Whose Body?

Whose Body?

DOROTHY L. SAYERS

A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

WHOSE BODY?

Copyright, 1923, by Dorothy Sayers

Printed in the United States of America

All rights in this book are reserved.

No part of the book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Brothers
49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N. Y.

The Singular Adventure of the
Man with the Golden Pince-Nez

To M. J.

Dear Jim:

This book is your fault. If it had not been for your
brutal insistence, Lord Peter would never have staggered
through to the end of this enquiry. Pray consider
that he thanks you with his accustomed suavity.

9

CHAPTER I

“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly
Circus. “Hi, driver!”

The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal
while negotiating the intricacies of turning into
Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 ’bus, a
38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.

“I’ve left the catalogue behind,” said Lord Peter
deprecatingly. “Uncommonly careless of me. D’you
mind puttin’ back to where we came from?”

“To the Savile Club, sir?”

“No—110 Piccadilly—just beyond—thank you.”

“Thought you was in a hurry,” said the man, overcome
with a sense of injury.

“I’m afraid it’s an awkward place to turn in,” said
Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the
words. His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated
spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots
breed from Gorgonzola.

The taxi, under the severe eye of a policeman, revolved
by slow jerks, with a noise like the grinding
of teeth.

The block of new, perfect and expensive flats in
which Lord Peter dwelt upon the second floor, stood
directly opposite the Green Park, in a spot for many
years occupied by the skeleton of a frustrate commercial
enterprise. As Lord Peter let himself in he
10
heard his man’s voice in the library, uplifted in that
throttled stridency peculiar to well-trained persons
using the telephone.

“I believe that’s his lordship just coming in again—if
your Grace would kindly hold the line a moment.”

“What is it, Bunter?”

“Her Grace has just called up from Denver, my
lord. I was just saying your lordship had gone to the
sale when I heard your lordship’s latchkey.”

“Thanks,” said Lord Peter; “and you might find
me my catalogue, would you? I think I must have left
it in my bedroom, or on the desk.”

He sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely
courtesy, as though it were an acquaintance
dropped in for a chat.

“Hullo, Mother—that you?”

“Oh, there you are, dear,” replied the voice of the
Dowager Duchess. “I was afraid I’d just missed you.”

“Well, you had, as a matter of fact. I’d just started
off to Brocklebury’s sale to pick up a book or two,
but I had to come back for the catalogue. What’s
up?”

“Such a quaint thing,” said the Duchess. “I thought
I’d tell you. You know little Mr. Thipps?”

“Thipps?” said Lord Peter. “Thipps? Oh, yes, the
little architect man who’s doing the church roof. Yes.
What about him?”

“Mrs. Throgmorton’s just been in, in quite a state
of mind.”

“Sorry, Mother, I can’t hear. Mrs. Who?”

“Throgmorton—Throgmorton—the vicar’s wife.”
11

“Oh, Throgmorton, yes?”

“Mr. Thipps rang them up this morning. It was
his day to come down, you know.”

“Yes?”

“He rang them up to say he couldn’t. He was so
upset, poor little man. He’d found a dead body in his
bath.”

“Sorry, Mother, I can’t hear; found what, where?”

“A dead body, dear, in his bath.”

“What?—no, no, we haven’t finished. Please don’t
cut us off. Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Mother? Hullo!—Mother!—Oh,
yes—sorry, the girl was trying to
cut us off. What sort of body?”

“A dead man, dear, with nothing on but a pair of
pince-nez. Mrs. Throgmorton positively blushed when
she was telling me. I’m afraid people do get a little
narrow-minded in country vicarages.”

“Well, it sounds a bit unusual. Was it anybody he
knew?”

“No, dear, I don’t think so, but, of course, he
couldn’t give her many details. She said he sounded
quite distracted. He’s such a respectable little man—and
having the police in the house and so on, really
worried him.”

“Poor little Thipps! Uncommonly awkward for
him. Let’s see, he lives in Battersea, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, dear; 59, Queen Caroline Mansions; opposite
the Park. That big block just round the corner from
the Hospital. I thought perhaps you’d like to run
round and see him and ask if there’s anything we can
do. I always thought him a nice little man.”
12

“Oh, quite,” said Lord Peter, grinning at the telephone.
The Duchess was always of the greatest assistance
to his hobby of criminal investigation, though
she never alluded to it, and maintained a polite fiction
of its non-existence.

“What time did it happen, Mother?”

“I think he found it early this morning, but, of
course, he didn’t think of telling the Throgmortons
just at first. She came up to me just before lunch—so
tiresome, I had to ask her to stay. Fortunately, I
was alone. I don’t mind being bored myself, but I hate
having my guests bored.”

“Poor old Mother! Well, thanks awfully for tellin’
me. I think I’ll send Bunter to the sale and toddle
round to Battersea now an’ try and console the poor
little beast. So-long.”

“Good-bye, dear.”

“Bunter!”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Her Grace tells me that a respectable Battersea
architect has discovered a dead man in his bath.”

“Indeed, my lord? That’s very gratifying.”

“Very, Bunter. Your choice of words is unerring.
I wish Eton and Balliol had done as much for me.
Have you found the catalogue?”

“Here it is, my lord.”

“Thanks. I am going to Battersea at once. I want
you to attend the sale for me. Don’t lose time—I
don’t want to miss the Folio Dante[A] nor the de
13
Voragine—here you are—see? ‘Golden Legend’—Wynkyn
de Worde, 1493—got that?—and, I say,
make a special effort for the Caxton folio of the ‘Four
Sons of Aymon’—it’s the 1489 folio and unique.
Look! I’ve marked the lots I want, and put my outside
offer against each. Do your best for me. I shall be
back to dinner.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“Take my cab and tell him to hurry. He may for
you; he doesn’t like me very much. Can I,” said Lord
Peter, looking at himself in the eighteenth-century
mirror over the mantelpiece, “can I have the heart to
fluster the flustered Thipps further—that’s very difficult
to say quickly—by appearing in a top-hat and
frock-coat? I think not. Ten to one he will overlook
my trousers and mistake me for the undertaker. A
grey suit, I fancy, neat but not gaudy, with a hat to
tone, suits my other self better. Exit the amateur of
first editions; new motive introduced by solo bassoon;
enter Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman.
There goes Bunter. Invaluable fellow—never
offers to do his job when you’ve told him to do somethin’
else. Hope he doesn’t miss the ‘Four Sons of
Aymon.’ Still, there is another copy of that—in the
Vatican.[B] It might become available, you never know
14
—if the Church of Rome went to pot or Switzerland
invaded Italy—whereas a strange corpse doesn’t turn
up in a suburban bathroom more than once in a lifetime—at
least, I should think not—at any rate, the
number of times it’s happened, with a pince-nez,
might be counted on the fingers of one hand, I imagine.
Dear me! it’s a dreadful mistake to ride two
hobbies at once.”

He had drifted across the passage into his bedroom,
and was changing with a rapidity one might not have
expected from a man of his mannerisms. He selected
a dark-green tie to match his socks and tied it accurately
without hesitation or the slightest compression
of his lips; substituted a pair of brown shoes for
his black ones, slipped a monocle into a breast pocket,
and took up a beautiful Malacca walking-stick with
a heavy silver knob.

“That’s all, I think,” he murmured to himself.
“Stay—I may as well have you—you may come in
useful—one never knows.” He added a flat silver
matchbox to his equipment, glanced at his watch, and
seeing that it was already a quarter to three, ran
briskly downstairs, and, hailing a taxi, was carried to
Battersea Park.

Mr. Alfred Thipps was a small, nervous man, whose
flaxen hair was beginning to abandon the unequal
struggle with destiny. One might say that his only
really marked feature was a large bruise over the left
eyebrow, which gave him a faintly dissipated air incongruous
with the rest of his appearance. Almost in
15
the same breath with his first greeting, he made a
self-conscious apology for it, murmuring something
about having run against the dining-room door in the
dark. He was touched almost to tears by Lord Peter’s
thoughtfulness and condescension in calling.

“I’m sure it’s most kind of your lordship,” he
repeated for the dozenth time, rapidly blinking his
weak little eyelids. “I appreciate it very deeply, very
deeply, indeed, and so would Mother, only she’s so
deaf, I don’t like to trouble you with making her
understand. It’s been very hard all day,” he added,
“with the policemen in the house and all this commotion.
It’s what Mother and me have never been used
to, always living very retired, and it’s most distressing
to a man of regular habits, my lord, and reely, I’m
almost thankful Mother doesn’t understand, for I’m
sure it would worry her terribly if she was to know
about it. She was upset at first, but she’s made up
some idea of her own about it now, and I’m sure it’s
all for the best.”

The old lady who sat knitting by the fire nodded
grimly in response to a look from her son.

“I always said as you ought to complain about that
bath, Alfred,” she said suddenly, in the high, piping
voice peculiar to the deaf, “and it’s to be ’oped the
landlord’ll see about it now; not but what I think you
might have managed without having the police in,
but there! you always were one to make a fuss about
a little thing, from chicken-pox up.”

“There now,” said Mr. Thipps apologetically, “you
see how it is. Not but what it’s just as well she’s settled
16
on that, because she understands we’ve locked up the
bathroom and don’t try to go in there. But it’s been a
terrible shock to me, sir—my lord, I should say, but
there! my nerves are all to pieces. Such a thing has
never ’appened—happened to me in all my born days.
Such a state I was in this morning—I didn’t know if
I was on my head or my heels—I reely didn’t, and my
heart not being too strong, I hardly knew how to get
out of that horrid room and telephone for the police.
It’s affected me, sir, it’s affected me, it reely has—I
couldn’t touch a bit of breakfast, nor lunch neither,
and what with telephoning and putting off clients and
interviewing people all morning, I’ve hardly known
what to do with myself.”

“I’m sure it must have been uncommonly distressin’,”
said Lord Peter, sympathetically, “especially
comin’ like that before breakfast. Hate anything tiresome
happenin’ before breakfast. Takes a man at such
a confounded disadvantage, what?”

“That’s just it, that’s just it,” said Mr. Thipps,
eagerly. “When I saw that dreadful thing lying there
in my bath, mother-naked, too, except for a pair of
eyeglasses, I assure you, my lord, it regularly turned
my stomach, if you’ll excuse the expression. I’m not
very strong, sir, and I get that sinking feeling sometimes
in the morning, and what with one thing and
another I ’ad—had to send the girl for a stiff brandy,
or I don’t know what mightn’t have happened. I felt
so queer, though I’m anything but partial to spirits as
a rule. Still, I make it a rule never to be without
brandy in the house, in case of emergency, you know?”
17

“Very wise of you,” said Lord Peter, cheerfully.
“You’re a very far-seein’ man, Mr. Thipps. Wonderful
what a little nip’ll do in case of need, and the less
you’re used to it the more good it does you. Hope
your girl is a sensible young woman, what? Nuisance
to have women faintin’ and shriekin’ all over the
place.”

“Oh, Gladys is a good girl,” said Mr. Thipps, “very
reasonable indeed. She was shocked, of course; that’s
very understandable. I was shocked myself, and it
wouldn’t be proper in a young woman not to be
shocked under the circumstances, but she is reely a
helpful, energetic girl in a crisis, if you understand
me. I consider myself very fortunate these days to
have got a good, decent girl to do for me and Mother,
even though she is a bit careless and forgetful about
little things, but that’s only natural. She was very
sorry indeed about having left the bathroom window
open, she reely was, and though I was angry at first,
seeing what’s come of it, it wasn’t anything to speak
of, not in the ordinary way, as you might say. Girls
will forget things, you know, my lord, and reely she
was so distressed I didn’t like to say too much to her.
All I said was: ‘It might have been burglars,’ I said,
‘remember that, next time you leave a window open
all night; this time it was a dead man,’ I said, ‘and
that’s unpleasant enough, but next time it might be
burglars,’ I said, ‘and all of us murdered in our beds.’
But the police-inspector—Inspector Sugg, they called
him, from the Yard—he was very sharp with her,
poor girl. Quite frightened her, and made her think
18
he suspected her of something, though what good a
body could be to her, poor girl, I can’t imagine, and
so I told the Inspector. He was quite rude to me, my
lord—I may say I didn’t like his manner at all. ‘If
you’ve got anything definite to accuse Gladys or me
of, Inspector,’ I said to him, ‘bring it forward, that’s
what you have to do,’ I said, ‘but I’ve yet to learn
that you’re paid to be rude to a gentleman in his own
’ouse—house.’ Reely,” said Mr. Thipps, growing quite
pink on the top of his head, “he regularly roused me,
regularly roused me, my lord, and I’m a mild man as
a rule.”

“Sugg all over,” said Lord Peter. “I know him.
When he don’t know what else to say, he’s rude.
Stands to reason you and the girl wouldn’t go collectin’
bodies. Who’d want to saddle himself with a
body? Difficulty’s usually to get rid of ’em. Have you
got rid of this one yet, by the way?”

“It’s still in the bathroom,” said Mr. Thipps. “Inspector
Sugg said nothing was to be touched till his
men came in to move it. I’m expecting them at any
time. If it would interest your lordship to have a look
at it—”

“Thanks awfully,” said Lord Peter. “I’d like to
very much, if I’m not puttin’ you out.”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Thipps. His manner as he
led the way along the passage convinced Lord Peter
of two things—first, that, gruesome as his exhibit
was, he rejoiced in the importance it reflected upon
himself and his flat, and secondly, that Inspector Sugg
had forbidden him to exhibit it to anyone. The latter
19
supposition was confirmed by the action of Mr.
Thipps, who stopped to fetch the door-key from his
bedroom, saying that the police had the other, but
that he made it a rule to have two keys to every door,
in case of accident.

The bathroom was in no way remarkable. It was
long and narrow, the window being exactly over the
head of the bath. The panes were of frosted glass; the
frame wide enough to admit a man’s body. Lord
Peter stepped rapidly across to it, opened it and
looked out.

The flat was the top one of the building and situated
about the middle of the block. The bathroom
window looked out upon the back-yards of the flats,
which were occupied by various small outbuildings,
coal-holes, garages, and the like. Beyond these were
the back gardens of a parallel line of houses. On the
right rose the extensive edifice of St. Luke’s Hospital,
Battersea, with its grounds, and, connected with it
by a covered way, the residence of the famous surgeon,
Sir Julian Freke, who directed the surgical side
of the great new hospital, and was, in addition,
known in Harley Street as a distinguished neurologist
with a highly individual point of view.

This information was poured into Lord Peter’s ear
at considerable length by Mr. Thipps, who seemed to
feel that the neighbourhood of anybody so distinguished
shed a kind of halo of glory over Queen Caroline
Mansions.

“We had him round here himself this morning,”
he said, “about this horrid business. Inspector Sugg
20
thought one of the young medical gentlemen at the
hospital might have brought the corpse round for a
joke, as you might say, they always having bodies in
the dissecting-room. So Inspector Sugg went round
to see Sir Julian this morning to ask if there was a
body missing. He was very kind, was Sir Julian, very
kind indeed, though he was at work when they got
there, in the dissecting-room. He looked up the books
to see that all the bodies were accounted for, and then
very obligingly came round here to look at this”—he
indicated the bath—“and said he was afraid he
couldn’t help us—there was no corpse missing from
the hospital, and this one didn’t answer to the description
of any they’d had.”

“Nor to the description of any of the patients, I
hope,” suggested Lord Peter casually.

At this grisly hint Mr. Thipps turned pale.

“I didn’t hear Inspector Sugg inquire,” he said,
with some agitation. “What a very horrid thing that
would be—God bless my soul, my lord, I never
thought of it.”

“Well, if they had missed a patient they’d probably
have discovered it by now,” said Lord Peter.
“Let’s have a look at this one.”

He screwed his monocle into his eye, adding: “I
see you’re troubled here with the soot blowing in.
Beastly nuisance, ain’t it? I get it, too—spoils all my
books, you know. Here, don’t you trouble, if you
don’t care about lookin’ at it.”

He took from Mr. Thipps’s hesitating hand the
21
sheet which had been flung over the bath, and turned
it back.

The body which lay in the bath was that of a tall,
stout man of about fifty. The hair, which was thick
and black and naturally curly, had been cut and
parted by a master hand, and exuded a faint violet
perfume, perfectly recognisable in the close air of the
bathroom. The features were thick, fleshy and
strongly marked, with prominent dark eyes, and a
long nose curving down to a heavy chin. The clean-shaven
lips were full and sensual, and the dropped
jaw showed teeth stained with tobacco. On the dead
face the handsome pair of gold pince-nez mocked
death with grotesque elegance; the fine gold chain
curved over the naked breast. The legs lay stiffly
stretched out side by side; the arms reposed close to
the body; the fingers were flexed naturally. Lord
Peter lifted one arm, and looked at the hand with a
little frown.

“Bit of a dandy, your visitor, what?” he murmured.
“Parma violet and manicure.” He bent again,
slipping his hand beneath the head. The absurd eyeglasses
slipped off, clattering into the bath, and the
noise put the last touch to Mr. Thipps’s growing
nervousness.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he murmured, “it makes me
feel quite faint, it reely does.”

He slipped outside, and he had no sooner done so
than Lord Peter, lifting the body quickly and cautiously,
turned it over and inspected it with his head
on one side, bringing his monocle into play with the
22
air of the late Joseph Chamberlain approving a rare
orchid. He then laid the head over his arm, and bringing
out the silver matchbox from his pocket, slipped
it into the open mouth. Then making the noise usually
written “Tut-tut,” he laid the body down,
picked up the mysterious pince-nez, looked at it, put
it on his nose and looked through it, made the same
noise again, readjusted the pince-nez upon the nose
of the corpse, so as to leave no traces of interference
for the irritation of Inspector Sugg; rearranged the
body; returned to the window and, leaning out,
reached upwards and sideways with his walking-stick,
which he had somewhat incongruously brought along
with him. Nothing appearing to come of these investigations,
he withdrew his head, closed the window,
and rejoined Mr. Thipps in the passage.

Mr. Thipps, touched by this sympathetic interest
in the younger son of a duke, took the liberty, on
their return to the sitting-room, of offering him a
cup of tea. Lord Peter, who had strolled over to the
window and was admiring the outlook on Battersea
Park, was about to accept, when an ambulance came
into view at the end of Prince of Wales Road. Its
appearance reminded Lord Peter of an important
engagement, and with a hurried “By Jove!” he took
his leave of Mr. Thipps.

“My mother sent kind regards and all that,” he
said, shaking hands fervently; “hopes you’ll soon be
down at Denver again. Good-bye, Mrs. Thipps,” he
bawled kindly into the ear of the old lady. “Oh, no,
my dear sir, please don’t trouble to come down.”
23

He was none too soon. As he stepped out of the
door and turned towards the station, the ambulance
drew up from the other direction, and Inspector Sugg
emerged from it with two constables. The Inspector
spoke to the officer on duty at the Mansions, and
turned a suspicious gaze on Lord Peter’s retreating
back.

“Dear old Sugg,” said that nobleman, fondly,
“dear, dear old bird! How he does hate me, to be
sure.”
24

CHAPTER II

“Excellent, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, sinking
with a sigh into a luxurious armchair. “I couldn’t
have done better myself. The thought of the Dante
makes my mouth water—and the ‘Four Sons of
Aymon.’ And you’ve saved me £60—that’s glorious.
What shall we spend it on, Bunter? Think of it—all
ours, to do as we like with, for as Harold Skimpole
so rightly observes, £60 saved is £60 gained, and I’d
reckoned on spending it all. It’s your saving, Bunter,
and properly speaking, your £60. What do we want?
Anything in your department? Would you like anything
altered in the flat?”

“Well, my lord, as your lordship is so good”—the
man-servant paused, about to pour an old brandy
into a liqueur glass.

“Well, out with it, my Bunter, you imperturbable
old hypocrite. It’s no good talking as if you were
announcing dinner—you’re spilling the brandy. The
voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of
Esau. What does that blessed darkroom of yours want
now?”

“There’s a Double Anastigmat with a set of supplementary
lenses, my lord,” said Bunter, with a note
almost of religious fervour. “If it was a case of
forgery now—or footprints—I could enlarge them
right up on the plate. Or the wide-angled lens would
25
be useful. It’s as though the camera had eyes at the
back of its head, my lord. Look—I’ve got it here.”

He pulled a catalogue from his pocket, and submitted
it, quivering, to his employer’s gaze.

Lord Peter perused the description slowly, the corners
of his long mouth lifted into a faint smile.

“It’s Greek to me,” he said, “and £50 seems a ridiculous
price for a few bits of glass. I suppose, Bunter,
you’d say £750 was a bit out of the way for a dirty
old book in a dead language, wouldn’t you?”

“It wouldn’t be my place to say so, my lord.”

“No, Bunter, I pay you £200 a year to keep your
thoughts to yourself. Tell me, Bunter, in these democratic
days, don’t you think that’s unfair?”

“No, my lord.”

“You don’t. D’you mind telling me frankly why
you don’t think it unfair?”

“Frankly, my lord, your lordship is paid a nobleman’s
income to take Lady Worthington in to dinner
and refrain from exercising your lordship’s undoubted
powers of repartee.”

Lord Peter considered this.

“That’s your idea, is it, Bunter? Noblesse oblige—for
a consideration. I daresay you’re right. Then
you’re better off than I am, because I’d have to behave
myself to Lady Worthington if I hadn’t a
penny. Bunter, if I sacked you here and now, would
you tell me what you think of me?”

“No, my lord.”

“You’d have a perfect right to, my Bunter, and if
I sacked you on top of drinking the kind of coffee
26
you make, I’d deserve everything you could say of
me. You’re a demon for coffee, Bunter—I don’t want
to know how you do it, because I believe it to be
witchcraft, and I don’t want to burn eternally. You
can buy your cross-eyed lens.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Have you finished in the dining-room?”

“Not quite, my lord.”

“Well, come back when you have. I have many
things to tell you. Hullo! who’s that?”

The doorbell had rung sharply.

“Unless it’s anybody interestin’ I’m not at home.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Lord Peter’s library was one of the most delightful
bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and
primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and
its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces
of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand,
a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth,
and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled
with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes
of the young man who was ushered in from the raw
November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable,
but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and
gilded paradise in a mediaeval painting.

“Mr. Parker, my lord.”

Lord Peter jumped up with genuine eagerness.

“My dear man, I’m delighted to see you. What a
beastly foggy night, ain’t it? Bunter, some more of
that admirable coffee and another glass and the cigars.
Parker, I hope you’re full of crime—nothing less than
27
arson or murder will do for us tonight. ‘On such a
night as this—’ Bunter and I were just sitting down
to carouse. I’ve got a Dante, and a Caxton folio that
is practically unique, at Sir Ralph Brocklebury’s sale.
Bunter, who did the bargaining, is going to have a
lens which does all kinds of wonderful things with its
eyes shut, and

Nothing less will do for us, Parker. It’s mine at present,
but we’re going shares in it. Property of the firm.
Won’t you join us? You really must put something
in the jack-pot. Perhaps you have a body. Oh, do
have a body. Every body welcome.

Not a bit of it. He tips a glassy wink to yours truly
and yours truly reads the truth.”

“Ah,” said Parker, “I knew you’d been round to
Queen Caroline Mansions. So’ve I, and met Sugg, and
he told me he’d seen you. He was cross, too. Unwarrantable
interference, he calls it.”

“I knew he would,” said Lord Peter. “I love taking
a rise out of dear old Sugg, he’s always so rude. I see
28
by the Star that he has excelled himself by taking the
girl, Gladys What’s-her-name, into custody. Sugg of
the evening, beautiful Sugg! But what were you
doing there?”

“To tell you the truth,” said Parker, “I went round
to see if the Semitic-looking stranger in Mr. Thipps’s
bath was by any extraordinary chance Sir Reuben
Levy. But he isn’t.”

“Sir Reuben Levy? Wait a minute, I saw something
about that. I know! A headline: ‘Mysterious
disappearance of famous financier.’ What’s it all
about? I didn’t read it carefully.”

“Well, it’s a bit odd, though I daresay it’s nothing
really—old chap may have cleared for some reason
best known to himself. It only happened this morning,
and nobody would have thought anything about
it, only it happened to be the day on which he had
arranged to attend a most important financial meeting
and do some deal involving millions—I haven’t
got all the details. But I know he’s got enemies who’d
just as soon the deal didn’t come off, so when I got
wind of this fellow in the bath, I buzzed round to
have a look at him. It didn’t seem likely, of course,
but unlikelier things do happen in our profession. The
funny thing is, old Sugg had got bitten with the idea
it is him, and is wildly telegraphing to Lady Levy to
come and identify him. But as a matter of fact, the
man in the bath is no more Sir Reuben Levy than
Adolf Beck, poor devil, was John Smith. Oddly
enough, though, he would be really extraordinarily
like Sir Reuben if he had a beard, and as Lady Levy
29
is abroad with the family, somebody may say it’s him,
and Sugg will build up a lovely theory, like the Tower
of Babel, and destined so to perish.”

“Sugg’s a beautiful, braying ass,” said Lord Peter.
“He’s like a detective in a novel. Well, I don’t know
anything about Levy, but I’ve seen the body, and I
should say the idea was preposterous upon the face
of it. What do you think of the brandy?”

“Unbelievable, Wimsey—sort of thing makes one
believe in heaven. But I want your yarn.”

“D’you mind if Bunter hears it, too? Invaluable
man, Bunter—amazin’ fellow with a camera. And
the odd thing is, he’s always on the spot when I want
my bath or my boots. I don’t know when he develops
things—I believe he does ’em in his sleep. Bunter!”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Stop fiddling about in there, and get yourself the
proper things to drink and join the merry throng.”

“Certainly, my lord.”

“Mr. Parker has a new trick: The Vanishing
Financier. Absolutely no deception. Hey, presto,
pass! and where is he? Will some gentleman from the
audience kindly step upon the platform and inspect
the cabinet? Thank you, sir. The quickness of the
’and deceives the heye.”

“I’m afraid mine isn’t much of a story,” said
Parker. “It’s just one of those simple things that offer
no handle. Sir Reuben Levy dined last night with
three friends at the Ritz. After dinner the friends
went to the theatre. He refused to go with them on
account of an appointment. I haven’t yet been able
30
to trace the appointment, but anyhow, he returned
home to his house—9a, Park Lane—at twelve
o’clock.”

“Who saw him?”

“The cook, who had just gone up to bed, saw him
on the doorstep, and heard him let himself in. He
walked upstairs, leaving his greatcoat on the hall peg
and his umbrella in the stand—you remember how
it rained last night. He undressed and went to bed.
Next morning he wasn’t there. That’s all,” said
Parker abruptly, with a wave of the hand.

“It isn’t all, it isn’t all. Daddy, go on, that’s not
half a story,” pleaded Lord Peter.

“But it is all. When his man came to call him he
wasn’t there. The bed had been slept in. His pyjamas
and all his clothes were there, the only odd thing
being that they were thrown rather untidily on the
ottoman at the foot of the bed, instead of being
neatly folded on a chair, as is Sir Reuben’s custom—looking
as though he had been rather agitated or unwell.
No clean clothes were missing, no suit, no boots—nothing.
The boots he had worn were in his dressing-room
as usual. He had washed and cleaned his
teeth and done all the usual things. The housemaid
was down cleaning the hall at half-past six, and can
swear that nobody came in or out after that. So one
is forced to suppose that a respectable middle-aged
Hebrew financier either went mad between twelve
and six a.m. and walked quietly out of the house in
his birthday suit on a November night, or else was
spirited away like the lady in the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’
31
body and bones, leaving only a heap of crumpled
clothes behind him.”

“Was the front door bolted?”

