Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers

were crushed, a flower or two here and there was wilted; there was a slight film of dust on the window-sill and on the polished table. In the houses of some of his friends this might have meant mere carelessness and a mind above trifles like dust and disorder, but with Mrs. Farren it was a phenomenon full of meaning. To her, the beauty of an ordered life was more than a mere phrase; it was a dogma to be preached, a cult to be practised with passion and concentration. Wimsey, who was imaginative, saw in those faint traces the witness to a night of suspense, a morning of terror; he remembered the anxious figure at the door, and the man — yes. There had been a man there, too. And Farren was away. And Mrs. Farren was a very beautiful woman, if you liked that style of thing, with her oval face and large grey eyes and those thick masses of copper-coloured hair, parted in the middle and rolled in a great knot on the nape of the neck.
    A step passed the window — Jeanie, with a basket on her arm. Mrs. Farren came back and sat down in a high, narrow-backed chair, looking out and past him like a distressed beggar-maid beginning to wonder whether Cophetua was not something of a trial in family life.
    ‘And where,’ said Wimsey, with obtuse tactlessness, ‘has Farren disappeared to?’
    The large eyes shadowed suddenly with fear or pain.
    ‘He’s gone out — somewhere.’
    ‘The gay dog,’ said Wimsey. ‘Or is he working?’
    ‘I — don’t quite know.’ Mrs. Farren laughed. ‘You know what this place is. People go off, saying they’ll be back to dinner, and then they meet a man, or somebody says the fish are rising somewhere, and that’s the last you see of them.’
    ‘I know — it’s shameful,’ said Wimsey, sympathetically. ‘Do you mean he didn’t even come home to his grub?’
    ‘Oh — I was only speaking generally. He was home to dinner all right.’
    ‘And then barged out afterwards, saying he wanted some cigarettes and would be back in ten minutes, I suppose. It’s disheartening, isn’t it, the way we behave? I’m a shocking offender myself, though my conscience is fairly easy. After all, Bunter is paid to put up with me. It’s not as though I had a devoted wife warming my slippers and looking out of the front-door every five minutes to see if I ’m going to turn up.’
    Mrs. Farren drew in her breath sharply.
    ‘Yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it?’
    ‘Terrible. No, I mean it. I do think it’s unfair. After all, one never knows what may happen to people. Look at poor Campbell.’
    8
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    This time there was no doubt about it. Mrs. Farren gave a gasp of terror that was almost a cry; but she recovered herself immediately.
    ‘Oh, Lord Peter, do tell me, what really has happened? Jeanie came in with some dreadful story about his being killed. But she gets so excited and talks such broad Scotch that I really couldn’t make it out.’
    ‘It’s a fact, I’m afraid,’ said Wimsey, soberly. ‘They found him lying in the Minnoch yesterday afternoon, with his head bashed in.’
    ‘With his head bashed in? You don’t mean—’
    ‘Well, it’s difficult to say quite how it happened. The river is full of rocks just there, you see—’
    ‘Did he fall in?’
    ‘It looks like it. He was in the water. But he wasn’t drowned, the doctor says. It was the blow on the head that did it.’
    ‘How dreadful!’
    ‘I wonder you hadn’t heard about it before,’ said Wimsey. ‘He was a great friend of yours, wasn’t he?’
    ‘Well — yes — we knew him very well.’ She stopped, and Wimsey thought she was going to faint. He sprang up.
    ‘Look here — I’m afraid this has been too much of a shock for you. Let me get some water.’
    ‘No — no—’ She flung out a hand to restrain him, but he had already darted across the passage into the studio, where he remembered to have seen a tap and a sink. The first thing he noticed there was Farren’s sketching-box, standing open on the table, the paints scattered about and the palette flung down higgledy-piggledy among them. An old