Five Red Herrings (29 page)

Waters took up his palette again.

‘I don’t want to discuss this stupid business.’

‘Nor do I. Go on painting. What a lot of brushes you’ve got. Do you use them all?’

‘Oh, no!’ said Waters, sarcastically. ‘I keep them there for swank.’

‘Do you always keep everything in this satchel? It’s just like a woman’s vanity-bag, all higgledy-piggledy.’

‘I can always find things when I want them.’

‘Campbell used a satchel, too.’

‘Then that was a bond of union between us, wasn’t it?’ Waters snatched the satchel, rather impatiently, out of Wimsey’s hands, ferreted out a tube of rose madder, dabbed some paint on his palette, screwed up the tube and tossed it back into the bag again.

‘Do you use rose madder?’ said Wimsey, inquisitively. ‘Some people say it’s such an awkward colour.’

‘It’s handy sometimes — if you know how to use it.’

‘Isn’t it supposed to be rather fugitive?’

‘Yes — I don’t use much of it. Have you been taking an art course?’

‘Something like it. Studying different methods and all that. It’s very interesting. I’m sorry I never saw Campbell at work. He—’

‘For God’s sake, don’t keep harping on Campbell!’

‘No? But I so well remember your saying that you could do a perfectly good imitation of Campbell if you liked. That was just before he was bumped off — do you remember?’

‘I don’t remember anything about it.’

‘Well, you were a bit tight at the time, and I don’t suppose you meant it. There’s a bit about him in the Sunday Chronicle this week. I’ve got it somewhere. Oh, yes — it says he is a great loss to the artistic world. “His inimitable style,” it says. Still, I suppose they have to say something. “Highly individual technique”: that’s a good phrase. “Remarkable power of vision and unique colour-sense placed him at once in the first rank.” I notice that people who die suddenly generally seem to be in the first rank.’

Waters snorted.

‘I know that fellow who does the Sunday Chronicle stuff. One of the Hambledon gang. But Hambledon is a painter. Campbell took Hambledon’s worst tricks and made a style out of them. I tell you—’

The door of the studio burst open and Jock Graham tumbled in, breathless.

‘I say is Wimsey here? Sorry, Waters, but I must speak to Wimsey. No, it’s all right. I don’t want to take him away. Wimsey, old man, I’m in the most ghastly hole. It’s too awful. Have you heard about it? It’s only just been sprung on me.’

‘Go to, go to,’ said Wimsey, ‘you have heard what you should not. Put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again. Campbell’s dead; ’a cannot come out on’s grave.’

‘I wish he could.’

‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking? I would thou couldst.’

‘Oh, stop drivelling, Wimsey. This really is damnable.’

‘O horror, horror, horror,’ pursued Wimsey, staggering realistically into a corner, ‘tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name it. Where got’st thou that goose-look?’

‘Goose is right enough,’ said Graham. ‘That’s exactly what I’m looking like just now.’

‘Geese are made to be plucked,’ said Wimsey, eyeing him shrewdly, ‘and so are you.’

‘Was that a lucky shot, or did you mean it?’

‘What is all this about?’ asked Waters, peevishly.

‘I don’t mind your knowing,’ said Graham. ‘It’ll be all over the county in half a moment if something isn’t done about it. My God!’ He wiped his forehead and dropped heavily into the nearest chair.

‘Well, well,’ said Wimsey.

‘Listen! You know all this fuss there is about Campbell. That constable fellow, Duncan—’

‘I told you Duncan came into it somewhere.’

‘Shut up! That fool came asking questions about where I’d been on Tuesday and so on. I never took the thing seriously, you know. I told him to run away and play. Then something got into the papers—’

‘I know, I know,’ said Wimsey. ‘We can take that part as read.’

‘All right. Well — you know that female at Newton Stewart — the Smith-Lemesurier woman?’

‘I have met her.’

‘God! so have I. She got hold of me this morning—’

‘Jock! Jock!’

‘I couldn’t make out what she was driving at first of all. She hinted and smiled and languished at me and said that whatever I had done wouldn’t make any difference to her friendship, and talked about honour and sacrifice and God knows what, till finally I had almost to shake it out of her. Do you know what she’s done?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Wimsey, cheerfully. ‘All is known. A lady’s reputation has been sacrificed on the altar of affection. But, dear old boy, we do not blame you. We know that, rather than compromise a noble woman, you would have gone to the scaffold with your lips locked in a chivalrous silence. I do not know which is the nobler soul — the woman who without a thought of self — I seem to be dropping into blank verse.’

