"How long did you stay on at the house after Lady Dormer died?" pursued Wimsey.
"I waited on till after the funeral, just in case Miss Dorland should need anybody."
"Before you left, did you hear anything of this trouble about the lawyers and the wills?"
"They were talking about it downstairs. Miss Dorland said nothing to me herself."
"Did she seem worried?"
"Not to notice."
"Had she any friends with her at the time?"
"Not staying in the house. She went out to see some friends one evening, I think—the evening before I left. She didn't say who they were."
"I see. Thank you, Nurse."
Parker had no more questions to put, and they took their leave.
"Well," said Parker, "how anybody could admire that girl's voice——"
"You noticed that! My theory is coming out right, Charles. I wish it wasn't. I'dratherbe wrong. I should like to have you look pitifully at me and say, 'I told you so.' I can't speak more strongly than that."
"Hang your theories!" said Parker. "It looks to me as if we shall have to wash out the idea that General Fentiman got his dose in Portman Square. By the way, didn't you say you'd met the Dorland girl at the Rushworth's?"
"No. I said I went hoping to meet her, but she wasn't there."
"Oh, I see. Well, that'll do for the moment. How about a spot of lunch?"
At which point they turned the corner and ran slap into Salcombe Hardy, emerging from Harley Street. Wimsey clutched Parker's arm suddenly. "I've remembered," he said.
"What?"
"Who that portrait reminds me of. Tell you later."
Sally, it appeared, was also thinking of grub. He was, in fact, due to meet Waffles Newton at the Falstaff. It ended in their all going to the Falstaff.
"And how's it all going?" demanded Sally, ordering boiled beef and carrots.
He looked limpidly at Parker who shook his head.
"Discreet man, your friend," said Sally to Peter. "I suppose the police are engaged in following up a clew—or have we reached the point when they are completely baffled? Or do we say that an arrest is imminent, eh?"
"Tell us your own version, Sally. Your opinion's as good as anybody's."
"Oh, mine!—Same as yours—same as everybody's. The girl was in league with the doctor, of course. Pretty obvious, isn't it?"
"Maybe," said Parker, cautiously. "But that's a hard thing to prove. We know, of course, that they both sometimes went to Mrs. Rushworth's house, but there's no evidence that they knew each other well."
"But, you ass, she—" Wimsey blurted out. He shut his mouth again with a snap. "No, I won't. Fish it out for yourselves."
Illumination was flooding in on him in great waves. Each point of light touched off a myriad others. Now a date was lit up, and now a sentence. The relief in his mind would have been overwhelming, had it not been for that nagging central uncertainty. It was the portrait that worried him most. Painted as a record, painted to recall beloved features—thrust face to the wall and covered with dust.
Sally and Parker were talking.
"... moral certainty is not the same thing as proof."
"Unless we can show that she knew the terms of the will...."
"... why wait till the last minute? It could have been done safely any time...."
"They probably thought it wasn't necessary. The old lady looked like seeing him into his grave easily. If it hadn't been for the pneumonia."
"Even so, they had five days."
"Yes—well, say she didn't know till the very day of Lady Dormer's death...."
"She might have told her then. Explained ... seeing the thing had become a probability...."
"And the Dorland girl arranged for the visit to Harley Street...."
"... plain as the nose on your face."
Hardy chuckled.
"They must have got a thundering shock when the body turned up the next morning at the Bellona. I suppose you gave Penberthy a good grueling about that rigor."
"Pretty fair. He fell back on professional caution, naturally."
"It's coming to him in the witness-box. Does he admit knowing the girl?"
"He says he just knows her to speak to. But one's got to find somebody who has seen them together. You remember the Thompson case. It was the interview in the tea-shop that clinched it."
"What I want to know," said Wimsey, "is why——"
"Why what?"
"Why didn't they compromise?" It was not what he had been going to say, but he felt defeated, and those words would end the sentence as well as any others.
"What's that?" asked Hardy, quickly.
Peter explained.
"When the question of survivorship came up, the Fentimans were ready to compromise and split the money. Why didn't Miss Dorland agree? If your idea is the right one, it was much the safest way. But it was she who insisted on an inquiry."
"I didn't know that," said Hardy. He was annoyed. All kinds of "stories" were coming his way to-day, and to-morrow there would probably be an arrest, and he wouldn't be able to use them.
"Theydidagree to compromise in the end," said Parker. "When was that?"
"After I told Penberthy there was going to be an exhumation," said Wimsey, as though in spite of himself.
"There you are! They saw it was getting too dangerous."
"Do you remember how nervous Penberthy was at the exhumation?" said Parker. "That man—what's his name's—joke about Palmer, and knocking over the jar?"
"What was that?" demanded Hardy again. Parker told him, and he listened, grinding his teeth. Another good story gone west. But it would all come out at the trial, and would be worth a headline.
"Robert Fentiman ought to be given a medal," said Hardy. "If he hadn't gone butting in——"
"Robert Fentiman?" inquired Parker, distantly.
