“I do.”
“And you think she did it?”
“Yes.”
Lord Peter walked across to the aspidistra in the bow-window and stroked its leaves thoughtfully. The silence was broken by a buxom nurse who, entering precipitately first and knocking afterwards, announced with a giggle:
“Excuse me, I’m sure, but you’re in request this afternoon, Philliter. Here’s Dr. Carr come for you.”
Dr. Carr followed hard upon his name. The sight of Wimsey struck him speechless.
“I told you I’d be turnin’ up again before long,” said Lord Peter, cheerfully. “Sherlock is my name and Holmes is my nature. I’m delighted to see you, Dr. Carr. Your little matter is well in hand, and seein’ I’m not required any longer I’ll make a noise like a bee and buzz off.”
“How didheget here?” demanded Dr. Carr, not altogether pleased.
“Didn’t you send him? I think he’s very nice,” said Nurse Philliter.
“He’s mad,” said Dr. Carr.
“He’s clever,” said the red-haired nurse.
“With vollies of eternal babble.”Butler,Hudibras
“With vollies of eternal babble.”
Butler,Hudibras
“So you are thinking of coming to live in Leahampton,” said Miss Murgatroyd. “Howvery nice. I do hope you will be settling down in the parish. We arenottoo well off for week-day congregations—there is so much indifference and so muchProtestantismabout. There! I have dropped a stitch. Provoking! Perhaps it was meant as a little reminder to me not to think uncharitably about Protestants. All is well—I have retrieved it. Were you thinking of taking a house, Miss Climpson?”
“I am not quite sure,” replied Miss Climpson. “Rents are so very high nowadays, and I fear that to buy a house would be almost beyond my means. I must look round very carefully, and view the question fromall sides. I should certainlypreferto be in this parish—and close to the Church, if possible. Perhaps the Vicar would know whether there is likely to be anything suitable.”
“Oh, yes, he would doubtless be able to suggest something. It is such a very nice, residential neighbourhood. I am sure you would like it. Let me see—you are staying in Nelson Avenue, I think Mrs. Tredgold said?”
“Yes—with Mrs. Budge at Fairview.”
“I am sure she makes you comfortable. Such a nice woman, though I’m afraid she never stops talking. Hasn’t she got any ideas on the subject? I’m sure if there’s any news going about, Mrs. Budge never fails to get hold of it.”
“Well,” said Miss Climpson, seizing the opening with a swiftness which would have done credit to Napoleon, “she did say something about a house in Wellington Avenue which she thought might be to let before long.”
“Wellington Avenue? You surprise me! I thought I knew almost everybody there. Could it be the Parfitts—really moving at last! They have been talking about it for at least seven years, and I really had begun to think it wasall talk. Mrs. Peasgood, do you hear that? Miss Climpson says the Parfitts are really leaving that house at last!”
“Bless me,” cried Mrs. Peasgood, raising her rather prominent eyes from a piece of plain needlework and focusing them on Miss Climpson like a pair of opera-glasses. “Well, thatisnews. It must be that brother of hers who was staying with them last week. Possibly he is going to live with them permanently, and that would clinch the matter, of course, for they couldn’t get on without another bedroom when the girls come home from school. A very sensible arrangement, I should think. I believe he is quite well off, you know, and it will be a very good thing for those children. I wonder where they will go. I expect it will be one of the new houses out on the Winchester Road, though of course that would mean keeping a car. Still, I expect he would want them to do that in any case. Most likely he will have it himself, and let them have the use of it.”
“I don’t think Parfitt was the name,” broke in Miss Climpson hurriedly, “I’m sure it wasn’t. It was a Miss somebody—a Miss Whittaker, I think, Mrs. Budge mentioned.”
“Miss Whittaker?” cried both the ladies in chorus. “Oh, no!surelynot?”
“I’m sure Miss Whittaker would have told me if she thought of giving up her house,” pursued Miss Murgatroyd. “We are such great friends. I think Mrs. Budge must have run away with a wrong idea. People do build up such amazing stories out of nothing at all.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” put in Mrs. Peasgood, rebukingly. “Theremaybe something in it. I know dear Miss Whittaker has sometimes spoken to me about wishing to take up chicken-farming. I daresay she has not mentioned the mattergenerally, but then she always confides inme. Depend on it, that is what she intends to do.”
“Mrs. Budge didn’t actually say Miss Whittaker was moving,” interposed Miss Climpson. “She said, I think, that Miss Whittaker had been left alone by some relation’s death, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she found the house lonely.”