‘My dear Wimsey, don’t say you ever thought for one moment that there was a word of truth in it.’

‘Frankly, I never did. I have known you do many rash things, but I gave you credit for seeing through Mrs. Smith-Lemesurier.’

‘I should hope so. But what on earth am I to do?’

‘It’s awkward,’ said Wimsey, ‘it’s awkward. Short of admitting where you really were that night, there is nothing for it but to accept the sacrifice, and with the sacrifice, the lady. And I greatly fear the lady means matrimony. Still, that’s a thing that overtakes most of us, and most of us survive it.’

‘It’s blackmail,’ groaned Graham. ‘And after all, what have I done to deserve it? I tell you that beyond a passing compliment or so I’ve never — dash it all!’

‘Not so much as a squeeze of the hand?’

‘Well, possibly a squeeze of the hand. I mean to say, hang it, one must be civil.’

‘Or a kiss or so — meaning no harm?’

‘No, no, Wimsey. I never went as far as that. I may be a bad cad, but I have some instincts of self-protection. No, really.’

‘Well, never mind,’ said Wimsey, consolingly. ‘Perhaps the love will come after marriage. When you look at her over the coffee-pot and say to yourself, “To this noble woman’s pure affection I owe my life and freedom,” your heart will reproach you for your coldness.’

‘Life and freedom be damned! Don’t be a fool. Just imagine how frightful it was. I had to be absolutely brutal before I could get away.’

‘Did you repulse the dear little woman?’

‘Yes, I did. I told her not to be a damned idiot, and she burst into tears. It’s appalling. What those people there will think—’

‘What people, where?’

‘At the hotel. She walked in there and asked for me, and I left her howling on the drawing-room sofa. God knows what she’s telling people! I ought to have seen her off the premises, but I — my God, Wimsey, she frightened me. I fled for my life. People ought to be had up for making scenes in public places. That old padre who’s staying there barged in in the middle, just as the waterworks were in full play. I’ll have to leave the place!’

‘You don’t seem to have played your cards very well.’

‘I shall have to go and make it right with the police, of course. But what’s the good? Nobody will ever believe that there wasn’t something in it.’

‘How true that is! What are you going to say to the police?’

‘Oh, I shall have to tell them where I was. That part’s O.K. But don’t you see that the mere fact of that woman’s having trotted out that tale will be proof enough that I’d given cause for it? She’s absolutely got me taped, old man. Scotland isn’t big enough to hold both of us. I shall have to go to Italy or somewhere. The more I prove that story to be a lie, the more obvious it will be that she couldn’t have told such a lie unless we were on terms of the most damnable intimacy.’

‘Isn’t life difficult?’ said Wimsey. ‘It all shows how careful one should be to tell the police everything at the first possible moment. Had you only been frank with that zealous young constable, all this would have been avoided.’

‘I know, but I didn’t want to get anybody into trouble. You see, Wimsey, the fact is, I was out poaching with Jimmy Fleeming, up at Bargrennan. I thought it would be good fun. We were netting the pool just below the fall.’

‘Oh, were you? That’s the Earl of Galloway’s water.’

‘Yes. We were out all Monday night. We had a damn good time, only I had more whiskey than was good for me. But that’s by the way. There’s a little sort of hut-place up there. It belongs to one of the men on the estate. We camped there. I wasn’t feeling altogether so good on the Tuesday, so I stayed up there and on Tuesday night we had another go at it, because Monday had produced more fun than fish. We did rather well on Tuesday. Some of these fellows are damn good sorts. I get a lot more kick out of that crowd than I do out of what’s called our own class. Jimmy Fleeming has an amazing collection of good stories. And the sidelights you get on the lives of respectable citizens! Besides, men like that know a damn sight more than ordinary educated people. What they don’t know about fish, flesh and fowl isn’t worth knowing. And they’re all damn good friends of mine. It makes me sick to think of giving them away to the police.’

‘You are an ass, Graham,’ said Wimsey. ‘Why the hell didn’t you come and tell me about it in the first place?’

‘You’d have had to tell the police.’

‘Oh, I know — but that could have been squared. Are these fellows prepared to give evidence now?’

‘I haven’t said anything to them. How could I? Dash it, I’m not such a swine as to go and ask them. I’ve no doubt they’d back me up, but I can’t ask them to. It isn’t done.’

