“Fine, full-blooded stuff,” said Wimsey. “But why should Deacon be carrying a note of the hiding-place about with him? And how did it come to be written on foreign paper?”
“I don’t know. Well, say it was like you said before. Say he’d given the paper to his wife. He spills his wife’s address, like a fool, and then it all happens the way I said. Cobbleigh goes back to France, deserts, and gets taken care of by Suzanne. He keeps quiet about who he is, because he don’t know whether Deacon’s body’s been found or not and he’s afraid of being had up for murder if he goes home. Meanwhile, he’s stuck to the paper — no, that’s wrong. He writes to Mrs. Deacon and gets the paper out of her.”
“Why should she give it up?”
“That’s a puzzler. Oh, I know! I’ve got it this time. He tells her he’s got the key to it. That’s right. Deacon told him, ‘My wife’s got the cipher, but she’s a babbling fool and I ain’t trusted her with the key. I’ll give you the key and that’ll show you I know what I’m talking about.’ Then Cobbleigh kills him, and when he thinks it’s safe he writes over to Mary and she sends him the paper.”
“The original paper?”
“Why, yes.”
“You’d think she’d keep that and send him a copy.”
“No. She sends the original, so that he can see it’s in Deacon’s writing.”
“But he wouldn’t necessarily know Deacon’s writing.”
“How’s she to know that? Cobbleigh works out the cipher and they help him to get across.”
“But we’ve been into all that and decided the Thodays couldn’t do it.”
“All right, then. The Thodays bring Cranton into it. Cobbleigh comes over, anyhow, under the name of Paul Taylor, and he comes along to Fenchurch and they get the emeralds. Then Thoday kills him, and he takes the emeralds. Meanwhile, along comes Cranton to see what’s happening and finds they’ve been ahead of him. He clears off and the Thodays go about looking innocent till they see we’re getting a bit close on their trail. Then they clear.”
“Who did the killing, then?”
“Any one of them, I should say.”
“And who did the burying?”
“Not Will, anyhow.”
“And how was it done? And why did they want to tie Cobbleigh up? Why not kill him straight off and with a bang on the head? Why did Thoday take £200 out of the bank and put it back again? When did it all happen? Who was the man Potty Peake saw in the church on the night of the 30th? And, above all, why was the cipher found in the belfry, of all places?”
“I can’t answer everything at once, can I? That’s the way it was done between ’em, you can take it from me. And now I’m going to have Cranton charged, and get hold of those precious Thodays, and if I don’t put my hand on the emeralds among them, I’ll eat my hat.”
“Oh!” said Wimsey, “that reminds me. Before you came, we were just going to look at the place where Deacon hid those jolly old emeralds. The Rector solved the cipher—”
“Him?”
“He. So, just for fun, and by way of shutting the stable door after the steed was stolen, we’re going to climb up aloft and have a hunt among the cherubims. In fact, the Rector is down at the church, champing his bit at this very moment. Shall we go?”
“Sure — though I haven’t a lot of time to waste.”
“I don’t suppose it will take long.”
The Rector had procured the sexton’s ladder and was already up in the south aisle roof, covering himself with cobwebs as he poked about vaguely among the ancient oak.
“The servants sat just about here,” he said, as Wimsey came in with the Superintendent. “But now I come to think of it, we had the painters up here last year, and they ought to have found anything there was to be found.”
“Perhaps they did,” said Wimsey; and Mr. Blundell uttered a low moan.
“Oh, I hope not. I really think not. They are most honest men.” Mr. Venables came down from the ladder. “Perhaps you had better try. I am not clever about these things.”
“Beautiful old work this is,” said his lordship. “All pegged together. There’s a lot of this old rafter work down at Duke’s Denver, and when I was a kid I made rather a pretty cache for myself in a corner of the attic. Used to keep tiddly-winks counters in it and pretend it was a pirate’s hoard. Only it was a dickens of a job getting them out again. I say! Blundell! do you remember that wire hook you found in the corpse’s pocket?”
“Yes, my lord. We never made out what that was for.”
“I ought to have known,” said Wimsey. “I made a thing very like it for the pirate’s hoard.” His long fingers were working over the beams, gently pulling at the thick wooden pegs which held them together. “He must have been able to reach it from where he sat. Aha! what did I tell you? This is the one. Wriggle her gently and out she comes. Look!”
He wrenched at one of the pegs, and it came out in his hand. Originally, it had passed right through the beam and must have been over a foot in length, tapering from the size of a penny-piece at one end to something over half-an-inch at the other. But at some time it had been sawn off about three inches from the thick end.
“There you are,” said Wimsey. “An old schoolboy cache originally, I expect. Some kid got pushing it from the other end and found it was loose. Probably shoved it clean out. At least, that’s what I did, up in the attic. Then he took it home and sawed six inches or so out of the middle of it. Next time he comes to church he brings a short rod with him. He pushes the thin end back again into place’ with the rod, so that the hole doesn’t show from the other side. Then he drops in his marbles or whatever he wanted to hide, and plugs up the big end again with this. And there he is, with a nice little six-inch hidey-hole where nobody would ever dream of looking for it. Or so he thinks. Then — perhaps years afterwards — along comes friend Deacon. He’s sitting up here one day, possibly a little bored with the sermon (sorry, padre!). He starts fidgeting with the peg, and out it comes — only three inches of it. Hullo, says he, here’s a game! Handy place if you wanted to pop any little thing away in a hurry. Later on, when he does want to pop his little shiners away in a hurry, he thinks of it again. Easy enough. Sits here all quiet and pious, listening to the First Lesson. Puts his hand down at his side, slips out the plug, slides the emeralds out of his pocket, slips them into the hole, pops back the plug. All over before his reverence says ‘Here endeth.’ Out into the sunshine and slap into the arms of our friend the Super here and his merry men. ‘Where are the emeralds?’ they say. ‘You can search me,’ says he. And they do, and they’ve been searching ever since.”
“Amazing!” said the Rector. Mr. Blundell uttered a regrettable expression, remembered his surroundings and coughed loudly.
“So now we see what the hook was for,” said Wimsey. “When Legros, or Cobbleigh, whichever you like to call him, came for the loot—”
“Stop a minute,” objected the Superintendent. “That cipher didn’t mention anything about a hole, did it? It only mentioned cherubims. How did he know he needed a hook to get necklaces out of cherubims?”