“Ah! that’s Mrs. Budge all over!” said Mrs. Peasgood, nodding ominously. “A most excellent woman, but she sometimes gets hold of the wrong end of the stick. Not but what I’ve often thought the same thing myself. I said to poor Mary Whittaker only the other day, ‘Don’t you find it very lonely in that house, my dear, now that your poor dear Aunt is no more?’ I’m sure it would be a very good thing if she did move, or got someone to live with her. It’s not a natural life for a young woman, all alone like that, and so I told her. I’m one of those that believe in speaking their mind, you know, Miss Climpson.”
“Well, now, so am I, Mrs. Peasgood,” rejoined Miss Climpson promptly, “and that is what I said to Mrs. Budge at the time. I said, ‘Do I understand that there was anythingoddabout the old lady’s death?’—because she had spoken of thepeculiar circumstancesof the case, and you know, I should notat all liketo live in a house which could be called in any waynotorious. I should really feel quiteuncomfortableabout it.” In saying which, Miss Climpson no doubt spoke with perfect sincerity.
“But not at all—not at all,” cried Miss Murgatroyd, so eagerly that Mrs. Peasgood, who had paused to purse up her face and assume an expression of portentous secrecy before replying, was completely crowded out and left at the post. “There never was a more wicked story. The death was natural—perfectly natural, and a most happy release, poor soul, I’m sure, for her sufferings at the last were truly terrible. It was all a scandalous story put about by that young Dr. Carr (whom I’m sure I never liked) simply to aggrandise himself. As though any doctor would pronounce so definitely upon what exact date it would please God to call a poor sufferer to Himself! Human pride and vanity make a most shocking exhibition, Miss Climpson, when they lead us to cast suspicion on innocent people, simply because we are wedded to our own presumptuous opinions. Poor Miss Whittaker! She went through a most terrible time. But it was proved—absolutelyproved, that there was nothing in the story at all, and I hope that young man was properly ashamed of himself.”
“There may be two opinions about that, Miss Murgatroyd,” said Mrs. Peasgood. “I say what I think, Miss Climpson, and in my opinion there should have been an inquest. I try to be up-to-date, and I believe Dr. Carr to have been a very able young man, though of course, he was not the kind of old-fashioned family doctor that appeals to elderly people. It was a great pity that nice Nurse Philliter was sent away—that woman Forbes was no more use than a headache—to use my brother’s rather vigorous expression. I don’t think she knew her job, and that’s a fact.”
“Nurse Forbes was a charming person,” snapped Miss Murgatroyd, pink with indignation at being called elderly.
“That may be,” retorted Mrs. Peasgood, “but you can’t get over the fact that she nearly killed herself one day by taking nine grains of calomel by mistake for three. She told me that herself, and what she did in one case she might do in another.”
“But Miss Dawson wasn’t given anything,” said Miss Murgatroyd, “and at any rate, Nurse Forbes’ mind was on her patient, and not on flirting with the doctor. I’ve always thought that Dr. Carr felt a spite against her for taking his young woman’s place, and nothing would have pleased him better than to get her into trouble.”
“You don’t mean,” said Miss Climpson, “that he would refuse a certificate and cause all that trouble, just to annoy the nurse.Surelyno doctor would dare to do that.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Peasgood, “and nobody with a grain of sense would suppose it for a moment.”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Peasgood,” cried Miss Murgatroyd, “thank you very much, I’m sure—”
“I say what I think,” said Mrs. Peasgood.
“Then I’m glad I haven’t such uncharitable thoughts,” said Miss Murgatroyd.
“I don’t think your own observations are so remarkable for their charity,” retorted Mrs. Peasgood.
Fortunately, at this moment Miss Murgatroyd, in her agitation, gave a vicious tweak to the wrong needle and dropped twenty-nine stitches at once. The Vicar’s wife, scenting battle from afar, hurried over with a plate of scones, and helped to bring about a diversion. To her, Miss Climpson, doggedly sticking to her mission in life, broached the subject of the house in Wellington Avenue.
“Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,” replied Mrs. Tredgold, “but there’s Miss Whittaker just arrived. Come over to my corner and I’ll introduce her to you, and you can have a nice chat about it. You will like each other so much, she is such a keen worker. Oh! and Mrs. Peasgood, my husband is so anxious to have a word with you about the choirboys’ social. He is discussing it now with Mrs. Findlater. I wonder if you’d be so very good as to come and give him your opinion? He values it so much.”
Thus tactfully the good lady parted the disputants and, having deposited Mrs. Peasgood safely under the clerical wing, towed Miss Climpson away to an arm-chair near the tea-table.