‘The best thing you can do,’ said Wimsey, ‘is to go straight to Sir Maxwell Jamieson and cough it all up. He’s very decent, and I bet he’ll see that your friends don’t suffer. By the way, you’re sure they can answer for you on Tuesday as well as Monday night?’

‘Oh, yes, Jimmy and another bloke were hanging round most of Tuesday morning off and on. But that doesn’t matter a damn. The thing I want to get clear is this business about Monday night.’

‘I know. But Tuesday morning is what’s going to interest the police.’

‘Good Lord, Wimsey — this rot about Campbell isn’t serious, really?’

‘That’s what I say,’ struck in Waters, grimly. ‘We seem to be in the same boat, Graham. I am supposed to have faked an alibi, suborned my friends and played merry hell generally. As far as I can see, Wimsey, Graham is just as clever a murderer as I am. However, no doubt you are the super-detective who can see through both of us. We can’t both be guilty, anyhow.’

‘Why not?’ said Wimsey. ‘You may be accomplices for all I know. Of course, that makes you not quite so clever, because the best murderers don’t have accomplices, but one can’t always expect perfection.’

‘But really and truly, Wimsey, what is the evidence about the murder, if it is one? Everybody seems to be full of mysterious hints, but you can’t get out of anybody why it is murder, or when it is supposed to have happened, or what it was done with or why, or anything about it — except, according to the papers, that it was done by an artist. What’s the point? Did the assassin leave his finger-prints behind in paint, or what?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Wimsey. ‘But I don’t mind saying this, that the whole thing turns upon how quickly Campbell could have got that sketch done. If I could have had that painting-party we planned—’

‘By Jove, yes! We never did that stunt,’ said Graham.

‘Look here, let’s do it now,’ said Wimsey. ‘Both you and Waters claim to be able to imitate Campbell’s style. Start off now and do something and I’ll time you. Half a jiff! I’ll run round to the police-station and borrow the sketch for you to copy. It won’t be quite the same thing, but it will give us an idea.’

Inspector Macpherson released the canvas without demur, but without enthusiasm. He seemed, indeed, so much depressed that Wimsey paused to ask what was the matter with him.

31

‘Maitter eneugh,’ said Macpherson. ‘We’ve found a mon that saw Campbell’s car goin’ up tae the Minnoch on Tuesday mornin’, an’ the time-table’s a’ went tae hell.’

‘No!’ said Wimsey.

‘Ay. There’s yin o’ the men as is workin’ at the road-mendin’ on the Newton Stewart road, an’ he saw the car wi’ Campbell in ’t — that’ll be the pairson that was got up tae luik like Campbell — pass the New Galloway turnin’ on the road betune Creetoon and Newton Stewart at five an’ twenty meenuts tae ten. He disna ken Campbell, but he described the car an’ the hat and cloak, an’ he tuk parteecular notice o’t because it was goin’ fast an’ nearly ran him doon as he was comin’ away on his bicycle tae deliver a message for the foreman.’

‘Five-and-twenty to ten,’ said Wimsey, thoughtfully. ‘That’s a bit on the late side.’

‘Ay. We was calculatin’ on him startin’ oot at 7.30 fra’ Gatehouse.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind that,’ said Wimsey. ‘He must have cleared off before Mrs. Green came, and parked the body somehow, though why he should have taken such a risk I don’t know. It’s the other end of the business that’s worrying me. At that rate he wouldn’t be up at the Minnoch much before ten. We reckoned that to catch the train at Girvan, he’d have to start off again at about 11.10. He’d have to be pretty quick with his picture.’

‘That’s so, he would that. But there’s more to it. We’ve found a man that passed yon bicyclist on the way tae Girvan, an’ it’s juist impossible that he could have caught the train at all!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Wimsey, ‘he must have caught it, because he did catch it.’

‘That’s so, but it must ha’ been anither man a’tegither.’

‘Well, then,’ said Wimsey. ‘If it was another man altogether it wasn’t our man at all. Do be logical.’

The Inspector shook his head, just as a constable knocked at the door, and, putting his head in, announced that Sergeant Dalziel was here with Mr. Clarence Gordon to see the Inspector.

‘Here’s the verra man,’ said Macpherson. ‘Ye’d better wait an’ see what he has to say.’

Mr. Clarence Gordon was a stout little gentleman with a pronounced facial angle, who pulled his hat off in a hurry at the sight of Wimsey.

‘Be covered, be covered,’ said that gentleman, graciously. ‘I fancy you may be asked to make a sworn statement.’

Mr. Gordon spread out his hands deprecatingly.