‘This was last Monday week, gentlemen. On the Tuesday night, I went, down to the sea — just over there, at the end of the town, and sat on, a seat to think things over. It was getting on for midnight. The words were coming more fluently now, the glass of whisky having no doubt done its work. ‘I looked at the sea and I felt the razor in my pocket and I wondered whether it was worth while struggling on. I was terribly depressed. I had come quite to the end of my resources. There was the sea, and there was the razor. You might think that the use of a razor would come natural to a hairdresser, but I can assure you gentlemen that the idea of using it for that purpose seems just as horrible to us as it would to you. But the sea — washing up against, the wall of the Esplanade — it seemed to call me, if you can understand what I mean. It sounded as if it was saying: “Chuck it, chuck it, chuck it up, Bill Simpson.” Fascinating and frightening at the same time, as you might say. All the same, I’ve always had a horror of drowning. Helpless and choking, and the green water in your eyes — we all have our special nightmares, and that one’s mine. Well, I’d sat there for a bit, trying to make up my mind, when I; heard somebody walking along, and presently this young fellow came and sat down on the seat, beside me. He was in evening dress, I remember, with an overcoat and a soft hat. He had a black beard — that was about the first thing I noticed, because it’s not very usual on a young man in this country, except he might be an artist, perhaps. Well, we got into conversation
I think he started it by offering me a cigarette. It was one of those Russian ones, with a paper tube to it. He spoke friendly, and, I don’t know how it was, I found myself telling him all about the fix I was in. You know how it is, my lord. Sometimes you’ll get talking to a stranger where you wouldn’t to anybody you knew. It struck me he didn’t feel so very happy himself, and we had a long talk about the general damnableness of life. He said he was a Russian and an exile and told me about the hard times he’d had as a kid, and a lot of stuff about “Holy Russia” and the Soviet. Seems as if he took it to heart a lot. And women and all that — seemed as though he’d had some trouble with his best girl. And then he said he only wished his difficulties could be solved as easy as mine, and how I ought to pull myself together and make a fresh start. “You give me that razor,” he said, ‘and go away and think it over.” So I said the razor was my livelihood, such as it was, and he laughed and said, “In the mood you’re in, it’s more likely to be your deathlihood.” A funny way he had of talking, quick and sort of poetic, you know. So he gave me some money — five pounds it was, in Treasury notes — and I gave him the razor. “What’ll you do with that, sir?” I said, “it’s no good to you..: “I’ll find a use for it, he said, “never you fear. And he laughed and put it away in his pocket. Then he got up and said, “Funny we should drop across one another tonight,” and something about “two minds with but a single thought”. And he clapped me on the shoulder and told me to buck up and gave me a pleasant nod and away he went, and that’s the last I saw of him. I wish I’d known what he wanted with the razor, or I. wouldn’t have given it to him, but there, how was I to know, I ask you, gentlemen?’ ‘Sounds like Paul Alexis, right enough,’ said Wimsey, thoughtfully.
‘He didn’t actually say who he was, I suppose?’ suggested Hardy.
‘No, he didn’t; but he said he was a professional dancing partner at one of the hotels, and wasn’t it one hell of a life for a man that ought to be a prince in his own country making love to ugly old women at twopence-halfpenny a time. Very bitter lie sounded.’
‘Well,’ said Wimsey, ‘we’re very much obliged to you, Mr Bright. That seems to clear the whole thing up’ quite satisfactorily. I think you’ll have to let the police know, about it.’
Mr Bright looked uneasy at the mention of the police.
‘Better come along now and get it over,’ said Wimsey, jumping to his feet. ‘You can’t very well get out of it, and, hang it all, man! there’s nothing in it for anybody to worry you about.’
The hairdresser agreed, reluctantly, and fastened his pale eyes on Sally Hardy.
‘It all sounds O. K. to me,’ said the latter, ‘but we’ll have to check up on your story, you know, old man. You might have invented it. But if the cops can prove what you say about yourself — it’s their business, really — then there’ll be a good, fat cheque for you, that ought to keep you going
for some time, if you’ll steer clear of that — er little weakness of yours. The great thing,’ added Sally, reaching for the whisky, ’is never to let weaknesses interfere with business.’
He poured himself out a stiff peg and, as an afterthought, mixed another for the hairdresser.
Superintendent Glaisher was delighted with Bright’s story, and so was Inspector Umpelty, who had clung to the suicide theory all along.
‘We’ll soon get this business cleared up,’ said the latter, confidently. ‘We’ll check up on this Bright lad’s movements, but they’re probably right enough. They fit in O.K. with what that man said at Seahampton. And we’ll keep an eye on Bright. He’s had to give us an address and his promise to stay in Wilvercombe, because, of course, he’ll be wanted for the inquest when we get an’ inquest. The body’s bound to turn up soon. I can’t understand why it’s not been found before this. It’s been five days in the water now, and it can’t stay there for ever. They float first, you know, and then they sink, but they have to come up again when the gases start to form. I’ve seen ’em blown up like balloons. It must have got caught, somewhere, that’s about the way of, it; but we’ll be dragging the bay near the Grinders again this afternoon, and we’re sure to get something before long. I’ll be glad when we do. Makes one feel kind of foolish to be carrying, on an investigation without a body to show for it.’
‘Satisfied?’ asked Hardy, as Wimsey returned from the police-station. He had telephoned his story to Town and was absorbing; a little refreshment afters his labours.
‘I ought to be,’ replied his lordship. ‘The only thing that worries me, Sally, is that if I’d wanted to invent a story to fit this case, that is exactly the story I should have invented. I wonder where Mr Bright was at two o’clock on, Thursday afternoon.’
‘What an obstinate devil you are,’ said Mr Hardy. ‘Fact is, you’re so damned keen on a murder, you smell murder everywhere. Forget it.’
Wimsey was silent, but when he had got rid of Sally Hardy, he drew out of his pocket a small leaflet entitled,’ ‘Tide Tables’, and studied it carefully.
‘I thought so,’ he said.
He took a piece of paper and wrote out a schedule of Things to be noted and Things. to be Done under the name of William Bright; It embodied the substance of Bright’s story and of the conversation with the police; but the left hand column ended with this observations
‘He states that the tide, lapping against the Esplanade, seemed to call him in a very convincing and poetic manner. But at midnight on Tuesday, 16 June the tide was not lapping against the Esplanade. It was the extreme bottom of the ebb.’
And in the right-hand column he wrote: ‘Keep an eye on him.’
After a little more thought, he took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote a letter to Chief — Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, asking for information about Bolshevik agents. One never could tell. Queer things have happened before this — queerer things even than Bolshevik conspiracies. Incidentally, he mentioned Mr Haviland Martin and his banking account. Parker, with the Bolsheviks as an excuse, might find ways and means to unlock even a bank-manager’s lips. Superintendent Glaisher might not like this horning in on his province but Parker had married Lord Peter’s sister, and may not a man write a private letter to his own brotherin-law?