"I sing but as the throstle sings,Amid the branches dwelling,"
"I sing but as the throstle sings,Amid the branches dwelling,"
"I sing but as the throstle sings,Amid the branches dwelling,"
"I sing but as the throstle sings,
Amid the branches dwelling,"
replied his lordship negligently, and went on without further comment.
"The painter throttled him. He flung him back on the sand. He looked at him, and his heart crowed within him. He stretched out his hand, and found a broken bottle, with a good jagged edge. He went to work with a will, stamping and tearing away every trace of the face he knew and loathed. He blotted it out and destroyed it utterly.
"He sat beside the thing he had made. He began to be frightened. They had staggered back beyond the edge of the water, and there were the marks of his feet on the sand. He had blood on his face and on his bathing-suit, and he had cut his hand with the bottle. But the blessed sea was still coming in. He watched it pass over the bloodstains and the footprints and wipe the story of his madness away. He remembered that this man had gone from his place, leaving no address behind him. He went back, step by step, into the water, and, as it came up to his breast, he saw the red stains smoke away like a faint mist in the brown-blueness of the tide. He went—wading and swimming and plunging his face and arms deep in the water, looking back from time to time to see what he had left behind him. I think that when he got back to the point and drew himself out, clean and cool, upon the rocks, he remembered that he ought to have taken the body back with him and let the tide carry it away, but it was too late. He was clean, and he could not bear to go back for the thing. Besides, he was late, and they would wonder at the hotel if he was not back in time for breakfast. He ran lightly over the bare rocks and the grass that showed no footprint. He dressed himself, taking care to leave no trace of his presence. He took the car, which would have told a story. He put his bicycle in the back seat, under the rugs, and he went—but you know as well as I do where he went."
Lord Peter got up with an impatient movement, and went over to the picture, rubbing his thumb meditatively over the texture of the painting.
"You may say, if he hated the face so much, why didn't he destroy the picture? He couldn't. It was the best thing he'd ever done. He took a hundred guineas for it. It was cheap at a hundred guineas. But then—I think he was afraid to refuse me. My name is rather well known. It was a sort of blackmail, I suppose. But I wanted that picture."
Inspector Winterbottom laughed again.
"Did you take any steps, my lord, to find out if Crowder has really been staying at East Felpham?"
"No." Wimsey swung round abruptly. "I have taken no steps at all. That's your business. I have told you the story, and, on my soul, I'd rather have stood by and said nothing."
"You needn't worry." The inspector laughed for the third time. "It's a good story, my lord, and you told it well. But you're right when you say it's a fairy-story. We've found this Italian fellow—Franceso, he called himself, and he's the man all right."
"How do you know? Has he confessed?"
"Practically. He's dead. Killed himself. He left a letter to the woman, begging her forgiveness, and saying that when he saw her with Plant he felt murder come into his heart. 'I have revenged myself,' he says, 'on him who dared to love you.' I suppose he got the wind up when he saw we were after him—I wish these newspapers wouldn't be always putting these criminals on their guard—so he did away with himself to cheat the gallows. I may say it's been a disappointment to me."
"It must have been," said Wimsey. "Very unsatisfactory, of course. But I'm glad my story turned out to be only a fairy-tale after all. You're not going?"
"Got to get back to my duty," said the inspector, heaving himself to his feet. "Very pleased to have met you, my lord. And I mean what I say—you ought to take to literature."
Wimsey remained after he had gone, still looking at the portrait.
"'What is Truth?' said jesting Pilate. No wonder, since it is so completely unbelievable.... I could prove it ... if I liked ... but the man had a villainous face, and there are few good painters in the world."