Have His Carcase (31 page)

at 2.10 at the very latest. Where was the murderer?’

‘In the cleft of the rock. Oh, ah – but not the horse. I see. There wouldn’t be

room for a horse too. How exasperating! If we put the murder too early, he

wouldn’t have time to get there, and if we put it too late, he wouldn’t have time

to get away. It’s maddening.’

‘Yes, and we can’t realy put the murder earlier than two o’clock because of

the blood. Putting the horse’s speed and the condition of the blood and the

scream al together, we get two o’clock as the earliest possible and on the

whole the most probable time for the murder. Right. You come on the scene, at

latest, at 2.5. Alow (which is very unlikely) that the murderer dashed up at ful

galop, cut Alexis’ throat and dashed off again at ful speed without wasting a

second, and alow him (which is again most unlikely) to do as much as ten miles

an hour
through water
. At 2.5 he wil have done just under a mile on his way

back. But we proved this afternoon that you have a clear view of over a mile

and a half from the Flat-Iron in the direction of Darley. If he had been there,

you couldn’t have failed to see him. Or could you? You didn’t start realy

looking
til 2.10, when you found the body.’

‘No, I didn’t. But I’ve got
all
my faculties. If the murder was done at two

o’clock, when the scream woke me, I couldn’t possibly not have
heard
a horse

galoping hel-for-leather along the shore. It would make a pretty good row,

wouldn’t it?’

‘It certainly would. Tramp, tramp along the land they rode, Splash, splash

along the sea. It won’t do, my girl, it won’t do. And yet, that mare went along

that bit of beach not so very long ago, or I’l eat my hat. Eh? Oh, thanks,

Bunter.’

He took the hat which Bunter gravely proffered him.

‘And there’s the ring-bolt in the rock. That didn’t come there by chance. The

horse was taken there, but when and why is a puzzle. Never mind. Let’s check

up on our facts, just as though the thing were coming out al right.’

They left the field and walked up Hinks’s Lane.

‘We won’t take the car,’ said Wimsey. ‘We’l just wander along chewing

straws and looking idle. Yonder is the vilage green, I fancy, where, as you

once informed us, under a spreading chestnut tree the vilage smithy stands. Let

us hope the smith is at work. Smiths, like electric drils, are made to be stared

at.’

The smith was at work. The cheerful clink of his hammer fel cheerily on their

ears as they crossed the green, and the huge dappled quarters of a cart-horse

gleamed in the shaft of sunlight that fel across the open door.

Harriet and Wimsey lounged up, Wimsey dangling the horse-shoe in his

hand.

‘Afternoon, zur,’ said the yokel in charge of the cart-horse, civily.

‘ ’Noon,’ replied Wimsey.

‘Fine day, zur.’

‘Ah!’ said Wimsey.

The yokel looked Wimsey over thoroughly, and decided that he was a

knowledgeable person and no foolish chatterer. He hitched his shoulder a little

more comfortably against the door-post and fel into a reverie.

After about five minutes, Wimsey judged that the time had come when a

further observation might be wel received. He said, jerking his head in the

direction of the anvil:

‘Not so much of that as there used to be.’

‘Ah!’ said the man.

The smith, who had removed the dul shoe from the anvil and replaced it in

the forge for re-heating, must have caught the remark, for he glanced towards

the door. He said nothing, however, but put al his energy into working his

belows.

Presently, the shoe being once more on the anvil, the man with the horse

shifted his shoulders again, pushed his cap back, scratched his head, replaced

the cap, spat (but with perfect politeness), thrust his hand deep into the right-

hand pocket of his breeches and addressed a brief word of encouragement to

the horse.

Silence, punctuated only by the clink of the hammer, folowed, til Wimsey

remarked:

‘You’l get the hay in al right, if this lasts.’

‘Ah!’ said the man, with satisfaction.

The smith, raising the shoe in the tongs and again returning it to the fire,

wiped his brow with his leather apron and broke into the conversation. He

folowed Humpty-Dumpty’s method of going back to the last remark but one.

‘I recolect,’ he said, ‘when thur warn’t none of these motor-cars, only the

one Squire Goodrich had – what year would that be now, Jem?’

‘Mafeking year, that wur.’

‘Ah! zo it wur.’

Silence, while al meditated.

Then Wimsey said:

‘I can remember when my father kept twenty-three horses, not counting the

farm stock, of course.’

‘Ah!’ said the blacksmith. ‘That ’ud be a big place, zur?’

‘Yes; it was a big place. It was a treat for us kids to go down to the smithy

and see them shod.’

‘Ah!’

‘I stil know a good bit of work when I see one. This young lady and I

picked up a cast shoe just now on the beach – you don’t get as much of that

sort of luck these days as you used to.’

He dangled the shoe on his fingers.

‘Off-fore,’ he added, casualy; ‘nice little wel-bred cob about fourteen

hands; kicks her shoes off, and pecks a bit on this foot – is that right?’

The smith extended a large hand, courteously wiping it first upon his apron.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘That’s right enough. Bay cob – belongs to Mr Newcombe – I

zhuld know it.’

‘Your work?’

‘Zartain zhure.’

‘Ah!’

‘Not been lying about very long, either.’

‘No.’ The smith licked his finger and rubbed the iron lovingly. ‘What day

wur that Mr Newcombe found the mare loose, Jem?’

Jem appeared to do a complicated arithmetical calculation, and replied:

‘Vriday, ay, it did be Vriday morning. That’s when it wur. Vriday.’

‘Ah! to be zhure. So t’wur.’

The smith leaned on his hammer and considered the matter. By slow degrees

he brought out the rest of the story. It was not much, but it confirmed Wimsey’s

deductions.

