Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers Page B

two and Waters are out of the running all right, I fancy.’
    ‘Oh? Where was Mr. Waters?’
    ‘Wasn’t he with you?’
    ‘With us?’
    They stared at one another. Wimsey apologised.
    ‘I’m sorry. Mrs. Doings — his landlady, what’s her name? — told me Waters had gone with you two to Glasgow.’
    ‘She must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He said on Sunday evening at Bob Anderson’s that he might possibly turn up, but he didn’t, so we thought he’d changed his mind. Anyhow, we didn’t really expect him, did we, Mary?’
    ‘No. But isn’t he here then, Lord Peter?’
    ‘Well, as a matter of fact, he’s not,’ said Wimsey, aghast.
    ‘Oh, well, he must be somewhere,’ said Miss Cochran comfortably.
    ‘Naturally,’ said Wimsey, ‘but he certainly went off at about 8.30 yesterday morning, saying he was going to Glasgow. Or at least, he seems to have left that impression behind him.’
    ‘Well, he certainly never came to the station,’ said Miss Selby, decidedly. ‘And he wasn’t at the show either day, that I could see. But of course he may have had other fish to fry.’
    Wimsey scratched his head.
    ‘I must interview that woman again,’ he said. ‘I must have misunderstood her. But it’s exceedingly odd. Why should be get up and go out early if he wasn’t going to Glasgow? Especially—’
    ‘Especially what?’ said Miss Cochran.
    ‘Well, I shouldn’t have expected it,’ said Wimsey. ‘He was a bit lit-up the night before, and as a rule it takes a lot to get Waters out of bed at the best of times. It’s rather unfortunate. Still, we can’t do much till he turns up.’
    ‘We?’ said Miss Selby.
    ‘The police, I mean,’ said Wimsey, blushing a little.
    ‘You’ll be helping the police, I expect,’ said Miss Cochran. ‘I was forgetting that you had such a reputation as a Sherlock. I’m sorry we don’t seem able to help. You’d better ask Mr. Ferguson. He may have run across Mr. Waters somewhere in Glasgow.’
    ‘Oh, Ferguson was there, was he?’
    Wimsey put his question carelessly, but not so carelessly as to deceive Miss Cochran, who darted a shrewd glance at him.
    ‘Yes. He was there. I believe we can give ye the precise time we saw him.’ (As Miss Cochran became more emphatic, she became more Scottish in her accent. She planted her plump feet squarely on the ground and leaned forward with a hand on each knee, like an argumentative workman in a tram.) ‘That train of ours gets in at 2.16 — it’s a bad train, stops at every station, and we’d have done better to wait and take the 1.46 at Dumfries, only we wanted to meet Margaret’s sister Kathleen and her husband and they were away to England by the 4 o’clock train. They came to the station to meet us, and we went into the hotel and had a bit of lunch, for we hadn’t had anything since 8 o’clock — there’s none served on that train — and the hotel was as good a place as any to have our bit of talk in. We saw them off at 4 o’clock, and then we had a little argument whether we should go straight on to my cousin’s where we were staying, or look in at the Gallery first. I said it was too late to do anything, but Margaret said it would be a good idea just to go down and see where they’d hung the different things, and then to come back next day and have our proper look at them; and I agreed that was a sensible notion. So we took the tram and we got into the Exhibition just about half-past four, or a few minutes earlier, and in the first room, whom should we see but Mr. Ferguson, just coming away. So of course we spoke to him and he said he’d been through the rooms pretty thoroughly once and was coming back next day. However, he went round once again with us.’
    Wimsey, who had been trying to hold the whole local time-table in his head and was hurriedly calculating arrivals and departures, broke in at this point.
    ‘I suppose he really had been through the place already?’
    ‘Oh, yes. He told us beforehand where everything was, and mentioned the ones he liked. He’d come in on