Shocking Ignorance of a Clergyman
“Of course,” said Roger, disposing of a large mouthful of veal-and-ham
pie, “of course when I say _murderer_, I may be exaggerating a
trifle.”
“You haven’t told me yet who he is, sir,” said the inspector
patiently. It was the seventh time he had said something like this,
and his curiosity was still ungratified.
“Perhaps it would be safer to say, for the present, that it’s the
thumb-print of a man who knows how Mrs. Vane met her death,” went on
Roger, who was taking a malicious joy in deliberately thwarting his
professional rival’s inquisitiveness. “Anyhow, there it is.”
“Did you say it was a man in the village?” asked the inspector
innocently.
“He that searches diligently shall find,” Roger replied irrelevantly,
“and he that is on the right tack shall make all the thrilling
discoveries. Likewise, to him that hath shall be given; so give me
some more of this excellent pie, Anthony.—No, a slice just about twice
as big as the one you’re meditating.”
“Who _is_ this man, Mr. Sheringham, sir?” demanded the inspector in
desperation.
Roger gazed at him blandly. “Inspector, I’m not going to tell you! You
may arrest me for obstructing the police in the dereliction of their
duty, for arson, fraud, petty treason, or anything you darned well
like, but I’m not going to tell you. You insinuated yourself, as I now
realise, into my confidence this morning and very neatly picked my
brains, without giving anything in return. All along I’ve been making
you free presents of my discoveries, and got practically nothing in
exchange for them. This time I’m hanging on.”
The inspector refilled his tankard and applied himself to it with
gusto. He set it down and wiped his moustache. “Serious business,
sir,” he observed, apparently unmoved.
“Obstructing the police?” Roger agreed heartily. “Yes, jolly serious,
isn’t it? But awfully interesting. I’ve never obstructed one before. I
rather like it.”
The inspector laughed. “You’ve got something up your sleeve, sir, I
know. What do you want me to do?”
“Send that thumb-print up to headquarters and see if they can tell you
anything about its owner,” Roger said promptly. “Seriously, there may
be nothing in this at all, but there may be rather a lot. I’ve got my
own ideas, but I want to verify them before I tell you anything
definite. That’s all.”
“Well, I’m not saying it isn’t highly irregular, sir; it is. By rights
you ought to tell me just what you’ve discovered and let me be the
judge of whether it’s worth following up or not. Still, knowing you,”
the inspector concluded handsomely, “I’ll take the risk.”
“That’s right,” Roger approved. “And I promise to tell you the whole
story as soon as you’ve got the report, even if it’s a negative one.
By the way, if you jump to it you’ve just got time to get it into the
post to-night.”
“That’s true,” conceded the inspector, casting a reluctant eye on his
tankard. He rose to his feet. “You won’t be gone when I come back?”
“No, I shall be here, even though I can’t say the same for my cousin.
That little two-seater I saw outside wouldn’t have anything to do with
you, Anthony, of course?”
Anthony coloured slightly. “Well,” he began, “I——”
“Enough!” Roger interrupted kindly. “You haven’t taken it back yet,
therefore you’re proposing to use it again. Well, the country looks
very charming by moonlight, I’m told. _Bon voyage!_— Oh, Inspector!”
Inspector Moresby paused, his hand on the door-knob. “Yes, sir?”
“Did you find anything out about that shoe, by the way?”
Inspector Moresby continued to pause. “Do you expect me to tell you
that, Mr. Sheringham, when you’re withholding your own information?”
“A promise,” said Roger smugly, “is a promise, Inspector.”
“Well, and I can’t say it wasn’t made in return for services rendered.
Very well, sir, I’ll return good for evil. I traced that pair of shoes
(we found the other one all right, I should say).”
“Traced it, did you?” said Roger with interest. “Do you mean, found
out whom it belonged to?”
“Just that. The inner soles, with the name of the maker, had been torn
out, but it wasn’t a difficult job. The servant-girl recognised ’em at
once, and the mistress admitted to ’em without hesitation.”
“Stop this cat-and-mouse act!” Roger implored. “Whose were they?”
The inspector gazed at him stolidly for a moment, enjoying his
impatience. “Mrs. Russell’s, sir,” he said, and withdrew.
As the door closed Roger emitted a long whistle of astonishment. “Mrs.
Russell’s! Good Lord, that’s an unexpected development. How on earth—?
What do you make of that, Anthony?”
“Goodness knows,” said Anthony frankly.
Roger mused, helping himself abstractedly to gooseberry-pie and cream.
“Well, I suppose it’ll fit in all right. I shall have to think that
over.”
“Are you going to keep me in the dark too about the bird with the
thumb-print?” Anthony asked.
“You?” Roger recalled himself from his meditations. “Oh, no. I’ve got
to tell somebody or bust. Anthony, I’ve had a heartrending day. Man,
woman and child, I’ve been cross-questioning them all till my throat,
hardened as you might think it, nearly collapsed under the strain; and
not a helpful word could I elicit. And then at the very last gasp,
quite literally, a little child led me toward the light. I found an
urchin who’d actually been on the spot and seen just what I wanted him
to have seen.”
“Good egg!” quoth Anthony.
“I had a job to charm his information out of him, as his business on
the cliffs (I never did discover what it was) seems to have been of an
illicit nature; however, fearful oaths of secrecy and a couple of
half-crowns did the trick. He was close to the top of the nearer
flight of steps at half-past three that afternoon, apparently in
hiding, and saw a man go down them and walk along the ledge. He is
even prepared to swear, Anthony, that the man had a paper in his hand
which didn’t seem to be folded quite like a newspaper and might well
have been a copy of _London Opinion_.”