Hardy grinned.
"If he didn't fix up the old boy's body, who did? Give us credit for a little intelligence."
"One admits nothing," said Parker, "but——"
"But everybody says he did it. Leave it at that. Somebody did it. If Somebody hadn't butted in, it would have been jam for the Dorland."
"Well, yes. Old Fentiman would just have gone home and pegged out quietly—and Penberthy would have given the certificate."
"I'd like to know how many inconvenient people are polished off that way. Damn it—it's so easy."
"I wonder how Penberthy's share of the boodle was to be transferred to him."
"I don't," said Hardy. "Look here—here's this girl. Calls herself an artist. Paints bad pictures. Right. Then she meets this doctor fellow. He's mad on glands. Shrewd man—knows there's money in glands.Shestarts taking up glands. Why?"
"That was a year ago."
"Precisely. Penberthy isn't a rich man. Retired Army surgeon, with a brass plate and a consulting-room in Harley Street—shares the house with two other hard-up brass-platers. Lives on a few old dodderers down at the Bellona. Has an idea, if only he could start one of these clinics for rejuvenating people, he could be a millionaire. All these giddy old goats who want their gay time over again—why, they're a perfect fortune to the man with a bit of capital and a hell of a lot of cheek. Then this girl comes along—rich old woman's heiress—and he goes after her. It's all fixed up. He's to accommodate her by removing the obstacle to the fortune, and she obligingly responds by putting the money into his clinic. In order not to make it too obvious, she had to pretend to get a dickens of an interest in glands. So she drops painting and takes to medicine. What could be clearer?"
"But that means," put in Wimsey, "that she must have known all about the will at least a year ago."
"Why not?"
"Well that brings us back to the old question: Why the delay?"
"And it gives us the answer," said Parker. "They waited till the interest in the glands and things was so firmly established and recognized by everybody that nobody would connect it with the General's death."
"Of course," said Wimsey. He felt that matters were rushing past him at a bewildering rate. But George was safe, anyhow.
"How soon do you think you'll be able to take action?" asked Hardy. "I suppose you'll want a bit more solid proof before you actually arrest them."
"I'd have to be certain that they don't wriggle out of it," said Parker, slowly. "It's not enough to prove that they were acquainted. There may be letters, of course, when we go over the girl's things. Or Penberthy's—though he's hardly the man to leave compromising documents lying about."
"You haven't detained Miss Dorland?"
"No, we've let her loose—on a string. I don't mind telling you one thing. There's been no communication of any kind with Penberthy."
"Of course there hasn't," said Wimsey. "They've quarrelled."
The others stared at him.
"How do you know that?" demanded Parker, annoyed.
"Oh, well—it doesn't matter—Ithinkso, that's all. And any way, they would take jolly good care not to communicate, once the alarm was given."
"Hullo!" broke in Hardy, "here's Waffles. Late again. Waffles!—whathaveyou been doing, old boy?"
"Interviewing the Rushworths," said Waffles, edging his way into a chair by Hardy. He was a thin, sandy person, with a tired manner. Hardy introduced him to Wimsey and Parker.
"Got your story in?"
"Oh, yes. Awful lot of cats these women are. Ma Rushworth—she's the sloppy sort of woman with her head in the clouds all the time, who never sees anything till it's stuck right under her nose—she pretends, of course, that she always thought Ann Dorland was an unwholesome kind of girl. I nearly asked why, in that case, she had her about the house; but I didn't. Anyway, Mrs. Rushworth said, they didn't know her very intimately. They wouldn't, of course. Wonderful how these soulful people sheer off at the least suggestion of unpleasantness."
"Did you get anything about Penberthy?"
"Oh, yes—I got something."
"Good?"
"Oh, yes."
Hardy, with Fleet Street's delicate reticence towards the man with an exclusive story, did not press the question. The talk turned back and went over the old ground. Waffles Newton agreed with Salcombe Hardy's theory.
"The Rushworths must surely know something. Not the mother, perhaps—but the girl. If she's engaged to Penberthy, she'll have noticed any other woman who seemed to have an understanding with him. Women see these things."
"You don't suppose that they're going to confess that dear Dr. Penberthy ever had an understanding with anybody but dear Naomi," retorted Newton. "Besides, they aren't such fools as not to know that Penberthy's connection with the Dorland girl must be smothered up at all costs. They know she did it, all right, but they aren't going to compromise him."
"Of course not," said Parker, rather shortly. "The mother probably knows nothing, anyway. It's a different matter if we get the girl in the witness-box——"
"You won't," said Waffles Newton. "At least, you'll have to be jolly quick."
"Why?"
Newton waved an apologetic hand.
"They're being married to-morrow," he said, "special license. I say, that's not to go further, Sally."
"That's all right, old man."
"Married?" said Parker. "Good lord! that forces our hand a bit. Perhaps I'd better pop off. So long—and thanks very much for the tip, old man."
Wimsey followed him into the street.