Farmer Newcombe always kept horses in that field during the summer

months. No, he never mowed that meadow on account of the (agricultural and

botanical detail of which Harriet did not grasp the significance). No, Mr

Newcombe wouldn’t be about in that meadow much, no, nor yet the men, on

account of it’s lying a long way from the rest of his land (interminable historical

detail dealing with the distribution of tenancies and glebe round about that

district, in which Harriet became completely lost), nor they wouldn’t need to,

not to water the horses, on account of the stream (lengthy and rather

disputatious account, to which Jem contributed, of the original course of the

stream in Jem’s grandfather’s time, before Mr Grenfel made the pond over to

Drake’s Spinney), and it wasn’t Mr Newcombe neither that see the mare

running wild Friday morning, but Bessie Turvey’s youngest, and he came and

told Jem’s uncle George and him and another of them got her in and terrible

lame she were, but Mr Newcombe, he did ought to have mended that gap

before (prolonged recital of humorous anecdote, ending ‘and lord! how Old

Parson did laugh, to be zhure!’).

After which, the explorers drove back in state to Wilvercombe, to hear that

the body had not turned up yet, but that Inspector Umpelty had a pretty good

idea where it might be. And dinner. And dancing. And so to bed.

XVII

THE EVIDENCE OF THE MONEY

‘O ho! here’s royal booty, on my soul:

A draught of ducats!’

Fragment

Wednesday, 24 June

Faithful to her self-imposed duty, Harriet next morning sought out Mrs Weldon.

It was not altogether easy to get rid of Henry, whose filial affection seemed

positively to tie him to his mother’s apron-strings. A happy thought made

Harriet suggest that she and Mrs Weldon might go and see what the

Resplendent could do for them in the way of a Turkish bath. This was check-

mate for Henry. He took himself off, murmuring that he would go and have a

haircut.

In the mood of relaxation and confidence that folows on being parboiled, it

was easy enough to pump Mrs Weldon. A little diplomacy was needed, so as

not to betray the ulterior object of the inquiry, but no detective could have had

a more unsuspecting victim. The matter proved to be very much as Harriet had

supposed.

Mrs Weldon was the only daughter of a wealthy brewer, who had left her a

very considerable fortune in her own right. Her parents having died when she

was a child, she had been brought up by a strict Noncomformist aunt in the little

town of St Ives in Huntingdonshire. She had been courted by a certain George

Weldon, a prosperous farmer owning a considerable property at Leamhurst in

the Isle of Ely, and had married him at eighteen, chiefly in order to get away

from the aunt. That rigid lady had not altogether opposed the marriage, which

was reasonably suitable, though not briliant; but she had shown sufficient

business ability to insist that her niece’s money should be tied up in such a

manner that Weldon could not touch the capital. Weldon, to do him justice, had

made no objection to this. He seemed to have been a perfectly honest, sober

and industrious man, farming his land thriftily and wel and having, so far as

Harriet could make out, no drawbacks beyond a certain lack of imagination in

matrimonial matters.

Henry was the only child of the marriage, and had been brought up from the

beginning with the idea that he was to folow in his father’s footsteps, and here

again, Weldon senior took a very proper view of the matter. He would not

have the boy brought up in idleness, or to ideas beyond his proper station in

life. He was a farmer’s son, and a farmer he should be, though Mrs Weldon

herself had often pleaded that the boy should be brought up to one of the

professions. But old Weldon was adamant, and indeed Mrs Weldon was

obliged to admit that he had very likely been right after al. Henry showed no

special aptitude for anything but the open-air life of the farm; the trouble was

that he did not apply himself even to that as wel as he should have done, and

was inclined to run after girls and race-meetings, leaving his work to be done by

his father and the farmhands. Already, before the elder Weldon’s death, there

had been a good deal of antagonism between Henry and his mother, and this

became intensified later on.

The farmer had died when Henry was twenty-five. He had left the farm and

al his own savings to his son, knowing that his wife was wel provided for.

Under Henry’s management the farm had begun to go down. Times had grown

harder for farmers. More and more personal supervision was needed to make

farming pay; Henry gave it less and less. There were experiments in horse-

breeding, which had not turned out wel, owing to lack of judgement in buying

and handling the stock. Mrs Weldon had by this time left the farm, which she

had always disliked, and was living a nomad life in spas and watering-places.

Henry had several times come to her for loans, and had received them; but Mrs

Weldon had steadily refused to make over any of her capital to him, although

she might have done so, her trustees being now dead and the trust wound up.

She had, after al, learnt something from the Noncomformist aunt. Finaly, when

she found out that Henry had got himself into rather disgraceful trouble with an

innkeeper’s wife in a neighbouring vilage, she quarreled with Henry, loudly and

finaly. Since then, she had heard little from him. She understood, however, that

the intrigue with the innkeeper’s wife had come to an end, and in February of

the current year she had told him about her forthcoming marriage to Alexis.

Henry had come down to Wilvercombe, stayed for the weekend, met Alexis

and expressed his disapproval of the whole business. This did not mend

matters, and relations had been strained until the death of Alexis had urged the

lonely woman to seek comfort in the ties of blood. Henry had come, expressed

contrition for his former waywardness, received forgiveness and shown that he

was, after al, her loving son.

Harriet mentioned Mrs Lefranc’s theory that Alexis had committed suicide

owing to the failure of unknown and important ‘speculations’. Mrs Weldon

scouted the theory.

‘What could it matter to him, my dear? Paul knew perfectly wel that when

we were married I should settle my money on him – with the exception, of

course, of a little provision for Henry. Of course, in the ordinary way, Henry

would get everything, and I am afraid he was a little upset when he heard that I

was going to get married, but, you know, it was not right that he should feel like

that. His father left him very wel off and always impressed upon him that he