At this point the kettle boiled. Sheila was taking it off the stove to make the Bovril, when Wimsey became aware of a hand on his coat-collar. He looked round into the face of a gentleman who appeared not to have shaved for several days.
“Now then,” said this apparition, “what’s the meaning of this?”
“Which,” added an indignant voice from the door, “I thought as there was something behind all this talk of the Captain being missing. You didn’t expect him to be missing, I suppose, ma’am. Oh, dear no! Nor your gentleman friend, neither, sneaking up in a taxi and you waiting at the door so’s Munns and me shouldn’t hear. But I’d have you know this is a respectable house, Lord Knows Who or whatever you call yourself—more likely one of these low-down confidence fellers, I expect, if the truth was known. With a monocle too, like that man we was reading about in the News of the World. And in my kitchen too, and drinking my Bovril in the middle of the night, the impudence! Not to speak of the goings-in-and-out all day, banging the front door, and that was the police come here this morning, you think I didn’t know? Up to something, that’s what they’ve been, the pair of them, and the captain as he says he is but that’s as may be, I daresay he had his reasons for clearing off, and the sooner you goes after him my fine madam, the better I’ll be pleased, I can tell you.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Munns—“ow!”
Lord Peter had removed the intrusive hand from his collar with a sharp jerk which appeared to cause anguish out of all proportion to the force used.
“I’m glad you’ve come along,” he said. “In fact, I was just going to give you a call. Have you anything to drink in the house, by the way?”
“Drink?” cried Mrs. Munns on a high note, “the impudence! And if I see you, Joe, giving drinks to thieves and worse in the middle of the night in my kitchen, you’ll get a piece of my mind. Coming in here as bold as brass and the captain run away, and asking for drink—”
“Because,” said Wimsey, fingering his notecase, “the public houses in this law-abiding neighborhood are of course closed. Otherwise a bottle of Scotch—”
Mr. Munns appeared to hesitate.
“Call yourself a man!” said Mrs. Munns.
“Of course,” said Mr. Munns, “if I was to go in a friendly manner to Jimmy Rowe at the Dragon, and ask him to give me a bottle of Johnny Walker as a friend to a friend, and provided no money was to pass between him and me, that is—”
“A good idea,” said Wimsey, cordially.
Mrs. Munns gave a loud shriek.
“The ladies,” said Mr. Munns, “gets nervous at times.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“I daresay a drop of Scotch wouldn’t do Mrs. Munns’s nerves any harm,” said Wimsey.
“If you dare, Joe Munns,” said the landlady, “if you dare to go out at this time of night, hobnobbing with Jimmy Rowe and making a fool of yourself with burglars and such—”
Mr. Munns executed a sudden volte-face.
“You shut up!” he shouted. “Always sticking your face in where you aren’t wanted.”
“Are you speaking to me?”
“Yes. Shut up!”
Mrs. Munns sat down suddenly on a kitchen chair and began to sniff.
“I’ll just hop round to the Dragon now, sir,” said Mr. Munns, “before old Jimmy goes to bed. And then we’ll go into this here.”
He departed. Possibly he forgot what he had said about no money passing, for he certainly took the note which Wimsey absentmindedly held out to him.
“Your drink’s getting cold,” said Wimsey to Sheila.
She came across to him.
“Can’t we get rid of these people?”
“In half a jiff. It’s not good having a row with them. I’d do it like a shot, only, you see, you’ve got to stay on here for a bit, in case George comes back.”
“Of course. I’m sorry for all this upset, Mrs. Munns,” she added, a little stiffly, “but I’m so worried about my husband.”
“Husband?” snorted Mrs. Munns. “A lot husbands are to worry about. Look at that Joe. Off he goes to the Dragon, never mind what I say to him. They’re dirt, that’s what husbands are, the whole pack of them. And I don’t care what anybody says.”
“Are they?” said Wimsey. “Well, I’m not one—yet—so you needn’t mind what you say to me.”
“It’s the same thing,” said the lady, viciously, “husbands and parricides, there’s not a halfpenny to choose between them. Only parricides aren’t respectable—but then, they’re easier got rid of.”
“Oh!” replied Wimsey, “but I’m not a parricide either—not Mrs. Fentiman’s parricide at any rate, I assure you. Hullo! here’s Joe. Did you get the doings, old man? You did? Good work. Now, Mrs. Munns, have just a spot with us. You’ll feel all the better for it. And why shouldn’t we go into the sitting-room where it’s warmer?”
Mrs. Munns complied. “Oh, well,” she said, “here’s friends all round. But you’ll allow it all looked a bit queer, now, didn’t it? And the police this morning, asking all those questions, and emptying the dustbin all over the backyard.”
“Whatever did they want with the dustbin?”
“Lord knows; and that Cummins woman looking on all the time over the wall. I can tell you, I was vexed. ‘Why, Mrs. Munns,’ she said, ‘have you been poisoning people?’ she said. ‘I always told you,’ she said ‘your cooking ’ud do for somebody one of these days.’ The nasty cat.”
“What a rotten thing to say,” said Wimsey, sympathetically. “Just jealousy, I expect. But what did the police find in the dustbin?”
“Find? Them find anything? I should like to see them finding things in my dustbin. The less I see of their interfering ways the better I’m pleased. I told them so. I said, ‘If you want to come upsetting my dustbin,’ I said, ‘you’ll have to come with a search-warrant,’ I said. That’s the law and they couldn’t deny
