Hangmans Holiday (4 page)

“Thirty-two years ago, if we lives another month,” she said. “Michaelmas it was they come. She was a nice-looking young woman, too, and my daughter, as was expecting her first, took a lot of interest in the sweet little boy.”

“The boy was not born here?”

“Why, no, sir. Born somewheres on the south side, he was, but I remember she never rightly said where—only that it was round about the New Cut. She was one of the quiet sort and kep’ herself to herself. Never one to talk, she wasn’t. Why even to my daughter, as might ’ave good reason for bein’ interested, she wouldn’t say much about ’ow she got through ’er bad time. Chlorryform she said she ’ad, I know, and she disremembered about it, bit it’s my belief it ’ad gone ’ard with ’er and she didn’t care to think overmuch about it. ’Er ’usband—a nice man ’e was, too—’e says to me, ‘Don’t remind ’er of it, Mrs. ’Arbottle, don’t remind ’er of it.’ Whether she was frightened or whether she was ’urt by it I don’t know, but she didn’t ’ave no more children. ‘Lor!’ I says to ’er time and again, ‘you’ll get used to it, my dear, when you’ve ’ad nine of ’em same as me,’ and she smiled, but she never ’ad no more, none the more for that.”

“I suppose it does take some getting used to,” said Wimsey, “but nine of them don’t seem to have hurt
you,
Mrs. Harbottle, if I may say so. You look extremely flourishing.”

“I keeps my ’ealth, sir, I am glad to say, though stouter than I used to be. Nine of them does ’ave a kind of spreading action on the figure. You wouldn’t believe, sir, to look at me now, as I ’ad a eighteen-inch waist when I was a girl. Many’s the time me pore mother broke the laces on me, with ’er knee in me back and me ’oldin’ on to the bedpost.”

“One must suffer to be beautiful,” said Wimsey politely. “How old was the baby, then, when Mrs. Duckworthy came to live in Brixton?”

“Three weeks old, ’e was, sir—a darling dear—and a lot of ’air on ’is ’ead. Black ’air it was then, but it turned into the brightest red you ever see—like them carrots there. It wasn’t so pretty as ’is ma’s, though much the same colour. He didn’t favour ’er in the face, neither, nor yet ’is dad. She said ’e took after some of ’er side of the family.”

“Did you ever see any of the rest of the family?”

“Only ’er sister, Mrs. Susan Brown. A big, stern, ’ard-faced woman she was—not like ’er sister. Lived at Evesham she did, as well I remembers, for I was gettin’ my grass from there at the time. I never sees a bunch o’ grass now but what I think of Mrs. Susan Brown. Stiff, she was, with a small ’ead, very like a stick o’ grass.”

Wimsey thanked Mrs. Harbottle in a suitable manner and took the next train to Evesham. He was beginning to wonder where the chase might lead him, but discovered, much to his relief, that Mrs. Susan Brown was well known in the town, being a pillar of the Methodist Chapel and a person well respected.

She was upright still, with smooth, dark hair parted in the middle and drawn tightly back—a woman broad in the base and narrow in the shoulder—not, indeed, unlike the stick of asparagus to which Mrs. Harbottle had compared her. She received Wimsey with stern civility, but disclaimed all knowledge of her nephew’s movements. The hint that he was in a position of some embarrassment, and even danger, did not appear to surprise her.

“There was bad blood in him,” she said. “My sister Hetty was softer by half than she ought to have been.”

“Ah!” said Wimsey. “Well, we can’t all be people of strong character, though it must be a source of great satisfaction to those that are. I don’t want to be a trouble to you, madam, and I know I’m given to twaddling rather, being a trifle on the soft side myself—so I’ll get to the point. I see by the register at Somerset House that your nephew, Robert Duckworthy, was born in Southwark, the son of Alfred and Hester Duckworthy. Wonderful system they have there. But of course—being only human—it breaks down now and again—doesn’t it?”

She folded her wrinkled hands over one another on the edge of the table, and he saw a kind of shadow flicker over her sharp dark eyes.

“If I’m not bothering you too much—in what name was the other registered?”

The hands trembled a little, but she said steadily:

“I do not understand you.”

“I’m frightfully sorry. Never was good at explaining myself. There were twin boys born, weren’t there? Under what name did they register the other? I’m so sorry to be a nuisance, but it’s really rather important.”

