Five Red Herrings (23 page)

‘My dear man,’ said Wimsey, breaking in before the Sergeant could speak, ‘your eloquence is extremely impressive, but not more so than your appearance, which is, if I may say so, picturesque in the extreme. Your absence from your usual haunts has been causing acute distress to your friends — a distress and anxiety which the manner of your return is doing nothing to allay. Before embarking on any discussion about Campbell or any other extraneous subject, will you so far relieve the agony of mind of a sympathising compatriot as to say where you have been, why you have not written and why you appear to have been indulging in a free fight, with extensive damage to your handsome façade?’

‘I never knew such a lot of silly fuss about nothing,’ grumbled Waters. ‘I’ve been yachting with a bloke, that’s all — old Tom Drewitt of Trinity, as a matter of fact. We were running up the west coast, and he was going to put me off at Gourock on Thursday, only we fell in with a bit of bad weather and had to run across and hang round the Irish coast for a couple of days while it blew itself out. I don’t know if you fancy hugging a lee shore full of rocks in a sou-westerly gale. All I can say is, we didn’t. I daresay I am a bit untidy — so’d you be, after five days in Tom’s dirty little wind-jamming beast of a boat. I’ve no skin left on my hands, and it’s not the fault of that young lout of Tom’s that I’m still alive. He got the wind up — Tom ought to have stuck to the tiller himself. Boom came across and nearly cracked my head open. Tom wanted me to go on with him this morning up to Skye, but I wasn’t having any. I told him he could damn well put me off at Gourock and if ever I sailed with him again it would be when that cub of his was drowned and out of harm’s way.’

‘See here, noo,’ put in Sergeant Dalziel. ‘Let’s get a’ this story correct. Ye say ye started oot wi’ this man Drewitt on his yacht. When did ye go aboard, sir?’

‘Look here, why all this?’ said Waters, appealing to Wimsey.

‘Better tell him what he wants to know,’ said Wimsey. ‘I’ll explain later.’

‘Oh, all right, if you say so. Well, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. Last Monday night I was in bed and asleep, when I heard some fool chucking stones at my window. I went down, and there was Drewitt. You remember Drewitt, Wimsey? Or was he before your time?’

‘I never knew any Trinity men,’ said Wimsey. ‘The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.’

‘Of course, you were at Balliol. Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I let Drewitt in and gave him a drink. It was about 11 o’clock at night, I think, and I was rather fed-up at being rousted out, because I meant to go up to Glasgow by the 8.45, and I wanted my beauty-sleep. Besides, I felt rather bloody. You remember, Wimsey — I’d had that scrimmage with Campbell at the McClellan Arms. By the way, what is this story about Campbell?’

‘Tell you later, old man. Carry on.’

‘Well, I told Drewitt I was going to Glasgow, and he said he’d got a better idea than that. Why not come with him? He was running up that way, and if I wasn’t in a hurry I might just as well join him and do a bit of fishing and get the sea-air. It was lovely weather and his boat, Susannah, he calls her, could make the voyage in two or three days, or we could muck about a bit longer if we wanted to, and if the wind didn’t hold, we could fall back on the auxiliary motor. Well, it sounded all right, and it didn’t matter to me when I got to Glasgow, so I said I’d think about it. So then he said wouldn’t I go with him anyhow and have a look at the Susannah. He’d got her lying off the Doon.’

‘That’s right,’ said Wimsey to Dalziel. ‘There was a boat there on Monday night, and she went off Tuesday morning.’

‘You seem to know all about it,’ said Waters. ‘Well, I thought I might as well have the run. It seemed the best way of getting Drewitt out of the house, so I put on a coat and went up with him. He’d hired a car from somewhere or other and he ran me along. He wanted me to go aboard and meet his whelp, but I didn’t want to do that. I hadn’t made up my mind, you see. So he brought me back again and dropped me at the corner of the road where it turns off to Borgue. He’d have come all the way, only I wouldn’t let him, because I knew I’d have to ask him in again and give him another drink, and I’d had quite as much as I wanted already. So I walked back into Kirkcudbright, and left it with him that I’d think it over, and if I wasn’t on board at half-past 9, he wasn’t to wait any longer, because I shouldn’t be coming and he’d miss the tide.

‘Well, I didn’t really intend to go, but I turned in and had a good sleep and next morning when Mrs. McLeod called me, the weather looked damn good, and I thought why not, after all? So I had my breakfast and got my bike out and pushed off.’

‘Ye didna tell Mrs. McLeod whaur ye were gaein’.’

