gold name written across it. The name was 'The Bridget Tea-shop', but the door was of plain glass. Wimsey looked at it for a few moments and then went in. He did not approach the tea-tables, but accosted the cashier, who sat at a little glass desk inside the door.
Here he went straight to the point and asked whether the young lady remembered the circumstances of a man's having fainted in the doorway some years previously.
The cashier could not say; she had only been there three months, but she thought one of the waitresses might remember. The waitress was produced, and after some consideration, thought she did recollect something of the sort. Wimsey thanked her, said he was a journalist--which seemed to be accepted as an excuse for eccentric questions--parted with half a crown, and withdrew.
His next visit was to Carmelite House. Wimsey had friends in every newspaper office in Fleet Street, and made his way without difficulty to the room where photographs are filed for reference. The original of the 'J. D.' portrait was produced for his inspection.
'One of yours?' he asked.
'Oh, no. Sent out by Scotland Yard. Why? Anything wrong with it?'
'Nothing. I wanted the name of the original photographer, that's all.'
'Oh! Well, you'll have to ask them there. Nothing more I can do for you?'
'Nothing, thanks.'
Scotland Yard was easy. Chief-Inspector Parker was Wimsey's closest friend. An inquiry of him soon furnished the photographer's name, which was inscribed at the foot of the print. Wimsey voyaged off at once in search of the establishment, where his name readily secured an interview with the proprietor.
As he had expected, Scotland Yard had been there before him. All information at the disposal of the firm had already been given. It amounted to very little. The photograph had been taken a couple of years previously, and nothing particular was remembered about the sitter. It was a small establishment, doing a rapid business in cheap portraits, and with no pretensions to artistic refinements.
Wimsey asked to see the original negative, which, after some search, was produced.
Wimsey looked it over, laid it down, and pulled from his pocket the copy of the Evening News in which the print had appeared.
'Look at this,' he said.
The proprietor looked, then looked back at the negative,
'Well, I'm dashed,' he said. 'That's funny.'
'It was done in the enlarging lantern, I take it,' said Wimsey.
'Yes. It must have been put in the wrong way round. Now, fancy that happening. You know, sir, we often have to work against time, and I suppose--but it's very careless. I shall have to inquire into it.'
'Get me a print of it right way round,' said Wimsey.
'Yes, sir, certainly, sir. At once.'
'And send one to Scotland Yard.'
'Yes, sir. Queer it should have been just this particular one, isn't it, sir? I wonder the party didn't notice. But we generally take three or four positions, and he might not remember, you know.'
'You'd better see if you've got any other positions and let me have them too.'
'I've done that already, sir, but there are none. No doubt this one was selected and the others destroyed. We don't keep all the rejected negatives, you know, sir. We haven't the space to file them. But I'll get three prints off at once.'
'Do,' said Wimsey. 'The sooner the better. Quick-dry them. And don't do any work on the prints.'
'No, sir. You shall have them in an hour or two, sir. But it's astonishing to me that the party didn't complain.'
'It's not astonishing,' said Wimsey. 'He probably thought it the best likeness of the lot. And so it would be--to him. Don't you see--that's the only view he could ever take of his own face. That photograph, with the left and right sides reversed, is the face he sees in the mirror every day--the only face he can really recognise as his. 'Wad the gods and giftie gie us', and all that.'
'Well, that's quite true, sir. And I'm much obliged to you for pointing the mistake out.'
Wimsey reitereated the need for haste, and departed. A brief visit to Somerset House followed; after which he called it a day and went home.
Inquiry in Brixton, in and about the address mentioned by Mr Duckworthy, eventually put Wimsey on to the track of persons who had known him and his mother. An aged lady who had kept a small greengrocery in the same street for the last forty years remembered all about them. She had the encyclopaedic memory of the almost illiterate, and was positive as to the date of their arrival.
'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, but 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, 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 'olding on to the bed-post.'
'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 in Evesham she did, as well I remembers, for I was gettin' my grass from them 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