“What makes you suppose that there were twins?”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it. I wouldn’t have bothered you for a supposition. I know there was a twin brother. What became—at least, I do know more or less what became of him—”

“It died,” she said hurriedly.

“I hate to seem contradictory,” said Wimsey. “Most unattractive behaviour. But it didn’t die, you know. In fact, it’s alive now. It’s only the name I want to know, you know.”

“And why should I tell you anything, young man?”

“Because,” said Wimsey, “if you will pardon the mention of anything so disagreeable to a refined taste, there’s been a murder committed and your nephew Robert is suspected. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that the murder was done by the brother. That’s why I want to get hold of him, don’t you see. It would be such a relief to my mind—I am naturally nice-minded—if you would help me to find him. Because, if not, I shall have to go to the police, and then you might be subpœna’d as a witness, and I shouldn’t like—I really shouldn’t like—to see you in the witness-box at a murder trial. So much unpleasant publicity, don’t you know. Whereas, if we can lay hands on the brother quickly, you and Robert need never come into it at all.”

Mrs. Brown sat in grim thought for a few minutes.

“Very well,” she said, “I will tell you.”

“Of course,” said Wimsey to Chief-Inspector Parker a few days later, “the whole thing was quite obvious when one had heard about the reversal of friend Duckworthy’s interior economy.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said Parker. “Nothing could be simpler. But all the same, you are aching to tell me how you deduced it and I am willing to be instructed. Are all twins wrong-sided? And are all wrong-sided people twins?”

“Yes. No. Or rather, no, yes. Dissimilar twins and some kinds of similar twins may both be quite normal. But the kind of similar twins that result from the splitting of a single cell
may
come out as looking-glass twins. It depends on the line of fission in the original cell. You can do it artificially with tadpoles and a bit of horsehair.”

“I will make a note to do it at once,” said Parker gravely.

“In fact, I’ve read somewhere that a person with a reversed inside practically always turns out to be one of a pair of similar twins. So you see, while poor old R. D. was burbling on about the
Student of Prague
and the fourth dimension, I was expecting the twin-brother.

“Apparently what happened was this. There were three sisters of the name of Dart—Susan, Hester and Emily. Susan married a man called Brown; Hester married a man called Duckworthy; Emily was unmarried. By one of those cheery little ironies of which life is so full, the only sister who had a baby, or who was apparently capable of having babies, was the unmarried Emily. By way of compensation, she overdid it and had twins.

“When this catastrophe was about to occur, Emily (deserted, of course, by the father) confided in her sisters, the parents being dead. Susan was a tartar—besides, she had married above her station and was climbing steadily on a ladder of good works. She delivered herself of a few texts and washed her hands of the business. Hester was a kind-hearted soul. She offered to adopt the infant, when produced, and bring it up as her own. Well, the baby came, and, as I said before, it was twins.

“That was a bit too much for Duckworthy. He had agreed to one baby, but twins were more than he had bargained for. Hester was allowed to pick her twin, and, being a kindly soul, she picked the weaklier-looking one, which was our Robert—the mirror-image twin. Emily had to keep the other, and, as soon as she was strong enough, decamped with him to Australia, after which she was no more heard of.

“Emily’s twin was registered in her own name of Dart and baptised Richard. Robert and Richard were two pretty men. Robert was registered as Hester Duckworthy’s own child—there were no tiresome rules in those days requiring notification of births by doctors and midwives, so one could do as one liked about these matters. The Duckworthys, complete with baby, moved to Brixton, where Robert was looked upon as being a perfectly genuine little Duckworthy.

“Apparently Emily died in Australia, and Richard, then a boy of fifteen, worked his passage home to London. He does not seem to have been a nice little boy. Two years afterwards, his path crossed that of Brother Robert and produced the episode of the air-raid night.

“Hester may have known about the wrong-sidedness of Robert, or she may not. Anyway, he wasn’t told. I imagine that the shock of the explosion caused him to revert more strongly to his natural left-handed tendency. It also seems to have induced a new tendency to amnesia under similar shock-conditions. The whole thing preyed on his mind, and he became more and more vague and somnambulant.