“Dear Miss Whittaker, I so want you to know Miss Climpson. She is a near neighbour of yours—in Nelson Avenue, and I hope we shall persuade her to make her home among us.”
“That will be delightful,” said Miss Whittaker.
The first impression which Miss Climpson got of Mary Whittaker was that she was totally out of place among the tea-tables of S. Onesimus. With her handsome, strongly-marked features and quiet air of authority, she was of the type that “does well” in City offices. She had a pleasant and self-possessed manner, and was beautifully tailored—not mannishly, and yet with a severe fineness of outline that negatived the appeal of a beautiful figure. With her long and melancholy experience of frustrated womanhood, observed in a dreary succession of cheap boarding-houses, Miss Climpson was able to dismiss one theory which had vaguely formed itself in her mind. This was no passionate nature, cramped by association with an old woman and eager to be free to mate before youth should depart.Thatlook she knew well—she could diagnose it with dreadful accuracy at the first glance, in the tone of a voice saying, “How do you do?” But meeting Mary Whittaker’s clear, light eyes under their well-shaped brows, she was struck by a sudden sense of familiarity. She had seen that look before, though the where and the when escaped her. Chatting volubly about her arrival in Leahampton, her introduction to the Vicar and her approval of the Hampshire air and sandy soil, Miss Climpson racked her shrewd brain for a clue. But the memory remained obstinately somewhere at the back of her head. “It will come to me in the night,” thought Miss Climpson, confidently, “and meanwhile I won’t say anything about the house; it would seem so pushing on a first acquaintance.”
Whereupon, fate instantly intervened to overthrow this prudent resolve, and very nearly ruined the whole effect of Miss Climpson’s diplomacy at one fell swoop.
The form which the avenging Erinyes assumed was that of the youngest Miss Findlater—the gushing one—who came romping over to them, her hands filled with baby-linen, and plumped down on the end of the sofa beside Miss Whittaker.
“Mary mydear! Why didn’t you tell me? You really are going to start your chicken-farming scheme at once. I’d noideayou’d got on so far with your plans. Howcouldyou let me hear it first from somebody else? You promised to tell me before anybody.”
“But I didn’t know it myself,” replied Miss Whittaker, coolly. “Who told you this wonderful story?”
“Why, Mrs. Peasgood said that she heard it from . . .” Here Miss Findlater was in a difficulty. She had not yet been introduced to Miss Climpson and hardly knew how to refer to her before her face. “This lady” was what a shop-girl would say; “Miss Climpson” would hardly do, as she had, so to speak, no official cognisance of the name; “Mrs. Budge’s new lodger” was obviously impossible in the circumstances. She hesitated—then beamed a bright appeal at Miss Climpson, and said: “Our new helper—may I introduce myself? I dosodetest formality, don’t you, and to belong to the Vicarage work-party is a sort of introduction in itself, don’t you think? Miss Climpson, I believe? How do you do? It is true, isn’t it, Mary?—that you are letting your house to Miss Climpson, and starting a poultry-farm at Alford.”
“Certainly not that I know of. Miss Climpson and I have only just met one another.” The tone of Miss Whittaker’s voice suggested that the first meeting might very willingly be the last so far as she was concerned.
“Oh dear!” cried the youngest Miss Findlater, who was fair and bobbed and rather coltish, “I believe I’ve dropped a brick. I’msureMrs. Peasgood understood that it was all settled.” She appealed to Miss Climpson again.
“Quitea mistake!” said that lady, energetically, “whatmustyou be thinking of me, Miss Whittaker?Of course, I could notpossiblyhave said such a thing. I only happened to mention—in the mostcasualway, that I was looking—that is,thinkingof looking about—for a house in the neighbourhood of the Church—so convenient, you know, forEarly ServicesandSaints’ Days—and it was suggested—justsuggested, I really forget bywhom, that youmight, justpossibly, atsometime, consider letting your house. I assure you, that wasall.” In saying which, Miss Climpson was not wholly accurate or disingenuous, but excused herself to her conscience on the rather jesuitical grounds that where so much responsibility was floating about, it was best to pin it down in the quarter which made for peace. “Miss Murgatroyd,” she added, “put me right at once, for she said you werecertainlynot thinking of any such thing, or you would have told her before anybody else.”
Miss Whittaker laughed.
“But I shouldn’t,” she said, “I should have told my house-agent. It’s quite true, I did have it in mind, but I certainly haven’t taken any steps.”
“You really are thinking of doing it, then?” cried Miss Findlater. “I do hope so—because, if you do, I mean to apply for a job on the farm! I’m simply longing to get away from all these silly tennis-parties and things, and live close to the Earth and the fundamental crudities. Do you read Sheila Kaye-Smith?”
