“That’s the stuff to give ’em, Mrs. Munns.”
“Not but what I’m respectable. If the police come to me in a right and lawful manner, I’ll gladly give them any help they want. I don’t want to get into trouble, not for any number of captains. But interference with a freeborn woman and no search warrant I will not stand. And they can either come to me in a fitting way or they can go and whistle for their bottle.”
“What bottle?” asked Wimsey, quickly.
“The bottle they were looking for in my dustbin, what the captain put there after breakfast.”
Sheila gave a faint cry.
“What bottle was that, Mrs. Munns?”
“One of them little tablet bottles,” said Mrs. Munns, “same as you have standing on the wash-hand stand, Mrs. Fentiman. When I saw the Captain smashing it up in the yard with a poker—”
“There now, Primrose,” said Mr. Munns, “can’t you see as Mrs. Fentiman ain’t well?”
“I’m quite all right,” said Sheila, hastily, pushing away the hair which clung damply to her forehead. “What was my husband doing?”
“I saw him,” said Mrs. Munns, “run out into the back yard—just after your breakfast it was, because I recollect Munns was letting the officers into the house at the time. Not that I knew then who it was, for, if you will excuse me mentioning of it, I was in the outside lavatory, and that was how I come to see the Captain. Which ordinarily, you can’t see the dustbin from the house, my lord I should say, I suppose, if you really are one, but you meet so many bad characters nowadays that one can’t be too careful—on account of the lavatory standing out as you may say and hiding it.”
“Just so,” said Wimsey.
“So when I saw the captain breaking the bottle as I said, and throwing the bits into the dustbin, ‘Hullo!’ I said, ‘that’s funny,’ and I went to see what it was and I put it in an envelope, thinking, you see, as it might be something poisonous, and the cat such a dreadful thief as he is, I never can keep him out of that dustbin. And when I came in, I found the police here. So after a bit, I found them poking about in the yard and I asked them what they were doing there. Such a mess as they’d made, you never would believe. So they showed me a little cap they’d found, same as it might be off that tablet bottle. Did I know where the rest of it was?’ they said. And I said, what business had they got with the dustbin at all. So they said—”
“Yes, I know,” said Wimsey. “I think you acted very sensibly, Mrs. Munns. And what did you do with the envelope and things?”
“I kept it,” replied Mrs. Munns, nodding her head, “I kept it. Because, you see, if they did return with a warrant and I’d destroyed that bottle, where should I be?”
“Quite right,” said Wimsey, with his eye on Sheila.
“Always keep on the right side of the law,” agreed Mrs. Munns, “and nobody can’t interfere with you. That’s what I say. I’m a Conservative, I am; I don’t hold with these Socialist games. Have another.”
“Not just now,” said Wimsey. “And we really must not keep you and Mrs. Munns up any longer. But, look here! You see, Captain Fentiman had shell-shock after the War, and he is liable to do these little odd things at times—break things up, I mean, and lose his memory and go wandering about. So Mrs. Fentiman is naturally anxious about his not having turned up this evening.”
“Ay,” said Mr. Munns, with relish. ‘I knew a fellow like that. Went clean off his rocker he did one night. Smashed up his family with a beetle—a pavior he was by profession, and that’s how he came to have a beetle in the house—pounded ’em to a jelly, he did, his wife and five little children, and went off and drownded himself in the Regent’s Canal. And, what’s more, when they got him out, he didn’t remember a word about it, not one word. So they sent him to—what’s that place? Dartmoor? no, Broadmoor, that’s it, where Ronnie True went to with his little toys and all.”
“Shut up, you fool,” said Wimsey, savagely.
“Haven’t you got feelings?” demanded his wife.
Sheila got up, and made a blind effort in the direction of the door.
“Come and lie down,” said Wimsey, “you’re worn out. Hullo! there’s Robert, I expect. I left a message for him to come round as soon as he got home.”
Mr. Munns went to answer the bell.
“We’d better get her to bed as quick as possible,” said Wimsey to the landlady. “Have you got such a thing as a hot-water bottle?”
Mrs. Munns departed to fetch one, and Sheila caught Wimsey’s hand.
“Can’t you get hold of that bottle? Make her give it to you. You can. You can do anything. Make her.”
“Better not,” said Wimsey. “Look suspicious. Look here, Sheila, what is the bottle?”
“My heart medicine. I missed it. It’s something to do with digitalin.”
“Oh, lord,” said Wimsey, as Robert came in.
“It’s all pretty damnable,” said Robert.
He thumped the fire gloomily; it was burning badly, the lower bars were choked with the ashes of a day and night.
“I’ve been having a talk with Frobisher,” he added. “All this talk in the Club—and the papers—naturally he couldn’t overlook it.”
“Was he decent?”
“Very decent. But of course I couldn’t explain the thing. I’m sending in my papers.”
Wimsey nodded. Colonel Frobisher could scarcely overlook an attempted fraud—not after things had been said in the papers.
“If I’d only let the old man alone. Too late now. He’d have been buried. Nobody would have asked questions.”
“I didn’t want to interfere,” said Wimsey, defending himself