“I rather think that Richard may have discovered the existence of his double and turned it to account. That explains the central incident of the mirror. I think Robert must have mistaken the glass door of the tea-shop for the door of the barber’s shop. It really was Richard who came to meet him, and who retired again so hurriedly for fear of being seen and noted. Circumstances played into his hands, of course—but these meetings do take place, and the fact that they were both wearing soft hats and burberries is not astonishing on a dark, wet day.

“And then there is the photograph. No doubt the original mistake was the photographer’s, but I shouldn’t be surprised if Richard welcomed it and chose that particular print on that account. Though that would mean, of course, that he knew about the wrong-sidedness of Robert. I don’t know how he could have done that, but he may have had opportunities for inquiry. It was known in the Army, and the rumours may have got round. But I won’t press that point.

“There’s one rather queer thing, and that is that Robert should have had that dream about strangling, on the very night, as far as one could make out, that Richard was engaged in doing away with Jessie Haynes. They say that similar twins are always in close sympathy with one another—that each knows what the other is thinking about, for instance, and contracts the same illness on the same day and all that. Richard was the stronger twin of the two, and perhaps he dominated Robert more than Robert did him. I’m sure I don’t know. Daresay it’s all bosh. The point is that you’ve found him all right.”

“Yes. Once we’d got the clue there was no difficulty.”

“Well, let’s toddle round to the Cri and have one.”

Wimsey got up and set his tie to rights before the glass.

“All the same,” he said, “there’s something queer about mirrors. Uncanny, a bit, don’t you think so?”

“T
HAT HOUSE, SEÑOR?” SAID
the landlord of the little
posada.
“That is the house of the American physician, whose wife, may the blessed saints preserve us, is bewitched.” He crossed himself, and so did his wife and daughter.

“Bewitched, is she?” said Langley sympathetically. He was a professor of ethnology, and this was not his first visit to the Pyrenees. He had, however, never before penetrated to any place quite so remote as this tiny hamlet, clinging, like a rock-plant, high up the scarred granite shoulders of the mountain. He scented material here for his book on Basque folk-lore. With tact, he might persuade the old man to tell his story.

“And in what manner,” he asked, “is the lady be-spelled?”

“Who knows?” replied the landlord, shrugging his shoulders. “‘The man that asked questions on Friday was buried on Saturday.’ Will your honour consent to take his supper?”

Langley took the hint. To press the question would be to encounter obstinate silence. Later, when they knew him better, perhaps—

His dinner was served to him at the family table—the oily, pepper-flavoured stew to which he was so well accustomed, and the harsh red wine of the country. His hosts chattered to him freely enough in that strange Basque language which has no fellow in the world, and is said by some to be the very speech of our first fathers in Paradise. They spoke of the bad winter, and young Esteban Arramandy, so strong and swift at the pelota, who had been lamed by a falling rock and now halted on two sticks; of three valuable goats carried off by a bear; of the torrential rains that, after a dry summer, had scoured the bare ribs of the mountains. It was raining now, and the wind was howling unpleasantly. This did not trouble Langley; he knew and loved this haunted and impenetrable country at all times and seasons. Sitting in that rude peasant inn, he thought of the oak-panelled hall of his Cambridge college and smiled, and his eyes gleamed happily behind his scholarly pince-nez. He was a young man, in spite of his professorship and the string of letters after his name. To his university colleagues it seemed strange that this man, so trim, so prim, so early old, should spend his vacations eating garlic, and scrambling on mule-back along precipitous mountain-tracks. You would never think it, they said, to look at him.

There was a knock at the door.

“That is Martha,” said the wife.

She drew back the latch, letting in a rush of wind and rain which made the candle gutter. A small, aged woman was blown in out of the night, her grey hair straggling in wisps from beneath her shawl.

“Come in, Martha, and rest yourself. It is a bad night. The parcel is ready—oh, yes. Dominique brought it from the town this morning. You must take a cup of wine or milk before you go back.”

The old woman thanked her and sat down, panting.

“And how goes all at the house? The doctor is well?”

“He is well.”

“And
she?”

The daughter put the question in a whisper, and the landlord shook his head at her with a frown.

“As always at this time of the year. It is but a month now to the Day of the Dead. Jesu-Maria! it is a grievous affliction for the poor gentleman, but he is patient, patient.”