Miss Climpson said no, but she was very fond of Thomas Hardy.
“It really is terrible, living in a little town like this,” went on Miss Findlater, “so full of aspidistras, you know, and small gossip. You’ve no idea what a dreadfully gossipy place Leahampton is, Miss Climpson. I’m sure, Mary dear, you must have had more than enough of it, with that tiresome Dr. Carr and the things people said. I don’t wonder you’re thinking of getting rid of that house. I shouldn’t think you could ever feel comfortable in it again.”
“Why on earth not?” said Miss Whittaker, lightly. Too lightly? Miss Climpson was startled to recognise in eye and voice the curious quick defensiveness of the neglected spinster who cries out that she has no use for men.
“Oh well,” said Miss Findlater, “I always think it’s a little sad, living where people have died, you know. Dear Miss Dawson—though of course it really was merciful that she should be released—all the same—”
Evidently, thought Miss Climpson, she was turning the matter off. The atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the death had been in her mind, but she shied at referring to it.
“There are very few houses in which somebody hasn’t died sometime or other,” said Miss Whittaker. “I really can’t see why people should worry about it. I suppose it’s just a question of not realising. We are not sensitive to the past lives of people we don’t know. Just as we are much less upset about epidemics and accidents that happen a long way off. Do you really suppose, by the way, Miss Climpson, that this Chinese business is coming to anything? Everybody seems to take it very casually. If all this rioting and Bolshevism was happening in Hyde Park, there’d be a lot more fuss made about it.”
Miss Climpson made a suitable reply. That night she wrote to Lord Peter:
Miss Whittaker has asked me to tea. She tells me that,much as she would enjoyan active, country life, with something definite to do, she has adeep affectionfor the house in Wellington Avenue, andcannot tear herself away. She seemsvery anxiousto give this impression. Would it befairfor me to say “The lady doth protesttoo much, methinks”? ThePrince of Denmarkmight even add: “Let the galled jade wince”—if one can use that expression of alady. How wonderful Shakespeare is! One canalwaysfind a phrase in his works foranysituation!
Miss Whittaker has asked me to tea. She tells me that,much as she would enjoyan active, country life, with something definite to do, she has adeep affectionfor the house in Wellington Avenue, andcannot tear herself away. She seemsvery anxiousto give this impression. Would it befairfor me to say “The lady doth protesttoo much, methinks”? ThePrince of Denmarkmight even add: “Let the galled jade wince”—if one can use that expression of alady. How wonderful Shakespeare is! One canalwaysfind a phrase in his works foranysituation!
“Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies.”Chapman,The Widow’s Tears
“Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies.”
Chapman,The Widow’s Tears
“You know, Wimsey, I think you’ve found a mare’s nest,” objected Mr. Parker. “I don’t believe there’s the slightest reason for supposing that there was anything odd about the Dawson woman’s death. You’ve nothing to go on but a conceited young doctor’s opinion and a lot of silly gossip.”
“You’ve got an official mind, Charles,” replied his friend. “Your official passion for evidence is gradually sapping your brilliant intellect and smothering your instincts. You’re over-civilised, that’s your trouble. Compared with you, I am a child of nature. I dwell among the untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove, a maid whom there are (I am shocked to say) few to praise, likewise very few to love, which is perhaps just as well. Iknowthere is something wrong about this case.”
“How?”
“How?—well, just as I know there is something wrong about that case of reputed Lafite ’76 which that infernal fellow Pettigrew-Robinson had the nerve to try out on me the other night. It has a nasty flavour.”
“Flavour be damned. There’s no indication of violence or poison. There’s no motive for doing away with the old girl. And there’s no possibility of proving anything against anybody.”
Lord Peter selected a Villar y Villar from his case, and lighted it with artistic care.
“Look here,” he said, “will you take a bet about it? I’ll lay you ten to one that Agatha Dawson was murdered, twenty to one that Mary Whittaker did it, and fifty to one that I bring it home to her within the year. Are you on?”
Parker laughed. “I’m a poor man, your Majesty,” he temporised.
“There you are,” said Lord Peter, triumphantly, “you’re not comfortable about it yourself. If you were, you’d have said, ‘It’s taking your money, old chap,’ and closed like a shot, in the happy assurance of a certainty.”
“I’ve seen enough to know that nothing is a certainty,” retorted the detective, “but I’ll take you—in—half-crowns,” he added, cautiously.
