“Dig up one thing,” thought Wimsey, “and you have to dig up another. I wish we’d never dug up Deacon. Once you let the tide in, it’s got to go somewhere.”
* * *
James Thoday, returning to England as instructed by his employers, was informed that the police wanted him as a witness. He was a sturdy man, rather older than William, with bleak blue eyes and a reserved manner. He repeated his original story, without emphasis and without details. He had been taken ill in the train after leaving Fenchurch. He had attributed the trouble to some sort of gastric influenza. When he got to London, he had felt quite unable to proceed, and had telegraphed to that effect.
He had spent part of that day huddled over the fire in a public house near Liverpool Street; he thought they might remember him there. They could not give him a bed for the night and, in the evening, feeling a little better, he had gone out and found a room in a back street. He could not recall the address, but it had been a clean, pleasant place. In the morning he found himself fit to continue his journey, though still very weak and tottery. He had, of course, seen English papers mentioning the discovery of the corpse in the churchyard, but knew nothing further about it, except, of course, what he had heard from his brother and sister-in-law, which was very little. He had never had any idea who the dead man was. Would he be surprised to hear that it was Geoffrey Deacon? He would be very much surprised indeed. The news came as a terrible shock to him. That would be a bad job for his people.
Indeed, he looked startled enough. But there had been a tenseness of the muscles about his mouth which persuaded Superintendent Blundell that the shock had been caused, not so much by hearing the dead man’s name as by hearing that the police knew it.
Mr. Blundell, aware of the solicitude with which the Law broods over the interests of witnesses, thanked him and proceeded with his inquiries. The public house was found, and substantiated the story of the sick sailor who had sat over the fire all day drinking hot toddies; but the clean and pleasant woman who had let her room to Mr. Thoday was not so easy of identification.
Meanwhile, the slow machinery of the London police revolved and, from many hundreds of reports, ground out the name of a garage proprietor who had hired out a motor-bicycle on the evening of the 4th of January to a man answering to the description of James Thoday. The bicycle had been returned on the Sunday by a messenger, who had claimed and taken away the deposit, minus the charge for hire and insurance. No, not a district messenger: a youth, who looked like an ordinary out-of-work.
On hearing this, Chief Inspector Parker, who was dealing with the London end of the inquiry, groaned dismally. It was too much to expect this nameless casual to turn up. Ten to one, he had pocketed the surplus deposit and would be particularly unwilling to inform the world of the fact. Parker was wrong. The man who had hired the bicycle had apparently made the fatal mistake of picking an honest messenger. After prolonged inquiry and advertisement a young Cockney made his appearance at New Scotland Yard. He gave his name as Frank Jenkins, and explained that he had only just seen the advertisement. He had been seeking work in various places, and had drifted back to Town in time to be confronted with the police inquiry on a notice board at the Labour Exchange.
He very well remembered the episode of the motorbike. It had struck him as funny at the time. He had been hanging round a garridge in Bloomsbury in the early morning of January 5th, hoping to pick up a job, when he see a bloke coming along on this here bike. The bloke was short and stocky, with blue eyes and sounded like he might be the boss of some outfit or other — he spoke sharp. and quick, like he might be accustomed to giving orders. Yes, he might have been an officer in the mercantile marine, very likely. Come to think of it, he did look a bit like a sailor. He was dressed in a very wet and dirty motoring coat and wore a cap, pulled down over his face, like. This man had said: “Here, sonny, d’you want a job?” On being told “Yes,” he had asked: “Can you ride a motor-bike?”
Frank Jenkins had replied, “Lead me to it, guv’nor”; whereupon he had been told to take the machine back to a certain garage, to collect the deposit and to bring it to the stranger outside the Rugby Tavern at the corner of Great James Street and Chapel Street, when he would receive something for his pains. He had done his part of the business, and hadn’t took more than an hour, all told (returning by ’bus), but when he arrived at the Rugby Tavern, the stranger was not there, and apparently never had been there. A woman said she had seen him walking away in the direction of Guildford Street. Jenkins had hung about till the middle of the morning, but had seen no sign of the man in the motor-coat. He had therefore deposited the money with the landlord of the Tavern, with a message to say that he could wait no longer and had kept back half-a-crown — that being the amount he thought fair to award himself for the transaction. The landlord would be able to tell them if the sum had ever been claimed.
The landlord, being interrogated, brought the matter to mind. Nobody answering the description of the stranger had ever called for the money, which, after a little search and delay, was produced intact in a dirty envelope. Enclosed with it was the garage-proprietor’s receipt, made out in the name of Joseph Smith, at a fictitious address.
The next thing was, obviously, to confront James Thoday with Frank Jenkins. The messenger identified his employer immediately; James Thoday persisted, politely, that there was some mistake. What next, thought Mr. Parker.
He put the question to Lord Peter, who said:
“I think it’s time for a spot of dirty work, Charles. Try putting William and James alone in a room with a microphone or whatever you call the beastly gadget. It may not be pretty, but you’ll probably find that it works.”
In these circumstances, therefore, the brothers met for the first time since James had left William on the morning of January 4th. The scene was a waiting-room at Scotland Yard.
“Well, William,” said James.
“Well. James,” said William.
There was a silence. Then James said: “How much do they know?”
“Pretty well everything, by what I can make out.”
There was another pause. Then James spoke again in a constrained voice: “Very well. Then you had better let me take the blame. I’m not married, and there’s Mary and the kids to be thought of. But in God’s name, man, couldn’t you have got rid of the fellow without killing him?”
“That,” said William, “is just what I was going to ask you.”
“You mean to say, it wasn’t you did away with him?”
“Of course not. I’d be a fool to do it. I’d offered the brute two hundred pounds to go back where he came from. If I hadn’t a-been ill, I’d a-got him away all right, and that’s what I thought you’d a-done. My God! when he come up out o’ that grave, like Judgment Day, I wished you’d killed me along of him.”
“But I never laid hand on him, Will, till after he was dead. I saw him there, the devil, with that ghastly look on his face, and I never blamed you for what you’d done. I swear I never blamed you. Will — only for being such a fool as to do it. So I broke his ugly face in, so that no one should ever guess who he was. But they’ve found out, seemingly. It was cursed bad luck, that grave being opened so soon. May be it’d have been better if I’d carried him out and thrown him in the Drain, but it’s a long way to go, and I thought we’d be safe enough.”