“That’s the sort of question you would ask, straight
off; it took me an hour to think of it. No; contrary
to custom, there was only the Yale lock on the door.
On the other hand, some of the maids had been given
leave to go to the theatre, and Sir Reuben may quite
conceivably have left the door open under the impression
they had not come in. Such a thing has happened
before.”

“And that’s really all?”

“Really all. Except for one very trifling circumstance.”

“I love trifling circumstances,” said Lord Peter,
with childish delight; “so many men have been
hanged by trifling circumstances. What was it?”

“Sir Reuben and Lady Levy, who are a most devoted
couple, always share the same room. Lady Levy,
as I said before, is in Mentonne at the moment for her
health. In her absence, Sir Reuben sleeps in the double
bed as usual, and invariably on his own side—the outside—of
the bed. Last night he put the two pillows
together and slept in the middle, or, if anything,
rather closer to the wall than otherwise. The housemaid,
who is a most intelligent girl, noticed this when
she went up to make the bed, and, with really admirable
detective instinct, refused to touch the bed or
let anybody else touch it, though it wasn’t till later
that they actually sent for the police.”
32

“Was nobody in the house but Sir Reuben and the
servants?”

“No; Lady Levy was away with her daughter and
her maid. The valet, cook, parlourmaid, housemaid
and kitchenmaid were the only people in the house,
and naturally wasted an hour or two squawking and
gossiping. I got there about ten.”

“What have you been doing since?”

“Trying to get on the track of Sir Reuben’s appointment
last night, since, with the exception of the
cook, his ‘appointer’ was the last person who saw him
before his disappearance. There may be some quite
simple explanation, though I’m dashed if I can think
of one for the moment. Hang it all, a man doesn’t
come in and go to bed and walk away again ‘mid
nodings on’ in the middle of the night.”

“He may have been disguised.”

“I thought of that—in fact, it seems the only possible
explanation. But it’s deuced odd, Wimsey. An
important city man, on the eve of an important
transaction, without a word of warning to anybody,
slips off in the middle of the night, disguised down to
his skin, leaving behind his watch, purse, cheque-book,
and—most mysterious and important of all—his
spectacles, without which he can’t see a step, as
he is extremely short-sighted. He—”

“That is important,” interrupted Wimsey. “You
are sure he didn’t take a second pair?”

“His man vouches for it that he had only two pairs,
one of which was found on his dressing-table, and the
other in the drawer where it is always kept.”
33

Lord Peter whistled.

“You’ve got me there, Parker. Even if he’d gone
out to commit suicide he’d have taken those.”

“So you’d think—or the suicide would have happened
the first time he started to cross the road. However,
I didn’t overlook the possibility. I’ve got particulars
of all today’s street accidents, and I can lay
my hand on my heart and say that none of them is
Sir Reuben. Besides, he took his latchkey with him,
which looks as though he’d meant to come back.”

“Have you seen the men he dined with?”

“I found two of them at the club. They said that
he seemed in the best of health and spirits, spoke of
looking forward to joining Lady Levy later on—perhaps
at Christmas—and referred with great satisfaction
to this morning’s business transaction, in which
one of them—a man called Anderson of Wyndham’s—was
himself concerned.”

“Then up till about nine o’clock, anyhow, he had
no apparent intention or expectation of disappearing.”

“None—unless he was a most consummate actor.
Whatever happened to change his mind must have
happened either at the mysterious appointment
which he kept after dinner, or while he was in bed
between midnight and 5.30 a.m.”

“Well, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “what do you
make of it?”

“Not in my department, my lord. Except that it
is odd that a gentleman who was too flurried or unwell
to fold his clothes as usual should remember to
34
clean his teeth and put his boots out. Those are two
things that quite frequently get overlooked, my
lord.”

“If you mean anything personal, Bunter,” said
Lord Peter, “I can only say that I think the speech
an unworthy one. It’s a sweet little problem, Parker
mine. Look here, I don’t want to butt in, but I should
dearly love to see that bedroom tomorrow. ’Tis not
that I mistrust thee, dear, but I should uncommonly
like to see it. Say me not nay—take another drop of
brandy and a Villar Villar, but say not, say not nay!”

“Of course you can come and see it—you’ll probably
find lots of things I’ve overlooked,” said the
other, equably, accepting the proffered hospitality.

“Parker, acushla, you’re an honour to Scotland
Yard. I look at you, and Sugg appears a myth, a fable,
an idiot-boy, spawned in a moonlight hour by some
fantastic poet’s brain. Sugg is too perfect to be possible.
What does he make of the body, by the way?”

“Sugg says,” replied Parker, with precision, “that
the body died from a blow on the back of the neck.
The doctor told him that. He says it’s been dead a
day or two. The doctor told him that, too. He says
it’s the body of a well-to-do Hebrew of about fifty.
Anybody could have told him that. He says it’s ridiculous
to suppose it came in through the window
without anybody knowing anything about it. He
says it probably walked in through the front door
and was murdered by the household. He’s arrested
the girl because she’s short and frail-looking and quite
unequal to downing a tall and sturdy Semite with a
35
poker. He’d arrest Thipps, only Thipps was away in
Manchester all yesterday and the day before and
didn’t come back till late last night—in fact, he
wanted to arrest him till I reminded him that if the
body had been a day or two dead, little Thipps
couldn’t have done him in at 10.30 last night. But
he’ll arrest him tomorrow as an accessory—and the
old lady with the knitting, too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Well, I’m glad the little man has so much of an
alibi,” said Lord Peter, “though if you’re only glueing
your faith to cadaveric lividity, rigidity, and all the
other quiddities, you must be prepared to have some
sceptical beast of a prosecuting counsel walk slap-bang
through the medical evidence. Remember
Impey Biggs defending in that Chelsea tea-shop affair?
Six bloomin’ medicos contradictin’ each other
in the box, an’ old Impey elocutin’ abnormal cases
from Glaister and Dixon Mann till the eyes of the
jury reeled in their heads! ‘Are you prepared to swear,
Dr. Thingumtight, that the onset of rigor mortis indicates
the hour of death without the possibility of
error?’ ‘So far as my experience goes, in the majority
of cases,’ says the doctor, all stiff. ‘Ah!’ says Biggs,
‘but this is a Court of Justice, Doctor, not a Parliamentary
election. We can’t get on without a minority
report. The law, Dr. Thingumtight, respects the
rights of the minority, alive or dead.’ Some ass laughs,
and old Biggs sticks his chest out and gets impressive.
‘Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. My client—an
upright and honourable gentleman—is being tried
for his life—for his life, gentlemen—and it is the
36
business of the prosecution to show his guilt—if they
can—without a shadow of doubt. Now, Dr. Thingumtight,
I ask you again, can you solemnly swear,
without the least shadow of doubt,—probable, possible
shadow of doubt—that this unhappy woman
met her death neither sooner nor later than Thursday
evening? A probable opinion? Gentlemen, we are not
Jesuits, we are straightforward Englishmen. You cannot
ask a British-born jury to convict any man on
the authority of a probable opinion.’ Hum of applause.”

“Biggs’s man was guilty all the same,” said Parker.

“Of course he was. But he was acquitted all the
same, an’ what you’ve just said is libel.” Wimsey
walked over to the bookshelf and took down a volume
of Medical Jurisprudence. “‘Rigor mortis—can
only be stated in a very general way—many factors
determine the result.’ Cautious brute. ‘On the average,
however, stiffening will have begun—neck and
jaw—5 to 6 hours after death’—m’m—‘in all likelihood
have passed off in the bulk of cases by the end
of 36 hours. Under certain circumstances, however,
it may appear unusually early, or be retarded unusually
long!’ Helpful, ain’t it, Parker? ‘Brown-Séquard
states … 3½ minutes after death…. In certain
cases not until lapse of 16 hours after death …
present as long as 21 days thereafter.’ Lord! ‘Modifying
factors—age—muscular state—or febrile diseases—or
where temperature of environment is high’—and
so on and so on—any bloomin’ thing. Never
mind. You can run the argument for what it’s worth
37
to Sugg. He won’t know any better.” He tossed the
book away. “Come back to facts. What did you make
of the body?”

“Well,” said the detective, “not very much—I was
puzzled—frankly. I should say he had been a rich
man, but self-made, and that his good fortune had
come to him fairly recently.”

“Ah, you noticed the calluses on the hands—I
thought you wouldn’t miss that.”

“Both his feet were badly blistered—he had been
wearing tight shoes.”

“Walking a long way in them, too,” said Lord
Peter, “to get such blisters as that. Didn’t that strike
you as odd, in a person evidently well off?”

“Well, I don’t know. The blisters were two or
three days old. He might have got stuck in the suburbs
one night, perhaps—last train gone and no
taxi—and had to walk home.”

“Possibly.”

“There were some little red marks all over his back
and one leg I couldn’t quite account for.”

“I saw them.”

“What did you make of them?”

“I’ll tell you afterwards. Go on.”

“He was very long-sighted—oddly long-sighted
for a man in the prime of life; the glasses were like a
very old man’s. By the way, they had a very beautiful
and remarkable chain of flat links chased with a pattern.
It struck me he might be traced through it.”

“I’ve just put an advertisement in the Times about
it,” said Lord Peter. “Go on.”
38

“He had had the glasses some time—they had been
mended twice.”

“Beautiful, Parker, beautiful. Did you realize the
importance of that?”

“Not specially, I’m afraid—why?”

“Never mind—go on.”

“He was probably a sullen, ill-tempered man—his
nails were filed down to the quick as though he
habitually bit them, and his fingers were bitten as
well. He smoked quantities of cigarettes without a
holder. He was particular about his personal appearance.”

“Did you examine the room at all? I didn’t get a
chance.”

“I couldn’t find much in the way of footprints.
Sugg & Co. had tramped all over the place, to say
nothing of little Thipps and the maid, but I noticed
a very indefinite patch just behind the head of the
bath, as though something damp might have stood
there. You could hardly call it a print.”

“It rained hard all last night, of course.”

“Yes; did you notice that the soot on the window-sill
was vaguely marked?”

“I did,” said Wimsey, “and I examined it hard
with this little fellow, but I could make nothing of
it except that something or other had rested on the
sill.” He drew out his monocle and handed it to
Parker.

“My word, that’s a powerful lens.”

“It is,” said Wimsey, “and jolly useful when you
want to take a good squint at somethin’ and look like
39
a bally fool all the time. Only it don’t do to wear it
permanently—if people see you full-face they say:
‘Dear me! how weak the sight of that eye must be!’
Still, it’s useful.”

“Sugg and I explored the ground at the back of
the building,” went on Parker, “but there wasn’t a
trace.”

“That’s interestin’. Did you try the roof?”

“No.”

“We’ll go over it tomorrow. The gutter’s only a
couple of feet off the top of the window. I measured
it with my stick—the gentleman-scout’s vade-mecum,
I call it—it’s marked off in inches. Uncommonly
handy companion at times. There’s a sword
inside and a compass in the head. Got it made
specially. Anything more?”

“Afraid not. Let’s hear your version, Wimsey.”

“Well, I think you’ve got most of the points. There
are just one or two little contradictions. For instance,
here’s a man wears expensive gold-rimmed pince-nez
and has had them long enough to be mended twice.
Yet his teeth are not merely discoloured, but badly
decayed and look as if he’d never cleaned them in his
life. There are four molars missing on one side and
three on the other and one front tooth broken right
across. He’s a man careful of his personal appearance,
as witness his hair and his hands. What do you say to
that?”

“Oh, these self-made men of low origin don’t
think much about teeth, and are terrified of dentists.”
40

“True; but one of the molars has a broken edge so
rough that it had made a sore place on the tongue.
Nothing’s more painful. D’you mean to tell me a man
would put up with that if he could afford to get the
tooth filed?”

“Well, people are queer. I’ve known servants endure
agonies rather than step over a dentist’s doormat.
How did you see that, Wimsey?”

“Had a look inside; electric torch,” said Lord Peter.
“Handy little gadget. Looks like a matchbox. Well—I
daresay it’s all right, but I just draw your attention
to it. Second point: Gentleman with hair smellin’ of
Parma violet and manicured hands and all the rest of
it, never washes the inside of his ears. Full of wax.
Nasty.”

“You’ve got me there, Wimsey; I never noticed
it. Still—old bad habits die hard.”

“Right oh! Put it down at that. Third point:
Gentleman with the manicure and the brilliantine
and all the rest of it suffers from fleas.”

“By Jove, you’re right! Flea-bites. It never occurred
to me.”

“No doubt about it, old son. The marks were faint
and old, but unmistakable.”

“Of course, now you mention it. Still, that might
happen to anybody. I loosed a whopper in the best
hotel in Lincoln the week before last. I hope it bit the
next occupier!”

“Oh, all these things might happen to anybody—separately.
Fourth point: Gentleman who uses Parma
41
violet for his hair, etc., etc., washes his body in strong
carbolic soap—so strong that the smell hangs about
twenty-four hours later.”

“Carbolic to get rid of the fleas.”

“I will say for you, Parker, you’ve an answer for
everything. Fifth point: Carefully got-up gentleman,
with manicured, though masticated, finger-nails, has
filthy black toe-nails which look as if they hadn’t
been cut for years.”

“All of a piece with habits as indicated.”

“Yes, I know, but such habits! Now, sixth and last
point: This gentleman with the intermittently gentlemanly
habits arrives in the middle of a pouring
wet night, and apparently through the window,
when he has already been twenty-four hours dead,
and lies down quietly in Mr. Thipps’s bath, unseasonably
dressed in a pair of pince-nez. Not a hair on his
head is ruffled—the hair has been cut so recently that
there are quite a number of little short hairs stuck on
his neck and the sides of the bath—and he has shaved
so recently that there is a line of dried soap on his
cheek—”

“Wimsey!”

“Wait a minute—and dried soap in his mouth.”

Bunter got up and appeared suddenly at the detective’s
elbow, the respectful man-servant all over.

“A little more brandy, sir?” he murmured.

“Wimsey,” said Parker, “you are making me feel
cold all over.” He emptied his glass—stared at it as
though he were surprised to find it empty, set it
42
down, got up, walked across to the bookcase, turned
round, stood with his back against it and said:

“Look here, Wimsey—you’ve been reading detective
stories; you’re talking nonsense.”

“No, I ain’t,” said Lord Peter, sleepily, “uncommon
good incident for a detective story, though,
what? Bunter, we’ll write one, and you shall illustrate
it with photographs.”

“Soap in his—Rubbish!” said Parker. “It was
something else—some discoloration—”

“No,” said Lord Peter, “there were hairs as well.
Bristly ones. He had a beard.”

He took his watch from his pocket, and drew out
a couple of longish, stiff hairs, which he had imprisoned
between the inner and the outer case.

Parker turned them over once or twice in his fingers,
looked at them close to the light, examined
them with a lens, handed them to the impassible
Bunter, and said:

“Do you mean to tell me, Wimsey, that any man
alive would”—he laughed harshly—“shave off his
beard with his mouth open, and then go and get
killed with his mouth full of hairs? You’re mad.”

“I don’t tell you so,” said Wimsey. “You policemen
are all alike—only one idea in your skulls. Blest
if I can make out why you’re ever appointed. He was
shaved after he was dead. Pretty, ain’t it? Uncommonly
jolly little job for the barber, what? Here, sit
down, man, and don’t be an ass, stumpin’ about the
room like that. Worse things happen in war. This is
43
only a blinkin’ old shillin’ shocker. But I’ll tell you
what, Parker, we’re up against a criminal—the criminal—the
real artist and blighter with imagination—real,
artistic, finished stuff. I’m enjoyin’ this, Parker.”
44

CHAPTER III

Lord Peter finished a Scarlatti sonata, and sat
looking thoughtfully at his own hands. The fingers
were long and muscular, with wide, flat joints and
square tips. When he was playing, his rather hard
grey eyes softened, and his long, indeterminate mouth
hardened in compensation. At no other time had he
any pretensions to good looks, and at all times he was
spoilt by a long, narrow chin, and a long, receding
forehead, accentuated by the brushed-back sleekness
of his tow-coloured hair. Labour papers, softening
down the chin, caricatured him as a typical aristocrat.

“That’s a wonderful instrument,” said Parker.

“It ain’t so bad,” said Lord Peter, “but Scarlatti
wants a harpsichord. Piano’s too modern—all thrills
and overtones. No good for our job, Parker. Have
you come to any conclusion?”

“The man in the bath,” said Parker, methodically,
“was not a well-off man careful of his personal appearance.
He was a labouring man, unemployed, but
who had only recently lost his employment. He had
been tramping about looking for a job when he met
with his end. Somebody killed him and washed him
and scented him and shaved him in order to disguise
him, and put him into Thipps’s bath without leaving
a trace. Conclusion: the murderer was a powerful
45
man, since he killed him with a single blow on the
neck, a man of cool head and masterly intellect, since
he did all that ghastly business without leaving a
mark, a man of wealth and refinement, since he had
all the apparatus of an elegant toilet handy, and a
man of bizarre, and almost perverted imagination, as
is shown in the two horrible touches of putting the
body in the bath and of adorning it with a pair of
pince-nez.”

“He is a poet of crime,” said Wimsey. “By the way,
your difficulty about the pince-nez is cleared up.
Obviously, the pince-nez never belonged to the
body.”

“That only makes a fresh puzzle. One can’t suppose
the murderer left them in that obliging manner
as a clue to his own identity.”

“We can hardly suppose that; I’m afraid this man
possessed what most criminals lack—a sense of
humour.”

“Rather macabre humour.”

“True. But a man who can afford to be humorous
at all in such circumstances is a terrible fellow. I
wonder what he did with the body between the murder
and depositing it chez Thipps. Then there are
more questions. How did he get it there? And why?
Was it brought in at the door, as Sugg of our heart
suggests? or through the window, as we think, on the
not very adequate testimony of a smudge on the
window-sill? Had the murderer accomplices? Is little
Thipps really in it, or the girl? It don’t do to put the
notion out of court merely because Sugg inclines to
46
it. Even idiots occasionally speak the truth accidentally.
If not, why was Thipps selected for such an
abominable practical joke? Has anybody got a grudge
against Thipps? Who are the people in the other flats?
We must find out that. Does Thipps play the piano
at midnight over their heads or damage the reputation
of the staircase by bringing home dubiously respectable
ladies? Are there unsuccessful architects
thirsting for his blood? Damn it all, Parker, there
must be a motive somewhere. Can’t have a crime
without a motive, you know.”

“A madman—” suggested Parker, doubtfully.

“With a deuced lot of method in his madness. He
hasn’t made a mistake—not one, unless leaving hairs
in the corpse’s mouth can be called a mistake. Well,
anyhow, it’s not Levy—you’re right there. I say, old
thing, neither your man nor mine has left much clue
to go upon, has he? And there don’t seem to be any
motives knockin’ about, either. And we seem to be
two suits of clothes short in last night’s work. Sir
Reuben makes tracks without so much as a fig-leaf,
and a mysterious individual turns up with a pince-nez,
which is quite useless for purposes of decency.
Dash it all! If only I had some good excuse for takin’
up this body case officially—”

The telephone bell rang. The silent Bunter, whom
the other two had almost forgotten, padded across
to it.

“It’s an elderly lady, my lord,” he said. “I think
she’s deaf—I can’t make her hear anything, but she’s
asking for your lordship.”
47

Lord Peter seized the receiver, and yelled into it a
“Hullo!” that might have cracked the vulcanite. He
listened for some minutes with an incredulous smile,
which gradually broadened into a grin of delight. At
length he screamed: “All right! all right!” several
times, and rang off.

“By Jove!” he announced, beaming, “sportin’ old
bird! It’s old Mrs. Thipps. Deaf as a post. Never used
the ’phone before. But determined. Perfect Napoleon.
The incomparable Sugg has made a discovery
and arrested little Thipps. Old lady abandoned in the
flat. Thipps’s last shriek to her: ‘Tell Lord Peter Wimsey.’
Old girl undaunted. Wrestles with telephone
book. Wakes up the people at the exchange. Won’t
take no for an answer (not bein’ able to hear it), gets
through, says: ‘Will I do what I can?’ Says she would
feel safe in the hands of a real gentleman. Oh, Parker,
Parker! I could kiss her, I reely could, as Thipps says.
I’ll write to her instead—no, hang it, Parker, we’ll go
round. Bunter, get your infernal machine and the
magnesium. I say, we’ll all go into partnership—pool
the two cases and work ’em out together. You shall
see my body tonight, Parker, and I’ll look for your
wandering Jew tomorrow. I feel so happy, I shall explode.
O Sugg, Sugg, how art thou suggified! Bunter,
my shoes. I say, Parker, I suppose yours are rubber-soled.
Not? Tut, tut, you mustn’t go out like that.
We’ll lend you a pair. Gloves? Here. My stick, my
torch, the lampblack, the forceps, knife, pill-boxes—all
complete?”

“Certainly, my lord.”
48

“Oh, Bunter, don’t look so offended. I mean no
harm. I believe in you, I trust you—what money
have I got? That’ll do. I knew a man once, Parker,
who let a world-famous poisoner slip through his
fingers because the machine on the Underground
took nothing but pennies. There was a queue at the
booking office and the man at the barrier stopped
him, and while they were arguing about accepting a
five-pound-note (which was all he had) for a twopenny
ride to Baker Street, the criminal had sprung
into a Circle train, and was next heard of in Constantinople,
disguised as an elderly Church of England
clergyman touring with his niece. Are we all
ready? Go!”

They stepped out, Bunter carefully switching off
the lights behind them.

As they emerged into the gloom and gleam of Piccadilly,
Wimsey stopped short with a little exclamation.

“Wait a second,” he said. “I’ve thought of something.
If Sugg’s there he’ll make trouble. I must
short-circuit him.”

He ran back, and the other two men employed the
few minutes of his absence in capturing a taxi.

Inspector Sugg and a subordinate Cerberus were
on guard at 59, Queen Caroline Mansions, and
showed no disposition to admit unofficial inquirers.
Parker, indeed, they could not easily turn away, but
Lord Peter found himself confronted with a surly
manner and what Lord Beaconsfield described as a
49
masterly inactivity. It was in vain that Lord Peter
pleaded that he had been retained by Mrs. Thipps on
behalf of her son.

“Retained!” said Inspector Sugg, with a snort.
“She’ll be retained if she doesn’t look out. Shouldn’t
wonder if she wasn’t in it herself, only she’s so deaf,
she’s no good for anything at all.”

“Look here, Inspector,” said Lord Peter, “what’s
the use of bein’ so bally obstructive? You’d much
better let me in—you know I’ll get there in the end.
Dash it all, it’s not as if I was takin’ the bread out of
your children’s mouths. Nobody paid me for finding
Lord Attenbury’s emeralds for you.”

“It’s my duty to keep out the public,” said Inspector
Sugg, morosely, “and it’s going to stay out.”

“I never said anything about your keeping out of
the public,” said Lord Peter, easily, sitting down on
the staircase to thrash the matter out comfortably,
“though I’ve no doubt pussyfoot’s a good thing, on
principle, if not exaggerated. The golden mean, Sugg,
as Aristotle says, keeps you from bein’ a golden ass.
Ever been a golden ass, Sugg? I have. It would take
a whole rose-garden to cure me, Sugg—

“I’m not going to stay any longer talking to you,”
said the harassed Sugg; “it’s bad enough— Hullo, drat
that telephone. Here, Cawthorn, go and see what it
is, if that old catamaran will let you into the room.
Shutting herself up there and screaming,” said the
50
Inspector, “it’s enough to make a man give up crime
and take to hedging and ditching.”

The constable came back:

“It’s from the Yard, sir,” he said, coughing apologetically;
“the Chief says every facility is to be given
to Lord Peter Wimsey, sir. Um!” He stood apart noncommittally,
glazing his eyes.

“Five aces,” said Lord Peter, cheerfully. “The
Chief’s a dear friend of my mother’s. No go, Sugg,
it’s no good buckin’; you’ve got a full house. I’m goin’
to make it a bit fuller.”

He walked in with his followers.

The body had been removed a few hours previously,
and when the bathroom and the whole flat had
been explored by the naked eye and the camera of
the competent Bunter, it became evident that the
real problem of the household was old Mrs. Thipps.
Her son and servant had both been removed, and it
appeared that they had no friends in town, beyond a
few business acquaintances of Thipps’s, whose very
addresses the old lady did not know. The other flats
in the building were occupied respectively by a family
of seven, at present departed to winter abroad, an
elderly Indian colonel of ferocious manners, who lived
alone with an Indian man-servant, and a highly respectable
family on the third floor, whom the disturbance
over their heads had outraged to the last
degree. The husband, indeed, when appealed to by
Lord Peter, showed a little human weakness, but Mrs.
Appledore, appearing suddenly in a warm dressing-gown,
51
extricated him from the difficulties into which
he was carelessly wandering.

“I am sorry,” she said, “I’m afraid we can’t interfere
in any way. This is a very unpleasant business,
Mr.— I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name, and we
have always found it better not to be mixed up with
the police. Of course, if the Thippses are innocent,
and I am sure I hope they are, it is very unfortunate
for them, but I must say that the circumstances seem
to me most suspicious, and to Theophilus too, and I
should not like to have it said that we had assisted
murderers. We might even be supposed to be accessories.
Of course you are young, Mr.—”

“This is Lord Peter Wimsey, my dear,” said Theophilus
mildly.

She was unimpressed.

“Ah, yes,” she said, “I believe you are distantly
related to my late cousin, the Bishop of Carisbrooke.
Poor man! He was always being taken in by impostors;
he died without ever learning any better. I
imagine you take after him, Lord Peter.”

“I doubt it,” said Lord Peter. “So far as I know
he is only a connection, though it’s a wise child that
knows its own father. I congratulate you, dear lady,
on takin’ after the other side of the family. You’ll
forgive my buttin’ in upon you like this in the middle
of the night, though, as you say, it’s all in the
family, and I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you,
and for permittin’ me to admire that awfully fetchin’
thing you’ve got on. Now, don’t you worry, Mr.
52
Appledore. I’m thinkin’ the best thing I can do is to
trundle the old lady down to my mother and take
her out of your way, otherwise you might be findin’
your Christian feelin’s gettin’ the better of you some
fine day, and there’s nothin’ like Christian feelin’s
for upsettin’ a man’s domestic comfort. Good-night,
sir—good-night, dear lady—it’s simply rippin’ of you
to let me drop in like this.”

“Well!” said Mrs. Appledore, as the door closed
behind him.

And—

said Lord Peter, “and taught me to be bestially impertinent
when I choose. Cat!”

Two a.m. saw Lord Peter Wimsey arrive in a
friend’s car at the Dower House, Denver Castle, in
company with a deaf and aged lady and an antique
portmanteau.

“It’s very nice to see you, dear,” said the Dowager
Duchess, placidly. She was a small, plump woman,
with perfectly white hair and exquisite hands. In
feature she was as unlike her second son as she was
like him in character; her black eyes twinkled cheerfully,
and her manners and movements were marked
with a neat and rapid decision. She wore a charming
wrap from Liberty’s, and sat watching Lord Peter
eat cold beef and cheese as though his arrival in such
incongruous circumstances and company were the
53
most ordinary event possible, which with him, indeed,
it was.

“Have you got the old lady to bed?” asked Lord
Peter.

“Oh, yes, dear. Such a striking old person, isn’t
she? And very courageous. She tells me she has never
been in a motor-car before. But she thinks you a very
nice lad, dear—that careful of her, you remind her
of her own son. Poor little Mr. Thipps—whatever
made your friend the inspector think he could have
murdered anybody?”