“Had you said ponies,” replied Lord Peter, “I would have taken your alleged poverty into consideration and spared you, but seven-and-sixpence will neither make nor break you. Consequently, I shall proceed to make my statements good.”
“And what step do you propose taking?” inquired Parker, sarcastically. “Shall you apply for an exhumation order and search for poison, regardless of the analyst’s report? Or kidnap Miss Whittaker and apply the third-degree in the Gallic manner?”
“Not at all. I am more modern. I shall use up-to-date psychological methods. Like the people in the Psalms, I lay traps; I catch men. I shall let the alleged criminal convict herself.”
“Go on! You are a one, aren’t you?” said Parker, jeeringly.
“I am indeed. It is a well-established psychological fact that criminals cannot let well alone. They—”
“Revisit the place of the crime?”
“Don’t interrupt, blast you. They take unnecessary steps to cover the traces which they haven’t left, and so invite, seriatim, Suspicion, Inquiry, Proof, Conviction and the Gallows. Eminent legal writers—no, pax! don’t chuck that S. Augustine about, it’s valuable. Anyhow, not to cast the jewels of my eloquence into the pig-bucket, I propose to insert this advertisement in all the morning papers. Miss Whittaker must readsomeproduct of our brilliant journalistic age, I suppose. By this means, we shall kill two birds with one stone.”
“Start two hares at once, you mean,” grumbled Parker. “Hand it over.”
“Bertha and Evelyn Gotobed, formerly in the service of Miss Agatha Dawson, of ‘The Grove,’ Wellington Avenue, Leahampton, are requested to communicate with J. Murbles, solicitor, of Staple Inn, when they will hear ofSOMETHING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.”
“Bertha and Evelyn Gotobed, formerly in the service of Miss Agatha Dawson, of ‘The Grove,’ Wellington Avenue, Leahampton, are requested to communicate with J. Murbles, solicitor, of Staple Inn, when they will hear ofSOMETHING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.”
“Rather good, I think, don’t you?” said Wimsey. “Calculated to rouse suspicion in the most innocent mind. I bet you Mary Whittaker will fall for that.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know. That’s what’s so interesting. I hope nothing unpleasant will happen to dear old Murbles. I should hate to lose him. He’s such a perfect type of the family solicitor. Still, a man in his profession must be prepared to take risks.”
“Oh, bosh!” said Parker. “But I agree that it might be as well to get hold of the girls, if you really want to find out about the Dawson household. Servants always know everything.”
“It isn’t only that. Don’t you remember that Nurse Philliter said the girls were sacked shortly before she left herself? Now, passing over the odd circumstances of the Nurse’s own dismissal—the story about Miss Dawson’s refusing to take food from her hands, which wasn’t at all borne out by the old lady’s own attitude to her nurse—isn’t it worth considerin’ that these girls should have been pushed off on some excuse just about three weeks after one of those hysterical attacks of Miss Dawson’s? Doesn’t it rather look as though everybody who was likely to remember anything about that particular episode had been got out of the way?”
“Well, there was a good reason for getting rid of the girls.”
“Crockery?—well, nowadays it’s not so easy to get good servants. Mistresses put up with a deal more carelessness than they did in the dear dead days beyond recall. Then, about that attack. Why did Miss Whittaker choose just the very moment when the highly-intelligent Nurse Philliter had gone for her walk, to bother Miss Dawson about signin’ some tiresome old lease or other? If business was liable to upset the old girl, why not have a capable person at hand to calm her down?”
“Oh, but Miss Whittaker is a trained nurse. She was surely capable enough to see to her aunt herself.”
“I’m perfectly sure she was a very capable woman indeed,” said Wimsey, with emphasis.
“Oh, all right. You’re prejudiced. But stick the ad. in by all means. It can’t do any harm.”
Lord Peter paused, in the very act of ringing the bell. His jaw slackened, giving his long, narrow face a faintly foolish and hesitant look, reminiscent of the heroes of Mr. P. G. Wodehouse.
“You don’t think—” he began. “Oh! rats!” He pressed the button. “Itcan’tdo any harm, as you say. Bunter, see that this advertisement appears in the personal columns of all this list of papers, every day until further notice.”
The advertisement made its first appearance on the Tuesday morning. Nothing of any note happened during the week, except that Miss Climpson wrote in some distress to say that the youngest Miss Findlater had at length succeeded in persuading Miss Whittaker to take definite steps about the poultry farm. They had gone away together to look at a business which they had seen advertised in thePoultry News, and proposed to be away for some weeks. Miss Climpson feared that under the circumstances she would not be able to carry on any investigations of sufficient importance to justify herfar too generoussalary. She had, however, become friendly with Miss Findlater, who had promised to tell herall abouttheir doings. Lord Peter replied in reassuring terms.
