“Hold on, my lord,” said the Superintendent. “The woman’s fainted.”
THE FOURTH PART
THE SLOW WORK
Who shut up the sea with doors… and brake up for it my decreed place?
JOB, xxxviii. 8, 10.
“He won’t say anything,” said Superintendent Blundell.
“I know he won’t,” said Wimsey. “Have you arrested him?”
“No, my lord, I haven’t. I’ve sent him home and told him to think it over. Of course, we could easily get him on being an accessory after the fact in both cases. I mean, he was shielding a known murderer — that’s pretty clear, I fancy; and he’s also shielding whoever killed Deacon, if he didn’t do it himself. But I’m taking the view that we’ll be able to handle him better after we’ve interrogated James. And we know James will be back in England at the end of the month. His owners have been very sensible. They’ve given him orders to come home, without saying what he’s wanted for. They’ve arranged for another man to take his place and he’s to report himself by the next boat.”
“Good! It’s a damnable business, the whole thing. If ever a fellow deserved a sticky death, it’s this Deacon brute. If the law had found him the law would have hanged him, with loud applause from all good citizens. Why should we hang a perfectly decent chap for anticipating the law and doing our dirty work for us?”
“Well, it is the law, my lord,” replied Mr. Blundell, “and it’s not my place to argue about it. In any case, we’re going to have a bit of a job to hang Will Thoday, unless it’s as an accessory before the fact. Deacon was killed on a full stomach. If Will did away with him on the 30th, or the 31st, why did he go to collect the £200? If Deacon was dead, he wouldn’t want it. On the other hand, if Deacon wasn’t killed till the 4th, who fed him in the interval? If James killed him, why did he trouble to feed him first? The thing makes no sense.”
“Suppose Deacon was being fed by somebody,” said Wimsey, “and suppose he said something infuriatin’ and the somebody killed him all of a sudden in a frenzy, not meaning to?”
“Yes, but how did he kill him? He wasn’t stabbed or shot or clouted over the head.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Wimsey. “Curse the man! He’s a perfect nuisance, dead or alive, and whoever killed him was a public benefactor. I wish I’d killed him myself. Perhaps I did. Perhaps the rector did. Perhaps Hezekiah Lavender did.”
“I don’t suppose it was any of those,” said Mr. Blundell, stolidly. “But it might have been somebody else, of course. There’s that Potty, for instance. He’s always wandering round the church at night. Only he’d have to get into the bell-chamber, and I don’t see how he could. But I’m waiting for James. I’ve got a hunch that James may have quite a lot to tell us.”
“Have you? Oysters have beards, but they don’t wag them.”
“If it comes to oysters,” said the Superintendent, “there’s ways and means of opening ’em — and you needn’t swallow ’em whole, neither. You’re not going back to Fenchurch?”
“Not just at present. I don’t think there’s very much I can do down there for a bit. But my brother Denver and I are going to Walbeach to open the New Cut. I expect we shall see you there.”
* * *
The only other thing of interest that happened during the next week or so was the sudden death of Mrs. Wilbraham. She died at night and alone — apparently from mere old age — with the emeralds clasped in her hand. She left a will drawn up fifteen years earlier, in which she left the whole of her very considerable estate to her Cousin Henry Thorpe “because he is the only honest man I know.” That she should cheerfully have left her only honest relative to suffer the wearing torments of straitened means and anxiety throughout the intervening period seemed to be only what anybody might have expected from her enigmatic and secretive disposition. A codicil, dated on the day after Henry’s death, transferred the legacy to Hilary, while a further codicil, executed a few days before her own death, not only directed that the emeralds which had caused all the disturbance should be given to “Lord Peter Wimsey, who seems to be a sensible man and to have acted without interested motives,” but also made him Hilary’s trustee. Lord Peter made a wry face over this bequest. He offered the necklace to Hilary, but she refused to touch it; it had painful associations for her. It was, indeed, only with difficulty that she was persuaded to accept the Wilbraham estate. She hated the thought of the testatrix; and besides, she had set her heart on earning her own living. “Uncle Edward will be worse than ever,” she said. “He will want me to marry some horrible rich man, and if I want to marry a poor one, he’ll say he’s after the money. And anyway, I don’t want to marry anybody.”
“Then don’t,” said Wimsey. “Be a wealthy spinster.”
“And get like Aunt Wilbraham? Not me!”
“Of course not. Be a nice wealthy spinster.”
“Are there any?”
“Well, there’s me. I mean, I’m a nice wealthy bachelor. Fairly nice, anyway. And it’s fun to be rich. I find it so. You needn’t spend it all on yachts and cocktails, you know. You could build something or endow something or run something or the other. If you don’t take it, it will go to some ghastly person — Uncle Edward or somebody — whoever is Mrs. Wilbraham’s next-of-kin, and they’d be sure to do something silly with it.”
“Uncle Edward would,” said Hilary, thoughtfully.
“Well, you’ve got a few years to think it over,” said Wimsey. “When you’re of age, you can see about throwing it into the Thames. But what I’m to do with the emeralds I really don’t know.”
“Beastly things,” said Hilary. “They’ve killed grandfather, and practically killed Dad, and they’ve killed Deacon and they’ll kill somebody else before long. I wouldn’t touch them with a barge-pole.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll keep them till you’re twenty-one, and then we’ll form ourselves into a Wilbraham Estate Disposals Committee and do something exciting with the whole lot.”
Hilary agreed; but Wimsey felt depressed. So far as he could see, his interference had done no good to anybody and only made extra trouble. It was a thousand pities that the body of Deacon had ever come to light at all. Nobody wanted it.
* * *
The New Wash Cut was opened with great rejoicings at the end of the month. The weather was perfect, the Duke of Denver made a speech which was a model of the obvious, and the Regatta was immensely successful. Three people fell into the river, four men and an old woman were had up for being drunk and disorderly, a motor-car became entangled with a tradesman’s cart and young Gotobed won First Prize in the Decorated Motor-cycle section of the Sports.
And the River Wale, placidly doing its job in the midst of all the disturbance, set to work to scour its channel to the sea. Wimsey, leaning over the wall at the entry to the Cut, watched the salt water moving upward with the incoming tide, muddied and chafing along its new-made bed. On his left, the crooked channel of the old river lay empty of its waters, a smooth expanse of shining mud.