Five Red Herrings (30 page)

‘I am thure,’ he said, pleasantly, ‘that I thall be only too willing to athitht the polithe in any way and to thwear to vat ith nethethary. But I athk you, gentlemen, to take into conthiderathon the interrupthon to my bithneth. I have come from Glathgow at conthiderable inconvenienth—’

‘Of course, of course, Mr. Gordon,’ said the Inspector. ‘It’s verra gude of ye.’

Mr. Gordon sat down, and spreading the four fat fingers of his left hand upon his knee, so as to display to full advantage a handsome ruby ring, raised his right hand, by way of adding emphasis to his statement and began:

‘My name ith Clarenth Gordon. I am a commerthial traveller for the firm of Moth & Gordon, Glathgow — ladieth’ dretheth and hothiery. Here ith my card. I travel thith dithrict on alternate Mondayth, thpending the night at Newton Thtewart and returning on Tuethday afternooth by the Bargrennan road to Girvan and Ayr where I have many good cuthtomerth. Latht Tuethday week I thtarted from Newton Thtewart in my limouthine ath uthual after an early lunth. I patht Barrhill at a little after half-patht twelve. I remember theeing the train go out of the thtathion jutht before I got there. That ith how I know the time. I had patht through the village when I thaw a bithyclitht in a grey thuit riding very fatht along the road in front of me. I they to mythelf: “There ith a man in a great hurry in the middle of the road — I mutht blow my horn loudly.” He ith vobbling from thide to thide, you underthtand, with hith head down. I thay to mythelf again, “If he ith not careful, he will have an acthident.” I blow very loud, and he hearth me, and drawth to the thide of the road. I path him, and I thee hith fathe very vite. That ith all. I do not thee him again, and he ith the only bithyclitht I thee on all that road till I get to Girvan.’

‘Half-past twelve,’ said Wimsey. ‘No — later — the train leaves Barrhill at 12.35. You’re right, Inspector, that can’t be our man. It’s twelve miles, good, from Barrhill to Girvan, and the man with the grey suit — our man, I mean — was there at 1.7. I don’t think he could possibly do it. Even a good bicyclist could hardly manage twenty-four miles an hour over twelve miles along that road — not on the Anwoth Hotel bicycle, anyhow. You would want a trained man on a racing machine. You are quite sure, Mr. Gordon, that you didn’t pass another bicyclist farther along the road?’

‘Not a tholitary one,’ replied Mr. Gordon, earnestly, raising all his fingers protestingly and sawing the air, ‘not a thingle thoul on a bithycle at all. I thould have notithed it, becauth I am a very careful driver, and I do not like puth-thyclithtth. No, I thee nobody. I take no notith of thith man at the time, of courthe. But on Thunday my vife tellth me, “Clarenth, there wath a call come through on the vireleth for travellerth by the Bargrennan road to thay if they thaw a bithyclitht latht Tuethday week. Did you hear it?” I thay, “No, I am travelling all the week and I cannot alwayth be lithening to the vireleth.” Vell, my vife tellth me what it ith, and I thay, “Vell, when I have time I go to tell the polithe what I have theen. And here I am. It ith very inconvenient and not good for bithneth, but it ith my duty ath a thitithen. I tell my firm — the both ith my brother be helped.” Tho I came, and here I am and that ith all I — and he thay, “Clarenth, you mutht tell the polithe. It cannot be helped. Tho I came and here I am and that ith all I know.”’

‘Thank you verra much, Mr. Gordon; ye have given us some valuable information an’ we’re much obliged tae ye. Now, there’s juist one other thing. Could ye tell us if the man ye saw is one o’ these, sir?’

The Inspector spread the six photographs out on the table, and Mr. Clarence Gordon bent dubiously over them.

‘I hardly thaw the man, you know,’ he said, ‘and he vore thpectacleth, and there ith no photo here with thpectacleth. I do not think it wath thith one, though.’ He set Strachan’s photograph aside. ‘That man hath a military look, and I thould thay he vould be a big, heavy man. Thith wath not a very big man, the man I thaw. And he did not have a beard. Now thith man’ — Mr. Gordon gazed at the photograph of Graham very intently — ‘thith man hath very remarkable eyeth, but with thpectacleth he might be anybody. You thee? Thpectacleth vould be a good dithguithe for him. Thith one it might be altho, but he hath a mouthtathe — I cannot remember if the man I thaw had one. It wath not a big one, if he had. Thith might be he and tho might thith or thith. No, I cannot tell.’

‘Never mind, Mr. Gordon, ye have done verra weel, an’ we’re greatly obliged to ye.’

‘I may go now? I have my bithneth to conthider.’