On the Tuesday following, Mr. Parker was just wrestling in prayer with his charlady, who had a tiresome habit of boiling his breakfast kippers till they resembled heavily pickled loofahs, when the telephone whirred aggressively.
“Is that you, Charles?” asked Lord Peter’s voice. “I say, Murbles has had a letter about that girl, Bertha Gotobed. She disappeared from her lodgings last Thursday, and her landlady, getting anxious, and having seen the advertisement, is coming to tell us all she knows. Can you come round to Staple Inn at eleven?”
“Dunno,” said Parker, a little irritably. “I’ve got a job to see to. Surely you can tackle it by yourself.”
“Oh, yes!” The voice was peevish. “But I thought you’d like to have some of the fun. What an ungrateful devil you are. You aren’t taking the faintest interest in this case.”
“Well—I don’t believe in it, you know. All right—don’t use language like that—you’ll frighten the girl at the Exchange. I’ll see what I can do. Eleven?—right!—Oh, I say!”
“Cluck!” said the telephone.
“Rung off,” said Parker, bitterly. “Bertha Gotobed. H’m! I could have sworn—”
He reached across to the breakfast-table for theDaily Yell, which was propped against the marmalade jar, and read with pursed lips a paragraph whose heavily leaded headlines had caught his eye, just before the interruption of the kipper episode.
“NIPPY” FOUND DEADIN EPPING FOREST—£5Note in Hand-bag.—
He took up the receiver again and asked for Wimsey’s number. The man-servant answered him.
“His lordship is in his bath, sir. Shall I put you through?”
“Please,” said Parker.
The telephone clucked again. Presently Lord Peter’s voice came faintly, “Hullo!”
“Did the landlady mention where Bertha Gotobed was employed?”
“Yes—she was a waitress at the Corner House. Why this interest all of a sudden? You snub me in my bed, but you woo me in my bath. It sounds like a music-hall song of the less refined sort. Why, oh why?”
“Haven’t you seen the papers?”
“No. I leave those follies till breakfast-time. What’s up? Are we ordered to Shanghai? or have they taken sixpence off the income-tax?”
“Shut up, you fool, it’s serious. You’re too late.”
“What for?”
“Bertha Gotobed was found dead in Epping Forest this morning.”
“Good God! Dead? How? What of?”
“No idea. Poison or something. Or heart failure. No violence. No robbery. No clue. I’m going down to the Yard about it now.”
“God forgive me, Charles. D’you know, I had a sort of awful feeling when you said that ad. could do no harm. Dead. Poor girl! Charles, I feel like a murderer. Oh, damn! and I’m all wet. It does make one feel so helpless. Look here, you spin down to the Yard and tell ’em what you know and I’ll join you there in half a tick. Anyway, there’s no doubt about it now.”
“Oh, but, look here. It may be something quite different. Nothing to do with your ad.”
“Pigsmayfly. Use your common sense. Oh! and Charles, does it mention the sister?”
“Yes. There was a letter from her on the body, by which they identified it. She got married last month and went to Canada.”
“That’s saved her life. She’ll be in absolutely horrible danger, if she comes back. We must get hold of her and warn her. And find out what she knows. Good-bye. Imustget some clothes on. Oh, hell!”
Cluck! the line went dead again, and Mr. Parker, abandoning the kippers without regret, ran feverishly out of the house and down Lamb’s Conduit Street to catch a diver tram to Westminster.
The Chief of Scotland Yard, Sir Andrew Mackenzie, was a very old friend of Lord Peter’s. He received that agitated young man kindly and listened with attention to his slightly involved story of cancer, wills, mysterious solicitors and advertisements in the agony column.
“It’s a curious coincidence,” he said, indulgently, “and I can understand your feeling upset about it. But you may set your mind at rest. I have the police-surgeon’s report, and he is quite convinced that the death was perfectly natural. No signs whatever of any assault. They will make an examination, of course, but I don’t think there is the slightest reason to suspect foul play.”
“But what was she doing in Epping Forest?”
Sir Andrew shrugged gently.
“That must be inquired into, of course. Still—young peopledowander about, you know. There’s a fiancé somewhere. Something to do with the railway, I believe. Collins has gone down to interview him. Or she may have been with some other friend.”
“But if the death was natural, no one would leave a sick or dying girl like that?”
“Youwouldn’t. But say there had been some running about—some horse-play—and the girl fell dead, as these heart cases sometimes do. The companion may well have taken fright and cleared out. It’s not unheard of.”