‘No, there wasn’t any need. She knew I was going to Glasgow and might be away some days, and it was no concern of hers how I went. As a matter of fact she was out at the back somewhere, and I didn’t see her. I bicycled up to the Doon, signalled to Drewitt and he took me off.’

‘What did you do with your bicycle?’ asked Wimsey.

‘I just shoved it into a little shed-place there is up there, among the trees. I’d often put it there before when I was painting or bathing off the Doon, and it never came to any harm. Well, that was that. As I was saying, we had rather bad luck with the weather and one thing and another, and we didn’t get to Gourock till this morning.’

‘Did ye no touch onywhere?’

‘Yes — I can give you the itinerary if you want it. We dropped down the estuary with the morning tide, passing the Ross Light some time before 10. Then we held on across Wigtown Bay, passing Burrow Head fairly close in. We had a good south-easterly breeze and made the Mull about tea-time. Then we followed the coast northwards, passing Portpatrick at about 7 o’clock, and anchored for the night in Lady Bay, just outside Loch Ryan. I can’t give you more details than that, as I’m no yachtsman. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday we lazed about and did a bit of fishing, and then, about lunch-time, the wind started to haul round to the south-west and Drewitt said he thought we’d better run across to Larne instead of carrying on up to Gourock as we intended. We put in at Larne for the night and took some beer and stuff aboard. On Thursday it was fine enough, but blowing rather a lot, so we sailed up to Ballycastle. It was a bally place, too. I began to think I was wasting my time, I was sick, too. Friday was a foul beast of a day, raining like hell and blowing. However, Tom Drewitt seemed to think it was the kind of day he liked to be out in. Said he didn’t care how it blew, provided he had plenty of sea-room or words to that effect. We staggered across to Arran, and I was sick all the time. That was the day I got this crack on the head, curse it. I made Tom put in somewhere under the lee of the island, and in the night the wind dropped, thank God! This morning we got up to Gourock and I shook the dust of the beastly boat off my feet. No more sailing-boats for me, thank you. For complete boredom and physical misery, commend me to a small sailing-vessel in a gale of wind. Have you ever tried cooking fish on a dirty little oil-stove, with your knees above your head? Oh, well, perhaps you enjoy that sort of thing. I don’t. Nothing but fish and corned beef for four days — that’s not my idea of amusement. Go on up the coast, indeed! Not on your sweet life, I told him. I got off that damned old wherry as quick as I bloody well could, and went on by train to Glasgow and got a hot bath and a shave, and my God! I needed them. And I was just starting off to catch the 5.20 to Dumfries, when these police imbeciles came along and collared me. And now, do you mind telling me what it’s all about?’

‘Did ye no see a newspaper all those four days?’

‘We saw a Daily Mail at Larne on Thursday morning and I got an Express in Glasgow this afternoon, but I can’t say I read them very carefully; why?’

‘The story tallies all right, what?’ said Wimsey, nodding to the Sergeant.

‘Ay, imph’m. It tallies well enough, only for the evidence of this man Drewitt.’

‘He’ll have to be found, of course,’ said the Glasgow Superintendent. ‘Where will he be just now, Mr. Waters?’

‘Oh, God knows!’ said Waters, wearily. ‘Somewhere off Kintyre, I should imagine. Don’t you believe what I’m telling you?’

‘Of course; why not?’ said the Superintendent. ‘But you see, sir, it’s our duty to obtain corroboration of your statement if possible. Did Mr. Drewitt carry a wireless set on board?’

‘Wireless set? The filthy canoe hadn’t so much as a spare frying-pan,’ said Waters, crossly. ‘Do you mind telling me what I’m accused of?’

‘Ye’re no accused of onything at all,’ said the Sergeant. ‘If I’d been accusin’ ye of onything,’ he added, cannily, ‘I would ha’ warned ye that ye’d no need tae be answerin’ my questions.’

‘Wimsey, I can’t make head or tail of all this. For God’s sake, what is all this mystery?’

‘Well,’ said Wimsey, consulting the Superintendent by a look, and receiving a nodded permission to speak, ‘you see, it’s like this, old horse. Last Tuesday they found Campbell lying dead in the Minnoch with a nasty crack in his head, made with a blunt instrument. And as you had last been seen with your ten fingers on his throat, threatening to do him in, we rather wondered, you know, what had become of you and all that.’

‘My God!’ said Waters.