"We'll have to put the stopper on this marriage business, quick," said Parker, madly waving to a taxi, which swooped past and ignored him. "I didn't want to move just at present, because I wasn't ready, but it'll be the devil and all if the Rushworth girl gets hitched up to Penberthy and we can't take her evidence. Devil of it is, if she's determined to go on with it, we can't stop it without arresting Penberthy. Very dangerous, when there's no real proof. I think we'd better have him down to the Yard for interrogation and detain him."
"Yes," said Wimsey. "But—look here, Charles."
A taxi drew up.
"What?" said Parker, sharply, with his foot on the step. "I can't wait, old man. What is it?"
"I—look here, Charles—this is all wrong," pleaded Wimsey. "You may have got the right solution, but the working of the sum's all wrong. Same as mine used to be at school, when I'd looked up the answer in the crib and had to fudge in the middle part. I've been a fool. I ought to have known about Penberthy. But I don't believe this story about bribing and corrupting him, and getting him to do the murder. It doesn't fit."
"Doesn't fit what?"
"Doesn't fit the portrait. Or the books. Or the way Nurse Armstrong described Ann Dorland. Or your description of her. It's a mechanically perfect explanation, but I swear it's all wrong."
"If it's mechanically perfect," said Parker, "that's good enough. It's far more than most explanations are. You've got that portrait on the brain. It's because you're artistic, I suppose."
For some reason, the word "artistic" produces the most alarming reactions in people who know anything about art.
"Artistic be damned!" said Wimsey, spluttering with fury, "it's because I'm an ordinary person, and have met women, and talked to them like ordinary human beings——"
"You and your women," said Parker, rudely.
"Well—I and my women, what about it? One learns something. You're on the wrong tack about this girl."
"I've met her and you haven't," objected Parker. "Unless you're suppressing something. You keep on hinting things. Anyhow, I've met the girl, and she impressed me as being guilty."
"And I haven't met her, and I'll swear she isn't guilty."
"You must know, of course."
"I do happen to know about this."
"I'm afraid your unsupported opinion will hardly be sufficient to refute the weight of evidence."
"You haven't any real evidence, if it comes to that. You don't know that they were ever alone together; you don't know that Ann Dorland knew about the will; you can't prove that Penberthy administered the poison——"
"I don't despair of getting all the evidence necessary," said Parker, coldly, "provided you don't keep me hereallday." He slammed the taxi-door.
"What a beast of a case this is," thought Wimsey. "That makes two silly, sordid rows to-day. Well, what next?" He considered a moment.
"My spirit needs soothing," he decided. "Feminine society is indicated. Virtuous feminine society. No emotions. I'll go and have tea with Marjorie Phelps."
Ann Dorland Goes Misere
The studio door was opened by a girl he did not know. She was not tall, but compactly and generously built. He noticed the wide shoulders and the strong swing of the thighs before he had taken in her face. The uncurtained window behind her threw her features into shadow, he was only aware of thick black hair, cut in a square bob, with a bang across the forehead.
"Miss Phelps is out."
"Oh!—will she be long?"
"Don't know. She'll be in to supper."
"Do you think I might come in and wait?"
"I expect so, if you're a friend of hers."
The girl fell back from the doorway and let him pass. He laid his hat and stick on the table and turned to her. She took no notice of him, but walked over to the fireplace and stood with one hand on the mantelpiece. Unable to sit down, since she was still standing, Wimsey moved to the modeling-board, and raised the wet cloth that covered the little mound of clay.
He was gazing with an assumption of great interest at the half-modeled figure of an old flower-seller, when the girl said:
"I say!"
She had taken up Marjorie Phelps' figurine of himself, and was twisting it over in her fingers.
"Is this you?"
"Yes—rather good of me, don't you think?"
"What do you want?"
"Want?"
"You've come here to have a look at me, haven't you?"
"I came to see Miss Phelps."
"I suppose the policeman at the corner comes to see Miss Phelps too."
Wimsey glanced out of the window. Therewasa man at the corner—an elaborately indifferent lounger.
"I am sorry," said Wimsey, with sudden enlightenment. "I'm really awfully sorry to seem so stupid, and so intrusive. But honestly, I had no idea who you were till this moment."
"Hadn't you? Oh, well, it doesn't matter."
"Shall I go?"
"You can please yourself."
"If you really mean that, Miss Dorland, I should like to stay. I've been wanting to meet you, you know."
"That was nice of you," she mocked. "First you wanted to defraud me, and now you're trying to——"
"To what?"
She shrugged her wide shoulders.
"Yours is not a pleasant hobby, Lord Peter Wimsey."
"Will you believe me," said Wimsey, "when I assure you that I was never a party to the fraud. In fact, I showed it up. I did, really."
"Oh, well. It doesn't matter now."
"But do please believe that."
"Very well. If you say so, I must believe it."
She threw herself on the couch near the fire.
"That's better," said Wimsey. "Napoleon or somebody said that you could always turn a tragedy into a comedy, by sittin' down. Perfectly true, isn't it? Let's talk about something ordinary till Miss Phelps comes in. Shall we?"
