Chapter VI. Back To The Army Again

Mr MacBride turned out to be a brisk young man, bowler-hatted, with sharp black eyes that seemed to inventory everything they encountered, and a highly regrettable tie. He rapidly summed up the vicar and Mr Puffett, dismissed them from his calculations, and made a bee-line for the monocle.

‘Morning,’ said Mr MacBride. ‘Lord Peter Wimsey, I believe. Very sorry to trouble your lordship. Understand you’re stopping here. Fact is, I have to see Mr Noakes on a little matter of business.’

‘Just so,’ said Peter, easily. ‘Any fog in Town this morning?’

‘Ow naow,’ replied Mr MacBride. ‘Nice clear day.’

‘I thought so. I mean, I thought you must have come from Town. Bred an’ bawn in a briar-patch, Brer Fox. But you might, of course, have been elsewhere since then, so I asked the question. You didn’t send in your card, I fancy.’

‘Well, you see,’ explained Mr MacBride, whose native accents were, indeed-apart from a trifling difficulty with his sibilants-pure Whitechapel, ‘my business is with Mr Noakes. Personal and confidential.’

At this point, Mr Puffett, finding a long piece of twine on the floor, began to roll it up slowly and methodically, fixing his gaze upon the stranger’s face in no very friendly manner.

‘Well,’ resumed Peter, ‘I’m afraid you have had your journey for nothing. Mr Noakes isn’t here. I only wish he was. But you’ll probably find him over at Broxford.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mr MacBride again. ‘That won’t work. Not a bit of it.’ A step at the door made him swing round sharply, but it was only Crutchley, armed with a pail and a broom and shovel. Mr MacBride laughed. ‘I’ve been over to Broxford, and they said I should find him here.’

‘Did they indeed?’ said Peter. ‘That’s right, Crutchley.

Sweep up this mess and get these papers cleared. Said he was here, did they? Then they were mistaken. He’s not here and we don’t know where he is.’

‘But,’ cried Miss Twitterton, ‘it isn’t possible! Not over at Broxford? Then where can he be? It’s most worrying. Oh, dear, Mr Goodacre, can’t you suggest something?’

‘Sorry to make such a dust,’ said Peter. ‘We have had a slight domestic accident with some soot. Excellent thing for the flower-beds. Garden pests are said to dislike it. Yes. Well now, this is Mr Noakes’s niece. Miss Twitterton. Perhaps you can state your business to her.’

‘Sorry,’ said Mr MacBride, ‘nothing doing. I’ve got to see the old gentleman personally. And it’s no good trying to put me off, because I know all the dodges.’ He skipped nimbly over tin broom that Crutchley was plying about his feet, and sat down, uninvited, on the settle.

‘Young man,’ said Mr Goodacre, rebukingly, ‘you had better keep a civil tongue in your head. Lord Peter Wimsey has given you his personal assurance that we do not know where to find Mr Noakes. You do not suppose that his lordship would tell you an untruth?’

His lordship, who had wandered over to a distant whatnot, and was hunting through a pile of his personal belongings placed there by Bunter, glanced at his wife and cocked a modest eyebrow.

‘Oh, wouldn’t he, though?’ said Mr MacBride. “There’s nobody like the British aristocracy to tell you a good stiff lie without batting an eyelid. His lordship’s face would be a fortune to him in the witness-box.’

‘Where,’ added Peter, extricating a box of cigars from the pile and addressing it in confidence, ‘it is not unknown.’

‘So you see,’ said MacBride, ‘that cock won’t fight.’

He stretched his legs out negligently, to show that he intended to stay where he was. Mr Puffett, groping about his feet, discovered a stray stub of pencil and put it in his pocket with a grunt

‘Mr MacBride.’ Peter had returned, box in hand. ‘Have a cigar. Now then, who do you represent?’

He stared down at his visitor with an eye so shrewd and a mouth so humorous that Mr MacBride, accepting the cigar and recognising the quality, pulled himself together, sat up and acknowledged his intellectual equal with a conspiratorial wink.