‘Noo, that,’ remarked Sergeant Dalziel to Wimsey, some time later, when Waters had retired to write agitated letters and telegrams addressed to the Susannah at various possible and impossible ports, ‘that is a verra inconvenient piece of evidence. Naiturally, we’ll be findin’ this felly Drewitt, an’ naiturally the baith o’ them will be in the same story tegither. But even supposin’ Waters went on board at the Doon as he said — an whae’s tae tell that? — he may ha’ bin pit ashore again at any point.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Wimsey. ‘How about the body? He couldn’t very well have taken that on board with him.’

‘Ay, that’s so. That’s verra true. But supposin’ Drewitt runs him up in the night tae the Minnoch—’

‘No,’ said Wimsey. ‘You’re forgetting. The man who threw stones at the window may have been Campbell or he may have been Drewitt. He can’t have been both. And somebody came back to Waters’ bedroom that night and ate his breakfast in the morning. He can’t have been Campbell, and it’s extremely unlikely that it was Drewitt, so it must have been Waters. He couldn’t have got up to the Minnoch and back again in the time.’

‘But Drewitt might ha’ cairrit the corpse away for him.’

‘That depends. He’d have had to know the country pretty well to find the right place in the dark. And when was all this planned? If the man at the window was Campbell, how did Waters get into communication with Drewitt? If Drewitt was the man at the window, when and where was Campbell murdered? Hang it all, Sergeant, you can’t have it both ways. If Waters went on board when he said he did, he’s got his alibi. Otherwise, I freely admit that there may be a flaw in the thing. It’s perfectly possible that the Susannah may have picked him up at some point or other on the Tuesday night. Suppose, for example, that Waters knew beforehand that the boat would be at Lady Bay that night. He could have hired a car somewhere and picked the Susannah up there, and the rest of the tale could have been concocted between them. The point you’ve got to prove is that Waters went aboard the Susannah on the Tuesday morning. There are cottages down at the Doon. Surely to goodness somebody must have seen him.’

‘That’s a fact,’ said the Sergeant.

‘And the bicycle should be there, too.’

‘Aweel,’ said Dalziel, resignedly, ‘I can see there’ll be no kirk for me the morn. It’s awfu’, the wark there is in a case the like o’ this. An’ there’s no train back tae Newton Stewart the nicht.’

‘No more there is,’ said Wimsey. ‘Life’s just one damn thing after another.’

‘It is that,’ said Sergeant Dalziel.

FARREN’S STORY

Gilda Farren sat, upright as a lily-stalk, in the high-backed chair, spinning wool. Her dress was mediaeval, with its close bodice and full, long skirt, just lifted from the ground by the foot that swayed placidly upon the treadle. It had a square neck and long, close-fitting sleeves, and it was made of a fine cream-coloured serge which gave her an air of stately purity. Besides, it had the advantage of not showing the fluff of white wool which settles all over the spinning-woman and tends to give her the appearance of a person who has slept in her clothes. Lord Peter Wimsey, seated rather closely beside her, to avoid the draught from the whirling wheel, noted this detail with sardonic appreciation.

‘Well, Mrs. Farren,’ he said, cheerfully, ‘we shall have the truant husband back now.’

The long hands seemed to falter for a moment in feeding the flock to the spindle, and the thread ran fine and thickened again.

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Mrs. Farren, never turning her red-gold head.

‘All-stations call,’ said Wimsey, lighting another cigarette. ‘Nothing agitating, you know. Anxious friends and relations, and all that.’

‘That,’ said Mrs. Farren, ‘is a very great impertinence.’

‘I admit,’ said Wimsey, ‘that you don’t seem frightfully anxious. If it isn’t rude to ask, why aren’t you?’

‘I think it is rather rude,’ said Mrs. Farren.

‘Sorry,’ said Wimsey, ‘but the question remains. Why aren’t you? Abandoned bicycle — dangerous old mine — indefatigable police with ropes and grappling-hooks — empty chair — deserted home — and a lady who sits spinning an even thread. It might be thought puzzling.’

25

‘I have already said,’ replied Mrs. Farren, ‘that I consider all that story about mines and suicide to be absurd. I am not responsible for the foolish ideas of country policemen. I resent this inquisitiveness about my private affairs extremely. The police I can forgive, Lord Peter, but what business is it of yours?’

‘None whatever,’ said Wimsey, cheerfully. ‘Only, if you cared to tell me the facts, I might be able to quell the riot.’

‘What facts?’

‘You might tell me, for instance,’ said Wimsey, ‘where the letter came from.’

The right hand paused and fumbled in its task. The thread whisked out of the left-hand thumb and finger and wound itself up sharply on the spindle. Mrs. Farren uttered a little exclamation of annoyance, stopped the wheel, and unwound the thread again.