"What do you want to talk about?"
"Oh, well—that's rather embarrassin'. Books." He waved a vague hand. "What have you been readin' lately?"
"Nothing much."
"Don't know what I should do without books. Fact, I always wonder what people did in the old days. Just think of it. All sorts of bothers goin' on—matrimonial rows and love-affairs—prodigal sons and servants and worries—and no books to turn to."
"People worked with their hands instead."
"Yes—that's frightfully jolly for the people who can do it. I envy them myself. You paint, don't you?"
"I try to."
"Portraits?"
"Oh, no—figure and landscape chiefly."
"Oh!... A friend of mine—well, it's no use disguising it—he's a detective—you've met him, I think...."
"That man? Oh, yes. Quite a polite sort of detective."
"He told me he'd seen some stuff of yours. It rather surprised him, I think. He's not exactly a modernist. He seemed to think your portraits were your best work."
"There weren't many portraits. A few figure-studies...."
"They worried him a bit." Wimsey laughed. "The only thing he understood, he said, was a man's head in oils...."
"Oh, that!—just an experiment—a fancy thing. My best stuff is some sketches I did of the Wiltshire Downs a year or two ago. Direct painting, without any preliminary sketch."
She described a number of these works.
"They sound ever so jolly," said Wimsey. "Great stuff. I wish I could do something of that kind. As I say, I have to fall back on books for my escape. Readingisan escape to me. Is it to you?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well—it is to most people, I think. Servants and factory hands read about beautiful girls loved by dark, handsome men, all covered over with jewels and moving in scenes of gilded splendour. And passionate spinsters read Ethel M. Dell. And dull men in offices read detective stories. They wouldn't, if murder and police entered into their lives."
"I don't know," she said. "When Crippen and Le Neve were taken on the steamer, they were reading Edgar Wallace." Her voice was losing its dull harshness; she sounded almost interested.
"Le Neve was reading it," said Wimsey, "but I've never believed she knew about the murder. I think she was fighting desperately to know nothing about it—reading horrors, and persuading herself that nothing of that kind had happened, or could happen, to her. I think one might do that, don't you?"
"I don't know," said Ann Dorland. "Of course, a detective story keeps your brain occupied. Rather like chess. Do you play chess?"
"No good at it. I like it—but I keep on thinking about the history of the various pieces, and the picturesqueness of the moves. So I get beaten. I'm not a player."
"Nor am I. I wish I were."
"Yes—that would keep one's mind off things with a vengeance. Draughts or dominoes or patience would be even better. No connection with anything. I remember," added Wimsey, "one time when something perfectly grinding and hateful had happened to me. I played patience all day. I was in a nursing home—with shell-shock—and other things. I only played one game, the very simplest ... the demon ... a silly game with no ideas in it at all. I just went on laying it out and gathering it up ... hundred times in an evening ... so as to stop thinking."
"Then you too...."
Wimsey waited; but she did not finish the sentence.
"It's a kind of drug, of course. That's an awfully trite thing to say, but it's quite true."
"Yes, quite."
"I read detective stories too. They were about the only thing I could read. All the others had the war in them—or love ... or some damn thing I didn't want to think about."
She moved restlessly.
"You've been through it, haven't you?" said Wimsey, gently.
"Me?... well ... all this ... it isn't pleasant, you know ... the police ... and ... and everything."
"You're not really worried about the police, are you?"
She had cause to be, if she only knew it, but he buried this knowledge at the bottom of his mind, defying it to show itself.
"Everything's pretty hateful, isn't it?"
"Something's hurt you ... all right ... don't talk about it if you don't want to ... a man?"
"It usually is a man, isn't it?"
Her eyes were turned away from him, and she answered with a kind of shamefaced defiance.
"Practically always," said Wimsey. "Fortunately, one gets over it."
"Depends what it is."
"One gets over everything," repeated Wimsey, firmly. "Particularly if one tells somebody about it."
"One can't always tell things."
"I can't imagine anything really untellable."
"Some things are so beastly."
"Oh, yes—quite a lot of things. Birth is beastly—and death—and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautifulsuprème de sole, with the caviare in boats, and thecroûtonsand the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets—I could cry. But there it is, don't you know."
Ann Dorland suddenly laughed.
"That's better," said Wimsey. "Look here, you've been brooding over this and you're seeing it all out of proportion. Let's be practical and frightfully ordinary. Is it a baby?"
"Oh, no!"
"Well—that's rather a good thing, because babies, though no doubt excellent in their way, take a long time and come expensive. Is it blackmail?"
"Good heavens, no!"
"Good. Because blackmail is even longer and more expensive than babies. Is it Freudian, or sadistic, or any of those popular modern amusements?"
"I don't believe you'd turn a hair if it was."
"Why should I?—I can't think of anything worse to suggest, except what Rose Macaulay refers to as 'nameless orgies.' Or diseases, of course. It's not leprosy or anything?"