‘Macdonald &. Abrahams,’ said Mr MacBride. ‘Bedford Row.’

‘Ah, yes. That clannish old North British firm. Solicitors? I thought so. Something to Mr Noakes’s advantage? No doubt. Well, you want him and so do we. So does this lady here…’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miss Twitterton, ‘I’m very worried about Uncle. We haven’t seen him since last Wednesday, and I’m sure-’

‘But,’ pursued Peter, ‘you won’t find him in my house.’

‘Your house?’

‘My house. I have just purchased this house from Mr Noakes.’

‘Whew!’ exclaimed Mr MacBride excitedly, blowing out a long jet of smoke. ‘So that’s the nigger in the woodpile. Bought the house, eh? Paid for it?’

‘Really, really!’ cried the vicar, scandalised. Mr Puffett, struggling into a sweater, remained with arms suspended.

‘Naturally,’ said Peter. ‘I have paid for it.’

‘Skipped, by thunder!’ exclaimed Mr MacBride. His sudden gesture dislodged his bowler from his knee and sent it spinning and skipping to Mr Puffett’s feet. Crutchley dropped the heap of papers he had collected and stood staring.

‘Skipped?’ shrieked Miss Twitterton. ‘What do you mean by that? Oh, what does he mean. Lord Peter?’

‘Oh, hush!’ said Harriet ‘He doesn’t really know, any more than we do.’

‘Gone away,’ explained Mr MacBride. ‘Vamoosed. Done a bunk. Skipped with the cash. Is that clear enough? If I’ve said it to Mr Abrahams once, I’ve said it a thousand times. If you don’t come down sharp on that fellow Noakes, he’ll skip, I said. And he has skipped, ain’t it?’

‘It looks like it, certainly,’ said Peter.

‘Skipped?’ Crutchley was indignant. ‘It’s easy for you to say skipped. What about my forty pound?’

‘Oh, Frank!’ cried Miss Twitterton.

‘Ah, you’re another of ’em, are you?’ said Mr MacBride, with condescending sympathy. ‘Forty pounds, eh? Well, what about us? What about our client’s money?’

‘But what money?’ gasped Miss Twitterton in an agony of apprehension. “Whose money? I don’t understand. What’s it all got to do with Uncle William?’

‘Peter,’ said Harriet, ‘don’t you think-?’

‘It’s no good,’ said Wimsey. ‘It’s got to come out.’

‘See this?’ said Mr MacBride. “That’s a writ, that is. Little matter of nine hundred pound.’

‘Nine ’undred?’ Crutchley made a snatch for the paper as though it were negotiable security for that amount

‘Nine hundred pounds.’ Miss Twitterton’s was the top note in the chorus. Peter shook his head.

‘Capital and interest,’ said Mr MacBride, calmly. ‘Levy, Levy & Levy; Running five years. Can’t wait for ever, you know.’

‘My uncle’s business-’ began Miss Twitterton. ‘Oh, there must be some mistake.’

‘Your uncle’s business, miss,’ said Mr MacBride, bluntly but not altogether unsympathetically, ‘hasn’t got a leg to stand on. Mortgage on the shop and not a hundred pounds’ worth of stock in the place-and I don’t suppose that’s paid for. Your uncle’s broke, that’s what it is. Broke.’

‘Broke?’ exclaimed Crutchley, with passion. ‘And how about my forty quid what he made me put into his business?’

‘Well, you won’t see that again, Mr Whoever-you-are,’ returned the clerk, coolly. ‘Not without we catch the old gentleman and make him cough up the cash. Even then might I ask, my lord, what you paid for the house? No offence, but it does make a difference.’

‘Six-fifty,’ said Peter.

‘Cheap,’ said Mr MacBride, shortly.

‘So we thought,’ replied his lordship. ‘It was valued at eight hundred for mortgage; but he took our offer for cash.’