“My friend the inspector—no, no more, thank
you, Mother—is determined to prove that the intrusive
person in Thipps’s bath is Sir Reuben Levy, who
disappeared mysteriously from his house last night.
His line of reasoning is: We’ve lost a middle-aged
gentleman without any clothes on in Park Lane;
we’ve found a middle-aged gentleman without any
clothes on in Battersea. Therefore they’re one and the
same person, Q.E.D., and put little Thipps in quod.”

“You’re very elliptical, dear,” said the Duchess,
mildly. “Why should Mr. Thipps be arrested even
if they are the same?”

“Sugg must arrest somebody,” said Lord Peter,
“but there is one odd little bit of evidence come out
which goes a long way to support Sugg’s theory, only
that I know it to be no go by the evidence of my
own eyes. Last night at about 9.15 a young woman
was strollin’ up the Battersea Park Road for purposes
best known to herself, when she saw a gentleman in
a fur coat and top-hat saunterin’ along under an
54
umbrella, lookin’ at the names of all the streets. He
looked a bit out of place, so, not bein’ a shy girl, you
see, she walked up to him, and said: ‘Good-evening.’
‘Can you tell me, please,’ says the mysterious stranger,
‘whether this street leads into Prince of Wales Road?’
She said it did, and further asked him in a jocular
manner what he was doing with himself and all the
rest of it, only she wasn’t altogether so explicit about
that part of the conversation, because she was unburdenin’
her heart to Sugg, d’you see, and he’s paid
by a grateful country to have very pure, high-minded
ideals, what? Anyway, the old boy said he
couldn’t attend to her just then as he had an appointment.
‘I’ve got to go and see a man, my dear,’ was
how she said he put it, and he walked on up Alexandra
Avenue towards Prince of Wales Road. She
was starin’ after him, still rather surprised, when she
was joined by a friend of hers, who said: ‘It’s no good
wasting your time with him—that’s Levy—I knew
him when I lived in the West End, and the girls used
to call him Peagreen Incorruptible’—friend’s name
suppressed, owing to implications of story, but girl
vouches for what was said. She thought no more
about it till the milkman brought news this morning
of the excitement at Queen Caroline Mansions; then
she went round, though not likin’ the police as a rule,
and asked the man there whether the dead gentleman
had a beard and glasses. Told he had glasses but no
beard, she incautiously said: ‘Oh, then, it isn’t him,’
and the man said: ‘Isn’t who?’ and collared her.
55
That’s her story. Sugg’s delighted, of course, and
quodded Thipps on the strength of it.”

“Dear me,” said the Duchess, “I hope the poor girl
won’t get into trouble.”

“Shouldn’t think so,” said Lord Peter. “Thipps is
the one that’s going to get it in the neck. Besides, he’s
done a silly thing. I got that out of Sugg, too, though
he was sittin’ tight on the information. Seems Thipps
got into a confusion about the train he took back
from Manchester. Said first he got home at 10.30.
Then they pumped Gladys Horrocks, who let out he
wasn’t back till after 11.45. Then Thipps, bein’ asked
to explain the discrepancy, stammers and bungles and
says, first, that he missed the train. Then Sugg makes
inquiries at St. Pancras and discovers that he left a
bag in the cloakroom there at ten. Thipps, again
asked to explain, stammers worse an’ says he walked
about for a few hours—met a friend—can’t say who—didn’t
meet a friend—can’t say what he did with
his time—can’t explain why he didn’t go back for his
bag—can’t say what time he did get in—can’t explain
how he got a bruise on his forehead. In fact, can’t
explain himself at all. Gladys Horrocks interrogated
again. Says, this time, Thipps came in at 10.30. Then
admits she didn’t hear him come in. Can’t say why
she didn’t hear him come in. Can’t say why she said
first of all that she did hear him. Bursts into tears.
Contradicts herself. Everybody’s suspicion roused.
Quod ’em both.”

“As you put it, dear,” said the Duchess, “it all
sounds very confusing, and not quite respectable.
56
Poor little Mr. Thipps would be terribly upset by
anything that wasn’t respectable.”

“I wonder what he did with himself,” said Lord
Peter thoughtfully. “I really don’t think he was committing
a murder. Besides, I believe the fellow has
been dead a day or two, though it don’t do to build
too much on doctors’ evidence. It’s an entertainin’
little problem.”

“Very curious, dear. But so sad about poor Sir
Reuben. I must write a few lines to Lady Levy; I used
to know her quite well, you know, dear, down in
Hampshire, when she was a girl. Christine Ford, she
was then, and I remember so well the dreadful trouble
there was about her marrying a Jew. That was before
he made his money, of course, in that oil business out
in America. The family wanted her to marry Julian
Freke, who did so well afterwards and was connected
with the family, but she fell in love with this Mr.
Levy and eloped with him. He was very handsome,
then, you know, dear, in a foreign-looking way, but
he hadn’t any means, and the Fords didn’t like his
religion. Of course we’re all Jews nowadays, and they
wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d pretended to
be something else, like that Mr. Simons we met at
Mrs. Porchester’s, who always tells everybody that he
got his nose in Italy at the Renaissance, and claims
to be descended somehow or other from La Bella
Simonetta—so foolish, you know, dear—as if anybody
believed it; and I’m sure some Jews are very
good people, and personally I’d much rather they
believed something, though of course it must be very
57
inconvenient, what with not working on Saturdays
and circumcising the poor little babies and everything
depending on the new moon and that funny
kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding
name, and never being able to have bacon for breakfast.
Still, there it was, and it was much better for
the girl to marry him if she was really fond of him,
though I believe young Freke was really devoted to
her, and they’re still great friends. Not that there was
ever a real engagement, only a sort of understanding
with her father, but he’s never married, you know,
and lives all by himself in that big house next to the
hospital, though he’s very rich and distinguished now,
and I know ever so many people have tried to get
hold of him—there was Lady Mainwaring wanted
him for that eldest girl of hers, though I remember
saying at the time it was no use expecting a surgeon
to be taken in by a figure that was all padding—they
have so many opportunities of judging, you know,
dear.”

“Lady Levy seems to have had the knack of makin’
people devoted to her,” said Peter. “Look at the pea-green
incorruptible Levy.”

“That’s quite true, dear; she was a most delightful
girl, and they say her daughter is just like her. I rather
lost sight of them when she married, and you know
your father didn’t care much about business people,
but I know everybody always said they were a model
couple. In fact it was a proverb that Sir Reuben was
as well loved at home as he was hated abroad. I don’t
mean in foreign countries, you know, dear—just the
58
proverbial way of putting things—like ‘a saint abroad
and a devil at home’—only the other way on, reminding
one of the Pilgrim’s Progress.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I daresay the old man made one
or two enemies.”

“Dozens, dear—such a dreadful place, the City,
isn’t it? Everybody Ishmaels together—though I
don’t suppose Sir Reuben would like to be called that,
would he? Doesn’t it mean illegitimate, or not a
proper Jew, anyway? I always did get confused with
those Old Testament characters.”

Lord Peter laughed and yawned.

“I think I’ll turn in for an hour or two,” he said.
“I must be back in town at eight—Parker’s coming
to breakfast.”

The Duchess looked at the clock, which marked
five minutes to three.

“I’ll send up your breakfast at half-past six, dear,”
she said. “I hope you’ll find everything all right. I told
them just to slip a hot-water bottle in; those linen
sheets are so chilly; you can put it out if it’s in your
way.”
59

CHAPTER IV

“—So there it is, Parker,” said Lord Peter, pushing
his coffee-cup aside and lighting his after-breakfast
pipe; “you may find it leads you to something,
though it don’t seem to get me any further with my
bathroom problem. Did you do anything more at that
after I left?”

“No; but I’ve been on the roof this morning.”

“The deuce you have—what an energetic devil you
are! I say, Parker, I think this co-operative scheme is
an uncommonly good one. It’s much easier to work
on someone else’s job than one’s own—gives one that
delightful feelin’ of interferin’ and bossin’ about,
combined with the glorious sensation that another
fellow is takin’ all one’s own work off one’s hands.
You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, what?
Did you find anything?”

“Not very much. I looked for any footmarks of
course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn’t
a sign. Of course, if this were a detective story,
there’d have been a convenient shower exactly an
hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks
which could only have come there between two and
three in the morning, but this being real life in a
London November, you might as well expect footprints
in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and
came to the jolly conclusion that any person in
60
any blessed flat in the blessed row might have done it.
All the staircases open on to the roof and the leads are
quite flat; you can walk along as easy as along
Shaftesbury Avenue. Still, I’ve got some evidence
that the body did walk along there.”

“What’s that?”

Parker brought out his pocketbook and extracted
a few shreds of material, which he laid before his
friend.

“One was caught in the gutter just above Thipps’s
bathroom window, another in a crack of the stone
parapet just over it, and the rest came from the
chimney-stack behind, where they had caught in an
iron stanchion. What do you make of them?”

Lord Peter scrutinized them very carefully
through his lens.

“Interesting,” he said, “damned interesting. Have
you developed those plates, Bunter?” he added, as that
discreet assistant came in with the post.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Caught anything?”

“I don’t know whether to call it anything or not,
my lord,” said Bunter, dubiously. “I’ll bring the
prints in.”

“Do,” said Wimsey. “Hallo! here’s our advertisement
about the gold chain in the Times—very nice it
looks: ‘Write,’phone or call 110, Piccadilly.’ Perhaps
it would have been safer to put a box number, though
I always think that the franker you are with people,
the more you’re likely to deceive ’em; so unused is
61
the modern world to the open hand and the guileless
heart, what?”

“But you don’t think the fellow who left that
chain on the body is going to give himself away by
coming here and inquiring about it?”

“I don’t, fathead,” said Lord Peter, with the easy
politeness of the real aristocracy; “that’s why I’ve
tried to get hold of the jeweller who originally sold
the chain. See?” He pointed to the paragraph. “It’s
not an old chain—hardly worn at all. Oh, thanks,
Bunter. Now, see here, Parker, these are the finger-marks
you noticed yesterday on the window-sash and
on the far edge of the bath. I’d overlooked them; I
give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I
grovel, my name is Watson, and you need not say
what you were just going to say, because I admit it
all. Now we shall—Hullo, hullo, hullo!”

The three men stared at the photographs.

“The criminal,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, “climbed
over the roofs in the wet and not unnaturally got
soot on his fingers. He arranged the body in the bath,
and wiped away all traces of himself except two,
which he obligingly left to show us how to do our
job. We learn from a smudge on the floor that he
wore india rubber boots, and from this admirable set
of finger-prints on the edge of the bath that he had
the usual number of fingers and wore rubber gloves.
That’s the kind of man he is. Take the fool away,
gentlemen.”

He put the prints aside, and returned to an examination
62
of the shreds of material in his hand. Suddenly
he whistled softly.

“Do you make anything of these, Parker?”

“They seemed to me to be ravellings of some
coarse cotton stuff—a sheet, perhaps, or an improvised
rope.”

“Yes,” said Lord Peter—“yes. It may be a mistake—it
may be our mistake. I wonder. Tell me,
d’you think these tiny threads are long enough and
strong enough to hang a man?”

He was silent, his long eyes narrowing into slits
behind the smoke of his pipe.

“What do you suggest doing this morning?” asked
Parker.

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “it seems to me it’s about
time I took a hand in your job. Let’s go round to
Park Lane and see what larks Sir Reuben Levy was
up to in bed last night.”

“And now, Mrs. Pemming, if you would be so kind
as to give me a blanket,” said Mr. Bunter, coming
down into the kitchen, “and permit of me hanging a
sheet across the lower part of this window, and drawing
the screen across here, so—so as to shut off any reflections,
if you understand me, we’ll get to work.”

Sir Reuben Levy’s cook, with her eye upon Mr.
Bunter’s gentlemanly and well-tailored appearance,
hastened to produce what was necessary. Her visitor
placed on the table a basket, containing a water-bottle,
a silver-backed hair-brush, a pair of boots, a
small roll of linoleum, and the “Letters of a Self-made
63
Merchant to His Son,” bound in polished
morocco. He drew an umbrella from beneath his
arm and added it to the collection. He then advanced
a ponderous photographic machine and set it up
in the neighbourhood of the kitchen range; then,
spreading a newspaper over the fair, scrubbed surface
of the table, he began to roll up his sleeves and insinuate
himself into a pair of surgical gloves. Sir
Reuben Levy’s valet, entering at the moment and
finding him thus engaged, put aside the kitchenmaid,
who was staring from a front-row position, and inspected
the apparatus critically. Mr. Bunter nodded
brightly to him, and uncorked a small bottle of grey
powder.

“Odd sort of fish, your employer, isn’t he?” said
the valet, carelessly.

“Very singular, indeed,” said Mr. Bunter. “Now,
my dear,” he added, ingratiatingly, to the kitchen-maid,
“I wonder if you’d just pour a little of this
grey powder over the edge of the bottle while I’m
holding it—and the same with this boot—here, at the
top—thank you, Miss—what is your name? Price?
Oh, but you’ve got another name besides Price,
haven’t you? Mabel, eh? That’s a name I’m uncommonly
partial to—that’s very nicely done, you’ve a
steady hand, Miss Mabel—see that? That’s the finger
marks—three there, and two here, and smudged over
in both places. No, don’t you touch ’em, my dear,
or you’ll rub the bloom off. We’ll stand ’em up here
till they’re ready to have their portraits taken. Now
then, let’s take the hair-brush next. Perhaps, Mrs.
64
Pemming, you’d like to lift him up very carefully by
the bristles.”

“By the bristles, Mr. Bunter?”

“If you please, Mrs. Pemming—and lay him here.
Now, Miss Mabel, another little exhibition of your
skill, if you please. No—we’ll try lamp-black this
time. Perfect. Couldn’t have done it better myself.
Ah! there’s a beautiful set. No smudges this time.
That’ll interest his lordship. Now the little book—no,
I’ll pick that up myself—with these gloves, you see,
and by the edges—I’m a careful criminal, Mrs. Pemming,
I don’t want to leave any traces. Dust the cover
all over, Miss Mabel; now this side—that’s the way to
do it. Lots of prints and no smudges. All according to
plan. Oh, please, Mr. Graves, you mustn’t touch it—it’s
as much as my place is worth to have it touched.”

“D’you have to do much of this sort of thing?”
inquired Mr. Graves, from a superior standpoint.

“Any amount,” replied Mr. Bunter, with a groan
calculated to appeal to Mr. Graves’s heart and unlock
his confidence. “If you’d kindly hold one end of
this bit of linoleum, Mrs. Pemming, I’ll hold up this
end while Miss Mabel operates. Yes, Mr. Graves, it’s
a hard life, valeting by day and developing by night—morning
tea at any time from 6.30 to 11, and
criminal investigation at all hours. It’s wonderful, the
ideas these rich men with nothing to do get into their
heads.”

“I wonder you stand it,” said Mr. Graves. “Now
there’s none of that here. A quiet, orderly, domestic
life, Mr. Bunter, has much to be said for it. Meals at
65
regular hours; decent, respectable families to dinner—none
of your painted women—and no valeting at
night, there’s much to be said for it. I don’t hold
with Hebrews as a rule, Mr. Bunter, and of course
I understand that you may find it to your advantage
to be in a titled family, but there’s less thought of
that these days, and I will say, for a self-made man,
no one could call Sir Reuben vulgar, and my lady at
any rate is county—Miss Ford, she was, one of the
Hampshire Fords, and both of them always most
considerate.”

“I agree with you, Mr. Graves—his lordship and
me have never held with being narrow-minded—why,
yes, my dear, of course it’s a footmark, this is
the washstand linoleum. A good Jew can be a good
man, that’s what I’ve always said. And regular hours
and considerate habits have a great deal to recommend
them. Very simple in his tastes, now, Sir
Reuben, isn’t he? for such a rich man, I mean.”

“Very simple indeed,” said the cook; “the meals he
and her ladyship have when they’re by themselves
with Miss Rachel—well, there now—if it wasn’t for
the dinners, which is always good when there’s company,
I’d be wastin’ my talents and education here,
if you understand me, Mr. Bunter.”

Mr. Bunter added the handle of the umbrella to his
collection, and began to pin a sheet across the window,
aided by the housemaid.

“Admirable,” said he. “Now, if I might have this
blanket on the table and another on a towel-horse
or something of that kind by way of a background—you’re
66
very kind, Mrs. Pemming…. Ah! I wish
his lordship never wanted valeting at night. Many’s
the time I’ve sat up till three and four, and up again
to call him early to go off Sherlocking at the other
end of the country. And the mud he gets on his
clothes and his boots!”

“I’m sure it’s a shame, Mr. Bunter,” said Mrs. Pemming,
warmly. “Low, I calls it. In my opinion, police-work
ain’t no fit occupation for a gentleman, let alone
a lordship.”

“Everything made so difficult, too,” said Mr.
Bunter nobly sacrificing his employer’s character and
his own feelings in a good cause; “boots chucked into
a corner, clothes hung up on the floor, as they say—”

“That’s often the case with these men as are born
with a silver spoon in their mouths,” said Mr. Graves.
“Now, Sir Reuben, he’s never lost his good old-fashioned
habits. Clothes folded up neat, boots put out in
his dressing-room, so as a man could get them in the
morning, everything made easy.”

“He forgot them the night before last, though.”

“The clothes, not the boots. Always thoughtful for
others, is Sir Reuben. Ah! I hope nothing’s happened
to him.”

“Indeed, no, poor gentleman,” chimed in the cook,
“and as for what they’re sayin’, that he’d ’ave gone
out surrepshous-like to do something he didn’t ought,
well, I’d never believe it of him, Mr. Bunter, not if
I was to take my dying oath upon it.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Bunter, adjusting his arc-lamps and
connecting them with the nearest electric light, “and
67
that’s more than most of us could say of them as
pays us.”

“Five foot ten,” said Lord Peter, “and not an inch
more.” He peered dubiously at the depression in the
bed clothes, and measured it a second time with the
gentleman-scout’s vade-mecum. Parker entered this
particular in a neat pocketbook.

“I suppose,” he said, “a six-foot-two man might
leave a five-foot-ten depression if he curled himself
up.”

“Have you any Scotch blood in you, Parker?” inquired
his colleague, bitterly.

“Not that I know of,” replied Parker. “Why?”

“Because of all the cautious, ungenerous, deliberate
and cold-blooded devils I know,” said Lord Peter,
“you are the most cautious, ungenerous, deliberate
and cold-blooded. Here am I, sweating my brains out
to introduce a really sensational incident into your
dull and disreputable little police investigation, and
you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm.”

“Well, it’s no good jumping at conclusions.”

“Jump? You don’t even crawl distantly within
sight of a conclusion. I believe if you caught the cat
with her head in the cream-jug you’d say it was conceivable
that the jug was empty when she got there.”

“Well, it would be conceivable, wouldn’t it?”

“Curse you,” said Lord Peter. He screwed his monocle
into his eye, and bent over the pillow, breathing
hard and tightly through his nose. “Here, give me
the tweezers,” he said presently. “Good heavens, man,
68
don’t blow like that, you might be a whale.” He
nipped up an almost invisible object from the linen.

“What is it?” asked Parker.

“It’s a hair,” said Wimsey grimly, his hard eyes
growing harder. “Let’s go and look at Levy’s hats,
shall we? And you might just ring for that fellow
with the churchyard name, do you mind?”

Mr. Graves, when summoned, found Lord Peter
Wimsey squatting on the floor of the dressing-room
before a row of hats arranged upside down before
him.

“Here you are,” said that nobleman cheerfully.
“Now, Graves, this is a guessin’ competition—a sort of
three-hat trick, to mix metaphors. Here are nine hats,
including three top-hats. Do you identify all these
hats as belonging to Sir Reuben Levy? You do? Very
good. Now I have three guesses as to which hat he
wore the night he disappeared, and if I guess right, I
win; if I don’t, you win. See? Ready? Go. I suppose
you know the answer yourself, by the way?”

“Do I understand your lordship to be asking which
hat Sir Reuben wore when he went out on Monday
night, your lordship?”

“No, you don’t understand a bit,” said Lord Peter.
“I’m asking if you know—don’t tell me, I’m going
to guess.”

“I do know, your lordship,” said Mr. Graves, reprovingly.

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “as he was dinin’ at the
Ritz he wore a topper. Here are three toppers. In
three guesses I’d be bound to hit the right one,
69
wouldn’t I? That don’t seem very sportin’. I’ll take
one guess. It was this one.”

He indicated the hat next the window.

“Am I right, Graves—have I got the prize?”

“That is the hat in question, my lord,” said Mr.
Graves, without excitement.

“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “that’s all I wanted to
know. Ask Bunter to step up, would you?”

Mr. Bunter stepped up with an aggrieved air, and
his usually smooth hair ruffled by the focussing cloth.

“Oh, there you are, Bunter,” said Lord Peter; “look
here—”

“Here I am, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, with respectful
reproach, “but if you’ll excuse me saying so,
downstairs is where I ought to be, with all those young
women about—they’ll be fingering the evidence, my
lord.”

“I cry your mercy,” said Lord Peter, “but I’ve
quarrelled hopelessly with Mr. Parker and distracted
the estimable Graves, and I want you to tell me what
finger-prints you have found. I shan’t be happy till I
get it, so don’t be harsh with me, Bunter.”

“Well, my lord, your lordship understands I haven’t
photographed them yet, but I won’t deny that their
appearance is interesting, my lord. The little book
off the night table, my lord, has only the marks of
one set of fingers—there’s a little scar on the right
thumb which makes them easy recognised. The hair-brush,
too, my lord, has only the same set of marks.
The umbrella, the toothglass and the boots all have
two sets: the hand with the scarred thumb, which I
70
take to be Sir Reuben’s, my lord, and a set of smudges
superimposed upon them, if I may put it that way,
my lord, which may or may not be the same hand in
rubber gloves. I could tell you better when I’ve got
the photographs made, to measure them, my lord.
The linoleum in front of the washstand is very gratifying
indeed, my lord, if you will excuse my mentioning
it. Besides the marks of Sir Reuben’s boots which
your lordship pointed out, there’s the print of a man’s
naked foot—a much smaller one, my lord, not much
more than a ten-inch sock, I should say if you asked
me.”

Lord Peter’s face became irradiated with almost a
dim, religious light.

“A mistake,” he breathed, “a mistake, a little one,
but he can’t afford it. When was the linoleum washed
last, Bunter?”

“Monday morning, my lord. The housemaid did
it and remembered to mention it. Only remark she’s
made yet, and it’s to the point. The other domestics—”

His features expressed disdain.

“What did I say, Parker? Five-foot-ten and not an
inch longer. And he didn’t dare to use the hair-brush.
Beautiful. But he had to risk the top-hat. Gentleman
can’t walk home in the rain late at night without a
hat, you know, Parker. Look! what do you make of
it? Two sets of finger-prints on everything but the
book and the brush, two sets of feet on the linoleum,
and two kinds of hair in the hat!”
71

He lifted the top-hat to the light, and extracted the
evidence with tweezers.

“Think of it, Parker—to remember the hair-brush
and forget the hat—to remember his fingers all the
time, and to make that one careless step on the tell-tale
linoleum. Here they are, you see, black hair and
tan hair—black hair in the bowler and the panama,
and black and tan in last night’s topper. And then,
just to make certain that we’re on the right track, just
one little auburn hair on the pillow, on this pillow,
Parker, which isn’t quite in the right place. It almost
brings tears to my eyes.”

“Do you mean to say—” said the detective, slowly.

“I mean to say,” said Lord Peter, “that it was not
Sir Reuben Levy whom the cook saw last night on
the doorstep. I say that it was another man, perhaps a
couple of inches shorter, who came here in Levy’s
clothes and let himself in with Levy’s latchkey. Oh,
he was a bold, cunning devil, Parker. He had on
Levy’s boots, and every stitch of Levy’s clothing down
to the skin. He had rubber gloves on his hands which
he never took off, and he did everything he could to
make us think that Levy slept here last night. He took
his chances, and won. He walked upstairs, he undressed,
he even washed and cleaned his teeth, though
he didn’t use the hair-brush for fear of leaving red
hairs in it. He had to guess what Levy did with boots
and clothes; one guess was wrong and the other right,
as it happened. The bed must look as if it had been
slept in, so he gets in, and lies there in his victim’s
very pyjamas. Then, in the morning sometime, probably
72
in the deadest hour between two and three, he
gets up, dresses himself in his own clothes that he has
brought with him in a bag, and creeps downstairs. If
anybody wakes, he is lost, but he is a bold man, and he
takes his chance. He knows that people do not wake
as a rule—and they don’t wake. He opens the street
door which he left on the latch when he came in—he
listens for the stray passer-by or the policeman on
his beat. He slips out. He pulls the door quietly to
with the latchkey. He walks briskly away in rubber-soled
shoes—he’s the kind of criminal who isn’t complete
without rubber-soled shoes. In a few minutes he
is at Hyde Park Corner. After that—”

He paused, and added:

“He did all that, and unless he had nothing at stake,
he had everything at stake. Either Sir Reuben Levy
has been spirited away for some silly practical joke,
or the man with the auburn hair has the guilt of murder
upon his soul.”

“Dear me!” ejaculated the detective, “you’re very
dramatic about it.”

Lord Peter passed his hand rather wearily over his
hair.

“My true friend,” he murmured in a voice surcharged
with emotion, “you recall me to the nursery
rhymes of my youth—the sacred duty of flippancy:

73

That’s the correct attitude, Parker. Here’s a poor old
buffer spirited away—such a joke—and I don’t believe
he’d hurt a fly himself—that makes it funnier.
D’you know, Parker, I don’t care frightfully about
this case after all.”

“Which, this or yours?”

“Both. I say, Parker, shall we go quietly home and
have lunch and go to the Coliseum?”

“You can if you like,” replied the detective; “but
you forget I do this for my bread and butter.”

“And I haven’t even that excuse,” said Lord Peter;
“well, what’s the next move? What would you do in
my case?”

“I’d do some good, hard grind,” said Parker. “I’d
distrust every bit of work Sugg ever did, and I’d get
the family history of every tenant of every flat in
Queen Caroline Mansions. I’d examine all their box-rooms
and rooftraps, and I would inveigle them into
conversations and suddenly bring in the words ‘body’
and ‘pince-nez,’ and see if they wriggled, like those
modern psyo-what’s-his-names.”

“You would, would you?” said Lord Peter with a
grin. “Well, we’ve exchanged cases, you know, so just
you toddle off and do it. I’m going to have a jolly
time at Wyndham’s.”

Parker made a grimace.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t suppose you’d ever do it,
so I’d better. You’ll never become a professional till
you learn to do a little work, Wimsey. How about
lunch?”

“I’m invited out,” said Lord Peter, magnificently.
74
“I’ll run around and change at the club. Can’t feed
with Freddy Arbuthnot in these bags; Bunter!”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Pack up if you’re ready, and come round and
wash my face and hands for me at the club.”

“Work here for another two hours, my lord. Can’t
do with less than thirty minutes’ exposure. The current’s
none too strong.”

“You see how I’m bullied by my own man, Parker?
Well, I must bear it, I suppose. Ta-ta!”

He whistled his way downstairs.

The conscientious Mr. Parker, with a groan, settled
down to a systematic search through Sir Reuben
Levy’s papers, with the assistance of a plate of ham
sandwiches and a bottle of Bass.

Lord Peter and the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot,
looking together like an advertisement for gents’
trouserings, strolled into the dining-room at Wyndham’s.

“Haven’t seen you for an age,” said the Honourable
Freddy. “What have you been doin’ with yourself?”

“Oh, foolin’ about,” said Lord Peter, languidly.

“Thick or clear, sir?” inquired the waiter of the
Honourable Freddy.

“Which’ll you have, Wimsey?” said that gentleman,
transferring the burden of selection to his guest.
“They’re both equally poisonous.”