"What a mind you've got," she said, beginning to laugh. "No, it isn't leprosy."
"Well, whatdidthe blighter do?"
Ann Dorland smiled faintly: "It's nothing, really."
"If only Heaven prevents Marjorie Phelps from coming in," thought Wimsey, "I'm going to get it now.... It must have been something, to upset you like this," he pursued aloud, "you're not the kind of woman to be upset about nothing."
"You don't think I am?" She got up and faced him squarely. "He said ... he said ... I imagined things ... he said ... he said I had a mania about sex. I suppose you would call it Freudian, really," she added hastily, flushing an ugly crimson.
"Is that all?" said Wimsey. "I know plenty of people who would take that as a compliment.... But obviously you don't. What exact form of mania did he suggest...?"
"Oh, the gibbering sort that hangs round church doors for curates," she broke out, fiercely. "It's a lie. He did—hedid—pretend to—want me and all that. The beast!... I can't tell you the things he said ... and I'd made such a fool of myself...."
She was back on the couch, crying, with large, ugly, streaming tears, and snorting into the cushions. Wimsey sat down beside her.
"Poor kid," he said. This, then, was at the back of Marjorie's mysterious hints, and those scratchcat sneers of Naomi Rushworth's. The girl had wanted love-affairs, that was certain; imagined them perhaps. There had been Ambrose Ledbury. Between the normal and the abnormal, the gulf is deep, but so narrow that misrepresentation is made easy.
"Look here." He put a comforting arm round Ann's heaving shoulders. "This fellow—was it Penberthy, by the way?"
"How did you know?"
"Oh!—the portrait, and lots of things. The things you liked once, and then wanted to hide away and forget. He's a rotter, anyway, for saying that kind of thing—even if it was true, which it isn't. You got to know him at the Rushworth's, I take it—when?"
"Nearly two years ago."
"Were you keen on him then?"
"No. I—well, I was keen on somebody else. Only that was a mistake too. He—he was one of those people, you know."
"They can't help themselves," said Wimsey, soothingly. "When did the change-over happen?"
"The other man went away. And later on, Dr. Penberthy—oh! I don't know! He walked home with me once or twice, and then he asked me to dine with him—in Soho."
"Had you at that time told any one about this comic will of Lady Dormer's?"
"Of course not. How could I? I never knew anything about it till after she died."
Her surprise sounded genuine enough.
"What did you think? Did you think the money would come to you?"
"I knew that some of it would; Auntie told me she would see me provided for."
"There were the grandsons, of course."
"Yes; I thought she would leave most of it to them. It's a pity she didn't, poor dear. Then there wouldn't have been all this dreadful bother."
"People so often seem to lose their heads when they make wills. So you were a sort of dark horse at that time. H'm. Did this precious Penberthy ask you to marry him?"
"I thought he did. But he says he didn't. We talked about founding his clinic; I was to help him."
"And that was when you chucked painting for books about medicine and first-aid classes. Did your aunt know about the engagement?"
"He didn't want her told. It was to be our secret, till he got a better position. He was afraid she might think he was after the money."
"I daresay he was."
"He made out he was fond of me," she said, miserably.
"Of course, my dear child; your case is not unique. Didn't you tell any of your friends?"
"No." Wimsey reflected that the Ledbury episode had probably left a scar. Besides—did women tell things to other women? He had long doubted it.
"You were still engaged when Lady Dormer died, I take it?"
"As engaged as we ever were. Of course, he told me that there was something funny about the body. He said you and the Fentimans were trying to defraud me of the money. I shouldn't have minded for myself—it was more money than I should have known what to do with. But it would have meant the clinic, you see."
"Yes, you could start a pretty decent clinic with half a million. So that was why you shot me out of the house."
He grinned—and then reflected a few moments.
"Look here," he said, "I'm going to give you a bit of a shock, but it'll have to come sooner or later. Has it ever occurred to you that it was Penberthy who murdered General Fentiman?"
"I—wondered," she said, slowly. "I couldn't think—who else—But you know they suspectme?"
"Oh, well—cui bonoand all that—they couldn't overlook you. They have to suspect every possible person, you know."
"I don't blame them at all. But I didn't, you know."
"Of course not. It was Penberthy. I look at it like this. Penberthy wanted money; he was sick of being poor, and he knew you would be certain to getsomeof Lady Dormer's money. He'd probably heard about the family quarrel with the General, and expected it would be the lot. So he started to make your acquaintance. But he was careful. He asked you to keep it quiet—just in case, you see. The money might be so tied up that you couldn't give it to him, or you might lose it if you married, or it might only be quite a small annuity, in which case he'd want to look for somebody richer."
"We considered those points when we talked it over about the clinic."
"Yes. Well, then, Lady Dormer fell ill. The General went round and heard about the legacy that was coming to him. And then he toddled along to Penberthy, feeling very groggy, and promptly told him all about it. You can imagine him saying: 'You've got to patch me up long enough to get the money.' That must have been a nasty jar for Penberthy."