The Inspector released him and turned to Wimsey.

‘Not Strachan and not Gowan,’ he said. ‘Gowan’s a verra big man.’

‘Not the murderer at all, apparently,’ said Wimsey. ‘Another red herring, Inspector.’

‘The place is fair lousy wi’ red herrings,’ mourned Inspector Macpherson. ‘But it’s a miracle to me that yon bicycle should ha’ got itself tae Euston an’ have no connection wi’ the crime. It’s no reasonable. Where did the Girvan man come from? And he had the grey suit and the spectacles an’ a’. But — twelve miles in thirty minutes — I’m wonderin’ could it no be done after all? If ony of our men was trained as an athlete—’

‘Try Who’s Who,’ suggested Wimsey — ‘it may throw some light on their hideous pasts. I must run away now. I’ve got two artists straining at the leash. Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war. It’s curious how blank verse seems to come natural to me today. It just shows how blank my mind is, I suppose.’

On returning he found that Waters had supplied Graham with canvas, palette, knife and brushes and was arguing cheerfully with him about the rival merits of two different kinds of sketching easel.

Wimsey stood Campbell’s sketch up on the table before them.

‘Oh, that’s the subject, is it?’ said Graham. ‘H’m. Very characteristic. Almost ultra-characteristic, don’t you think, Waters?’

‘That’s exactly what one expects from the Campbells of this world,’ said Waters. ‘The trick degenerates into a mannerism, and they paint caricatures of their own style. As a matter of fact, it’s apt to happen to anybody. Even Corot, for instance. I went to a Corot exhibition once, and ’pon my soul, after seeing a hundred or so Corots gathered together, I began to have my doubts. And he was a master.’

Graham picked the canvas up and carried it across to the light. He frowned and rubbed the surface with a thoughtful thumb.

‘Funny,’ he said, ‘the handling isn’t altogether. . How many people have seen this, Wimsey?’

‘Only myself and the police, so far. And the Fiscal, naturally.’

‘Ah! — well! Do you know, I should have said — if I didn’t know what it was—’

‘Well?’

‘I should almost have thought I had done it myself. There’s a slight flavour of pastiche about it. And there’s a sort of — just look at those stones in the burn, Waters, and the shadow under the bridge. It’s rather more cold and cobalty than Campbell’s usual style.’ He held it away at arm’s length. ‘Looks as though he’d been experimenting. There’s a lack of freedom about it, somehow. Don’t you think so?’

Waters came up and stared over his shoulder.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Graham. Yes, I see what you mean. It looks a bit fumbled here and there. No, not quite that. A little tentative. That’s not the word, either. Insincere. But that’s exactly what I complain of in all Campbell’s stuff. It makes its effect all right, but when you come to look into it, it doesn’t stand up to inspection. I call that a thoroughly Campbellish piece of work. A poor Campbell, if you like, but full of Campbellisms.’

‘I know,’ said Graham. ‘It reminds me of what the good lady said about Hamlet — that it was all quotations.’

‘G. K. Chesterton says,’ put in Wimsey, ‘that most people with a very well-defined style write at times what looks like bad parodies of themselves. He mentions Swinburne, for instance — that bit about “From the lilies and languors of virtue to the raptures and roses of vice.” I expect painters do the same. But of course I don’t know a thing about it.’

Graham looked at him, opened his mouth to speak, and shut it again.

‘Well, chuck it here,’ said Waters. ‘If we’ve got to copy the beastly thing, we’d better start. Can you see all right there? I’ll put the paints on the table here. And please don’t throw them on the floor in your usual dirty way.’

‘I don’t,’ said Graham, indignantly. ‘I collect them neatly in my hat, if I’m not wearing it, and if I am, I lay them handily in the grass. I’m not always fumbling about for them in a satchel among my sandwiches. It’s a miracle to me that you don’t eat your colours and put the bloater-paste on the canvas.’

‘I never keep sandwiches in my satchel,’ retorted Waters. ‘I put them in my pocket. The left-hand pocket. Always. You may think I’m not methodical, but I always know where to find everything. Ferguson puts tubes in his pockets, and that’s why his handkerchiefs always look like paint-rags.’

‘That’s better than going round with crumbs in your clothing,’ said Graham. ‘To say nothing of the time when Mrs. McLeod thought the drains were wrong, till she traced the stink to your old painting-coat. What was it? Liver-sausage?’

‘That was an oversight. You don’t expect me to go about like Gowan, carrying a sort of combined picnic-basket and sketching-box, with a partition for each colour and a portable kettle, do you?’

‘Oh, Gowan? That’s pure swank. Do you remember the day I pinched his box and filled all the partitions up with wee fush?’

