses to be so damned particular about exact truth. They get away with it as often as not, and then where are you? Not but what I did think of speaking to Rosie, but her mother called her away double quick — and no wonder! Besides, I don’t care, somehow, for pumping kids about their parents. I can’t help thinking of my own Betty and Ann.”
And if that was not quite the exact truth, there was a good deal of truth in it; for Mr. Blundell was a kindly man.
THE FIFTH PART
TAILOR PAUL IS CALLED BEFORE WITH A SINGLE
The canal has been dangerously ignored. Each year of the Republic, our family have reported to the Capital that there were silted channels and weakened dykes in our neighbourhood. My husband and Maida’s father have just interviewed the present President. They were received politely, but their conclusion is that nothing will be done.
NORA WALN: The House of Exile.
Lord Peter Wimsey sat in the schoolroom at the Rectory, brooding over a set of underclothing. The schoolroom was, in fact, no longer the schoolroom, and had not been so for nearly twenty years. It had retained its name from the time when the Rector’s daughters departed to a real boarding-school. It was now devoted to Parish Business, but a fragrance of long-vanished governesses still clung about it — governesses with straight-fronted corsets and high-necked frocks with bell sleeves, who wore their hair à la Pompadour. There was a shelf of battered lesson-books, ranging from Little Arthur’s England to Hall & Knight’s Algebra, and a bleached-looking Map of Europe still adorned one wall. Of this room, Lord Peter had been made free, “except,” as Mrs. Venables explained, “on Clothing-Club nights, when I am afraid we shall have to turn you out.”
The vest and pants were spread upon the table, as though the Clothing Club, in retiring, had left some forlorn flotsam and jetsam behind. They had been washed, but there were still faint discolorations upon them, like the shadow of corruption, and here and there the fabric had rotted away, as the garments of mortality will, when the grave has had its way with them. Wafted in through the open window came the funeral scent of jonquils.
Wimsey whistled gently as he examined the underclothes, which had been mended with scrupulous and economical care. It puzzled him that Cranton, last seen in London in September, should possess a French vest and pants so much worn and so carefully repaired. His shirt and outer garments — now also clean and folded — lay on a chair close at hand. They, too, were well-worn, but they were English. Why should Cranton be wearing second-hand French underclothes?
Wimsey knew that it would be hopeless to try tracing the garments through the makers. Underwear of this mark and quality was sold by the hundred thousand in Paris and throughout the provinces. It lay stacked up outside the great linen-drapers’ shops, marked “Occasions,” and thrifty housewives bought it there for cash. There was no laundry-mark; the washing had doubtless been done at home by the housewife herself or the bonne à tout faire. Holes here and there had been carefully darned; under the armpits, patches of a different material had been neatly let in; the wrists of the vest, frayed with use, had been over-sewn; buttons had been renewed upon the pants. Why not? One must make economies. But they were not garments that anyone would have gone out of his way to purchase, even at a second-hand dealer’s. And it would be hard for even the most active man to reduce his clothes to such a state of senility in four months’ wear.
Lord Peter thrust his fingers into his hair till the sleek yellow locks stood upright. “Bless his heart!” thought Mrs. Venables, looking in upon him through the window. She had conceived a warm maternal affection for her guest. “Would you like a glass of milk, or a whisky-and-soda, or a cup of beef-tea?” she suggested, hospitably. Wimsey laughed and thanked her, but declined.
“I hope you won’t catch anything from those dreadful old clothes,” said Mrs. Venables. “I’m sure they can’t be healthy.”