"It was. You see, he didn't even hear about my twelve thousand."
"Oh?"
"No. Apparently what the General said was, 'If only I last out poor Felicity, all the money comes to me. Otherwise it goes to the girl and my boys only get seven thousand apiece.' That was why——"
"Just a moment. When did Penberthy tell you about that?"
"Why, later—when he said I was to compromise with the Fentimans."
"That explains it. I wondered why you gave in so suddenly. I thought, then, that you—Well, anyhow, Penberthy hears this, and gets the brilliant idea of putting General Fentiman out of the way. So he gives him a slow-working kind of a pill——"
"Probably a powder in a very tough capsule that would take a long time to digest."
"Good idea. Yes, very likely. And then the General, instead of heading straight for home, as he expected, goes off to the Club and dies there. And then Robert——"
He explained in detail what Robert had done, and resumed.
"Well, now—Penberthy was in a bad fix. If he drew attention at the time to the peculiar appearance of the corpse, he couldn't reasonably give a certificate. In which case there would be a post-mortem and an analysis, and the digitalin would be found. If he kept quiet, the money might be lost and all his trouble would be wasted. Maddenin' for him, wasn't it? So he did what he could. He put the time of the death as early as he dared, and hoped for the best."
"He told me he thought there would be some attempt to make it seem later than it really was. I thought it wasyouwho were trying to hush everything up. And I was so furious that of course I told Mr. Pritchard to have a proper inquiry made and on no account to compromise."
"Thank God you did," said Wimsey.
"Why?"
"I'll tell you presently. But Penberthy now—I can't think whyhedidn't persuade you to compromise. That would have made him absolutely safe."
"But he did! That's what started our first quarrel. As soon as he heard about it, he said I was a fool not to compromise. I couldn't understand his saying that, since he himself had said there was something wrong. We had a fearful row. That was the time I mentioned the twelve thousand that was coming to me anyway."
"What did he say?"
"'I didn't know that.' Just like that. And then he apologized and said that the law was so uncertain, it would be best to agree to divide the money anyhow. So I rang up Mr. Pritchard and told him not to make any more fuss. And we were friends again."
"Was it the day after that, that Penberthy—er—said things to you?"
"Yes."
"Right. Then I can tell you one thing: he would never have been so brutal if he hadn't been in fear of his life. Do you know what had happened in between?"
She shook her head.
"I had been on the phone to him, and told him there was going to be an autopsy."
"Oh!"
"Yes—listen—you needn't worry any more about it. He knew the poison would be discovered, and that if he was known to be engaged to you, he was absolutely bound to be suspected. So he hurried to cut the connection with you—purely in self-defense."
"But why do it in that brutal way?"
"Because, my dear, he knew that that particular accusation would be the very last thing a girl of your sort would tell people about. He made it absolutely impossible for you to claim him publicly. And he bolstered it up by engaging himself to the Rushworth female."
"He didn't care howIsuffered."
"He was in a beast of a hole," said Wimsey, apologetically. "Mind you, it was a perfectly diabolical thing to do. I daresay he's feeling pretty rotten about it."
Ann Dorland clenched her hands.
"I've been so horribly ashamed——"
"Well, you aren't any more, are you?"
"No—but——" A thought seemed to strike her. "Lord Peter—I can'tprovea word of this. Everybody will think I was in league with him. And they'll think that our quarrel and his getting engaged to Naomi was just a put-up job between us to get us both out of a difficulty."
"You've got brains," said Wimsey, admiringly. "Nowyou see why I thanked God you'd been so keen on an inquiry at first. Pritchard can make it pretty certain that you weren't an accessory before the fact, anyhow."
"Of course—so he can. Oh, I'm so glad! Iamso glad." She burst into excited sobs and clutched Wimsey's hand. "I wrote him a letter—right at the beginning—saying I'd read about a case in which they'd proved the time of somebody's death by looking into his stomach, and asking if General Fentiman couldn't be dug up."
"Did you? Splendid girl! Youhavegot a head on your shoulders!... No, I observe that it's on my shoulders. Go on. Have a real, good howl—I feel rather like howling myself. I've been quite worried about it all. But it's all right now, isn't it?"
"I am a fool ... but I'm so thankful you came."
"So am I. Here, have a hanky. Poor old dear!... Hullo! there's Marjorie."
He released her and went out to meet Marjorie Phelps at the door.
"Lord Peter! Good lord!"
"Thank you, Marjorie," said Wimsey, gravely.
"No, but listen! Have you seen Ann?—I took her away. She's frightfully queer—and there's a policeman outside. But whatever she's done, I couldn't leave her alone in that awful house. You haven't come to—to——"
"Marjorie!" said Wimsey, "don't you ever talk to me again about feminine intuition. You've been thinking all this time that that girl was suffering from guilty conscience. Well, she wasn't. It was a man, my child—a MAN!"
"How do you know?"