‘That was a good riot,’ said Waters, reminiscently. ‘He couldn’t use the box for a week because of the fishy smell. And he had to stop painting, because it put him out to have his arrangements upset. Or so he said.’

‘Oh, Gowan’s a man of method,’ said Graham. ‘I’m like a Waterman pen — I function in any position. But he has to have everything just so. Never mind. Here I am, like a fish out of water. I don’t like your knife, I don’t like your palette and I simply loathe your easel. But you don’t imagine trifles like that are going to put me off. Not on your life. Have at it. Are you standing by with the stop-watch, Wimsey?’

‘Yes. Are you ready? One, two, three — go!’

‘By the way, I suppose we can’t expect you to tell us whether the object of all this is to incriminate us? I mean, do we get hanged for being quick or for being slow?’

‘I haven’t worked it out yet,’ said Wimsey, ‘but I don’t mind telling you that the less you dawdle the better I shall be pleased.’

‘It’s not altogether a fair test,’ said Waters, mashing up his blue and white to the colour of a morning sky. ‘Copying a canvas isn’t the same thing as painting direct. It’s bound to be rather quicker.’

‘Slower,’ said Graham.

‘Different, anyhow.’

‘It’s the technique that’s a nuisance,’ said Graham. ‘I don’t feel handy with so much knife-work.’

‘I do,’ said Waters. ‘I use the knife myself quite a lot.’

‘I used to,’ said Graham, ‘but I’ve chucked it lately. I suppose we needn’t follow every scratch and scrape exactly, Wimsey?’

‘If you try to do that,’ said Waters, ‘it will certainly make you slower.’

‘I’ll let you off that,’ said Wimsey. ‘I only want you to get somewhere about the same amount of paint on the canvas.’

The two men worked on in silence for some time, while Wimsey fidgeted restlessly about the studio, picking things up and putting them down and whistling tuneless fragments of Bach.

At the end of an hour, Graham was a little farther advanced than Waters, but the panel was still incomplete as compared with the model.

32

After another ten minutes Wimsey took up his stand behind the painters and watched them with a maddening kind of intentness. Waters fidgeted, scraped out something he had done, put it in again, cursed and said:

‘I wish you’d go away.’

‘Nerves cracking up under the strain,’ commented Wimsey, dispassionately.

‘What’s the matter, Wimsey? Are we behind time?’

‘Not quite,’ said Wimsey, ‘but very nearly.’

‘Well, you can reckon on another half-hour as far as I’m concerned,’ said Graham, ‘and if you flurry me it’ll probably be longer still.’

‘Never mind, do the thing properly. Even if you upset my calculations, it doesn’t matter. I shall probably be able to get round it somehow.’

The half-hour dragged to an end. Graham, glancing from the model to the copy, said, ‘There, that’s the best I can make it,’ threw down his palette and stretched himself. Waters glanced across at his work and said, ‘You’ve beaten me on time,’ and painted on. He put in another fifteen minutes or so and announced that he had finished. Wimsey strolled over and examined the results. Graham and Waters rose and did likewise.

‘Not bad efforts, on the whole,’ suggested Graham, half-shutting his eyes and retiring suddenly on to Wimsey’s toes.

‘You’ve got that stuff on the bridge very well,’ said Waters. ‘Thoroughly Campbellian.’

‘Your burn is better than mine and better than Campbell’s, if it comes to that,’ replied Graham. ‘However, I take it that intrinsic artistic merit is not important in this particular case.’

‘Not a bit,’ said Wimsey. He seemed to have suddenly grown more cheerful. ‘I’m frightfully obliged to you both. Come and have a drink. Several drinks. I rather want to celebrate.’

‘What?’ said Waters, his face going very red and suddenly white again.

‘Why?’ said Graham. ‘Do you mean to say you’ve got your man? Is it one of us?’

‘Yes,’ said Wimsey. ‘I mean. I think I’ve got the man. I ought to have known long ago. In fact, I never was in very much doubt. But now I know for certain.’

GOWAN’S STORY

‘A call for you from London, sir,’ said the constable.

Inspector Macpherson took up the receiver.

‘Is that Inspector Macpherson of Kirk-kud-brite?’ demanded London in ladylike tones.

‘Ay,’ said Inspector Macpherson.

‘One moment, please.’

A pause. Then, ‘You’re through,’ and an official voice:

‘Is that Kirkcudbright Police Station? Is that Inspector Macpherson speaking? This is Scotland Yard. One moment, please.’

A shorter pause. Then:

‘Is that Inspector Macpherson? Oh, good morning, Inspector. This is Parker — Chief Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. How are you?’