“Well, clear’s less trouble to lick out of the spoon,”
said Lord Peter.
75

“Clear,” said the Honourable Freddy.

“Consommé Polonais,” agreed the waiter. “Very
nice, sir.”

Conversation languished until the Honourable
Freddy found a bone in the filleted sole, and sent for
the head waiter to explain its presence. When this
matter had been adjusted Lord Peter found energy to
say:

“Sorry to hear about your gov’nor, old man.”

“Yes, poor old buffer,” said the Honourable
Freddy; “they say he can’t last long now. What? Oh!
the Montrachet ’08. There’s nothing fit to drink in
this place,” he added gloomily.

After this deliberate insult to a noble vintage there
was a further pause, till Lord Peter said: “How’s
’Change?”

“Rotten,” said the Honourable Freddy.

He helped himself gloomily to salmis of game.

“Can I do anything?” asked Lord Peter.

“Oh, no, thanks—very decent of you, but it’ll pan
out all right in time.”

“This isn’t a bad salmis,” said Lord Peter.

“I’ve eaten worse,” admitted his friend.

“What about those Argentines?” inquired Lord
Peter. “Here, waiter, there’s a bit of cork in my
glass.”

“Cork?” cried the Honourable Freddy, with something
approaching animation; “you’ll hear about this,
waiter. It’s an amazing thing a fellow who’s paid to
do the job can’t manage to take a cork out of a
bottle. What you say? Argentines? Gone all to hell.
76
Old Levy bunkin’ off like that’s knocked the bottom
out of the market.”

“You don’t say so,” said Lord Peter. “What d’you
suppose has happened to the old man?”

“Cursed if I know,” said the Honourable Freddy;
“knocked on the head by the bears, I should think.”

“P’r’aps he’s gone off on his own,” suggested Lord
Peter. “Double life, you know. Giddy old blighters,
some of these City men.”

“Oh, no,” said the Honourable Freddy, faintly
roused; “no, hang it all, Wimsey, I wouldn’t care to
say that. He’s a decent old domestic bird, and his
daughter’s a charmin’ girl. Besides, he’s straight
enough—he’d do you down fast enough, but he
wouldn’t let you down. Old Anderson is badly cut
up about it.”

“Who’s Anderson?”

“Chap with property out there. He belongs here.
He was goin’ to meet Levy on Tuesday. He’s afraid
those railway people will get in now, and then it’ll be
all U. P.”

“Who’s runnin’ the railway people over here?” inquired
Lord Peter.

“Yankee blighter, John P. Milligan. He’s got an
option, or says he has. You can’t trust these brutes.”

“Can’t Anderson hold on?”

“Anderson isn’t Levy. Hasn’t got the shekels. Besides,
he’s only one. Levy covers the ground—he
could boycott Milligan’s beastly railway if he liked.
That’s where he’s got the pull, you see.”

“B’lieve I met the Milligan man somewhere,” said
77
Lord Peter, thoughtfully. “Ain’t he a hulking brute
with black hair and a beard?”

“You’re thinkin’ of somebody else,” said the Honourable
Freddy. “Milligan don’t stand any higher
than I do, unless you call five-feet-ten hulking—and
he’s bald, anyway.”

Lord Peter considered this over the Gorgonzola.
Then he said: “Didn’t know Levy had a charmin’
daughter.”

“Oh, yes,” said the Honourable Freddy, with an
elaborate detachment. “Met her and Mamma last year
abroad. That’s how I got to know the old man. He’s
been very decent. Let me into this Argentine business
on the ground floor, don’t you know?”

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “you might do worse.
Money’s money, ain’t it? And Lady Levy is quite a
redeemin’ point. At least, my mother knew her
people.”

“Oh, she’s all right,” said the Honourable Freddy,
“and the old man’s nothing to be ashamed of nowadays.
He’s self-made, of course, but he don’t pretend
to be anything else. No side. Toddles off to business
on a 96 ’bus every morning. ‘Can’t make up my mind
to taxis, my boy,’ he says. ‘I had to look at every halfpenny
when I was a young man, and I can’t get out
of the way of it now.’ Though, if he’s takin’ his family
out, nothing’s too good. Rachel—that’s the girl—always
laughs at the old man’s little economies.”

“I suppose they’ve sent for Lady Levy,” said Lord
Peter.

“I suppose so,” agreed the other. “I’d better pop
78
round and express sympathy or somethin’, what?
Wouldn’t look well not to, d’you think? But it’s
deuced awkward. What am I to say?”

“I don’t think it matters much what you say,” said
Lord Peter, helpfully. “I should ask if you can do
anything.”

“Thanks,” said the lover, “I will. Energetic young
man. Count on me. Always at your service. Ring me
up any time of the day or night. That’s the line to
take, don’t you think?”

“That’s the idea,” said Lord Peter.

Mr. John P. Milligan, the London representative
of the great Milligan railroad and shipping company,
was dictating code cables to his secretary in an office in
Lombard Street, when a card was brought up to him,
bearing the simple legend:

LORD PETER WIMSEY
Marlborough Club

Mr. Milligan was annoyed at the interruption, but,
like many of his nation, if he had a weak point, it
was the British aristocracy. He postponed for a few
minutes the elimination from the map of a modest
but promising farm, and directed that the visitor
should be shown up.

“Good-afternoon,” said that nobleman, ambling
genially in, “it’s most uncommonly good of you to
let me come round wastin’ your time like this. I’ll try
not to be too long about it, though I’m not awfully
good at comin’ to the point. My brother never would
79
let me stand for the county, y’know—said I wandered
on so nobody’d know what I was talkin’ about.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lord Wimsey,” said Mr.
Milligan. “Won’t you take a seat?”

“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “but I’m not a peer, you
know—that’s my brother Denver. My name’s Peter.
It’s a silly name, I always think, so old-world and full
of homely virtue and that sort of thing, but my godfathers
and godmothers in my baptism are responsible
for that, I suppose, officially—which is rather hard on
them, you know, as they didn’t actually choose it.
But we always have a Peter, after the third duke, who
betrayed five kings somewhere about the Wars of the
Roses, though come to think of it, it ain’t anything to
be proud of. Still, one has to make the best of it.”

Mr. Milligan, thus ingeniously placed at that disadvantage
which attends ignorance, manoeuvred for
position, and offered his interrupter a Corona Corona.

“Thanks, awfully,” said Lord Peter, “though you
really mustn’t tempt me to stay here burblin’ all
afternoon. By Jove, Mr. Milligan, if you offer people
such comfortable chairs and cigars like these, I wonder
they don’t come an’ live in your office.” He added
mentally: “I wish to goodness I could get those long-toed
boots off you. How’s a man to know the size of
your feet? And a head like a potato. It’s enough to
make one swear.”

“Say now, Lord Peter,” said Mr. Milligan, “can I
do anything for you?”

“Well, d’you know,” said Lord Peter, “I’m wonderin’
if you would. It’s damned cheek to ask you,
80
but fact is, it’s my mother, you know. Wonderful
woman, but don’t realize what it means, demands on
the time of a busy man like you. We don’t understand
hustle over here, you know, Mr. Milligan.”

“Now don’t you mention that,” said Mr. Milligan;
“I’d be surely charmed to do anything to oblige the
Duchess.”

He felt a momentary qualm as to whether a duke’s
mother were also a duchess, but breathed more freely
as Lord Peter went on:

“Thanks—that’s uncommonly good of you. Well,
now, it’s like this. My mother—most energetic, self-sacrificin’
woman, don’t you see, is thinkin’ of gettin’
up a sort of a charity bazaar down at Denver this
winter, in aid of the church roof, y’know. Very sad
case, Mr. Milligan—fine old antique—early English
windows and decorated angel roof, and all that—all
tumblin’ to pieces, rain pourin’ in and so on—vicar
catchin’ rheumatism at early service, owin’ to
the draught blowin’ in over the altar—you know the
sort of thing. They’ve got a man down startin’ on it—little
beggar called Thipps—lives with an aged
mother in Battersea—vulgar little beast, but quite
good on angel roofs and things, I’m told.”

At this point, Lord Peter watched his interlocutor
narrowly, but finding that this rigmarole produced in
him no reaction more startling than polite interest
tinged with faint bewilderment, he abandoned this
line of investigation, and proceeded:

“I say, I beg your pardon, frightfully—I’m afraid
I’m bein’ beastly long-winded. Fact is, my mother
81
is gettin’ up this bazaar, and she thought it’d be
an awfully interestin’ side-show to have some lectures—sort
of little talks, y’know—by eminent business
men of all nations. ‘How I Did It’ kind of
touch, y’know—‘A Drop of Oil with a Kerosene
King’—‘Cash Conscience and Cocoa’ and so on. It
would interest people down there no end. You see, all
my mother’s friends will be there, and we’ve none of
us any money—not what you’d call money, I mean—I
expect our incomes wouldn’t pay your telephone
calls, would they?—but we like awfully to hear about
the people who can make money. Gives us a sort of
uplifted feelin’, don’t you know. Well, anyway, I
mean, my mother’d be frightfully pleased and grateful
to you, Mr. Milligan, if you’d come down and
give us a few words as a representative American. It
needn’t take more than ten minutes or so, y’know,
because the local people can’t understand much beyond
shootin’ and huntin’, and my mother’s crowd
can’t keep their minds on anythin’ more than ten
minutes together, but we’d really appreciate it very
much if you’d come and stay a day or two and just
give us a little breezy word on the almighty dollar.”

“Why, yes,” said Mr. Milligan, “I’d like to, Lord
Peter. It’s kind of the Duchess to suggest it. It’s a
very sad thing when these fine old antiques begin to
wear out. I’ll come with great pleasure. And perhaps
you’d be kind enough to accept a little donation to
the Restoration Fund.”

This unexpected development nearly brought
Lord Peter up all standing. To pump, by means of an
82
ingenious lie, a hospitable gentleman whom you are
inclined to suspect of a peculiarly malicious murder,
and to accept from him in the course of the proceedings
a large cheque for a charitable object, has something
about it unpalatable to any but the hardened
Secret Service agent. Lord Peter temporized.

“That’s awfully decent of you,” he said. “I’m sure
they’d be no end grateful. But you’d better not give
it to me, you know. I might spend it, or lose it. I’m
not very reliable, I’m afraid. The vicar’s the right
person—the Rev. Constantine Throgmorton, St.
John-before-the-Latin-Gate Vicarage, Duke’s Denver,
if you like to send it there.”

“I will,” said Mr. Milligan. “Will you write it out
now for a thousand pounds, Scoot, in case it slips my
mind later?”

The secretary, a sandy-haired young man with a
long chin and no eyebrows, silently did as he was requested.
Lord Peter looked from the bald head of
Mr. Milligan to the red head of the secretary, hardened
his heart and tried again.

“Well, I’m no end grateful to you, Mr. Milligan,
and so’ll my mother be when I tell her. I’ll let you
know the date of the bazaar—it’s not quite settled
yet, and I’ve got to see some other business men, don’t
you know. I thought of askin’ someone from one of
the big newspaper combines to represent British advertisin’
talent, what?—and a friend of mine promises
me a leadin’ German financier—very interestin’
if there ain’t too much feelin’ against it down in the
country, and I’ll have to find somebody or other to
83
do the Hebrew point of view. I thought of askin’
Levy, y’know, only he’s floated off in this inconvenient
way.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Milligan, “that’s a very curious
thing, though I don’t mind saying, Lord Peter, that
it’s a convenience to me. He had a cinch on my railroad
combine, but I’d nothing against him personally,
and if he turns up after I’ve brought off a little deal
I’ve got on, I’ll be happy to give him the right hand
of welcome.”

A vision passed through Lord Peter’s mind of Sir
Reuben kept somewhere in custody till a financial
crisis was over. This was exceedingly possible, and far
more agreeable than his earlier conjecture; it also
agreed better with the impression he was forming of
Mr. Milligan.

“Well, it’s a rum go,” said Lord Peter, “but I daresay
he had his reasons. Much better not inquire into
people’s reasons, y’know, what? Specially as a police
friend of mine who’s connected with the case says the
old johnnie dyed his hair before he went.”

Out of the tail of his eye, Lord Peter saw the redheaded
secretary add up five columns of figures simultaneously
and jot down the answer.

“Dyed his hair, did he?” said Mr. Milligan.

“Dyed it red,” said Lord Peter. The secretary looked
up. “Odd thing is,” continued Wimsey, “they can’t
lay hands on the bottle. Somethin’ fishy there, don’t
you think, what?”

The secretary’s interest seemed to have evaporated.
He inserted a fresh sheet into his looseleaf ledger, and
84
carried forward a row of digits from the preceding
page.

“I daresay there’s nothin’ in it,” said Lord Peter,
rising to go. “Well, it’s uncommonly good of you to
be bothered with me like this, Mr. Milligan—my
mother’ll be no end pleased. She’ll write you about
the date.”

“I’m charmed,” said Mr. Milligan. “Very pleased
to have met you.”

Mr. Scoot rose silently to open the door, uncoiling
as he did so a portentous length of thin leg, hitherto
hidden by the desk. With a mental sigh Lord Peter
estimated him at six-foot-four.

“It’s a pity I can’t put Scoot’s head on Milligan’s
shoulders,” said Lord Peter, emerging into the swirl
of the city. “And what will my mother say?”
85

CHAPTER V

Mr. Parker was a bachelor, and occupied a
Georgian but inconvenient flat at No. 12A Great
Ormond Street, for which he paid a pound a week.
His exertions in the cause of civilization were rewarded,
not by the gift of diamond rings from empresses
or munificent cheques from grateful Prime
Ministers, but by a modest, though sufficient, salary,
drawn from the pockets of the British taxpayer. He
awoke, after a long day of arduous and inconclusive
labour, to the smell of burnt porridge. Through his
bedroom window, hygienically open top and bottom,
a raw fog was rolling slowly in, and the sight of a
pair of winter pants, flung hastily over a chair the
previous night, fretted him with a sense of the sordid
absurdity of the human form. The telephone bell
rang, and he crawled wretchedly out of bed and into
the sitting-room, where Mrs. Munns, who did for him
by the day, was laying the table, sneezing as she went.

Mr. Bunter was speaking.

“His lordship says he’d be very glad, sir, if you
could make it convenient to step round to breakfast.”

If the odour of kidneys and bacon had been wafted
along the wire, Mr. Parker could not have experienced
a more vivid sense of consolation.

“Tell his lordship I’ll be with him in half an hour,”
86
he said, thankfully, and plunging into the bathroom,
which was also the kitchen, he informed Mrs. Munns,
who was just making tea from a kettle which had
gone off the boil, that he should be out to breakfast.

“You can take the porridge home for the family,”
he added, viciously, and flung off his dressing-gown
with such determination that Mrs. Munns could only
scuttle away with a snort.

A 19 ’bus deposited him in Piccadilly only fifteen
minutes later than his rather sanguine impulse had
prompted him to suggest, and Mr. Bunter served him
with glorious food, incomparable coffee, and the
Daily Mail before a blazing fire of wood and coal.
A distant voice singing the “et iterum venturus est”
from Bach’s Mass in B minor proclaimed that for the
owner of the flat cleanliness and godliness met at least
once a day, and presently Lord Peter roamed in, moist
and verbena-scented, in a bath-robe cheerfully patterned
with unnaturally variegated peacocks.

“Mornin’, old dear,” said that gentleman. “Beast of
a day, ain’t it? Very good of you to trundle out in
it, but I had a letter I wanted you to see, and I hadn’t
the energy to come round to your place. Bunter and
I’ve been makin’ a night of it.”

“What’s the letter?” asked Parker.

“Never talk business with your mouth full,” said
Lord Peter, reprovingly; “have some Oxford marmalade—and
then I’ll show you my Dante; they
brought it round last night. What ought I to read
this morning, Bunter?”
87

“Lord Erith’s collection is going to be sold, my lord.
There is a column about it in the Morning Post. I
think your lordship should look at this review of Sir
Julian Freke’s new book on ‘The Physiological Bases
of the Conscience’ in the Times Literary Supplement.
Then there is a very singular little burglary in the
Chronicle, my lord, and an attack on titled families
in the Herald—rather ill-written, if I may say so,
but not without unconscious humour which your
lordship will appreciate.”

“All right, give me that and the burglary,” said
his lordship.

“I have looked over the other papers,” pursued Mr.
Bunter, indicating a formidable pile, “and marked
your lordship’s after-breakfast reading.”

“Oh, pray don’t allude to it,” said Lord Peter; “you
take my appetite away.”

There was silence, but for the crunching of toast
and the crackling of paper.

“I see they adjourned the inquest,” said Parker
presently.

“Nothing else to do,” said Lord Peter; “but Lady
Levy arrived last night, and will have to go and fail
to identify the body this morning for Sugg’s benefit.”

“Time, too,” said Mr. Parker shortly.

Silence fell again.

“I don’t think much of your burglary, Bunter,”
said Lord Peter. “Competent, of course, but no imagination.
I want imagination in a criminal. Where’s
the Morning Post?”
88

After a further silence, Lord Peter said: “You
might send for the catalogue, Bunter, that Apollonios
Rhodios[C] might be worth looking at. No, I’m
damned if I’m going to stodge through that review,
but you can stick the book on the library list if you
like. His book on crime was entertainin’ enough as
far as it went, but the fellow’s got a bee in his bonnet.
Thinks God’s a secretion of the liver—all right once
in a way, but there’s no need to keep on about it.
There’s nothing you can’t prove if your outlook is
only sufficiently limited. Look at Sugg.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Parker; “I wasn’t attending.
Argentines are steadying a little, I see.”

“Milligan,” said Lord Peter.

“Oil’s in a bad way. Levy’s made a difference there.
That funny little boom in Peruvians that came on
just before he disappeared has died away again. I
wonder if he was concerned in it. D’you know at all?”

“I’ll find out,” said Lord Peter. “What was it?”

“Oh, an absolutely dud enterprise that hadn’t been
heard of for years. It suddenly took a little lease of
life last week. I happened to notice it because my
mother got let in for a couple of hundred shares a
long time ago. It never paid a dividend. Now it’s
petered out again.”

Wimsey pushed his plate aside and lit a pipe.

“Having finished, I don’t mind doing some work,”
he said. “How did you get on yesterday?”
89

“I didn’t,” replied Parker. “I sleuthed up and down
those flats in my own bodily shape and two different
disguises. I was a gas-meter man and a collector for a
Home for Lost Doggies, and I didn’t get a thing to go
on, except a servant in the top flat at the Battersea
Bridge Road end of the row who said she thought
she heard a bump on the roof one night. Asked which
night, she couldn’t rightly say. Asked if it was Monday
night, she thought it very likely. Asked if it
mightn’t have been in that high wind on Saturday
night that blew my chimney-pot off, she couldn’t
say but what it might have been. Asked if she was
sure it was on the roof and not inside the flat, said
to be sure they did find a picture tumbled down next
morning. Very suggestible girl. I saw your friends,
Mr. and Mrs. Appledore, who received me coldly, but
could make no definite complaint about Thipps except
that his mother dropped her h’s, and that he
once called on them uninvited, armed with a pamphlet
about anti-vivisection. The Indian Colonel on
the first floor was loud, but unexpectedly friendly.
He gave me Indian curry for supper and some very
good whisky, but he’s a sort of hermit, and all he
could tell me was that he couldn’t stand Mrs. Appledore.”

“Did you get nothing at the house?”

“Only Levy’s private diary. I brought it away with
me. Here it is. It doesn’t tell one much, though. It’s
full of entries like: ‘Tom and Annie to dinner’; and
‘My dear wife’s birthday; gave her an old opal ring’;
90
‘Mr. Arbuthnot dropped in to tea; he wants to marry
Rachel, but I should like someone steadier for my
treasure.’ Still, I thought it would show who came
to the house and so on. He evidently wrote it up at
night. There’s no entry for Monday.”

“I expect it’ll be useful,” said Lord Peter, turning
over the pages. “Poor old buffer. I say, I’m not so certain
now he was done away with.”

He detailed to Mr. Parker his day’s work.

“Arbuthnot?” said Parker. “Is that the Arbuthnot
of the diary?”

“I suppose so. I hunted him up because I knew he
was fond of fooling round the Stock Exchange. As
for Milligan, he looks all right, but I believe he’s
pretty ruthless in business and you never can tell.
Then there’s the red-haired secretary—lightnin’ calculator
man with a face like a fish, keeps on sayin’
nuthin’—got the Tarbaby in his family tree, I should
think. Milligan’s got a jolly good motive for, at any
rate, suspendin’ Levy for a few days. Then there’s the
new man.”

“What new man?”

“Ah, that’s the letter I mentioned to you. Where
did I put it? Here we are. Good parchment paper,
printed address of solicitor’s office in Salisbury, and
postmark to correspond. Very precisely written with
a fine nib by an elderly business man of old-fashioned
habits.”

Parker took the letter and read:
91

“Dear me,” said Parker, “this is what you might
call unexpected.”

“Either it is some extraordinary misunderstanding,”
said Lord Peter, “or Mr. Crimplesham is a very
bold and cunning villain. Or possibly, of course, they
are the wrong glasses. We may as well get a ruling on
that point at once. I suppose the glasses are at the
Yard. I wish you’d just ring ’em up and ask ’em to
92
send round an optician’s description of them at once—and
you might ask at the same time whether it’s a
very common prescription.”

“Right you are,” said Parker, and took the receiver
off its hook.

“And now,” said his friend, when the message was
delivered, “just come into the library for a minute.”

On the library table, Lord Peter had spread out a
series of bromide prints, some dry, some damp, and
some but half-washed.

“These little ones are the originals of the photos
we’ve been taking,” said Lord Peter, “and these big
ones are enlargements all made to precisely the same
scale. This one here is the footmark on the linoleum;
we’ll put that by itself at present. Now these finger-prints
can be divided into five lots. I’ve numbered ’em
on the prints—see?—and made a list:

“A. The finger-prints of Levy himself, off his little
bedside book and his hair-brush—this and this—you
can’t mistake the little scar on the thumb.

“B. The smudges made by the gloved fingers of
the man who slept in Levy’s room on Monday night.
They show clearly on the water-bottle and on the
boots—superimposed on Levy’s. They are very distinct
on the boots—surprisingly so for gloved hands,
and I deduce that the gloves were rubber ones and
had recently been in water.

“Here’s another interestin’ point. Levy walked in
the rain on Monday night, as we know, and these
dark marks are mud-splashes. You see they lie over
Levy’s finger-prints in every case. Now see: on this
93
left boot we find the stranger’s thumb-mark over the
mud on the leather above the heel. That’s a funny
place to find a thumb-mark on a boot, isn’t it? That
is, if Levy took off his own boots. But it’s the place
where you’d expect to see it if somebody forcibly removed
his boots for him. Again, most of the stranger’s
finger-marks come over the mud-marks, but here is
one splash of mud which comes on top of them again.
Which makes me infer that the stranger came back to
Park Lane, wearing Levy’s boots, in a cab, carriage
or car, but that at some point or other he walked a
little way—just enough to tread in a puddle and get
a splash on the boots. What do you say?”

“Very pretty,” said Parker. “A bit intricate,
though, and the marks are not all that I could wish
a finger-print to be.”

“Well, I won’t lay too much stress on it. But it
fits in with our previous ideas. Now let’s turn to:

“C. The prints obligingly left by my own particular
villain on the further edge of Thipps’s bath, where
you spotted them, and I ought to be scourged for not
having spotted them. The left hand, you notice, the
base of the palm and the fingers, but not the tips,
looking as though he had steadied himself on the edge
of the bath while leaning down to adjust something
at the bottom, the pince-nez perhaps. Gloved, you
see, but showing no ridge or seam of any kind—I say
rubber, you say rubber. That’s that. Now see here:

“D and E come off a visiting-card of mine. There’s
this thing at the corner, marked F, but that you can
disregard; in the original document it’s a sticky mark
94
left by the thumb of the youth who took it from
me, after first removing a piece of chewing-gum
from his teeth with his finger to tell me that Mr.
Milligan might or might not be disengaged. D and
E are the thumb-marks of Mr. Milligan and his red-haired
secretary. I’m not clear which is which, but
I saw the youth with the chewing-gum hand the
card to the secretary, and when I got into the inner
shrine I saw John P. Milligan standing with it in his
hand, so it’s one or the other, and for the moment it’s
immaterial to our purpose which is which. I boned
the card from the table when I left.

“Well, now, Parker, here’s what’s been keeping
Bunter and me up till the small hours. I’ve measured
and measured every way backwards and forwards
till my head’s spinnin’, and I’ve stared till I’m nearly
blind, but I’m hanged if I can make my mind up.
Question 1. Is C identical with B? Question 2. Is D
or E identical with B? There’s nothing to go on but
the size and shape, of course, and the marks are so
faint—what do you think?”

Parker shook his head doubtfully.

“I think E might almost be put out of the question,”
he said; “it seems such an excessively long and
narrow thumb. But I think there is a decided resemblance
between the span of B on the water-bottle
and C on the bath. And I don’t see any reason why
D shouldn’t be the same as B, only there’s so little
to judge from.”

“Your untutored judgment and my measurements
have brought us both to the same conclusion—if you
95
can call it a conclusion,” said Lord Peter, bitterly.

“Another thing,” said Parker. “Why on earth
should we try to connect B with C? The fact that
you and I happen to be friends doesn’t make it necessary
to conclude that the two cases we happen to be
interested in have any organic connection with one
another. Why should they? The only person who
thinks they have is Sugg, and he’s nothing to go by. It
would be different if there were any truth in the suggestion
that the man in the bath was Levy, but we
know for a certainty he wasn’t. It’s ridiculous to suppose
that the same man was employed in committing
two totally distinct crimes on the same night, one in
Battersea and the other in Park Lane.”

“I know,” said Wimsey, “though of course we
mustn’t forget that Levy was in Battersea at the time,
and now we know he didn’t return home at twelve
as was supposed, we’ve no reason to think he ever left
Battersea at all.”

“True. But there are other places in Battersea besides
Thipps’s bathroom. And he wasn’t in Thipps’s
bathroom. In fact, come to think of it, that’s the
one place in the universe where we know definitely
that he wasn’t. So what’s Thipps’s bath got to do
with it?”

“I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “Well, perhaps
we shall get something better to go on today.”

He leaned back in his chair and smoked thoughtfully
for some time over the papers which Bunter
had marked for him.

“They’ve got you out in the limelight,” he said.
96
“Thank Heaven, Sugg hates me too much to give me
any publicity. What a dull Agony Column! ‘Darling
Pipsey—Come back soon to your distracted Popsey’—and
the usual young man in need of financial assistance,
and the usual injunction to ‘Remember thy
Creator in the days of thy youth.’ Hullo! there’s the
bell. Oh, it’s our answer from Scotland Yard.”

The note from Scotland Yard enclosed an optician’s
specification identical with that sent by Mr. Crimplesham,
and added that it was an unusual one, owing to
the peculiar strength of the lenses and the marked
difference between the sight of the two eyes.

“That’s good enough,” said Parker.

