He set the tray tenderly upon Lord Peter’s ready knees.
“They must be jolly well dragged out of their sockets,” said his lordship, “holdin’ me up all that ghastly long time. I’m so beastly deep in debt to you already, Bunter, it’s not a bit of use tryin’ to repay it. You know I won’t forget, anyhow, don’t you? All right, I won’t be embarrassin’ or anything—thanks awfully, anyhow. That’s that. What? Did they give you anywhere decent to sleep? I didn’t seem to be able to sit up an’ take notice last night.”
“I slept excellently, I thank your lordship.” Mr. Bunter indicated a kind of truckle-bed in a corner of the room. “They would have given me another room, my lord, but in the circumstances, I preferred to remain with your lordship, trusting you would excuse the liberty. I told them that I feared the effects of prolonged immersion upon your lordship’s health. I was uneasy, besides, about the intention of Grimethorpe. I feared he might not feel altogether hospitably disposed, and that he might be led into some hasty action if we were not together.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. Most murderous-lookin’ fellow I ever set eyes on. I’ll have to talk to him this morning—or to Mrs. Grimethorpe. I’d take my oath she could tell us something, what?”
“I should say there was very little doubt of it, my lord.”
“Trouble is,” pursued Wimsey, with his mouth full of egg, “I don’t know how to get at her. That jolly husband of hers seems to cherish the most unpleasant suspicions of anything that comes this way in trousers. If he found out we’d been talkin’ to her, what you may call privately, he might, as you say, be hurried by his feelin’s into doin’ something regrettable.”
“Just so, my lord.”
“Still, the fellow must go an’ look after his bally old farm some time, and then, p’raps, we’ll be able to tackle her. Queer sort of woman—damn fine one, what? Wonder what she made of Cathcart?” he added musingly.
Mr. Bunter volunteered no opinion on this delicate point.
“Well, Bunter, I think I’ll get up. I don’t suppose we’re altogether welcome here. I didn’t fancy the look in our host’s eye last night.”
“No, my lord. He made a deal of opposition about having your lordship conveyed to this room.”
“Why, whose room is it?”
“His own and Mrs. Grimethorpe’s, my lord. It appeared most suitable, there being a fireplace, and the bed already made up. Mrs. Grimethorpe showed great kindness, my lord, and the man Jake pointed out to Grimethorpe that it would doubtless be to his pecuniary advantage to treat your lordship with consideration.”
“H’m. Nice, graspin’ character, ain’t he? Well, it’s up and away for me. O Lord! I am stiff. I say, Bunter, have I any clothes to put on?”
“I have dried and brushed your lordship’s suit to the best of my ability, my lord. It is not as I should wish to see it, but I think your lordship will be able to wear it to Riddlesdale.”
“Well, I don’t suppose the streets will be precisely crowded,” retorted his lordship. “I do so want a hot bath. How about shavin’ water?”
“I can procure that from the kitchen, my lord.”
Bunter padded away, and Lord Peter, having pulled on a shirt and trousers with many grunts and groans, roamed over to the window. As usual with hardy country dwellers, it was tightly shut, and a thick wedge of paper had been rammed in to keep the sash from rattling. He removed this and flung up the sash. The wind rollicked in, laden with peaty moor scents. He drank it in gladly. It was good to see the jolly old sun after all—he would have hated to die a sticky death in Peter’s Pot. For a few minutes he stood there, returning thanks vaguely in his mind for the benefits of existence. Then he withdrew to finish dressing. The wad of paper was still in his hand, and he was about to fling it into the fire, when a word caught his eye. He unrolled the paper. As he read it his eyebrows went up and his mouth pursed itself into an indescribable expression of whimsical enlightenment. Bunter, returning with the hot water, found his master transfixed, the paper in one hand, and his socks in the other, and whistling a complicated passage of Bach under his breath.
“Bunter,” said his lordship, “I am, without exception, the biggest ass in Christendom. When a thing is close under my nose I can’t see it. I get a telescope, and look for the explanation in Stapley. I deserve to be crucified upside-down, as a cure for anemia of the brain. Jerry! Jerry! But, naturally, of course, you rotten ass, isn’t it obvious? Silly old blighter. Why couldn’t he tell Murbles or me?”
Mr. Bunter advanced, the picture of respectful inquiry.
“Look at it—look at it!” said Wimsey, with a hysterical squeak of laughter. “O Lord! O Lord! Stuck into the window-frame for anybody to find. Just like Jerry. Signs his name to the business in letters a foot long, leaves it conspicuously about, and then goes away and is chivalrously silent.”
Mr. Bunter put the jug down upon the washstand in case of accident, and took the paper.
It was the missing letter from Tommy Freeborn.
No doubt about it. There it was—the evidence which established the truth of Denver’s evidence. More—which established his alibi for the night of the 13th.
Not Cathcart—Denver.
Denver suggesting that the shooting party should return in October to Riddlesdale, where they had opened the grouse season in August. Denver sneaking hurriedly out at 11:30 to walk two miles across the fields on a night when Farmer Grimethorpe had gone to buy machinery. Denver carelessly plugging a rattling sash on a stormy night with an important letter bearing his title on it for all to see. Denver padding back at three in the morning like a homing tomcat, to fall over his guest’s dead body by