“Coo!” said Anthony. “And were you able to make out who the cove was?”
“There was no need to do that. The urchin very kindly supplied that
information himself. Anthony, my lad, who do you think it was? Just
about the very last person you’d expect.”
“Who?”
Roger regarded his companion with triumphant eyes. “That blighted
little parson, with a face like a goat—the Rev. Samuel Blinking
Meadows!”
“_What!_”
“Yes, that’s a bit of a facer, isn’t it? So off I made in a bee-line
for Samuel. He’d pressed me to drop in whenever I got the chance, so
there was no difficulty about that. I dropped. He was delighted to see
me—oh, delighted! And I was delighted to see him. We were both
delighted. We almost wept on one another’s necks with delight. It was
a touching scene. He wanted to discuss the murder, but I didn’t. I
wanted to discuss something quite different. Theology, Anthony.”
“Ah!” said Anthony.
“Quite so. I discussed theology. He didn’t. He didn’t even know the
name of Moses’s father-in-law, Anthony. Shocking ignorance for a
clergyman, wasn’t it? Of course I didn’t let him see how shockingly
ignorant I thought him. I was a model of tact. I told him that Omar
Khayyám was my favourite among the minor prophets, and he never turned
a hair. I remarked that if Queen Elizabeth hadn’t written the
Athanasian Creed, Cardinal Manning would never have condemned Joan of
Arc to a diet of worms, and he batted no eyelash. Oh, we _did_ enjoy
ourselves.”
“What you’re getting at, I suppose,” observed Anthony acutely, “is
that the chap isn’t a parson at all.”
“Anthony, you read my thoughts. No, the chap isn’t a parson at all.”
“Good!” said Anthony.
“So all I had to do then was to get his finger-print in the orthodox
manner, and come swiftly away. So that’s that.”
“How did you manage the finger-print?”
“Oh, that was simple enough. He was reading a newspaper when I was
shown in. I professed to find something extremely interesting on the
page he had been perusing, and he readily gave me permission to tear
it off and take it away. To hold a newspaper it is of course necessary
to grip the edge quite firmly. For a clergyman, Mr. Meadows evidently
doesn’t wash his hands as often as he might. It has also been a hot
day. Nicely planted in the margin was the perfect impression of a
somewhat greasy thumb. Thank you, Mr. Meadows.”
“Very cunning,” Anthony approved.
“I rather thought that, too,” Roger admitted.
“And you’re not going to say anything about it to the inspector?”
“For the time being, no. I like having Moresby on toast for a change,
I must say, but also I don’t want to commit myself. If anybody’s going
to solve this pretty little mystery, I want it to be Roger Sheringham;
so I’m not giving any information away unnecessarily. Of course it
_may_ turn out that this chap had nothing to do with it, but candidly,
I don’t see how that can possibly be the case.”
“And you think they’ll know about him at Scotland Yard?”
“It seems a reasonable inference. People don’t go about masquerading
as clergymen just as an interesting concomitant of their summer
holiday. He may never have been in the hands of the police at all, but
there’s always the hope.”
“It’ll make a better case against him if he has.”
“Yes, and help us in other ways too. You see, what I’m really hoping
is that he’s a slice out of Mrs. Vane’s past. If so, we ought to be
able to clear up quite a lot of things that are obscure at present. He
might even—” Roger paused. “Oh, there are all sorts of possibilities,”
he corrected himself.
There was a little pause.
“Well, thank goodness Margaret seems to be outside it at last,” said
Anthony.
“Yes, and talking of Margaret, Anthony, I want you to treat what I’ve
told you as highly confidential. It’s much better for her not to know
about this for the time being, at any rate till we hear from Scotland
Yard. It may only raise false hopes, and in any case I don’t want it
talked about. You can simply say that I’m still pursuing my enquiries.
Is it a bet?”
“I’m quite sure,” Anthony began, “that Margaret can be trusted not
to——”
“It isn’t a case of that at all,” Roger interrupted peremptorily.
“It’s simply that this information is to be looked on as my private
property till I choose to make it public. If I can’t rely on you to
keep things to yourself when I don’t want them to go any further, then
I simply shan’t be able to tell you anything. Now then, what about
it?”
“Of course if you make such a point of it,” said Anthony, a little
sulkily.
“I do!”
“All right, then.”
“Then that’s settled,” Roger said cheerfully. “Have some more beer.”
Anthony rose. “No thanks. As a matter of fact I—I’ve got to be getting
along now.”
“Isn’t that girl getting sick of the sight of you, Anthony?” Roger
asked with frank curiosity. “The only times you leave her alone seem
to be at meals.”
“Well, she’s all by herself,” Anthony replied defiantly. “She never
sees the other two, except at meals. If I didn’t go along there, she’d
be quite alone.”
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you to wonder whether she wouldn’t prefer
that?”
“Funny ass,” said Anthony tolerantly. “Well, cheerio! See you later, I
expect.”
“Grrrrr. . . .” said Roger coarsely.
However, Roger did not spend an uninteresting evening. For three whole
hours he was able to enjoy the unbounded felicity of listening to
Inspector Moresby trying by every means in his power, subtle and
official, to obtain the name of the man whose thumb-print was on its
way to London. In gently balking all these indefatigable attempts,
Roger managed to enjoy himself quite considerably.