Lord Peter looked unconvinced.
“How long has she been dead?”
“About five or six days, our man thinks. It was quite by accident that she was found then at all; it’s quite an unfrequented part of the Forest. A party of young people were exploring with a couple of terriers, and one of the dogs nosed out the body.”
“Was it out in the open?”
“Not exactly. It lay among some bushes—the sort of place where a frolicsome young couple might go to play hide-and-seek.”
“Or where a murderer might go to play hide and let the police seek,” said Wimsey.
“Well, well. Have it your own way,” said Sir Andrew, smiling. “If it was murder, it must have been a poisoning job, for, as I say, there was not the slightest sign of a wound or a struggle. I’ll let you have the report of the autopsy. In the meanwhile, if you’d like to run down there with Inspector Parker, you can of course have any facilities you want. And if you discover anything, let me know.”
Wimsey thanked him, and collecting Parker from an adjacent office, rushed him briskly down the corridor.
“I don’t like it,” he said, “that is, of course, it’s very gratifying to know that our first steps in psychology have led to action, so to speak, but I wish to God it hadn’t been quite such decisive action. We’d better trot down to Epping straight away, and see the landlady later. I’ve got a new car, by the way, which you’ll like.”
Mr. Parker took one look at the slim black monster, with its long rakish body and polished-copper twin exhausts, and decided there and then that the only hope of getting down to Epping without interference was to look as official as possible and wave his police authority under the eyes of every man in blue along the route. He shoe-horned himself into his seat without protest, and was more unnerved than relieved to find himself shoot suddenly ahead of the traffic—not with the bellowing roar of the ordinary racing engine, but in a smooth, uncanny silence.
“The new Daimler Twin-Six,” said Lord Peter, skimming dexterously round a lorry without appearing to look at it. “With a racing body. Specially built . . . useful . . . gadgets . . . no row—hate row . . . like Edmund Sparkler . . . very anxious there should be no row . . . Little Dorrit . . . remember . . . call her Mrs. Merdle . . . for that reason . . . presently we’ll see what she can do.”
The promise was fulfilled before their arrival at the spot where the body had been found. Their arrival made a considerable sensation among the little crowd which business or curiosity had drawn to the spot. Lord Peter was instantly pounced upon by four reporters and a synod of Press photographers, whom his presence encouraged in the hope that the mystery might turn out to be a three-column splash after all. Parker, to his annoyance, was photographed in the undignified act of extricating himself from “Mrs. Merdle.” Superintendent Walmisley came politely to his assistance, rebuked the onlookers, and led him to the scene of action.
The body had been already removed to the mortuary, but a depression in the moist ground showed clearly enough where it had lain. Lord Peter groaned faintly as he saw it.
“Damn this nasty warm spring weather,” he said, with feeling. “April showers—sun and water—couldn’t be worse. Body much altered, Superintendent?”
“Well, yes, rather, my lord, especially in the exposed parts. But there’s no doubt about the identity.”
“I didn’t suppose there was. How was it lying?”
“On the back, quite quiet and natural-like. No disarrangement of clothing, or anything. She must just have sat down when she felt herself bad and fallen back.”
“M’m. The rain has spoilt any footprints or signs on the ground. And it’s grassy. Beastly stuff, grass, eh, Charles?”
“Yes. These twigs don’t seem to have been broken at all, Superintendent.”
“Oh, no,” said the officer, “no signs of a struggle, as I pointed out in my report.”
“No—but if she’d sat down here and fallen back as you suggest, don’t you think her weight would have snapped some of these young shoots?”
The Superintendent glanced sharply at the Scotland Yard man.
“You don’t suppose she was brought and put here, do you, sir?”
“I don’t suppose anything,” retorted Parker, “I merely drew attention to a point which I think you should consider. What are these wheel-marks?”
“That’s our car, sir. We backed it up here and took her up that way.”
“And all this trampling is your men too, I suppose?”
“Partly that, sir, and partly the party as found her.”
“You noticed no other person’s tracks, I suppose?”
“No, sir. But it’s rained considerably this last week. Besides, the rabbits have been all over the place, as you can see, and other creatures too, I fancy. Weasels, or something of that sort.”
“Oh! Well, I think you’d better take a look round. There might be traces of some kind a bit further away. Make a circle, and report anything you see. And you oughtn’t to have let all that bunch of people get so near. Put a cordon round and tell ’em to move on. Have you seen all you want, Peter?”