“Yes,” said Wimsey. “Then Possibility No. 3 is
knocked on the head. There remain Possibility No.
1: Accident or Misunderstanding, and No. 2: Deliberate
Villainy, of a remarkably bold and calculating
kind—of a kind, in fact, characteristic of the author
or authors of our two problems. Following the methods
inculcated at that University of which I have the
honour to be a member, we will now examine severally
the various suggestions afforded by Possibility
No. 2. This Possibility may be again subdivided into
two or more Hypotheses. On Hypothesis 1 (strongly
advocated by my distinguished colleague Professor
Snupshed), the criminal, whom we may designate as
X, is not identical with Crimplesham, but is using the
name of Crimplesham as his shield, or aegis. This
hypothesis may be further subdivided into two alternatives.
Alternative A: Crimplesham is an innocent
and unconscious accomplice, and X is in his employment.
97
X writes in Crimplesham’s name on Crimplesham’s
office-paper and obtains that the object in
question, i.e., the eyeglasses, be despatched to Crimplesham’s
address. He is in a position to intercept the
parcel before it reaches Crimplesham. The presumption
is that X is Crimplesham’s charwoman, office-boy,
clerk, secretary or porter. This offers a wide field
of investigation. The method of inquiry will be to
interview Crimplesham and discover whether he sent
the letter, and if not, who has access to his correspondence.
Alternative B: Crimplesham is under X’s
influence or in his power, and has been induced to
write the letter by (a) bribery, (b) misrepresentation
or (c) threats. X may in that case be a persuasive
relation or friend, or else a creditor, blackmailer or
assassin; Crimplesham, on the other hand, is obviously
venal or a fool. The method of inquiry in this case,
I would tentatively suggest, is again to interview
Crimplesham, put the facts of the case strongly before
him, and assure him in the most intimidating
terms that he is liable to a prolonged term of penal
servitude as an accessory after the fact in the crime
of murder— Ah-hem! Trusting, gentlemen, that you
have followed me thus far, we will pass to the consideration
of Hypothesis No. 2, to which I personally
incline, and according to which X is identical with
Crimplesham.

“In this case, Crimplesham, who is, in the words of
an English classic, a man-of-infinite-resource-and-sagacity,
correctly deduces that, of all people, the last
whom we shall expect to find answering our advertisement
98
is the criminal himself. Accordingly, he plays
a bold game of bluff. He invents an occasion on which
the glasses may very easily have been lost or stolen,
and applies for them. If confronted, nobody will be
more astonished than he to learn where they were
found. He will produce witnesses to prove that he
left Victoria at 5.45 and emerged from the train at
Balham at the scheduled time, and sat up all Monday
night playing chess with a respectable gentleman well
known in Balham. In this case, the method of inquiry
will be to pump the respectable gentleman in Balham,
and if he should happen to be a single gentleman
with a deaf housekeeper, it may be no easy matter to
impugn the alibi, since, outside detective romances,
few ticket-collectors and ’bus-conductors keep an
exact remembrance of all the passengers passing between
Balham and London on any and every evening
of the week.

“Finally, gentlemen, I will frankly point out the
weak point of all these hypotheses, namely: that none
of them offers any explanation as to why the incriminating
article was left so conspicuously on the
body in the first instance.”

Mr. Parker had listened with commendable patience
to this academic exposition.

“Might not X,” he suggested, “be an enemy of
Crimplesham’s, who designed to throw suspicion upon
him?”

“He might. In that case he should be easy to discover,
since he obviously lives in close proximity to
Crimplesham and his glasses, and Crimplesham in fear
99
of his life will then be a valuable ally for the prosecution.”

“How about the first possibility of all, misunderstanding
or accident?”

“Well! Well, for purposes of discussion, nothing,
because it really doesn’t afford any data for discussion.”

“In any case,” said Parker, “the obvious course
appears to be to go to Salisbury.”

“That seems indicated,” said Lord Peter.

“Very well,” said the detective, “is it to be you or
me or both of us?”

“It is to be me,” said Lord Peter, “and that for two
reasons. First, because, if (by Possibility No. 2, Hypothesis
1, Alternative A) Crimplesham is an innocent
catspaw, the person who put in the advertisement
is the proper person to hand over the property.
Secondly, because, if we are to adopt Hypothesis 2,
we must not overlook the sinister possibility that
Crimplesham-X is laying a careful trap to rid himself
of the person who so unwarily advertised in the daily
press his interest in the solution of the Battersea
Park mystery.”

“That appears to me to be an argument for our
both going,” objected the detective.

“Far from it,” said Lord Peter. “Why play into
the hands of Crimplesham-X by delivering over to
him the only two men in London with the evidence,
such as it is, and shall I say the wits, to connect him
with the Battersea body?”

“But if we told the Yard where we were going, and
100
we both got nobbled,” said Mr. Parker, “it would
afford strong presumptive evidence of Crimplesham’s
guilt, and anyhow, if he didn’t get hanged for murdering
the man in the bath he’d at least get hanged
for murdering us.”

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “if he only murdered me
you could still hang him—what’s the good of wasting
a sound, marriageable young male like yourself? Besides,
how about old Levy? If you’re incapacitated,
do you think anybody else is going to find him?”

“But we could frighten Crimplesham by threatening
him with the Yard.”

“Well, dash it all, if it comes to that, I can frighten
him by threatening him with you, which, seeing you
hold what evidence there is, is much more to the
point. And, then, suppose it’s a wild-goose chase after
all, you’ll have wasted time when you might have
been getting on with the case. There are several things
that need doing.”

“Well,” said Parker, silenced but reluctant, “why
can’t I go, in that case?”

“Bosh!” said Lord Peter. “I am retained (by old
Mrs. Thipps, for whom I entertain the greatest respect)
to deal with this case, and it’s only by courtesy
I allow you to have anything to do with it.”

Mr. Parker groaned.

“Will you at least take Bunter?” he said.

“In deference to your feelings,” replied Lord Peter,
“I will take Bunter, though he could be far more usefully
employed taking photographs or overhauling
101
my wardrobe. When is there a good train to Salisbury,
Bunter?”

“There is an excellent train at 10.50, my lord.”

“Kindly make arrangements to catch it,” said Lord
Peter, throwing off his bath-robe and trailing away
with it into his bedroom. “And, Parker—if you have
nothing else to do you might get hold of Levy’s secretary
and look into that little matter of the Peruvian
oil.”

Lord Peter took with him, for light reading in the
train, Sir Reuben Levy’s diary. It was a simple, and
in the light of recent facts, rather a pathetic document.
The terrible fighter of the Stock Exchange,
who could with one nod set the surly bear dancing, or
bring the savage bull to feed out of his hand, whose
breath devastated whole districts with famine or
swept financial potentates from their seats, was revealed
in private life as kindly, domestic, innocently
proud of himself and his belongings, confiding, generous
and a little dull. His own small economies were
duly chronicled side by side with extravagant presents
to his wife and daughter. Small incidents of
household routine appeared, such as: “Man came to
mend the conservatory roof,” or “The new butler
(Simpson) has arrived, recommended by the Goldbergs.
I think he will be satisfactory.” All visitors and
entertainments were duly entered, from a very magnificent
lunch to Lord Dewsbury, the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, and Dr. Jabez K. Wort, the American
plenipotentiary, through a series of diplomatic
102
dinners to eminent financiers, down to intimate family
gatherings of persons designated by Christian
names or nicknames. About May there came a mention
of Lady Levy’s nerves, and further reference was
made to the subject in subsequent months. In September
it was stated that “Freke came to see my dear
wife and advised complete rest and change of scene.
She thinks of going abroad with Rachel.” The name
of the famous nerve-specialist occurred as a diner or
luncher about once a month, and it came into Lord
Peter’s mind that Freke would be a good person to
consult about Levy himself. “People sometimes tell
things to the doctor,” he murmured to himself. “And,
by Jove! if Levy was simply going round to see Freke
on Monday night, that rather disposes of the Battersea
incident, doesn’t it?” He made a note to look
up Sir Julian and turned on further. On September
18th, Lady Levy and her daughter had left for the
south of France. Then suddenly, under the date October
5th, Lord Peter found what he was looking for:
“Goldberg, Skriner and Milligan to dinner.”

There was the evidence that Milligan had been in
that house. There had been a formal entertainment—a
meeting as of two duellists shaking hands before the
fight. Skriner was a well-known picture-dealer; Lord
Peter imagined an after-dinner excursion upstairs to
see the two Corots in the drawing-room, and the portrait
of the oldest Levy girl, who had died at the
age of sixteen. It was by Augustus John, and hung in
the bedroom. The name of the red-haired secretary
was nowhere mentioned, unless the initial S., occurring
103
in another entry, referred to him. Throughout
September and October, Anderson (of Wyndham’s)
had been a frequent visitor.

Lord Peter shook his head over the diary, and
turned to the consideration of the Battersea Park
mystery. Whereas in the Levy affair it was easy
enough to supply a motive for the crime, if crime it
were, and the difficulty was to discover the method of
its carrying out and the whereabouts of the victim,
in the other case the chief obstacle to inquiry was the
entire absence of any imaginable motive. It was odd
that, although the papers had carried news of the
affair from one end of the country to the other and a
description of the body had been sent to every police
station in the country, nobody had as yet come forward
to identify the mysterious occupant of Mr.
Thipps’s bath. It was true that the description, which
mentioned the clean-shaven chin, elegantly cut hair
and the pince-nez, was rather misleading, but on the
other hand, the police had managed to discover the
number of molars missing, and the height, complexion
and other data were correctly enough stated, as also
the date at which death had presumably occurred. It
seemed, however, as though the man had melted out
of society without leaving a gap or so much as a ripple.
Assigning a motive for the murder of a person
without relations or antecedents or even clothes is like
trying to visualize the fourth dimension—admirable
exercise for the imagination, but arduous and inconclusive.
Even if the day’s interview should disclose
black spots in the past or present of Mr. Crimplesham,
104
how were they to be brought into connection
with a person apparently without a past, and whose
present was confined to the narrow limits of a bath
and a police mortuary?

“Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “I beg that in the future
you will restrain me from starting two hares at once.
These cases are gettin’ to be a strain on my constitution.
One hare has nowhere to run from, and the
other has nowhere to run to. It’s a kind of mental
D.T., Bunter. When this is over I shall turn pussyfoot,
forswear the police news, and take to an emollient
diet of the works of the late Charles Garvice.”

It was its comparative proximity to Milford Hill
that induced Lord Peter to lunch at the Minster
Hotel rather than at the White Hart or some other
more picturesquely situated hostel. It was not a lunch
calculated to cheer his mind; as in all Cathedral cities,
the atmosphere of the Close pervades every nook and
corner of Salisbury, and no food in that city but
seems faintly flavoured with prayer-books. As he sat
sadly consuming that impassive pale substance known
to the English as “cheese” unqualified (for there are
cheeses which go openly by their names, as Stilton,
Camembert, Gruyère, Wensleydale or Gorgonzola,
but “cheese” is cheese and everywhere the same), he
inquired of the waiter the whereabouts of Mr. Crimplesham’s
office.

The waiter directed him to a house rather further
up the street on the opposite side, adding: “But anybody’ll
105
tell you, sir; Mr. Crimplesham’s very well
known hereabouts.”

“He’s a good solicitor, I suppose?” said Lord Peter.

“Oh, yes, sir,” said the waiter, “you couldn’t do
better than trust to Mr. Crimplesham, sir. There’s
folk say he’s old-fashioned, but I’d rather have my
little bits of business done by Mr. Crimplesham than
by one of these fly-away young men. Not but what
Mr. Crimplesham’ll be retiring soon, sir, I don’t
doubt, for he must be close on eighty, sir, if he’s a day,
but then there’s young Mr. Wicks to carry on the
business, and he’s a very nice, steady-like young gentleman.”

“Is Mr. Crimplesham really as old as that?” said
Lord Peter. “Dear me! He must be very active for
his years. A friend of mine was doing business with
him in town last week.”

“Wonderful active, sir,” agreed the waiter, “and
with his game leg, too, you’d be surprised. But there,
sir, I often think when a man’s once past a certain
age, the older he grows the tougher he gets, and
women the same or more so.”

“Very likely,” said Lord Peter, calling up and dismissing
the mental picture of a gentleman of eighty
with a game leg carrying a dead body over the roof
of a Battersea flat at midnight. “‘He’s tough, sir,
tough, is old Joey Bagstock, tough and devilish sly,’”
he added, thoughtlessly.

“Indeed, sir?” said the waiter. “I couldn’t say, I’m
sure.”
106

“I beg your pardon,” said Lord Peter; “I was quoting
poetry. Very silly of me. I got the habit at my
mother’s knee and I can’t break myself of it.”

“No, sir,” said the waiter, pocketing a liberal tip.
“Thank you very much, sir. You’ll find the house
easy. Just afore you come to Penny-farthing Street,
sir, about two turnings off, on the right-hand side opposite.”

“Afraid that disposes of Crimplesham-X,” said
Lord Peter. “I’m rather sorry; he was a fine sinister
figure as I had pictured him. Still, his may yet be the
brain behind the hands—the aged spider sitting invisible
in the centre of the vibrating web, you know,
Bunter.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Bunter. They were walking up
the street together.

“There is the office over the way,” pursued Lord
Peter. “I think, Bunter, you might step into this little
shop and purchase a sporting paper, and if I do not
emerge from the villain’s lair—say within three-quarters
of an hour, you may take such steps as your perspicuity
may suggest.”

Mr. Bunter turned into the shop as desired, and
Lord Peter walked across and rang the lawyer’s bell
with decision.

“The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth is my long suit here, I fancy,” he murmured,
and when the door was opened by a clerk he delivered
over his card with an unflinching air.

He was ushered immediately into a confidential-looking
107
office, obviously furnished in the early years
of Queen Victoria’s reign, and never altered since. A
lean, frail-looking old gentleman rose briskly from his
chair as he entered and limped forward to meet him.

“My dear sir,” exclaimed the lawyer, “how extremely
good of you to come in person! Indeed, I
am ashamed to have given you so much trouble. I
trust you were passing this way, and that my glasses
have not put you to any great inconvenience. Pray
take a seat, Lord Peter.” He peered gratefully at the
young man over a pince-nez obviously the fellow of
that now adorning a dossier in Scotland Yard.

Lord Peter sat down. The lawyer sat down. Lord
Peter picked up a glass paper-weight from the desk
and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. Subconsciously
he noted what an admirable set of finger-prints
he was leaving upon it. He replaced it with
precision on the exact centre of a pile of letters.

“It’s quite all right,” said Lord Peter. “I was here
on business. Very happy to be of service to you.
Very awkward to lose one’s glasses, Mr. Crimplesham.”

“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I assure you I feel quite
lost without them. I have this pair, but they do not
fit my nose so well—besides, that chain has a great
sentimental value for me. I was terribly distressed on
arriving at Balham to find that I had lost them. I
made inquiries of the railway, but to no purpose. I
feared they had been stolen. There were such crowds
at Victoria, and the carriage was packed with people
108
all the way to Balham. Did you come across them in
the train?”

“Well, no,” said Lord Peter, “I found them in
rather an unexpected place. Do you mind telling me
if you recognized any of your fellow-travellers on
that occasion?”

The lawyer stared at him.

“Not a soul,” he answered. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “I thought perhaps the—the
person with whom I found them might have
taken them for a joke.”

The lawyer looked puzzled.

“Did the person claim to be an acquaintance of
mine?” he inquired. “I know practically nobody in
London, except the friend with whom I was staying
in Balham, Dr. Philpots, and I should be very greatly
surprised at his practising a jest upon me. He knew
very well how distressed I was at the loss of the glasses.
My business was to attend a meeting of shareholders
in Medlicott’s Bank, but the other gentlemen present
were all personally unknown to me, and I cannot
think that any of them would take so great a liberty.
In any case,” he added, “as the glasses are here, I will
not inquire too closely into the manner of their restoration.
I am deeply obliged to you for your
trouble.”

Lord Peter hesitated.

“Pray forgive my seeming inquisitiveness,” he
said, “but I must ask you another question. It sounds
rather melodramatic, I’m afraid, but it’s this. Are
you aware that you have any enemy—anyone, I
109
mean, who would profit by your—er—decease or disgrace?”

Mr. Crimplesham sat frozen into stony surprise
and disapproval.

“May I ask the meaning of this extraordinary question?”
he inquired stiffly.

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “the circumstances are a
little unusual. You may recollect that my advertisement
was addressed to the jeweller who sold the
chain.”

“That surprised me at the time,” said Mr. Crimplesham,
“but I begin to think your advertisement and
your behaviour are all of a piece.”

“They are,” said Lord Peter. “As a matter of fact
I did not expect the owner of the glasses to answer
my advertisement. Mr. Crimplesham, you have no
doubt read what the papers have to say about the
Battersea Park mystery. Your glasses are the pair that
was found on the body, and they are now in the
possession of the police at Scotland Yard, as you may
see by this.” He placed the specification of the glasses
and the official note before Crimplesham.

“Good God!” exclaimed the lawyer. He glanced at
the paper, and then looked narrowly at Lord Peter.

“Are you yourself connected with the police?” he
inquired.

“Not officially,” said Lord Peter. “I am investigating
the matter privately, in the interests of one of the
parties.”

Mr. Crimplesham rose to his feet.
110

“My good man,” he said, “this is a very impudent
attempt, but blackmail is an indictable offence, and
I advise you to leave my office before you commit
yourself.” He rang the bell.

“I was afraid you’d take it like that,” said Lord
Peter. “It looks as though this ought to have been
my friend Detective Parker’s job, after all.” He laid
Parker’s card on the table beside the specification, and
added: “If you should wish to see me again, Mr.
Crimplesham, before tomorrow morning, you will
find me at the Minster Hotel.”

Mr. Crimplesham disdained to reply further than
to direct the clerk who entered to “show this person
out.”

In the entrance Lord Peter brushed against a tall
young man who was just coming in, and who stared
at him with surprised recognition. His face, however,
aroused no memories in Lord Peter’s mind, and that
baffled nobleman, calling out Bunter from the newspaper
shop, departed to his hotel to get a trunk-call
through to Parker.

Meanwhile, in the office, the meditations of the
indignant Mr. Crimplesham were interrupted by the
entrance of his junior partner.

“I say,” said the latter gentleman, “has somebody
done something really wicked at last? Whatever
brings such a distinguished amateur of crime on our
sober doorstep?”

“I have been the victim of a vulgar attempt at
111
blackmail,” said the lawyer; “an individual passing
himself off as Lord Peter Wimsey—”

“But that is Lord Peter Wimsey,” said Mr. Wicks,
“there’s no mistaking him. I saw him give evidence in
the Attenbury emerald case. He’s a big little pot in
his way, you know, and goes fishing with the head
of Scotland Yard.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mr. Crimplesham.

Fate arranged that the nerves of Mr. Crimplesham
should be tried that afternoon. When, escorted by
Mr. Wicks, he arrived at the Minster Hotel, he was
informed by the porter that Lord Peter Wimsey had
strolled out, mentioning that he thought of attending
Evensong. “But his man is here, sir,” he added, “if
you’d like to leave a message.”

Mr. Wicks thought that on the whole it would be
well to leave a message. Mr. Bunter, on inquiry, was
found to be sitting by the telephone, waiting for a
trunk-call. As Mr. Wicks addressed him the bell rang,
and Mr. Bunter, politely excusing himself, took down
the receiver.

“Hullo!” he said. “Is that Mr. Parker? Oh, thanks!
Exchange! Exchange! Sorry, can you put me through
to Scotland Yard? Excuse me, gentlemen, keeping
you waiting.—Exchange! all right—Scotland Yard—Hullo!
Is that Scotland Yard?—Is Detective Parker
round there?—Can I speak to him?—I shall have done
in a moment, gentlemen.—Hullo! is that you, Mr.
Parker? Lord Peter would be much obliged if you
could find it convenient to step down to Salisbury, sir.
112
Oh, no, sir, he’s in excellent health, sir—just stepped
round to hear Evensong, sir—oh, no, I think tomorrow
morning would do excellently, sir, thank you,
sir.”
113

CHAPTER VI

It was, in fact, inconvenient for Mr. Parker to
leave London. He had had to go and see Lady Levy
towards the end of the morning, and subsequently
his plans for the day had been thrown out of gear
and his movements delayed by the discovery that the
adjourned inquest of Mr. Thipps’s unknown visitor
was to be held that afternoon, since nothing very
definite seemed forthcoming from Inspector Sugg’s
inquiries. Jury and witnesses had been convened accordingly
for three o’clock. Mr. Parker might altogether
have missed the event, had he not run against
Sugg that morning at the Yard and extracted the
information from him as one would a reluctant tooth.
Inspector Sugg, indeed, considered Mr. Parker rather
interfering; moreover, he was hand-in-glove with
Lord Peter Wimsey, and Inspector Sugg had no words
for the interferingness of Lord Peter. He could not,
however, when directly questioned, deny that there
was to be an inquest that afternoon, nor could he prevent
Mr. Parker from enjoying the inalienable right
of any interested British citizen to be present. At a
little before three, therefore, Mr. Parker was in his
place, and amusing himself with watching the efforts
of those persons who arrived after the room was
packed to insinuate, bribe or bully themselves into a
position of vantage. The Coroner, a medical man of
114
precise habits and unimaginative aspect, arrived
punctually, and looking peevishly round at the
crowded assembly, directed all the windows to be
opened, thus letting in a stream of drizzling fog upon
the heads of the unfortunates on that side of the
room. This caused a commotion and some expressions
of disapproval, checked sternly by the Coroner, who
said that with the influenza about again an unventilated
room was a death-trap; that anybody who
chose to object to open windows had the obvious
remedy of leaving the court, and further, that if any
disturbance was made he would clear the court. He
then took a Formamint lozenge, and proceeded, after
the usual preliminaries, to call up fourteen good and
lawful persons and swear them diligently to inquire
and a true presentment make of all matters touching
the death of the gentleman with the pince-nez and
to give a true verdict according to the evidence, so
help them God. When an expostulation by a woman
juror—an elderly lady in spectacles who kept a sweet-shop,
and appeared to wish she was back there—had
been summarily quashed by the Coroner, the jury departed
to view the body. Mr. Parker gazed round
again and identified the unhappy Mr. Thipps and the
girl Gladys led into an adjoining room under the grim
guard of the police. They were soon followed by a
gaunt old lady in a bonnet and mantle. With her, in
a wonderful fur coat and a motor bonnet of fascinating
construction, came the Dowager Duchess of
Denver, her quick, dark eyes darting hither and
thither about the crowd. The next moment they had
115
lighted on Mr. Parker, who had several times visited
the Dower House, and she nodded to him, and spoke
to a policeman. Before long, a way opened magically
through the press, and Mr. Parker found himself accommodated
with a front seat just behind the Duchess,
who greeted him charmingly, and said: “What’s
happened to poor Peter?” Parker began to explain,
and the Coroner glanced irritably in their direction.
Somebody went up and whispered in his ear, at which
he coughed, and took another Formamint.

“We came up by car,” said the Duchess—“so tiresome—such
bad roads between Denver and Gunbury
St. Walters—and there were people coming to lunch—I
had to put them off—I couldn’t let the old lady
go alone, could I? By the way, such an odd thing’s
happened about the Church Restoration Fund—the
Vicar—oh, dear, here are these people coming back
again; well, I’ll tell you afterwards—do look at that
woman looking shocked, and the girl in tweeds
trying to look as if she sat on undraped gentlemen
every day of her life—I don’t mean that—corpses of
course—but one finds oneself being so Elizabethan
nowadays—what an awful little man the coroner
is, isn’t he? He’s looking daggers at me—do you think
he’ll dare to clear me out of the court or commit me
for what-you-may-call-it?”

The first part of the evidence was not of great
interest to Mr. Parker. The wretched Mr. Thipps, who
had caught cold in gaol, deposed in an unhappy croak
to having discovered the body when he went in to
take his bath at eight o’clock. He had had such a
116
shock, he had to sit down and send the girl for brandy.
He had never seen the deceased before. He had no
idea how he came there.

Yes, he had been in Manchester the day before. He
had arrived at St. Pancras at ten o’clock. He had
cloak-roomed his bag. At this point Mr. Thipps became
very red, unhappy and confused, and glanced
nervously about the court.

“Now, Mr. Thipps,” said the Coroner, briskly, “we
must have your movements quite clear. You must
appreciate the importance of the matter. You have
chosen to give evidence, which you need not have
done, but having done so, you will find it best to be
perfectly explicit.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Thipps faintly.

“Have you cautioned this witness, officer?” inquired
the Coroner, turning sharply to Inspector
Sugg.

The Inspector replied that he had told Mr. Thipps
that anything he said might be used agin’ him at his
trial. Mr. Thipps became ashy, and said in a bleating
voice that he ’adn’t—hadn’t meant to do anything
that wasn’t right.

This remark produced a mild sensation, and the
Coroner became even more acidulated in manner than
before.

“Is anybody representing Mr. Thipps?” he asked,
irritably. “No? Did you not explain to him that he
could—that he ought to be represented? You did not?
Really, Inspector! Did you not know, Mr. Thipps,
that you had a right to be legally represented?”
117

Mr. Thipps clung to a chair-back for support, and
said, “No,” in a voice barely audible.

“It is incredible,” said the Coroner, “that so-called
educated people should be so ignorant of the legal
procedure of their own country. This places us in a
very awkward position. I doubt, Inspector, whether
I should permit the prisoner—Mr. Thipps—to give
evidence at all. It is a delicate position.”

The perspiration stood on Mrs. Thipps’s forehead.

“Save us from our friends,” whispered the Duchess
to Parker. “If that cough-drop-devouring creature
had openly instructed those fourteen people—and
what unfinished-looking faces they have—so characteristic,
I always think, of the lower middle-class,
rather like sheep, or calves’ head (boiled, I mean), to
bring in wilful murder against the poor little man,
he couldn’t have made himself plainer.”

“He can’t let him incriminate himself, you know,”
said Parker.

“Stuff!” said the Duchess. “How could the man
incriminate himself when he never did anything in
his life? You men never think of anything but your
red tape.”

Meanwhile Mr. Thipps, wiping his brow with a
handkerchief, had summoned up courage. He stood
up with a kind of weak dignity, like a small white
rabbit brought to bay.

“I would rather tell you,” he said, “though it’s
reelly very unpleasant for a man in my position. But
I reelly couldn’t have it thought for a moment that
I’d committed this dreadful crime. I assure you,
118
gentlemen, I couldn’t bear that. No. I’d rather tell
you the truth, though I’m afraid it places me in
rather a—well, I’ll tell you.”

“You fully understand the gravity of making such
a statement, Mr. Thipps,” said the Coroner.

“Quite,” said Mr. Thipps. “It’s all right—I—might
I have a drink of water?”

“Take your time,” said the Coroner, at the same
time robbing his remark of all conviction by an impatient
glance at his watch.

“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Thipps. “Well, then, it’s
true I got to St. Pancras at ten. But there was a man
in the carriage with me. He’d got in at Leicester. I
didn’t recognise him at first, but he turned out to be
an old school-fellow of mine.”

“What was this gentleman’s name?” inquired the
Coroner, his pencil poised.

Mr. Thipps shrank together visibly.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said. “You see—that
is, you will see—it would get him into trouble,
and I couldn’t do that—no, I reelly couldn’t do that,
not if my life depended on it. No!” he added, as the
ominous pertinence of the last phrase smote upon
him, “I’m sure I couldn’t do that.”

“Well, well,” said the Coroner.

The Duchess leaned over to Parker again. “I’m beginning
quite to admire the little man,” she said.

Mr. Thipps resumed.

“When we got to St. Pancras I was going home,
but my friend said no. We hadn’t met for a long
time and we ought to—to make a night of it, was his
119
expression. I fear I was weak, and let him overpersuade
me to accompany him to one of his haunts. I
use the word advisedly,” said Mr. Thipps, “and I assure
you, sir, that if I had known beforehand where
we were going I never would have set foot in the
place.

