“Oh I don’t expect to get anything worse than brain-fever,” said Wimsey. “I mean”—seeing Mrs. Venables look concerned—“I can’t quite make out about these underthings. Perhaps you can suggest something.” Mrs. Venables came in, and he laid his problem before her.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mrs. Venables, gingerly examining the objects before her. “I’m afraid I’m not a Sherlock Holmes. I should think the man must have had a very good, hard-working wife, but I can’t say more.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t explain why he should get his things in France. Especially as everything else is English. Except, of course, the ten-centime piece, and they’re common enough in this country.”
Mrs. Venables, who had been gardening and was rather hot, sat down to consider the question. “The only thing I can think of,” she said, “is that he got his English clothes as a disguise — you said he came here in disguise, didn’t you? But, of course, as nobody would see his underneaths, he didn’t bother to change them.”
“But that would mean that he came from France.”
“Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was a Frenchman. They often wear beards, don’t they?”
“Yes; but the man I met wasn’t a Frenchman.”
“But you don’t know he was the man you met. He may be somebody quite different.”
“Well, he may,” said Wimsey, dubiously.
“He didn’t bring any other clothes with him, I suppose?”
“No; not a thing. He was just a tramping out-of-work. Or he said he was. All he brought was an old British trenchcoat, which he took with him, and a toothbrush. He left that behind him. Can we wangle a bit of evidence out of that? Can we say that he must have been murdered because, if he had merely wandered away, he would have taken his toothbrush with him? And if he was the corpse, where is his coat? For the corpse had no coat.”
“I can’t imagine,” replied Mrs. Venables, “and that reminds me, do be careful when you go down the bottom of the garden. The rooks are building and they are so messy. I should wear a hat if I were you. Or there’s always an old umbrella in the summer-house. Did he leave his hat behind too?”
“In a sense he did,” said Wimsey. “We’ve found that, in rather a queer place. But it doesn’t help us much.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Venables, “how tiresome it all is. I’m sure you’ll wear your brains right out with all these problems. You mustn’t overdo yourself. And the butcher says he has some nice calf’s liver to-day, only I don’t know if you can eat it. Theodore is very fond of liver-and-bacon, though I always think it’s rather rich. And I’ve been meaning to say, it’s very good of that nice manservant of yours to clean the silver and brass so beautifully, but he really shouldn’t have troubled. I’m quite used to giving Emily a hand with it. I hope it isn’t very dull for him here. I understand he’s a great acquisition in the kitchen and extraordinarily good at music-hall imitations. Twice as good as the talkies, Cook says.”
“Is he indeed?” said Wimsey. “I had no idea of it. But what I don’t know about Bunter would fill a book.”
Mrs. Venables bustled away, but her remarks remained in Wimsey’s mind. He put aside the vest and pants, filled a pipe and wandered down the garden, pursued by Mrs. Venables with an ancient and rook-proof linen hat, belonging to the Rector. The hat was considerably too small for him, and the fact that he immediately put it on, with expressions of gratitude, may attest the kind heart which, despite the poet, is frequently found in close alliance with coronets; though the shock to Bunter’s system was severe when his master suddenly appeared before him, wearing this grotesque headgear, and told him to get the car out and accompany him on a short journey.
“Very good, my lord,” said Bunter. “Ahem! there is a fresh breeze, my lord.”
“All the better.”
“Certainly, my lord. If I may venture to say so, the tweed cap or the grey felt would possibly be better suited to the climatic conditions.”
“Eh? Oh! Possibly you are right, Bunter. Pray restore this excellent hat to its proper place, and, if you should see Mrs. Venables, give her my compliments and say that I found its protection invaluable. And, Bunter, I rely upon you to keep a check upon your Don Juan fascinations and not strew the threshold of friendship with the wreckage of broken hearts.”
“Very good, my lord.”
On returning with the grey felt, Bunter found the car already out and his lordship in the driving-seat.
“We are going to try a long shot, Bunter, and we will begin with Leamholt.”
“By all means, my lord.”
They sped away up the Fenchurch Road, turned left along the Drain, switchbacked over Frog’s Bridge without mishap and ran the twelve or thirteen miles to the little town of Leamholt. It was market day, and the Daimler had to push her way decorously through droves of sheep and pigs and through groups of farmers, who stood carelessly in the middle of the street, disdaining to move till the mudguards brushed their thighs. In the centre of one side of the market-place stood the post-office.
“Go in here, Bunter, and ask if there is any letter here for Mr. Stephen Driver, to be left till called for.”
Lord Peter waited for some time, as one always waits when transacting business in rural post-offices, while pigs lurched against his bumpers and bullocks blew down his neck. Presently, Bunter returned, having drawn a blank despite a careful search conducted by three young ladies and the postmaster in person.
“Well, never mind,” said Wimsey. “Leamholt is the post town, so I thought we ought to give it the first chance. The other possibilities are Holport and Walbeach, on this side of the Drain. Holport is a long way off and rather unlikely. I think we will try Walbeach. There’s a direct road from here — at least, as direct as any fen road ever is…. I suppose God could have made a sillier animal than a sheep, but it is very certain that He never did…. Unless it’s cows. Hoop, there, hup! hup! get along with you, Jemima!”
Mile after mile the flat road reeled away behind them. Here a windmill, there a solitary farm-house, there a row of poplars strung along the edge of a reed-grown dyke. Wheat, potatoes, beet, mustard and wheat again, grassland, potatoes, lucerne, wheat, beet and mustard. A long village street with a grey and ancient church tower, a redbrick chapel, and the Vicarage set in a little oasis of elm and horse-chestnut, and then once more dyke and windmill, wheat, mustard and grassland. And as they went, the land flattened more and more, if a flatter flatness were possible, and the windmills became more numerous, and on the right hand the silver streak of the Wale River came back into view, broader now, swollen with the water of the Thirty-foot and of Harper’s Cut and St. Simon’s Eau, and winding and spreading here and there, with a remembrance of its ancient leisure. Then, ahead of the great circle of the horizon, a little bunch of spires and roofs and a tall tree or so, and beyond them the thin masts of shipping. And so, by bridge and bridge the travellers came to Walbeach, once a great port, but stranded now far inland with the silting of the marshes and the choking of the Wale outfall; yet with her maritime tradition written unerringly upon her grey stones and timber warehouses, and the long lines of her half-deserted quays.