The Nine Tailors

During Sunday’s church service, Wimsey has an idea. An upper gallery where the servants from Red House used to sit has been removed from the church in the years since Deacon went to jail. Cherubim decorate the wall around this spot, just as the cipher indicates. Wimsey suspects that Deacon slipped the emeralds behind a wall panel for safekeeping since the police were likely to arrest him at any moment. Wimsey informs Blundell of his plan to search the church. Even though he doesn’t expect to find the emeralds still there, he believes that locating the empty hiding place will prove that all the mysterious events in the village are connected.

Later that afternoon, Wimsey and the inspector climb a ladder, open a wall panel, and find the missing emeralds. Blundell is elated, but Wimsey makes the strange observation that both men have been entirely wrong about the crime. He says, “We’ve been wrong from start to finish. Nobody found them. Nobody killed anybody for them. Nobody deciphered the cryptogram. We’re wrong, wrong, out of the hunt and wrong!” (298).

The following day, Wimsey learns that the Thodays have disappeared from town. Meanwhile, Blundell discovers the real name of Jean LeGros. He was a soldier called Arthur Cobbleigh. Wimsey has already connected all the dots of the case, but he stubbornly refuses to reveal what he knows until he can confirm the facts. After a flurry of telegrams, he seems satisfied with his conclusions but is not happy for the trouble it will cause in the village. He tells Venables, “Probably I’m tryin’ to be too clever. That’s me every time. I’m sorry to have made so much unpleasantness, anyhow. And I really would rather go away now. I’ve got that silly modern squeamishness that doesn’t like watchin’ people suffer” (307).

Back in London, Wimsey and Blundell revisit Cranton. Wimsey reveals that the dead man in the churchyard was Deacon. Cranton fills in the narrative gaps because he had been corresponding with Deacon for some time before the thief returned to England.

Apparently, Deacon had managed his jailbreak without an inside accomplice, murdering a prison guard in the process. While hiding in the woods near the prison, he is seen by a drunken soldier. He hits the soldier, intending to knock him out but kills him accidentally. Deacon then switches clothes with the soldier named Arthur Cobbleigh and joins his unit, which is being shipped to the front at Marne. During a shelling in France, Deacon is injured and disoriented. He wanders away from the fighting, and Suzanne discovers him. He convinces her to help him and later marries her. Some years later, the couple runs out of money, and Deacon writes to Cranton, offering to split the emeralds with him if Cranton will help smuggle him back into the country using a fake passport.

Initially thinking it’s a trick, Cranton demands proof that Deacon knows where the jewels are hidden. Since Deacon was once a change ringer, he writes a coded letter using the bell sequence as clues. He tells Cranton that he’s welcome to the emeralds if he can solve the cipher without help. Of course, Cranton cannot decipher the message, so he agrees to meet Deacon in the village. When the latter doesn’t arrive on time, Cranton gets tired of waiting and looks for Deacon in the church.

He climbs up to the bell tower, but the room unnerves him. He says, “Have you ever been up in that place? Ever seen those bells? I’m not what you’d call fanciful in a general way, but there was something about the bells that gave me the fantods” (320). In the belfry, he discovers Deacon’s dead body. The man has been tied up, but his cause of death is unknown. Just at that moment, someone comes up the stairs to dispose of the remains, and Cranton sneaks out in a hurry, accidentally dropping the cipher letter when he leaves.

Wimsey and Blundell next turn their attention to the Thodays, who have been found. After the couple knew that the dead man was Deacon, they realized that their marriage was invalid, so they rushed off to renew their vows privately. Wimsey presses for an explanation of how they knew the body was Deacon’s. Will grudgingly admits that he caught Deacon searching the church on December 30. When he threatens to call the police, Deacon points out that this would embarrass the bigamous Thoday family. Will agrees to get Deacon out of the country and give him 200 pounds. In the meantime, he knocks him down and ties him up. This is what Potty saw that night in the church.

Will drags Deacon up to the belfry and gives him food and drink until he can smuggle him out of town. However, Will falls ill on December 31, so Wimsey presses to find out the identity of Deacon’s killer, asking, “If you didn’t kill him then, who took him his rations in the interval? And who, having fed him and killed him, rolled him down the belfry ladder on the night of the 4th, with a witness sitting in the roof of the tower” (336).