“I cloak-roomed my bag, for he did not like the
notion of our being encumbered with it, and we got
into a taxicab and drove to the corner of Tottenham
Court Road and Oxford Street. We then walked a
little way, and turned into a side street (I do not
recollect which) where there was an open door, with
the light shining out. There was a man at a counter,
and my friend bought some tickets, and I heard the
man at the counter say something to him about ‘Your
friend,’ meaning me, and my friend said, ‘Oh, yes,
he’s been here before, haven’t you, Alf?’ (which was
what they called me at school), though I assure you,
sir”—here Mr. Thipps grew very earnest—“I never
had, and nothing in the world should induce me to
go to such a place again.

“Well, we went down into a room underneath,
where there were drinks, and my friend had several,
and made me take one or two—though I am an abstemious
man as a rule—and he talked to some other
men and girls who were there—a very vulgar set of
people, I thought them, though I wouldn’t say but
what some of the young ladies were nice-looking
enough. One of them sat on my friend’s knee and
called him a slow old thing, and told him to come on—so
we went into another room, where there were a
120
lot of people dancing all these up-to-date dances. My
friend went and danced, and I sat on a sofa. One of
the young ladies came up to me and said, didn’t I
dance, and I said ‘No,’ so she said wouldn’t I stand
her a drink then. ‘You’ll stand us a drink then,
darling,’ that was what she said, and I said, ‘Wasn’t it
after hours?’ and she said that didn’t matter. So I
ordered the drink—a gin and bitters it was—for I
didn’t like not to, the young lady seemed to expect it
of me and I felt it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to refuse
when she asked. But it went against my conscience—such
a young girl as she was—and she put her arm
round my neck afterwards and kissed me just like as
if she was paying for the drink—and it reelly went to
my ’eart,” said Mr. Thipps, a little ambiguously, but
with uncommon emphasis.

Here somebody at the back said, “Cheer-oh!” and
a sound was heard as of the noisy smacking of lips.

“Remove the person who made that improper
noise,” said the Coroner, with great indignation. “Go
on, please, Mr. Thipps.”

“Well,” said Mr. Thipps, “about half-past twelve,
as I should reckon, things began to get a bit lively,
and I was looking for my friend to say good-night,
not wishing to stay longer, as you will understand,
when I saw him with one of the young ladies, and
they seemed to be getting on altogether too well, if
you follow me, my friend pulling the ribbons off her
shoulder and the young lady laughing—and so on,”
said Mr. Thipps, hurriedly, “so I thought I’d just slip
quietly out, when I heard a scuffle and a shout—and
121
before I knew what was happening there were half-a-dozen
policemen in, and the lights went out, and
everybody stampeding and shouting—quite horrid, it
was. I was knocked down in the rush, and hit my
head a nasty knock on a chair—that was where I got
that bruise they asked me about—and I was dreadfully
afraid I’d never get away and it would all come
out, and perhaps my photograph in the papers, when
someone caught hold of me—I think it was the young
lady I’d given the gin and bitters to—and she said,
‘This way,’ and pushed me along a passage and out
at the back somewhere. So I ran through some streets,
and found myself in Goodge Street, and there I got
a taxi and came home. I saw the account of the raid
afterwards in the papers, and saw my friend had escaped,
and so, as it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted
made public, and I didn’t want to get him into difficulties,
I just said nothing. But that’s the truth.”

“Well, Mr. Thipps,” said the Coroner, “we shall be
able to substantiate a certain amount of this story.
Your friend’s name—”

“No,” said Mr. Thipps, stoutly, “not on any account.”

“Very good,” said the Coroner. “Now, can you tell
us what time you did get in?”

“About half-past one, I should think. Though
reelly, I was so upset—”

“Quite so. Did you go straight to bed?”

“Yes, I took my sandwich and glass of milk first.
I thought it might settle my inside, so to speak,”
added the witness, apologetically, “not being accustomed
122
to alcohol so late at night and on an empty
stomach, as you may say.”

“Quite so. Nobody sat up for you?”

“Nobody.”

“How long did you take getting to bed first and
last?”

Mr. Thipps thought it might have been half-an-hour.

“Did you visit the bathroom before turning in?”

“No.”

“And you heard nothing in the night?”

“No. I fell fast asleep. I was rather agitated, so I
took a little dose to make me sleep, and what with
being so tired and the milk and the dose, I just tumbled
right off and didn’t wake till Gladys called me.”

Further questioning elicited little from Mr. Thipps.
Yes, the bathroom window had been open when he
went in in the morning, he was sure of that, and he
had spoken very sharply to the girl about it. He was
ready to answer any questions; he would be only too
’appy—happy to have this dreadful affair sifted to
the bottom.

Gladys Horrocks stated that she had been in Mr.
Thipps’s employment about three months. Her previous
employers would speak to her character. It was
her duty to make the round of the flat at night, when
she had seen Mrs. Thipps to bed at ten. Yes, she remembered
doing so on Monday evening. She had
looked into all the rooms. Did she recollect shutting
the bathroom window that night? Well, no, she
couldn’t swear to it, not in particular, but when Mr.
123
Thipps called her into the bathroom in the morning
it certainly was open. She had not been into the bathroom
before Mr. Thipps went in. Well, yes, it had
happened that she had left that window open before,
when anyone had been ’aving a bath in the evening
and ’ad left the blind down. Mrs. Thipps ’ad ’ad a
bath on Monday evening, Mondays was one of her
regular bath nights. She was very much afraid she
’adn’t shut the window on Monday night, though she
wished her ’ead ’ad been cut off afore she’d been so
forgetful.

Here the witness burst into tears and was given
some water, while the Coroner refreshed himself with
a third lozenge.

Recovering, witness stated that she had certainly
looked into all the rooms before going to bed. No, it
was quite impossible for a body to be ’idden in the
flat without her seeing of it. She ’ad been in the
kitchen all evening, and there wasn’t ’ardly room to
keep the best dinner service there, let alone a body.
Old Mrs. Thipps sat in the drawing-room. Yes, she
was sure she’d been into the dining-room. How?
Because she put Mr. Thipps’s milk and sandwiches
there ready for him. There had been nothing in there—that
she could swear to. Nor yet in her own bedroom,
nor in the ’all. Had she searched the bedroom
cupboard and the box-room? Well, no, not to say
searched; she wasn’t use to searchin’ people’s ’ouses
for skelintons every night. So that a man might have
concealed himself in the box-room or a wardrobe?
She supposed he might.
124

In reply to a woman juror—well, yes, she was
walking out with a young man. Williams was his
name, Bill Williams,—well, yes, William Williams, if
they insisted. He was a glazier by profession. Well,
yes, he ’ad been in the flat sometimes. Well, she supposed
you might say he was acquainted with the flat.
Had she ever—no, she ’adn’t, and if she’d thought
such a question was going to be put to a respectable
girl she wouldn’t ’ave offered to give evidence. The
vicar of St. Mary’s would speak to her character and
to Mr. Williams’s. Last time Mr. Williams was at the
flat was a fortnight ago.

Well, no, it wasn’t exactly the last time she ’ad seen
Mr. Williams. Well, yes, the last time was Monday—well,
yes, Monday night. Well, if she must tell the
truth, she must. Yes, the officer had cautioned her,
but there wasn’t any ’arm in it, and it was better to
lose her place than to be ’ung, though it was a cruel
shame a girl couldn’t ’ave a bit of fun without a nasty
corpse comin’ in through the window to get ’er into
difficulties. After she ’ad put Mrs. Thipps to bed, she
’ad slipped out to go to the Plumbers’ and Glaziers’
Ball at the “Black Faced Ram.” Mr. Williams ’ad met
’er and brought ’er back. ’E could testify to where
she’d been and that there wasn’t no ’arm in it. She’d
left before the end of the ball. It might ’ave been two
o’clock when she got back. She’d got the keys of the
flat from Mrs. Thipps’s drawer when Mrs. Thipps
wasn’t looking. She ’ad asked leave to go, but couldn’t
get it, along of Mr. Thipps bein’ away that night.
She was bitterly sorry she ’ad be’aved so, and she was
125
sure she’d been punished for it. She had ’eard nothing
suspicious when she came in. She had gone straight to
bed without looking round the flat. She wished she
were dead.

No, Mr. and Mrs. Thipps didn’t ’ardly ever ’ave
any visitors; they kep’ themselves very retired. She
had found the outside door bolted that morning as
usual. She wouldn’t never believe any ’arm of Mr.
Thipps. Thank you, Miss Horrocks. Call Georgiana
Thipps, and the Coroner thought we had better light
the gas.

The examination of Mrs. Thipps provided more
entertainment than enlightenment, affording as it
did an excellent example of the game called “cross
questions and crooked answers.” After fifteen minutes’
suffering, both in voice and temper, the Coroner
abandoned the struggle, leaving the lady with the
last word.

“You needn’t try to bully me, young man,” said
that octogenarian with spirit, “settin’ there spoilin’
your stomach with them nasty jujubes.”

At this point a young man arose in court and demanded
to give evidence. Having explained that he
was William Williams, glazier, he was sworn, and
corroborated the evidence of Gladys Horrocks in the
matter of her presence at the “Black Faced Ram” on
the Monday night. They had returned to the flat
rather before two, he thought, but certainly later
than 1.30. He was sorry that he had persuaded Miss
Horrocks to come out with him when she didn’t
126
ought. He had observed nothing of a suspicious nature
in Prince of Wales Road at either visit.

Inspector Sugg gave evidence of having been called
in at about half-past eight on Monday morning. He
had considered the girl’s manner to be suspicious and
had arrested her. On later information, leading him
to suspect that the deceased might have been murdered
that night, he had arrested Mr. Thipps. He had
found no trace of breaking into the flat. There were
marks on the bathroom window-sill which pointed to
somebody having got in that way. There were no ladder
marks or footmarks in the yard; the yard was
paved with asphalt. He had examined the roof, but
found nothing on the roof. In his opinion the body
had been brought into the flat previously and concealed
till the evening by someone who had then gone
out during the night by the bathroom window, with
the connivance of the girl. In that case, why should
not the girl have let the person out by the door? Well,
it might have been so. Had he found traces of a body
or a man or both having been hidden in the flat? He
found nothing to show that they might not have been
so concealed. What was the evidence that led him to
suppose that the death had occurred that night?

At this point Inspector Sugg appeared uneasy, and
endeavoured to retire upon his professional dignity.
On being pressed, however, he admitted that the evidence
in question had come to nothing.

One of the jurors: Was it the case that any finger-marks
had been left by the criminal?
127

Some marks had been found on the bath, but the
criminal had worn gloves.

The Coroner: Do you draw any conclusion from
this fact as to the experience of the criminal?

Inspector Sugg: Looks as if he was an old hand, sir.

The Juror: Is that very consistent with the charge
against Alfred Thipps, Inspector?

The Inspector was silent.

The Coroner: In the light of the evidence which
you have just heard, do you still press the charge
against Alfred Thipps and Gladys Horrocks?

Inspector Sugg: I consider the whole set-out highly
suspicious. Thipps’s story isn’t corroborated, and as
for the girl Horrocks, how do we know this Williams
ain’t in it as well?

William Williams: Now, you drop that. I can
bring a ’undred witnesses—

The Coroner: Silence, if you please. I am surprised,
Inspector, that you should make this suggestion in
that manner. It is highly improper. By the way, can
you tell us whether a police raid was actually carried
out on the Monday night on any Night Club in the
neighbourhood of St. Giles’s Circus?

Inspector Sugg (sulkily): I believe there was something
of the sort.

The Coroner: You will, no doubt, inquire into the
matter. I seem to recollect having seen some mention
of it in the newspapers. Thank you, Inspector, that
will do.

Several witnesses having appeared and testified to
the characters of Mr. Thipps and Gladys Horrocks,
128
the Coroner stated his intention of proceeding to the
medical evidence.

“Sir Julian Freke.”

There was considerable stir in the court as the great
specialist walked up to give evidence. He was not only
a distinguished man, but a striking figure, with his
wide shoulders, upright carriage and leonine head.
His manner as he kissed the Book presented to him
with the usual deprecatory mumble by the Coroner’s
officer, was that of a St. Paul condescending to
humour the timid mumbo-jumbo of superstitious
Corinthians.

“So handsome, I always think,” whispered the
Duchess to Mr. Parker; “just exactly like William
Morris, with that bush of hair and beard and those
exciting eyes looking out of it—so splendid, these dear
men always devoted to something or other—not but
what I think socialism is a mistake—of course it
works with all those nice people, so good and happy
in art linen and the weather always perfect—Morris,
I mean, you know—but so difficult in real life. Science
is different—I’m sure if I had nerves I should
go to Sir Julian just to look at him—eyes like that
give one something to think about, and that’s what
most of these people want, only I never had any—nerves,
I mean. Don’t you think so?”

“You are Sir Julian Freke,” said the Coroner, “and
live at St. Luke’s House, Prince of Wales Road, Battersea,
where you exercise a general direction over the
surgical side of St. Luke’s Hospital?”
129

Sir Julian assented briefly to this definition of his
personality.

“You were the first medical man to see the deceased?”

“I was.”

“And you have since conducted an examination in
collaboration with Dr. Grimbold of Scotland Yard?”

“I have.”

“You are in agreement as to the cause of death?”

“Generally speaking, yes.”

“Will you communicate your impressions to the
Jury?”

“I was engaged in research work in the dissecting
room at St. Luke’s Hospital at about nine o’clock on
Monday morning, when I was informed that Inspector
Sugg wished to see me. He told me that the dead
body of a man had been discovered under mysterious
circumstances at 59 Queen Caroline Mansions. He
asked me whether it could be supposed to be a joke
perpetrated by any of the medical students at the
hospital. I was able to assure him, by an examination
of the hospital’s books, that there was no subject
missing from the dissecting room.”

“Who would be in charge of such bodies?”

“William Watts, the dissecting-room attendant.”

“Is William Watts present?” inquired the Coroner
of the officer.

William Watts was present, and could be called if
the Coroner thought it necessary.

“I suppose no dead body would be delivered to the
hospital without your knowledge, Sir Julian?”
130

“Certainly not.”

“Thank you. Will you proceed with your statement?”

“Inspector Sugg then asked me whether I would
send a medical man round to view the body. I said
that I would go myself.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I confess to my share of ordinary human curiosity,
Mr. Coroner.”

Laughter from a medical student at the back of the
room.

“On arriving at the flat I found the deceased lying
on his back in the bath. I examined him, and came to
the conclusion that death had been caused by a blow
on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth and
fifth cervical vertebrae, bruising the spinal cord and
producing internal haemorrhage and partial paralysis
of the brain. I judged the deceased to have been dead
at least twelve hours, possibly more. I observed no
other sign of violence of any kind upon the body.
Deceased was a strong, well-nourished man of about
fifty to fifty-five years of age.”

“In your opinion, could the blow have been self-inflicted?”

“Certainly not. It had been made with a heavy,
blunt instrument from behind, with great force and
considerable judgment. It is quite impossible that it
was self-inflicted.”

“Could it have been the result of an accident?”

“That is possible, of course.”

“If, for example, the deceased had been looking out
131
of the window, and the sash had shut violently down
upon him?”

“No; in that case there would have been signs of
strangulation and a bruise upon the throat as well.”

“But deceased might have been killed through a
heavy weight accidentally falling upon him?”

“He might.”

“Was death instantaneous, in your opinion?”

“It is difficult to say. Such a blow might very well
cause death instantaneously, or the patient might
linger in a partially paralyzed condition for some
time. In the present case I should be disposed to think
that deceased might have lingered for some hours. I
base my decision upon the condition of the brain revealed
at the autopsy. I may say, however, that Dr.
Grimbold and I are not in complete agreement on
the point.”

“I understand that a suggestion has been made as
to the identification of the deceased. You are not in a
position to identify him?”

“Certainly not. I never saw him before. The suggestion
to which you refer is a preposterous one, and
ought never to have been made. I was not aware until
this morning that it had been made; had it been made
to me earlier, I should have known how to deal with
it, and I should like to express my strong disapproval
of the unnecessary shock and distress inflicted upon a
lady with whom I have the honour to be acquainted.”

The Coroner: It was not my fault, Sir Julian; I
had nothing to do with it; I agree with you that it
was unfortunate you were not consulted.
132

The reporters scribbled busily, and the court asked
each other what was meant, while the jury tried to
look as if they knew already.

“In the matter of the eyeglasses found upon the
body, Sir Julian. Do these give any indication to a
medical man?”

“They are somewhat unusual lenses; an oculist
would be able to speak more definitely, but I will
say for myself that I should have expected them to
belong to an older man than the deceased.”

“Speaking as a physician, who has had many opportunities
of observing the human body, did you
gather anything from the appearance of the deceased
as to his personal habits?”

“I should say that he was a man in easy circumstances,
but who had only recently come into money.
His teeth are in a bad state, and his hands shows signs
of recent manual labour.”

“An Australian colonist, for instance, who had
made money?”

“Something of that sort; of course, I could not say
positively.”

“Of course not. Thank you, Sir Julian.”

Dr. Grimbold, called, corroborated his distinguished
colleague in every particular, except that, in
his opinion, death had not occurred for several days
after the blow. It was with the greatest hesitancy that
he ventured to differ from Sir Julian Freke, and he
might be wrong. It was difficult to tell in any case,
and when he saw the body, deceased had been dead
at least twenty-four hours, in his opinion.
133

Inspector Sugg, recalled. Would he tell the jury
what steps had been taken to identify the deceased?

A description had been sent to every police station
and had been inserted in all the newspapers. In view
of the suggestion made by Sir Julian Freke, had inquiries
been made at all the seaports? They had. And
with no results? With no results at all. No one had
come forward to identify the body? Plenty of people
had come forward; but nobody had succeeded in
identifying it. Had any effort been made to follow
up the clue afforded by the eyeglasses? Inspector
Sugg submitted that, having regard to the interests
of justice, he would beg to be excused from answering
that question. Might the jury see the eyeglasses?
The eyeglasses were handed to the jury.

William Watts, called, confirmed the evidence of
Sir Julian Freke with regard to dissecting-room subjects.
He explained the system by which they were
entered. They usually were supplied by the workhouses
and free hospitals. They were under his sole
charge. The young gentlemen could not possibly get
the keys. Had Sir Julian Freke, or any of the house
surgeons, the keys? No, not even Sir Julian Freke.
The keys had remained in his possession on Monday
night? They had. And, in any case, the inquiry was
irrelevant, as there was no body missing, nor ever
had been? That was the case.

The Coroner then addressed the jury, reminding
them with some asperity that they were not there to
gossip about who the deceased could or could not
have been, but to give their opinion as to the cause
134
of death. He reminded them that they should consider
whether, according to the medical evidence,
death could have been accidental or self-inflicted, or
whether it was deliberate murder, or homicide. If
they considered the evidence on this point insufficient,
they could return an open verdict. In any case,
their verdict could not prejudice any person; if they
brought it in “murder,” all the whole evidence would
have to be gone through again before the magistrate.
He then dismissed them, with the unspoken adjuration
to be quick about it.

Sir Julian Freke, after giving his evidence, had
caught the eye of the Duchess, and now came over
and greeted her.

“I haven’t seen you for an age,” said that lady.
“How are you?”

“Hard at work,” said the specialist. “Just got my
new book out. This kind of thing wastes time. Have
you seen Lady Levy yet?”

“No, poor dear,” said the Duchess. “I only came up
this morning, for this. Mrs. Thipps is staying with
me—one of Peter’s eccentricities, you know. Poor
Christine! I must run round and see her. This is Mr.
Parker,” she added, “who is investigating that case.”

“Oh,” said Sir Julian, and paused. “Do you know,”
he said in a low voice to Parker, “I am very glad to
meet you. Have you seen Lady Levy yet?”

“I saw her this morning.”

“Did she ask you to go on with the inquiry?”

“Yes,” said Parker; “she thinks,” he added, “that
Sir Reuben may be detained in the hands of some
135
financial rival or that perhaps some scoundrels are
holding him to ransom.”

“And is that your opinion?” asked Sir Julian.

“I think it very likely,” said Parker, frankly.

Sir Julian hesitated again.

“I wish you would walk back with me when this
is over,” he said.

“I should be delighted,” said Parker.

At this moment the jury returned and took their
places, and there was a little rustle and hush. The
Coroner addressed the foreman and inquired if they
were agreed upon their verdict.

“We are agreed, Mr. Coroner, that deceased died
of the effects of a blow upon the spine, but how that
injury was inflicted we consider that there is not sufficient
evidence to show.”

Mr. Parker and Sir Julian Freke walked up the
road together.

“I had absolutely no idea until I saw Lady Levy
this morning,” said the doctor, “that there was any
idea of connecting this matter with the disappearance
of Sir Reuben. The suggestion was perfectly monstrous,
and could only have grown up in the mind of
that ridiculous police officer. If I had had any idea
what was in his mind I could have disabused him and
avoided all this.”

“I did my best to do so,” said Parker, “as soon as
I was called in to the Levy case—”

“Who called you in, if I may ask?” inquired Sir
Julian.
136

“Well, the household first of all, and then Sir
Reuben’s uncle, Mr. Levy of Portman Square, wrote
to me to go on with the investigation.”

“And now Lady Levy has confirmed those instructions?”

“Certainly,” said Parker in some surprise.

Sir Julian was silent for a little time.

“I’m afraid I was the first person to put the idea
into Sugg’s head,” said Parker, rather penitently.
“When Sir Reuben disappeared, my first step, almost,
was to hunt up all the street accidents and suicides
and so on that had turned up during the day, and I
went down to see this Battersea Park body as a matter
of routine. Of course, I saw that the thing was
ridiculous as soon as I got there, but Sugg froze on
to the idea—and it’s true there was a good deal of resemblance
between the dead man and the portraits
I’ve seen of Sir Reuben.”

“A strong superficial likeness,” said Sir Julian.
“The upper part of the face is a not uncommon type,
and as Sir Reuben wore a heavy beard and there was
no opportunity of comparing the mouths and chins,
I can understand the idea occurring to anybody. But
only to be dismissed at once. I am sorry,” he added,
“as the whole matter has been painful to Lady Levy.
You may know, Mr. Parker, that I am an old, though
I should not call myself an intimate, friend of the
Levys.”

“I understood something of the sort.”

“Yes. When I was a young man I—in short, Mr.
Parker, I hoped once to marry Lady Levy.” (Mr.
137
Parker gave the usual sympathetic groan.) “I have
never married, as you know,” pursued Sir Julian.
“We have remained good friends. I have always done
what I could to spare her pain.”

“Believe me, Sir Julian,” said Parker, “that I sympathize
very much with you and with Lady Levy,
and that I did all I could to disabuse Inspector Sugg
of this notion. Unhappily, the coincidence of Sir
Reuben’s being seen that evening in the Battersea
Park Road—”

“Ah, yes,” said Sir Julian. “Dear me, here we are
at home. Perhaps you would come in for a moment,
Mr. Parker, and have tea or a whisky-and-soda or
something.”

Parker promptly accepted this invitation, feeling
that there were other things to be said.

The two men stepped into a square, finely furnished
hall with a fireplace on the same side as the
door, and a staircase opposite. The dining-room door
stood open on their right, and as Sir Julian rang the
bell a man-servant appeared at the far end of the
hall.

“What will you take?” asked the doctor.

“After that dreadfully cold place,” said Parker,
“what I really want is gallons of hot tea, if you, as a
nerve specialist, can bear the thought of it.”

“Provided you allow of a judicious blend of China
in it,” replied Sir Julian in the same tone, “I have no
objection to make. Tea in the library at once,” he
added to the servant, and led the way upstairs.

“I don’t use the downstairs rooms much, except
138
the dining-room,” he explained as he ushered his
guest into a small but cheerful library on the first
floor. “This room leads out of my bedroom and is
more convenient. I only live part of my time here,
but it’s very handy for my research work at the hospital.
That’s what I do there, mostly. It’s a fatal thing
for a theorist, Mr. Parker, to let the practical work
get behindhand. Dissection is the basis of all good
theory and all correct diagnosis. One must keep one’s
hand and eye in training. This place is far more important
to me than Harley Street, and some day I
shall abandon my consulting practice altogether and
settle down here to cut up my subjects and write my
books in peace. So many things in this life are a waste
of time, Mr. Parker.”

Mr. Parker assented to this.

“Very often,” said Sir Julian, “the only time I get
for any research work—necessitating as it does the
keenest observation and the faculties at their acutest—has
to be at night, after a long day’s work and by
artificial light, which, magnificent as the lighting of
the dissecting room here is, is always more trying to
the eyes than daylight. Doubtless your own work has
to be carried on under even more trying conditions.”

“Yes, sometimes,” said Parker; “but then you see,”
he added, “the conditions are, so to speak, part of the
work.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Sir Julian; “you mean
that the burglar, for example, does not demonstrate
his methods in the light of day, or plant the perfect
139
footmark in the middle of a damp patch of sand for
you to analyze.”

“Not as a rule,” said the detective, “but I have no
doubt many of your diseases work quite as insidiously
as any burglar.”

“They do, they do,” said Sir Julian, laughing, “and
it is my pride, as it is yours, to track them down for
the good of society. The neuroses, you know, are particularly
clever criminals—they break out into as
many disguises as—”

“As Leon Kestrel, the Master-Mummer,” suggested
Parker, who read railway-stall detective stories
on the principle of the ’busman’s holiday.

“No doubt,” said Sir Julian, who did not, “and
they cover up their tracks wonderfully. But when
you can really investigate, Mr. Parker, and break up
the dead, or for preference the living body with the
scalpel, you always find the footmarks—the little
trail of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or
drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is
to trace them back, merely by observing the surface
symptoms—the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness,
conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you
observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps
of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an
outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical
irritation which has produced it.”

“You regard all these things as physical?”

“Undoubtedly. I am not ignorant of the rise of
another school of thought, Mr. Parker, but its exponents
are mostly charlatans or self-deceivers. ‘Sie
140
haben sich so weit darin eingeheimnisst’ that, like
Sludge the Medium, they are beginning to believe
their own nonsense. I should like to have the exploring
of some of their brains, Mr. Parker; I would show
you the little faults and landslips in the cells—the
misfiring and short-circuiting of the nerves, which
produce these notions and these books. At least,” he
added, gazing sombrely at his guest, “at least, if I
could not quite show you today, I shall be able to do
so tomorrow—or in a year’s time—or before I die.”

He sat for some minutes gazing into the fire, while
the red light played upon his tawny beard and struck
out answering gleams from his compelling eyes.

Parker drank tea in silence, watching him. On the
whole, however, he remained but little interested in
the causes of nervous phenomena and his mind
strayed to Lord Peter, coping with the redoubtable
Crimplesham down in Salisbury. Lord Peter had
wanted him to come: that meant, either that Crimplesham
was proving recalcitrant or that a clue
wanted following. But Bunter had said that tomorrow
would do, and it was just as well. After all, the
Battersea affair was not Parker’s case; he had already
wasted valuable time attending an inconclusive inquest,
and he really ought to get on with his legitimate
work. There was still Levy’s secretary to see and
the little matter of the Peruvian Oil to be looked into.
He looked at his watch.

“I am very much afraid—if you will excuse me—” he
murmured.
141

Sir Julian came back with a start to the consideration
of actuality.

“Your work calls you?” he said, smiling. “Well, I
can understand that. I won’t keep you. But I wanted
to say something to you in connection with your
present inquiry—only I hardly know—I hardly
like—”

Parker sat down again, and banished every indication
of hurry from his face and attitude.

“I shall be very grateful for any help you can give
me,” he said.

“I’m afraid it’s more in the nature of hindrance,”
said Sir Julian, with a short laugh. “It’s a case of destroying
a clue for you, and a breach of professional
confidence on my side. But since—accidentally—a
certain amount has come out, perhaps the whole had
better do so.”

Mr. Parker made the encouraging noise which,
among laymen, supplies the place of the priest’s insinuating,
“Yes, my son?”