"My experienced eye told me as much at the first glance. It's all right now. Sorrow and sighing have fled away. I am going to take your young friend out to dinner."
"But why didn't she tell me what it was all about?"
"Because," said Wimsey, mincingly, "it wasn't the kind of thing one woman tells another."
Lord Peter Calls A Bluff
"It is new to me," said Lord Peter, glancing from the back window of the taxi at the other taxi which was following them, "to be shadowed by the police, but it amuses them and doesn't hurt us."
He was revolving ways and means of proof in his mind. Unhappily, all the evidence in favor of Ann Dorland was evidence against her as well—except, indeed, the letter to Pritchard. Damn Penberthy. The best that could be hoped for now was that the girl should escape from public inquiry with a verdict of 'Not proven.' Even if acquitted—even if never charged with the murder—she would always be suspect. The question was not one which could be conveniently settled by a brilliant flash of deductive logic, or the discovery of a blood-stained thumb-mark. It was a case for lawyers to argue—for a weighing of the emotional situation by twelve good and lawful persons. Presumably the association could be proved—the couple had met and dined together; probably the quarrel could be proved—but what next? Would a jury believe in the cause of the quarrel? Would they think it a pre-arranged blind, or perhaps—or mistake it for the falling-out of rogues among themselves? What would they think of this plain, sulky, inarticulate girl, who had never had any real friends, and whose clumsy and tentative graspings after passion had been so obscure, so disastrous?
Penberthy, too—but Penberthy was easier to understand. Penberthy, cynical and bored with poverty, found himself in contact with this girl, who might be so well-off some day. And Penberthy, the physician, would not mistake the need for passion that made the girl such easy stuff to work on. So he carried on—bored with the girl, of course—keeping it all secret, till he saw which way the cat was going to jump. Then the old man—the truth about the will—the opportunity. And then, upsettingly, Robert.... Would the jury see it like that?
Wimsey leaned out of the cab window and told the driver to go to the Savoy. When they arrived, he handed the girl over to the cloak-room attendant. "I'm going up to change," he added, and turning, had the pleasure of seeing his sleuth arguing with the porter in the entrance-hall.
Bunter, previously summoned by telephone, was already in attendance with his master's dress clothes. Having changed, Wimsey passed through the hall again. The sleuth was there, quietly waiting. Wimsey grinned at him, and offered him a drink.
"I can't help it, my lord," said the detective.
"Of course not; you've sent for a bloke in a boiled shirt to take your place, I suppose?"
"Yes, my lord."
"More power to his elbow. So long."
He rejoined his charge and they went into the dining-room. Dressed in a green which did not suit her, she was undoubtedly plain. But she had character; he was not ashamed of her. He offered her the menu.
"What shall it be?" he asked. "Lobster and champagne?"
She laughed at him.
"Marjorie says you are an authority on food. I don't believe authorities on food ever take lobster and champagne. Anyway, I don't like lobster, much. Surely there's something they do best here, isn't there? Let's have that."
"You show the right spirit," said Wimsey. "I will compose a dinner for you."
He called the head waiter, and went into the question scientifically.
"Huîtres Musgrave—I am opposed on principle to the cooking of oysters—but it is a dish so excellent that one may depart from the rules in its favor. Fried in their shells, Miss Dorland, with little strips of bacon. Shall we try it?—The soup must beTortue Vraie, of course. The fish—oh! just aFilet de Sole, the merest mouthful, a hyphen between the prologue and the main theme."
"That all sounds delightful. And what is the main theme to be?"
"I think aFaisan RôtiwithPommes Byron. And a salad to promote digestion. And, waiter—be sure the salad is dry and perfectly crisp. ASoufflé Glaceto finish up with. And bring me the wine-list."
They talked. When she was not on the defensive, the girl was pleasant enough in manner; a trifle downright and aggressive, perhaps, in her opinions, but needing only mellowing.
"What do you think of theRomanée Conti?" he asked, suddenly.
"I don't know much about wine. It's good. Not sweet, like Sauterne. It's a little—well—harsh. But it's harsh without being thin—quite different from that horrid Chianti people always seem to drink at Chelsea parties."
"You're right; it's rather unfinished, but it has plenty of body—it'll be a grand wine in ten years' time. It's 1915. Now, you see. Waiter, take this away and bring me a bottle of the 1908."
He leaned towards his companion.
"Miss Dorland—may I be impertinent?"
"How? Why?"
"Not an artist, not a bohemian, and not a professional man;—a man of the world."
"Whatdoyou mean by those cryptic words?"
"For you. That is the kind of man who is going to like you very much. Look! that wine I've sent away—it's no good for a champagne-and-lobster sort of person, nor for very young people—it's too big and rough. But it's got the essential guts. So have you. It takes a fairly experienced palate to appreciate it. But you and it will come into your own one day. Get me?"
"Do you think so?"
"Yes. But your man won't be at all the sort of person you're expecting. You have always thought of being dominated by somebody, haven't you?"