Wimsey had been poking his stick aimlessly into the bole of an oak-tree at a few yards’ distance. Now he stooped and lifted out a package which had been stuffed into a cleft. The two policemen hurried forward with eager interest, which evaporated somewhat at sight of the find—a ham sandwich and an empty Bass bottle, roughly wrapped up in a greasy newspaper.
“Picnickers,” said Walmisley, with a snort. “Nothing to do with the body, I daresay.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” said Wimsey, placidly. “When did the girl disappear, exactly?”
“Well, she went off duty at the Corner House at five a week ago to-morrow, that’s Wednesday, 27th,” said Parker.
“And this is theEvening Viewsof Wednesday, 27th,” said Wimsey. “Late Final edition. Now that edition isn’t on the streets till about 6 o’clock. So unless somebody brought it down and had supper here, it was probably brought by the girl herself or her companion. It’s hardly likely anyone would come and picnic here afterwards, not with the body there. Not that bodies need necessarily interfere with one’s enjoyment of one’s food. À la guerre comme à la guerre. But for the moment there isn’t a war on.”
“That’s true, sir. But you’re assuming the death took place on the Wednesday or Thursday. She may have been somewhere else—living with someone in town or anywhere.”
“Crushed again,” said Wimsey. “Still, it’s a curious coincidence.”
“It is, my lord, and I’m very glad you found the things. Will you take charge of ’em, Mr. Parker, or shall I?”
“Better take them along and put them with the other things,” said Parker, extending his hand to take them from Wimsey, whom they seemed to interest quite disproportionately. “I fancy his lordship’s right and that the parcel came here along with the girl. And that certainly looks as if she didn’t come alone. Possibly that young man of hers was with her. Looks like the old, old story. Take care of that bottle, old man, it may have finger-prints on it.”
“You can have the bottle,” said Wimsey. “May we ne’er lack a friend or a bottle to give him, as Dick Swiveller says. But I earnestly beg that before you caution your respectable young railway clerk that anything he says may be taken down and used against him, you will cast your eye, and your nose, upon this ham sandwich.”
“What’s wrong with it?” inquired Parker.
“Nothing. It appears to be in astonishingly good preservation, thanks to this admirable oak-tree. The stalwart oak—for so many centuries Britain’s bulwark against the invader! Heart of oak are our ships—not hearts, by the way, as it is usually misquoted. But I am puzzled by the incongruity between the sandwich and the rest of the outfit.”
“It’s an ordinary ham sandwich, isn’t it?”
“Oh, gods of the wine-flask and the board, how long? how long?—it is a ham sandwich, Goth, but not an ordinary one. Never did it see Lyons’ kitchen, or the counter of the multiple store or the delicatessen shop in the back street. The pig that was sacrificed to make this dainty titbit fattened in no dull style, never knew the daily ration of pig-wash or the not unmixed rapture of the domestic garbage-pail. Observe the hard texture, the deep brownish tint of the lean; the rich fat, yellow as a Chinaman’s cheek; the dark spot where the black treacle cure has soaked in, to make a dish fit to lure Zeus from Olympus. And tell me, man of no discrimination and worthy to be fed on boiled cod all the year round, tell me how it comes that your little waitress and her railway clerk come down to Epping Forest to regale themselves on sandwiches made from coal-black, treacle-cured Bradenham ham, which long ago ran as a young wild boar about the woodlands, till death translated it to an incorruptible and more glorious body? I may add that it costs about 3s. a pound uncooked—an argument which you will allow to be weighty.”
“That’s odd, certainly,” said Parker. “I imagine that only rich people—”
“Only rich people or people who understand eating as a fine art,” said Wimsey. “The two classes are by no means identical, though they occasionally overlap.”
“It may be very important,” said Parker, wrapping the exhibits up carefully. “We’d better go along now and see the body.”
The examination was not a very pleasant matter, for the weather had been damp and warm and there had certainly been weasels. In fact, after a brief glance, Wimsey left the two policemen to carry on alone, and devoted his attention to the dead girl’s handbag. He glanced through the letter from Evelyn Gotobed—(now Evelyn Cropper)——and noted down the Canadian address. He turned the cutting of his own advertisement out of an inner compartment, and remained for some time in consideration of the £5 note which lay, folded up, side by side with a 10s.Treasury note, 7s., 8d.in silver and copper, a latch-key and a powder compacte.
“You’re having this note traced, Walmisley, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, my lord, certainly.”
“And the latch-key, I imagine, belongs to the girl’s lodgings.”
“No doubt it does. We have asked her landlady to come and identify the body. Not that there’s any doubt about it, but just as a matter of routine. She may give us some help. Ah!”—the Superintendent peered out of the mortuary door—“I think this must be the lady.”