“Sir Reuben Levy’s visit on Monday night was to
me,” said Sir Julian.

“Yes?” said Mr. Parker, without expression.

“He found cause for certain grave suspicions concerning
his health,” said Sir Julian, slowly, as though
weighing how much he could in honour disclose to a
stranger. “He came to me, in preference to his own
medical man, as he was particularly anxious that the
matter should be kept from his wife. As I told you,
he knew me fairly well, and Lady Levy had consulted
me about a nervous disorder in the summer.”
142

“Did he make an appointment with you?” asked
Parker.

“I beg your pardon,” said the other, absently.

“Did he make an appointment?”

“An appointment? Oh, no! He turned up suddenly
in the evening after dinner when I wasn’t expecting
him. I took him up here and examined him, and he
left me somewhere about ten o’clock, I should think.”

“May I ask what was the result of your examination?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“It might illuminate—well, conjecture as to his
subsequent conduct,” said Parker, cautiously. This
story seemed to have little coherence with the rest of
the business, and he wondered whether coincidence
was alone responsible for Sir Reuben’s disappearance
on the same night that he visited the doctor.

“I see,” said Sir Julian. “Yes. Well, I will tell you
in confidence that I saw grave grounds of suspicion,
but as yet, no absolute certainty of mischief.”

“Thank you. Sir Reuben left you at ten o’clock?”

“Then or thereabouts. I did not at first mention the
matter as it was so very much Sir Reuben’s wish to
keep his visit to me secret, and there was no question
of accident in the street or anything of that kind,
since he reached home safely at midnight.”

“Quite so,” said Parker.

“It would have been, and is, a breach of confidence,”
said Sir Julian, “and I only tell you now because
Sir Reuben was accidentally seen, and because
I would rather tell you in private than have you ferretting
143
round here and questioning my servants, Mr.
Parker. You will excuse my frankness.”

“Certainly,” said Parker. “I hold no brief for the
pleasantness of my profession, Sir Julian. I am very
much obliged to you for telling me this. I might
otherwise have wasted valuable time following up a
false trail.”

“I am sure I need not ask you, in your turn, to respect
this confidence,” said the doctor. “To publish
the matter abroad could only harm Sir Reuben and
pain his wife, besides placing me in no favourable
light with my patients.”

“I promise to keep the thing to myself,” said
Parker, “except of course,” he added hastily, “that I
must inform my colleague.”

“You have a colleague in the case?”

“I have.”

“What sort of person is he?”

“He will be perfectly discreet, Sir Julian.”

“Is he a police officer?”

“You need not be afraid of your confidence getting
into the records at Scotland Yard.”

“I see that you know how to be discreet, Mr.
Parker.”

“We also have our professional etiquette, Sir
Julian.”

On returning to Great Ormond Street, Mr. Parker
found a wire awaiting him, which said: “Do not
trouble to come. All well. Returning tomorrow.
Wimsey.”
144

CHAPTER VII

On returning to the flat just before lunch-time
on the following morning, after a few confirmatory
researches in Balham and the neighbourhood
of Victoria Station, Lord Peter was greeted at
the door by Mr. Bunter (who had gone straight home
from Waterloo) with a telephone message and a
severe and nursemaid-like eye.

“Lady Swaffham rang up, my lord, and said she
hoped your lordship had not forgotten you were
lunching with her.”

“I have forgotten, Bunter, and I mean to forget.
I trust you told her I had succumbed to lethargic
encephalitis suddenly, no flowers by request.”

“Lady Swaffham said, my lord, she was counting
on you. She met the Duchess of Denver yesterday—”

“If my sister-in-law’s there I won’t go, that’s flat,”
said Lord Peter.

“I beg your pardon, my lord, the Dowager
Duchess.”

“What’s she doing in town?”

“I imagine she came up for the inquest, my lord.”

“Oh, yes—we missed that, Bunter.”

“Yes, my lord. Her Grace is lunching with Lady
Swaffham.”

“Bunter, I can’t. I can’t, really. Say I’m in bed with
145
whooping cough, and ask my mother to come round
after lunch.”

“Very well, my lord. Mrs. Tommy Frayle will be
at Lady Swaffham’s, my lord, and Mr. Milligan—”

“Mr. who?”

“Mr. John P. Milligan, my lord, and—”

“Good God, Bunter, why didn’t you say so before?
Have I time to get there before he does? All right.
I’m off. With a taxi I can just—”

“Not in those trousers, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter,
blocking the way to the door with deferential firmness.

“Oh, Bunter,” pleaded his lordship, “do let me—just
this once. You don’t know how important it is.”

“Not on any account, my lord. It would be as
much as my place is worth.”

“The trousers are all right, Bunter.”

“Not for Lady Swaffham’s, my lord. Besides, your
lordship forgets the man that ran against you with
a milk-can at Salisbury.”

And Mr. Bunter laid an accusing finger on a slight
stain of grease showing across the light cloth.

“I wish to God I’d never let you grow into a privileged
family retainer, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, bitterly,
dashing his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand.
“You’ve no conception of the mistakes my
mother may be making.”

Mr. Bunter smiled grimly and led his victim away.

When an immaculate Lord Peter was ushered,
rather late for lunch, into Lady Swaffham’s drawing-room,
the Dowager Duchess of Denver was seated on
146
a sofa, plunged in intimate conversation with Mr.
John P. Milligan of Chicago.

“I’m vurry pleased to meet you, Duchess,” had
been that financier’s opening remark, “to thank you
for your exceedingly kind invitation. I assure you it’s
a compliment I deeply appreciate.”

The Duchess beamed at him, while conducting a
rapid rally of all her intellectual forces.

“Do come and sit down and talk to me, Mr. Milligan,”
she said. “I do so love talking to you great
business men—let me see, is it a railway king you are
or something about puss-in-the-corner—at least, I
don’t mean that exactly, but that game one used to
play with cards, all about wheat and oats, and there
was a bull and a bear, too—or was it a horse?—no,
a bear, because I remember one always had to try and
get rid of it and it used to get so dreadfully crumpled
and torn, poor thing, always being handed about, one
got to recognise it, and then one had to buy a new
pack—so foolish it must seem to you, knowing the
real thing, and dreadfully noisy, but really excellent
for breaking the ice with rather stiff people who
didn’t know each other—I’m quite sorry it’s gone
out.”

Mr. Milligan sat down.

“Wal, now,” he said, “I guess it’s as interesting for
us business men to meet British aristocrats as it is for
Britishers to meet American railway kings, Duchess.
And I guess I’ll make as many mistakes talking your
kind of talk as you would make if you were tryin’ to
147
run a corner in wheat in Chicago. Fancy now, I called
that fine lad of yours Lord Wimsey the other day,
and he thought I’d mistaken him for his brother. That
made me feel rather green.”

This was an unhoped-for lead. The Duchess walked
warily.

“Dear boy,” she said, “I am so glad you met him,
Mr. Milligan. Both my sons are a great comfort to
me, you know, though, of course, Gerald is more
conventional—just the right kind of person for the
House of Lords, you know, and a splendid farmer. I
can’t see Peter down at Denver half so well, though
he is always going to all the right things in town, and
very amusing sometimes, poor boy.”

“I was vurry much gratified by Lord Peter’s suggestion,”
pursued Mr. Milligan, “for which I understand
you are responsible, and I’ll surely be very
pleased to come any day you like, though I think
you’re flattering me too much.”

“Ah, well,” said the Duchess, “I don’t know if
you’re the best judge of that, Mr. Milligan. Not that
I know anything about business myself,” she added.
“I’m rather old-fashioned for these days, you know,
and I can’t pretend to do more than know a nice man
when I see him; for the other things I rely on my
son.”

The accent of this speech was so flattering that Mr.
Milligan purred almost audibly, and said:

“Wal, Duchess, I guess that’s where a lady with a
real, beautiful, old-fashioned soul has the advantage
of these modern young blatherskites—there aren’t
148
many men who wouldn’t be nice—to her, and even
then, if they aren’t rock-bottom she can see through
them.”

“But that leaves me where I was,” thought the
Duchess. “I believe,” she said aloud, “that I ought to
be thanking you in the name of the vicar of Duke’s
Denver for a very munificent cheque which reached
him yesterday for the Church Restoration Fund. He
was so delighted and astonished, poor dear man.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Mr. Milligan, “we
haven’t any fine old crusted buildings like yours over
on our side, so it’s a privilege to be allowed to drop a
little kerosene into the worm-holes when we hear of
one in the old country suffering from senile decay.
So when your lad told me about Duke’s Denver I
took the liberty to subscribe without waiting for the
Bazaar.”

“I’m sure it was very kind of you,” said the
Duchess. “You are coming to the Bazaar, then?” she
continued, gazing into his face appealingly.

“Sure thing,” said Mr. Milligan, with great
promptness. “Lord Peter said you’d let me know for
sure about the date, but we can always make time for
a little bit of good work anyway. Of course I’m hoping
to be able to avail myself of your kind invitation
to stop, but if I’m rushed, I’ll manage anyhow to pop
over and speak my piece and pop back again.”

“I hope so very much,” said the Duchess. “I must
see what can be done about the date—of course, I
can’t promise—”

“No, no,” said Mr. Milligan heartily. “I know what
149
these things are to fix up. And then there’s not only
me—there’s all the real big men of European eminence
your son mentioned, to be consulted.”

The Duchess turned pale at the thought that any
one of these illustrious persons might some time turn
up in somebody’s drawing-room, but by this time
she had dug herself in comfortably, and was even
beginning to find her range.

“I can’t say how grateful we are to you,” she said;
“it will be such a treat. Do tell me what you think of
saying.”

“Wal—” began Mr. Milligan.

Suddenly everybody was standing up and a penitent
voice was heard to say:

“Really, most awfully sorry, y’know—hope you’ll
forgive me, Lady Swaffham, what? Dear lady, could
I possibly forget an invitation from you? Fact is, I
had to go an’ see a man down in Salisbury—absolutely
true, ’pon my word, and the fellow wouldn’t let me
get away. I’m simply grovellin’ before you, Lady
Swaffham. Shall I go an’ eat my lunch in the corner?”

Lady Swaffham gracefully forgave the culprit.

“Your dear mother is here,” she said.

“How do, Mother?” said Lord Peter, uneasily.

“How are you, dear?” replied the Duchess. “You
really oughtn’t to have turned up just yet. Mr. Milligan
was just going to tell me what a thrilling speech
he’s preparing for the Bazaar, when you came and
interrupted us.”

Conversation at lunch turned, not unnaturally, on
the Battersea inquest, the Duchess giving a vivid impersonation
150
of Mrs. Thipps being interrogated by the
Coroner.

“‘Did you hear anything unusual in the night?’
says the little man, leaning forward and screaming
at her, and so crimson in the face and his ears sticking
out so—just like a cherubim in that poem of Tennyson’s—or
is a cherub blue?—perhaps it’s a seraphim
I mean—anyway, you know what I mean, all eyes,
with little wings on its head. And dear old Mrs.
Thipps saying, ‘Of course I have, any time these
eighty years,’ and such a sensation in court till they
found out she thought he’d said, ‘Do you sleep without
a light?’ and everybody laughing, and then the
Coroner said quite loudly, ‘Damn the woman,’ and
she heard that, I can’t think why, and said: ‘Don’t
you get swearing, young man, sitting there in the
presence of Providence, as you may say. I don’t know
what young people are coming to nowadays’—and
he’s sixty if he’s a day, you know,” said the Duchess.

By a natural transition, Mrs. Tommy Frayle referred
to the man who was hanged for murdering
three brides in a bath.

“I always thought that was so ingenious,” she said,
gazing soulfully at Lord Peter, “and do you know, as
it happened, Tommy had just made me insure my
life, and I got so frightened, I gave up my morning
bath and took to having it in the afternoon when he
was in the House—I mean, when he was not in the
house—not at home, I mean.”

“Dear lady,” said Lord Peter, reproachfully, “I
151
have a distinct recollection that all those brides were
thoroughly unattractive. But it was an uncommonly
ingenious plan—the first time of askin’—only he
shouldn’t have repeated himself.”

“One demands a little originality in these days,
even from murderers,” said Lady Swaffham. “Like
dramatists, you know—so much easier in Shakespeare’s
time, wasn’t it? Always the same girl dressed
up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio
or Dante or somebody. I’m sure if I’d been a Shakespeare
hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged
young page-boy I’d have said: ‘Odsbodikins! There’s
that girl again!’”

“That’s just what happened, as a matter of fact,”
said Lord Peter. “You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you
want to commit a murder, the thing you’ve got to
do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas.
Most people don’t associate anythin’—their ideas just
roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a
lot of noise and goin’ nowhere, but once you begin
lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’
to be strong enough to hang you, what?”

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Tommy Frayle, with a little
scream, “what a blessing it is none of my friends
have any ideas at all!”

“Y’see,” said Lord Peter, balancing a piece of duck
on his fork and frowning, “it’s only in Sherlock
Holmes and stories like that, that people think things
out logically. Or’nar’ly, if somebody tells you somethin’
out of the way, you just say, ‘By Jove!’ or ‘How
sad!’ an’ leave it at that, an’ half the time you forget
152
about it, ’nless somethin’ turns up afterwards to drive
it home. F’r instance, Lady Swaffham, I told you
when I came in that I’d been down to Salisbury, ’n’
that’s true, only I don’t suppose it impressed you
much; ’n’ I don’t suppose it’d impress you much if
you read in the paper tomorrow of a tragic discovery
of a dead lawyer down in Salisbury, but if I went to
Salisbury again next week ’n’ there was a Salisbury
doctor found dead the day after, you might begin to
think I was a bird of ill omen for Salisbury residents;
and if I went there again the week after, ’n’ you
heard next day that the see of Salisbury had fallen
vacant suddenly, you might begin to wonder what
took me to Salisbury, an’ why I’d never mentioned
before that I had friends down there, don’t you see,
an’ you might think of goin’ down to Salisbury yourself,
an’ askin’ all kinds of people if they’d happened
to see a young man in plum-coloured socks hangin’
round the Bishop’s Palace.”

“I daresay I should,” said Lady Swaffham.

“Quite. An’ if you found that the lawyer and the
doctor had once upon a time been in business at
Poggleton-on-the-Marsh when the Bishop had been
vicar there, you’d begin to remember you’d once
heard of me payin’ a visit to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh
a long time ago, an’ you’d begin to look up the parish
registers there an’ discover I’d been married under
an assumed name by the vicar to the widow of a
wealthy farmer, who’d died suddenly of peritonitis,
as certified by the doctor, after the lawyer’d made a
will leavin’ me all her money, and then you’d begin
153
to think I might have very good reasons for gettin’
rid of such promisin’ blackmailers as the lawyer, the
doctor an’ the bishop. Only, if I hadn’t started an
association in your mind by gettin’ rid of ’em all in
the same place, you’d never have thought of goin’ to
Poggleton-on-the-Marsh, ’n’ you wouldn’t even have
remembered I’d ever been there.”

“Were you ever there, Lord Peter?” inquired Mrs.
Tommy, anxiously.

“I don’t think so,” said Lord Peter; “the name
threads no beads in my mind. But it might, any day,
you know.”

“But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady
Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things,
I suppose—finding out what the person had been
doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive,
wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have
such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive
people. There’s lots of people I’d like to
murder, wouldn’t you?”

“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham. “There’s that dreadful—perhaps
I’d better not say it, though, for fear
you should remember it later on.”

“Well, I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Peter, amiably.
“You never know. It’d be beastly awkward if
the person died suddenly tomorrow.”

“The difficulty with this Battersea case, I guess,”
said Mr. Milligan, “is that nobody seems to have any
associations with the gentleman in the bath.”
154

“So hard on poor Inspector Sugg,” said the Duchess.
“I quite felt for the man, having to stand up
there and answer a lot of questions when he had nothing
at all to say.”

Lord Peter applied himself to the duck, having got
a little behindhand. Presently he heard somebody ask
the Duchess if she had seen Lady Levy.

“She is in great distress,” said the woman who had
spoken, a Mrs. Freemantle, “though she clings to the
hope that he will turn up. I suppose you knew him,
Mr. Milligan—know him, I should say, for I hope
he’s still alive somewhere.”

Mrs. Freemantle was the wife of an eminent railway
director, and celebrated for her ignorance of the
world of finance. Her faux pas in this connection
enlivened the tea parties of City men’s wives.

“Wal, I’ve dined with him,” said Mr. Milligan,
good-naturedly. “I think he and I’ve done our best
to ruin each other, Mrs. Freemantle. If this were the
States,” he added, “I’d be much inclined to suspect
myself of having put Sir Reuben in a safe place. But
we can’t do business that way in your old country;
no, ma’am.”

“It must be exciting work doing business in America,”
said Lord Peter.

“It is,” said Mr. Milligan. “I guess my brothers
are having a good time there now. I’ll be joining them
again before long, as soon as I’ve fixed up a little
bit of work for them on this side.”

“Well, you mustn’t go till after my bazaar,” said
the Duchess.
155

Lord Peter spent the afternoon in a vain hunt for
Mr. Parker. He ran him down eventually after dinner
in Great Ormond Street.

Parker was sitting in an elderly but affectionate
armchair, with his feet on the mantelpiece, relaxing
his mind with a modern commentary on the Epistle
to the Galatians. He received Lord Peter with quiet
pleasure, though without rapturous enthusiasm, and
mixed him a whisky-and-soda. Peter took up the
book his friend had laid down and glanced over the
pages.

“All these men work with a bias in their minds,
one way or other,” he said; “they find what they are
looking for.”

“Oh, they do,” agreed the detective; “but one
learns to discount that almost automatically, you
know. When I was at college, I was all on the other
side—Conybeare and Robertson and Drews and those
people, you know, till I found they were all so busy
looking for a burglar whom nobody had ever seen,
that they couldn’t recognise the footprints of the
household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning
to be cautious.”

“Hum,” said Lord Peter, “theology must be good
exercise for the brain then, for you’re easily the most
cautious devil I know. But I say, do go on reading—it’s
a shame for me to come and root you up in your
off-time like this.”

“It’s all right, old man,” said Parker.

The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord
Peter said:
156

“D’you like your job?”

The detective considered the question, and replied:

“Yes—yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am
fitted to it. I do it quite well—not with inspiration,
perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It
is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the
mark and not get slack. And there’s a future to it.
Yes, I like it. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Peter. “It’s a hobby to me,
you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was
rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned
exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it—up to a
point. If it was all on paper I’d enjoy every bit of it.
I love the beginning of a job—when one doesn’t
know any of the people and it’s just exciting and
amusing. But if it comes to really running down a
live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded,
poor devil, there don’t seem as if there was any excuse
for me buttin’ in, since I don’t have to make my
livin’ by it. And I feel as if I oughtn’t ever to find it
amusin’. But I do.”

Parker gave this speech his careful attention.

“I see what you mean,” he said.

“There’s old Milligan, f’r instance,” said Lord
Peter. “On paper, nothin’ would be funnier than to
catch old Milligan out. But he’s rather a decent old
bird to talk to. Mother likes him. He’s taken a fancy
to me. It’s awfully entertainin’ goin’ and pumpin’
him with stuff about a bazaar for church expenses,
but when he’s so jolly pleased about it and that, I
feel a worm. S’pose old Milligan has cut Levy’s throat
157
and plugged him into the Thames. It ain’t my business.”

“It’s as much yours as anybody’s,” said Parker;
“it’s no better to do it for money than to do it for
nothing.”

“Yes, it is,” said Peter stubbornly. “Havin’ to live
is the only excuse there is for doin’ that kind of
thing.”

“Well, but look here!” said Parker. “If Milligan has
cut poor old Levy’s throat for no reason except to
make himself richer, I don’t see why he should buy
himself off by giving £1,000 to Duke’s Denver
church roof, or why he should be forgiven just because
he’s childishly vain, or childishly snobbish.”

“That’s a nasty one,” said Lord Peter.

“Well, if you like, even because he has taken a
fancy to you.”

“No, but—”

“Look here, Wimsey—do you think he has murdered
Levy?”

“Well, he may have.”

“But do you think he has?”

“I don’t want to think so.”

“Because he has taken a fancy to you?”

“Well, that biases me, of course—”

“I daresay it’s quite a legitimate bias. You don’t
think a callous murderer would be likely to take a
fancy to you?”

“Well—besides, I’ve taken rather a fancy to him.”

“I daresay that’s quite legitimate, too. You’ve observed
him and made a subconscious deduction from
158
your observations, and the result is, you don’t think
he did it. Well, why not? You’re entitled to take that
into account.”

“But perhaps I’m wrong and he did do it.”

“Then why let your vainglorious conceit in your
own power of estimating character stand in the way
of unmasking the singularly cold-blooded murder of
an innocent and lovable man?”

“I know—but I don’t feel I’m playing the game
somehow.”

“Look here, Peter,” said the other with some earnestness,
“suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton
complex out of your system once and for all. There
doesn’t seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant
has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it
murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben
has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat
it as a game?”

“That’s what I’m ashamed of, really,” said Lord
Peter. “It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on
cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is
going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said the detective, “but that’s
because you’re thinking about your attitude. You
want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you
want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of
puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a
tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that’s
childish. If you’ve any duty to society in the way of
finding out the truth about murders, you must do it
in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be
159
elegant and detached? That’s all right, if you find
the truth out that way, but it hasn’t any value in itself,
you know. You want to look dignified and consistent—what’s
that got to do with it? You want to
hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and
then shake hands with him and say, ‘Well played—hard
luck—you shall have your revenge tomorrow!’
Well, you can’t do it like that. Life’s not a football
match. You want to be a sportsman. You can’t be a
sportsman. You’re a responsible person.”

“I don’t think you ought to read so much theology,”
said Lord Peter. “It has a brutalizing influence.”

He got up and paced about the room, looking idly
over the bookshelves. Then he sat down again, filled
and lit his pipe, and said:

“Well, I’d better tell you about the ferocious and
hardened Crimplesham.”

He detailed his visit to Salisbury. Once assured of
his bona fides, Mr. Crimplesham had given him the
fullest details of his visit to town.

“And I’ve substantiated it all,” groaned Lord
Peter, “and unless he’s corrupted half Balham, there’s
no doubt he spent the night there. And the afternoon
was really spent with the bank people. And half
the residents of Salisbury seem to have seen him off
on Monday before lunch. And nobody but his own
family or young Wicks seems to have anything to
gain by his death. And even if young Wicks wanted
to make away with him, it’s rather far-fetched to go
and murder an unknown man in Thipps’s place in
160
order to stick Crimplesham’s eyeglasses on his nose.”

“Where was young Wicks on Monday?” asked
Parker.

“At a dance given by the Precentor,” said Lord
Peter, wildly. “David—his name is David—dancing
before the ark of the Lord in the face of the whole
Cathedral Close.”

There was a pause.

“Tell me about the inquest,” said Wimsey.

Parker obliged with a summary of the evidence.

“Do you believe the body could have been concealed
in the flat after all?” he asked. “I know we
looked, but I suppose we might have missed something.”

“We might. But Sugg looked as well.”

“Sugg!”

“You do Sugg an injustice,” said Lord Peter; “if
there had been any signs of Thipps’s complicity in
the crime, Sugg would have found them.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he was looking for them. He’s like
your commentators on Galatians. He thinks that
either Thipps, or Gladys Horrocks, or Gladys Horrocks’s
young man did it. Therefore he found marks
on the window sill where Gladys Horrocks’s young
man might have come in or handed something in to
Gladys Horrocks. He didn’t find any signs on the
roof, because he wasn’t looking for them.”

“But he went over the roof before me.”

“Yes, but only in order to prove that there were
no marks there. He reasons like this: Gladys Horrocks’s
161
young man is a glazier. Glaziers come on ladders.
Glaziers have ready access to ladders. Therefore
Gladys Horrocks’s young man had ready access to a
ladder. Therefore Gladys Horrocks’s young man
came on a ladder. Therefore there will be marks on
the window sill and none on the roof. Therefore he
finds marks on the window sill but none on the roof.
He finds no marks on the ground, but he thinks he
would have found them if the yard didn’t happen
to be paved with asphalt. Similarly, he thinks Mr.
Thipps may have concealed the body in the box-room
or elsewhere. Therefore you may be sure he
searched the box-room and all the other places for
signs of occupation. If they had been there he would
have found them, because he was looking for them.
Therefore, if he didn’t find them it’s because they
weren’t there.”

“All right,” said Parker, “stop talking. I believe
you.”

He went on to detail the medical evidence.

“By the way,” said Lord Peter, “to skip across for
a moment to the other case, has it occurred to you
that perhaps Levy was going out to see Freke on
Monday night?”

“He was; he did,” said Parker, rather unexpectedly,
and proceeded to recount his interview with
the nerve-specialist.

“Humph!” said Lord Peter. “I say, Parker, these
are funny cases, ain’t they? Every line of inquiry
seems to peter out. It’s awfully exciting up to a point,
162
you know, and then nothing comes of it. It’s like
rivers getting lost in the sand.”

“Yes,” said Parker. “And there’s another one I lost
this morning.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, I was pumping Levy’s secretary about his
business. I couldn’t get much that seemed important
except further details about the Argentine and so on.
Then I thought I’d just ask round in the City about
those Peruvian Oil shares, but Levy hadn’t even
heard of them so far as I could make out. I routed
out the brokers, and found a lot of mystery and concealment,
as one always does, you know, when somebody’s
been rigging the market, and at last I found
one name at the back of it. But it wasn’t Levy’s.”

“No? Whose was it?”

“Oddly enough, Freke’s. It seems mysterious. He
bought a lot of shares last week, in a secret kind of
way, a few of them in his own name, and then quietly
sold ’em out on Tuesday at a small profit—a few
hundreds, not worth going to all that trouble about,
you wouldn’t think.”

“Shouldn’t have thought he ever went in for that
kind of gamble.”

“He doesn’t as a rule. That’s the funny part of it.”

“Well, you never know,” said Lord Peter; “people
do these things just to prove to themselves or somebody
else that they could make a fortune that way
if they liked. I’ve done it myself in a small way.”

He knocked out his pipe and rose to go.

“I say, old man,” he said suddenly, as Parker was
163
letting him out, “does it occur to you that Freke’s
story doesn’t fit in awfully well with what Anderson
said about the old boy having been so jolly at dinner
on Monday night? Would you be, if you thought
you’d got anything of that sort?”

“No, I shouldn’t,” said Parker; “but,” he added
with his habitual caution, “some men will jest in the
dentist’s waiting-room. You, for one.”

“Well, that’s true,” said Lord Peter, and went
downstairs.
164

CHAPTER VIII

Lord Peter reached home about midnight,
feeling extraordinarily wakeful and alert. Something
was jigging and worrying in his brain; it felt like a
hive of bees, stirred up by a stick. He felt as though
he were looking at a complicated riddle, of which he
had once been told the answer but had forgotten it
and was always on the point of remembering.

“Somewhere,” said Lord Peter to himself, “somewhere
I’ve got the key to these two things. I know
I’ve got it, only I can’t remember what it is. Somebody
said it. Perhaps I said it. I can’t remember
where, but I know I’ve got it. Go to bed, Bunter, I
shall sit up a little. I’ll just slip on a dressing-gown.”

Before the fire he sat down with his pipe in his
mouth and his jazz-coloured peacocks gathered about
him. He traced out this line and that line of investigation—rivers
running into the sand. They ran out
from the thought of Levy, last seen at ten o’clock in
Prince of Wales Road. They ran back from the picture
of the grotesque dead man in Mr. Thipps’s bathroom—they
ran over the roof, and were lost—lost in
the sand. Rivers running into the sand—rivers running
underground, very far down—

165

By leaning his head down, it seemed to Lord Peter
that he could hear them, very faintly, lipping and
gurgling somewhere in the darkness. But where? He
felt quite sure that somebody had told him once, only
he had forgotten.