"Well——"
"But you'll find that yours will be the leading brain of the two. He will take great pride in the fact. And you will find the man reliable and kind, and it will turn out quite well."
"I didn't know you were a prophet."
"I am, though."
Wimsey took the bottle of 1908 from the waiter and glanced over the girl's head at the door. A man in a boiled shirt was making his way in, accompanied by the manager.
"I am a prophet," said Wimsey. "Listen. Something tiresome is going to happen—now, this minute. But don't worry. Drink your wine, and trust."
The manager had brought the man to their table. It was Parker.
"Ah!" said Wimsey, brightly. "You'll forgive our starting without you, old man. Sit down. I think you know Miss Dorland."
"Have you come to arrest me?" asked Ann.
"Just to ask you to come down to the Yard with me," said Parker, smiling pleasantly and unfolding his napkin.
Ann looked palely at Wimsey, and took a gulp of the wine.
"Right," said Wimsey. "Miss Dorland has quite a lot to tell you. After dinner will suit us charmingly. What will you have?"
Parker, who was not imaginative, demanded a grilled steak.
"Shall we find any other friends at the Yard?" pursued Wimsey.
"Possibly," said Parker.
"Well, cheer up! You put me off my food, looking so grim. Hullo! Yes, waiter, what is it?"
"Excuse me, my lord; is this gentleman Detective-Inspector Parker?"
"Yes, yes," said Parker, "what's the matter?"
"You're wanted on the 'phone, sir."
Parker departed.
"It's all right," said Wimsey to the girl. "I know you're straight, and I'll damn well see you through."
"What am I to do?"
"Tell the truth."
"It sounds so silly."
"They've heard lots of very much sillier stories than that."
"But—I don't want to—to be the one to——"
"You're still fond of him, then?"
"No!—but I'd rather it wasn't me."
"I'll be frank with you. I think it's going to be between you and him that suspicion will lie."
"In that case"—she set her teeth—"he can have what's coming to him."
"Thank the lord! I thought you were going to be noble and self-sacrificing and tiresome. You know. Like the people whose noble motives are misunderstood in chapter one and who get dozens of people tangled up in their miserable affairs till the family lawyer solves everything on the last page but two."
Parker had come back from the telephone.
"Just a moment!" He spoke in Peter's ear.
"Hullo?"
"Look here; this is awkward. George Fentiman——"
"Yes?"
"He's been found in Clerkenwell."
"Clerkenwell?"
"Yes; must have wandered back by 'bus or something. He's at the police-station; in fact he's given himself up."
"Good lord!"
"For the murder of his grandfather."
"The devil he has!"
"It's a nuisance; of course it must be looked into. I think perhaps I'd better put off interrogating Dorland and Penberthy. What are you doing with the girl, by the way?"
"I'll explain later. Look here—I'll take Miss Dorland back to Marjorie Phelps' place, and then come along and join you. The girl won't run away; I know that. And anyhow, you've got a man looking after her."
"Yes, I rather wish you would come with me; Fentiman is pretty queer, by all accounts. We've sent for his wife."
"Right. You buzz off, and I'll join you in—say in three quarters of an hour. What address? Oh, yes, righty-ho! Sorry you're missing your dinner."
"It's all in the day's work," growled Parker, and took his leave.
George Fentiman greeted them with a tired white smile.
"Hush!" he said. "I've told them all about it.He'sasleep; don't wake him."
"Who's asleep, dearest?" said Sheila.
"I mustn't say the name," said George, cunningly. "He'd hear it—even in his sleep—even if you whispered it. But he's tired, and he nodded off. So I ran in here and told them all about it while he snored."
The police superintendent tapped his forehead significantly behind Sheila's back.
"Has he made any statement?" asked Parker.
"Yes, he insisted on writing it himself. Here it is. Of course...." the Superintendent shrugged his shoulders.
"That's all right," said George. "I'm getting sleepy myself. I've been watching him for a day and a night, you know. I'm going to bed. Sheila—it's time to go to bed."
"Yes, dear."
"We'll have to keep him here to-night, I suppose," muttered Parker. "Has the doctor seen him?"
"We've sent for him, sir."
"Well, Mrs. Fentiman, I think if you'd take your husband into the room the officer will show you, that would be the best way. And we'll send the doctor in to you when he arrives. Perhaps it would be as well that he should see his own medical man too. Whom would you like us to send for?"
"Dr. Penberthy has vetted him from time to time, I think," put in Wimsey, suddenly. "Why not send for him?"
Parker gasped involuntarily.
"He might be able to throw some light on the symptoms," said Wimsey, in a rigid voice.
Parker nodded.
"A good idea," he agreed. He moved to the telephone. George smiled as his wife put her arm about his shoulder.
"Tired," he said, "very tired. Off to bed, old girl."
A police-constable opened the door to them, and they started through it together; George leaned heavily on Sheila; his feet dragged.
"Let's have a look at his statement," said Parker.
It was written in a staggering handwriting, much blotted and erased, with words left out and repeated here and there.