He roused himself, threw a log on the fire, and
picked up a book which the indefatigable Bunter,
carrying on his daily fatigues amid the excitements
of special duty, had brought from the Times Book
Club. It happened to be Sir Julian Freke’s “Physiological
Bases of the Conscience,” which he had seen
reviewed two days before.

“This ought to send one to sleep,” said Lord Peter;
“if I can’t leave these problems to my subconscious
I’ll be as limp as a rag tomorrow.”

He opened the book slowly, and glanced carelessly
through the preface.

“I wonder if that’s true about Levy being ill,” he
thought, putting the book down; “it doesn’t seem
likely. And yet—Dash it all, I’ll take my mind off
it.”

He read on resolutely for a little.

“I don’t suppose Mother’s kept up with the Levys
much,” was the next importunate train of thought.
“Dad always hated self-made people and wouldn’t
have ’em at Denver. And old Gerald keeps up the
tradition. I wonder if she knew Freke well in those
days. She seems to get on with Milligan. I trust
Mother’s judgment a good deal. She was a brick about
that bazaar business. I ought to have warned her. She
said something once—”
166

He pursued an elusive memory for some minutes,
till it vanished altogether with a mocking flicker of
the tail. He returned to his reading.

Presently another thought crossed his mind aroused
by a photograph of some experiment in surgery.

“If the evidence of Freke and that man Watts
hadn’t been so positive,” he said to himself, “I
should be inclined to look into the matter of those
shreds of lint on the chimney.”

He considered this, shook his head and read with
determination.

Mind and matter were one thing, that was the
theme of the physiologist. Matter could erupt, as it
were, into ideas. You could carve passions in the brain
with a knife. You could get rid of imagination with
drugs and cure an outworn convention like a disease.
“The knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon,
attendant upon a certain condition of the
brain-cells, which is removable.” That was one
phrase; and again:

“Conscience in man may, in fact, be compared to
the sting of a hive-bee, which, so far from conducing
to the welfare of its possessor, cannot function, even
in a single instance, without occasioning its death.
The survival-value in each case is thus purely social;
and if humanity ever passes from its present phase
of social development into that of a higher individualism,
as some of our philosophers have ventured to
speculate, we may suppose that this interesting mental
phenomenon may gradually cease to appear; just
as the nerves and muscles which once controlled the
167
movements of our ears and scalps have, in all save a
few backward individuals, become atrophied and of
interest only to the physiologist.”

“By Jove!” thought Lord Peter, idly, “that’s an
ideal doctrine for the criminal. A man who believed
that would never—”

And then it happened—the thing he had been half-unconsciously
expecting. It happened suddenly,
surely, as unmistakably, as sunrise. He remembered—not
one thing, nor another thing, nor a logical succession
of things, but everything—the whole thing,
perfect, complete, in all its dimensions as it were and
instantaneously; as if he stood outside the world and
saw it suspended in infinitely dimensional space. He
no longer needed to reason about it, or even to think
about it. He knew it.

There is a game in which one is presented with a
jumble of letters and is required to make a word out
of them, as thus:

C O S S S S R I

The slow way of solving the problem is to try out
all the permutations and combinations in turn,
throwing away impossible conjunctions of letters, as:

S S S I R C

or

S C S R S O

Another way is to stare at the inco-ordinate elements
until, by no logical process that the conscious mind
168
can detect, or under some adventitious external stimulus,
the combination:

S C I S S O R S

presents itself with calm certainty. After that, one
does not even need to arrange the letters in order.
The thing is done.

Even so, the scattered elements of two grotesque
conundrums, flung higgledy-piggledy into Lord
Peter’s mind, resolved themselves, unquestioned
henceforward. A bump on the roof of the end house—Levy
in a welter of cold rain talking to a prostitute
in the Battersea Park Road—a single ruddy hair—lint
bandages—Inspector Sugg calling the great surgeon
from the dissecting-room of the hospital—Lady
Levy with a nervous attack—the smell of carbolic
soap—the Duchess’s voice—“not really an engagement,
only a sort of understanding with her father”—shares
in Peruvian Oil—the dark skin and curved,
fleshy profile of the man in the bath—Dr. Grimbold
giving evidence, “In my opinion, death did not occur
for several days after the blow”—india-rubber gloves—even,
faintly, the voice of Mr. Appledore, “He
called on me, sir, with an anti-vivisectionist pamphlet”—all
these things and many others rang together
and made one sound, they swung together like
bells in a steeple, with the deep tenor booming
through the clamour:

“The knowledge of good and evil is a phenomenon
of the brain, and is removable, removable, removable.
The knowledge of good and evil is removable.”
169

Lord Peter Wimsey was not a young man who
habitually took himself very seriously, but this time
he was frankly appalled. “It’s impossible,” said his
reason, feebly; “credo quia impossibile,” said his interior
certainty with impervious self-satisfaction. “All
right,” said conscience, instantly allying itself with
blind faith, “what are you going to do about it?”

Lord Peter got up and paced the room: “Good
Lord!” he said. “Good Lord!” He took down “Who’s
Who” from the little shelf over the telephone and
sought comfort in its pages:

He flung the book away. “Confirmation!” he
groaned. “As if I needed it!”

He sat down again and buried his face in his hands.
He remembered quite suddenly how, years ago, he
had stood before the breakfast table at Denver Castle—a
small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously
beating heart. The family had not come
down; there was a great silver urn with a spirit lamp
under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling in a glass
dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth—twitched
it harder, and the urn moved ponderously
forward and all the teaspoons rattled. He seized the
tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his hardest—he
could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the
urn and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sèvres
breakfast service had crashed down in one stupendous
ruin—he remembered the horrified face of the butler,
and the screams of a lady guest.

A log broke across and sank into a fluff of white
ash. A belated motor-lorry rumbled past the window.

Mr. Bunter, sleeping the sleep of the true and
faithful servant, was aroused in the small hours by a
hoarse whisper, “Bunter!”

“Yes, my lord,” said Bunter, sitting up and switching
on the light.

“Put that light out, damn you!” said the voice.
“Listen—over there—listen—can’t you hear it?”
171

“It’s nothing, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, hastily
getting out of bed and catching hold of his master;
“it’s all right, you get to bed quick and I’ll fetch you
a drop of bromide. Why, you’re all shivering—you’ve
been sitting up too late.”

“Hush! no, no—it’s the water,” said Lord Peter
with chattering teeth; “it’s up to their waists down
there, poor devils. But listen! can’t you hear it? Tap,
tap, tap—they’re mining us—but I don’t know where—I
can’t hear—I can’t. Listen, you! There it is again—we
must find it—we must stop it…. Listen!
Oh, my God! I can’t hear—I can’t hear anything for
the noise of the guns. Can’t they stop the guns?”

“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Bunter to himself. “No, no—it’s
all right, Major—don’t you worry.”

“But I hear it,” protested Peter.

“So do I,” said Mr. Bunter stoutly; “very good
hearing, too, my lord. That’s our own sappers at work
in the communication trench. Don’t you fret about
that, sir.”

Lord Peter grasped his wrist with a feverish hand.

“Our own sappers,” he said; “sure of that?”

“Certain of it,” said Mr. Bunter, cheerfully.

“They’ll bring down the tower,” said Lord Peter.

“To be sure they will,” said Mr. Bunter, “and very
nice, too. You just come and lay down a bit, sir—they’ve
come to take over this section.”

“You’re sure it’s safe to leave it?” said Lord Peter.

“Safe as houses, sir,” said Mr. Bunter, tucking his
master’s arm under his and walking him off to his
bedroom.
172

Lord Peter allowed himself to be dosed and put to
bed without further resistance. Mr. Bunter, looking
singularly un-Bunterlike in striped pyjamas, with his
stiff black hair ruffled about his head, sat grimly
watching the younger man’s sharp cheekbones and
the purple stains under his eyes.

“Thought we’d had the last of these attacks,” he
said. “Been overdoin’ of himself. Asleep?” He peered
at him anxiously. An affectionate note crept into his
voice. “Bloody little fool!” said Sergeant Bunter.
173

CHAPTER IX

Mr. Parker, summoned the next morning to
110 Piccadilly, arrived to find the Dowager Duchess
in possession. She greeted him charmingly.

“I am going to take this silly boy down to Denver
for the week-end,” she said, indicating Peter,
who was writing and only acknowledged his friend’s
entrance with a brief nod. “He’s been doing too much—running
about to Salisbury and places and up till
all hours of the night—you really shouldn’t encourage
him, Mr. Parker, it’s very naughty of you—waking
poor Bunter up in the middle of the night with scares
about Germans, as if that wasn’t all over years ago,
and he hasn’t had an attack for ages, but there!
Nerves are such funny things, and Peter always did
have nightmares when he was quite a little boy—though
very often of course it was only a little pill
he wanted; but he was so dreadfully bad in 1918,
you know, and I suppose we can’t expect to forget all
about a great war in a year or two, and, really, I
ought to be very thankful with both my boys safe.
Still, I think a little peace and quiet at Denver won’t
do him any harm.”

“Sorry you’ve been having a bad turn, old man,”
said Parker, vaguely sympathetic; “you’re looking a
bit seedy.”

“Charles,” said Lord Peter, in a voice entirely void
174
of expression, “I am going away for a couple of days
because I can be no use to you in London. What has
got to be done for the moment can be much better
done by you than by me. I want you to take this”—he
folded up his writing and placed it in an envelope—“to
Scotland Yard immediately and get it sent out
to all the workhouses, infirmaries, police stations,
Y.M.C.A.’s and so on in London. It is a description of
Thipps’s corpse as he was before he was shaved and
cleaned up. I want to know whether any man answering
to that description has been taken in anywhere,
alive or dead, during the last fortnight. You will see
Sir Andrew Mackenzie personally, and get the paper
sent out at once, by his authority; you will tell him
that you have solved the problems of the Levy murder
and the Battersea mystery”—Mr. Parker made an
astonished noise to which his friend paid no attention—“and
you will ask him to have men in readiness with
a warrant to arrest a very dangerous and important
criminal at any moment on your information. When
the replies to this paper come in, you will search for
any mention of St. Luke’s Hospital, or of any person
connected with St. Luke’s Hospital, and you will send
for me at once.

“Meanwhile you will scrape acquaintance—I don’t
care how—with one of the students at St. Luke’s.
Don’t march in there blowing about murders and
police warrants, or you may find yourself in Queer
Street. I shall come up to town as soon as I hear from
you, and I shall expect to find a nice ingenuous Sawbones
here to meet me.” He grinned faintly.
175

“D’you mean you’ve got to the bottom of this
thing?” asked Parker.

“Yes. I may be wrong. I hope I am, but I know
I’m not.”

“You won’t tell me?”

“D’you know,” said Peter, “honestly I’d rather not.
I say I may be wrong—and I’d feel as if I’d libelled
the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“Well, tell me—is it one mystery or two?”

“One.”

“You talked of the Levy murder. Is Levy dead?”

“God—yes!” said Peter, with a strong shudder.

The Duchess looked up from where she was reading
the Tatler.

“Peter,” she said, “is that your ague coming on
again? Whatever you two are chattering about, you’d
better stop it at once if it excites you. Besides, it’s
about time to be off.”

“All right, Mother,” said Peter. He turned to
Bunter, standing respectfully in the door with an
overcoat and suitcase. “You understand what you
have to do, don’t you?” he said.

“Perfectly, thank you, my lord. The car is just
arriving, your Grace.”

“With Mrs. Thipps inside it,” said the Duchess.
“She’ll be delighted to see you again, Peter. You remind
her so of Mr. Thipps. Good-morning, Bunter.”

“Good-morning, your Grace.”

Parker accompanied them downstairs.

When they had gone he looked blankly at the paper
176
in his hand—then, remembering that it was Saturday
and there was need for haste, he hailed a taxi.

“Scotland Yard!” he cried.

Tuesday morning saw Lord Peter and a man in a
velveteen jacket swishing merrily through seven acres
of turnip-tops, streaked yellow with early frosts. A
little way ahead, a sinuous undercurrent of excitement
among the leaves proclaimed the unseen yet
ever-near presence of one of the Duke of Denver’s
setter pups. Presently a partridge flew up with a noise
like a police rattle, and Lord Peter accounted for it
very creditably for a man who, a few nights before,
had been listening to imaginary German sappers. The
setter bounded foolishly through the turnips, and
fetched back the dead bird.

“Good dog,” said Lord Peter.

Encouraged by this, the dog gave a sudden ridiculous
gambol and barked, its ear tossed inside out over
its head.

“Heel,” said the man in velveteen, violently. The
animal sidled up, ashamed.

“Fool of a dog, that,” said the man in velveteen;
“can’t keep quiet. Too nervous, my lord. One of old
Black Lass’s pups.”

“Dear me,” said Peter, “is the old dog still going?”

“No, my lord; we had to put her away in the
spring.”

Peter nodded. He always proclaimed that he hated
the country and was thankful to have nothing to do
with the family estates, but this morning he enjoyed
177
the crisp air and the wet leaves washing darkly over
his polished boots. At Denver things moved in an
orderly way; no one died sudden and violent deaths
except aged setters—and partridges, to be sure. He
sniffed up the autumn smell with appreciation. There
was a letter in his pocket which had come by the
morning post, but he did not intend to read it just
yet. Parker had not wired; there was no hurry.

He read it in the smoking-room after lunch. His
brother was there, dozing over the Times—a good,
clean Englishman, sturdy and conventional, rather
like Henry VIII in his youth; Gerald, sixteenth Duke
of Denver. The Duke considered his cadet rather degenerate,
and not quite good form; he disliked his
taste for police-court news.

The letter was from Mr. Bunter.

My Lord:

I write (Mr. Bunter had been carefully educated
and knew that nothing is more vulgar than a careful
avoidance of beginning a letter with the first person
singular) as your lordship directed, to inform you
of the result of my investigations.

I experienced no difficulty in becoming acquainted
with Sir Julian Freke’s man-servant. He belongs to
the same club as the Hon. Frederick Arbuthnot’s
man, who is a friend of mine, and was very willing
to introduce me. He took me to the club yesterday
178
(Sunday) evening, and we dined with the man, whose
name is John Cummings, and afterwards I invited
Cummings to drinks and a cigar in the flat. Your
lordship will excuse me doing this, knowing that it
is not my habit, but it has always been my experience
that the best way to gain a man’s confidence is to let
him suppose that one takes advantage of one’s employer.

(“I always suspected Bunter of being a student of
human nature,” commented Lord Peter.)

I gave him the best old port (“The deuce you did,”
said Lord Peter), having heard you and Mr. Arbuthnot
talk over it. (“Hum!” said Lord Peter.)

Its effects were quite equal to my expectations as
regards the principal matter in hand, but I very much
regret to state that the man had so little understanding
of what was offered to him that he smoked a
cigar with it (one of your lordship’s Villar Villars).
You will understand that I made no comment on this
at the time, but your lordship will sympathize with
my feelings. May I take this opportunity of expressing
my grateful appreciation of your lordship’s excellent
taste in food, drink and dress? It is, if I may say
so, more than a pleasure—it is an education, to valet
and buttle your lordship.

Lord Peter bowed his head gravely.

“What on earth are you doing, Peter, sittin’ there
noddin’ an’ grinnin’ like a what-you-may-call-it?”
demanded the Duke, coming suddenly out of a snooze.
“Someone writin’ pretty things to you, what?”
179

“Charming things,” said Lord Peter.

The Duke eyed him doubtfully.

“Hope to goodness you don’t go and marry a chorus
beauty,” he muttered inwardly, and returned to the
Times.

Over dinner I had set myself to discover Cummings’s
tastes, and found them to run in the direction
of the music-hall stage. During his first glass I drew
him out in this direction, your lordship having kindly
given me opportunities of seeing every performance
in London, and I spoke more freely than I should
consider becoming in the ordinary way in order to
make myself pleasant to him. I may say that his views
on women and the stage were such as I should have
expected from a man who would smoke with your
lordship’s port.

With the second glass I introduced the subject of
your lordship’s inquiries. In order to save time I will
write our conversation in the form of a dialogue, as
nearly as possible as it actually took place.

Cummings: You seem to get many opportunities
of seeing a bit of life, Mr. Bunter.

Bunter: One can always make opportunities if one
knows how.

Cummings: Ah, it’s very easy for you to talk, Mr.
Bunter. You’re not married, for one thing.

Bunter: I know better than that, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: So do I—now, when it’s too late. (He
sighed heavily, and I filled up his glass.)
180

Bunter: Does Mrs. Cummings live with you at
Battersea?

Cummings: Yes, her and me we do for my governor.
Such a life! Not but what there’s a char comes
in by the day. But what’s a char? I can tell you it’s
dull all by ourselves in that d—d Battersea suburb.

Bunter: Not very convenient for the Halls, of
course.

Cummings: I believe you. It’s all right for you,
here in Piccadilly, right on the spot as you might say.
And I daresay your governor’s often out all night,
eh?

Bunter: Oh, frequently, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: And I daresay you take the opportunity
to slip off yourself every so often, eh?

Bunter: Well, what do you think, Mr. Cummings?

Cummings: That’s it; there you are! But what’s a
man to do with a nagging fool of a wife and a blasted
scientific doctor for a governor, as sits up all night
cutting up dead bodies and experimenting with frogs?

Bunter: Surely he goes out sometimes.

Cummings: Not often. And always back before
twelve. And the way he goes on if he rings the bell
and you ain’t there. I give you my word, Mr. Bunter.

Bunter: Temper?

Cummings: No-o-o—but looking through you,
nasty-like, as if you was on that operating table of
his and he was going to cut you up. Nothing a man
could rightly complain of, you understand, Mr.
Bunter, just nasty looks. Not but what I will say he’s
very correct. Apologizes if he’s been inconsiderate.
181
But what’s the good of that when he’s been and gone
and lost you your night’s rest?

Bunter: How does he do that? Keeps you up late,
you mean?

Cummings: Not him; far from it. House locked up
and household to bed at half-past ten. That’s his little
rule. Not but what I’m glad enough to go as a rule,
it’s that dreary. Still, when I do go to bed I like to go
to sleep.

Bunter: What does he do? Walk about the house?

Cummings: Doesn’t he? All night. And in and out
of the private door to the hospital.

Bunter: You don’t mean to say, Mr. Cummings, a
great specialist like Sir Julian Freke does night work
at the hospital?

Cummings: No, no; he does his own work—research
work, as you may say. Cuts people up. They
say he’s very clever. Could take you or me to pieces
like a clock, Mr. Bunter, and put us together again.

Bunter: Do you sleep in the basement, then, to hear
him so plain?

Cummings: No; our bedroom’s at the top. But,
Lord! what’s that? He’ll bang the door so you can
hear him all over the house.

Bunter: Ah, many’s the time I’ve had to speak to
Lord Peter about that. And talking all night. And
baths.

Cummings: Baths? You may well say that, Mr.
Bunter. Baths? Me and my wife sleep next to the
cistern-room. Noise fit to wake the dead. All hours.
182
When d’you think he chose to have a bath, no later
than last Monday night, Mr. Bunter?

Bunter: I’ve known them to do it at two in the
morning, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: Have you, now? Well, this was at
three. Three o’clock in the morning we was waked
up. I give you my word.

Bunter: You don’t say so, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: He cuts up diseases, you see, Mr.
Bunter, and then he don’t like to go to bed till he’s
washed the bacilluses off, if you understand me. Very
natural, too, I daresay. But what I say is, the middle
of the night’s no time for a gentleman to be occupying
his mind with diseases.

Bunter: These great men have their own way of
doing things.

Cummings: Well, all I can say is, it isn’t my way.

(I could believe that, your lordship. Cummings
has no signs of greatness about him, and his trousers
are not what I would wish to see in a man of his
profession.)

Bunter: Is he habitually as late as that, Mr. Cummings?

Cummings: Well, no, Mr. Bunter, I will say, not
as a general rule. He apologized, too, in the morning,
and said he would have the cistern seen to—and very
necessary, in my opinion, for the air gets into the
pipes, and the groaning and screeching as goes on is
something awful. Just like Niagara, if you follow me,
Mr. Bunter, I give you my word.

Bunter: Well, that’s as it should be, Mr. Cummings.
183
One can put up with a great deal from a gentleman
that has the manners to apologize. And, of course,
sometimes they can’t help themselves. A visitor will
come in unexpectedly and keep them late, perhaps.

Cummings: That’s true enough, Mr. Bunter. Now
I come to think of it, there was a gentleman come in
on Monday evening. Not that he came late, but he
stayed about an hour, and may have put Sir Julian
behindhand.

Bunter: Very likely. Let me give you some more
port, Mr. Cummings. Or a little of Lord Peter’s old
brandy.

Cummings: A little of the brandy, thank you, Mr.
Bunter. I suppose you have the run of the cellar here.
(He winked at me.)

“Trust me for that,” I said, and I fetched him the
Napoleon. I assure your lordship it went to my heart
to pour it out for a man like that. However, seeing
we had got on the right tack, I felt it wouldn’t be
wasted.

“I’m sure I wish it was always gentlemen that
come here at night,” I said. (Your lordship will excuse
me, I am sure, making such a suggestion.)

(“Good God,” said Lord Peter, “I wish Bunter was
less thorough in his methods.”)

Cummings: Oh, he’s that sort, his lordship, is he?
(He chuckled and poked me. I suppress a portion of
his conversation here, which could not fail to be as offensive
to your lordship as it was to myself. He went
on:) No, it’s none of that with Sir Julian. Very few
184
visitors at night, and always gentlemen. And going
early as a rule, like the one I mentioned.

Bunter: Just as well. There’s nothing I find more
wearisome, Mr. Cummings, than sitting up to see
visitors out.

Cummings: Oh, I didn’t see this one out. Sir Julian
let him out himself at ten o’clock or thereabouts. I
heard the gentleman shout “Good-night” and off he
goes.

Bunter: Does Sir Julian always do that?

Cummings: Well, that depends. If he sees visitors
downstairs, he lets them out himself: if he sees them
upstairs in the library, he rings for me.

Bunter: This was a downstairs visitor, then?

Cummings: Oh, yes. Sir Julian opened the door to
him, I remember. He happened to be working in the
hall. Though now I come to think of it, they went
up to the library afterwards. That’s funny. I know
they did, because I happened to go up to the hall with
coals, and I heard them upstairs. Besides, Sir Julian
rang for me in the library a few minutes later. Still,
anyway, we heard him go at ten, or it may have been
a bit before. He hadn’t only stayed about three-quarters
of an hour. However, as I was saying, there
was Sir Julian banging in and out of the private door
all night, and a bath at three in the morning, and up
again for breakfast at eight—it beats me. If I had all
his money, curse me if I’d go poking about with dead
men in the middle of the night. I’d find something
better to do with my time, eh, Mr. Bunter—
185

I need not repeat any more of his conversation, as
it became unpleasant and incoherent, and I could not
bring him back to the events of Monday night. I was
unable to get rid of him till three. He cried on my
neck, and said I was the bird, and you were the governor
for him. He said that Sir Julian would be
greatly annoyed with him for coming home so late,
but Sunday night was his night out and if anything
was said about it he would give notice. I think he will
be ill-advised to do so, as I feel he is not a man I
could conscientiously recommend if I were in Sir
Julian Freke’s place. I noticed that his boot-heels
were slightly worn down.

I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits
of your lordship’s cellar, that, although I was obliged
to drink a somewhat large quantity both of the Cockburn ’68
and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no headache
or other ill effects this morning.

Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit
from the country air, and that the little information
I have been able to obtain will prove satisfactory, I
remain.

With respectful duty to all the family,

“Y’know,” said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself,
“I sometimes think Mervyn Bunter’s pullin’ my
leg. What is it, Soames?”

“A telegram, my lord.”

“Parker,” said Lord Peter, opening it. It said:
186

“Hurray!” said Lord Peter, suddenly sparkling.
“I’m glad I’ve puzzled Parker. Gives me confidence
in myself. Makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes. ‘Perfectly
simple, Watson.’ Dash it all, though! this is a
beastly business. Still, it’s puzzled Parker.”

“What’s the matter?” asked the Duke, getting up
and yawning.

“Marching orders,” said Peter, “back to town.
Many thanks for your hospitality, old bird—I’m
feelin’ no end better. Ready to tackle Professor Moriarty
or Leon Kestrel or any of ’em.”

“I do wish you’d keep out of the police courts,”
grumbled the Duke. “It makes it so dashed awkward
for me, havin’ a brother makin’ himself conspicuous.”

“Sorry, Gerald,” said the other; “I know I’m a
beastly blot on the ’scutcheon.”

“Why can’t you marry and settle down and live
quietly, doin’ something useful?” said the Duke, unappeased.

“Because that was a wash-out as you perfectly well
know,” said Peter; “besides,” he added cheerfully,
“I’m bein’ no end useful. You may come to want me
yourself, you never know. When anybody comes
blackmailin’ you, Gerald, or your first deserted wife
turns up unexpectedly from the West Indies, you’ll
realize the pull of havin’ a private detective in the
187
family. ‘Delicate private business arranged with tact
and discretion. Investigations undertaken. Divorce
evidence a specialty. Every guarantee!’ Come, now.”

“Ass!” said Lord Denver, throwing the newspaper
violently into his armchair. “When do you want the
car?”

“Almost at once. I say, Jerry, I’m taking Mother
up with me.”

“Why should she be mixed up in it?”

“Well, I want her help.”

“I call it most unsuitable,” said the Duke.

The Dowager Duchess, however, made no objection.

“I used to know her quite well,” she said, “when
she was Christine Ford. Why, dear?”

“Because,” said Lord Peter, “there’s a terrible piece
of news to be broken to her about her husband.”

“Is he dead, dear?”

“Yes; and she will have to come and identify him.”

“Poor Christine.”

“Under very revolting circumstances, Mother.”

“I’ll come with you, dear.”

“Thank you, Mother, you’re a brick. D’you mind
gettin’ your things on straight away and comin’ up
with me? I’ll tell you about it in the car.”
188

CHAPTER X

Mr. Parker, a faithful though doubting
Thomas, had duly secured his medical student: a large
young man like an overgrown puppy, with innocent
eyes and a freckled face. He sat on the Chesterfield
before Lord Peter’s library fire, bewildered in equal
measure by his errand, his surroundings and the drink
which he was absorbing. His palate, though untutored,
was naturally a good one, and he realized that
even to call this liquid a drink—the term ordinarily
used by him to designate cheap whisky, post-war beer
or a dubious glass of claret in a Soho restaurant—was
a sacrilege; this was something outside normal experience:
a genie in a bottle.

The man called Parker, whom he had happened to
run across the evening before in the public-house at
the corner of Prince of Wales Road, seemed to be a
good sort. He had insisted on bringing him round to
see this friend of his, who lived splendidly in Piccadilly.
Parker was quite understandable; he put him
down as a government servant, or perhaps something
in the City. The friend was embarrassing; he was a
lord, to begin with, and his clothes were a kind of
rebuke to the world at large. He talked the most
fatuous nonsense, certainly, but in a disconcerting
way. He didn’t dig into a joke and get all the fun out
of it; he made it in passing, so to speak, and skipped
189
away to something else before your retort was ready.
He had a truly terrible man-servant—the sort you
read about in books—who froze the marrow in your
bones with silent criticism. Parker appeared to bear
up under the strain, and this made you think more
highly of Parker; he must be more habituated to the
surroundings of the great than you would think to
look at him. You wondered what the carpet had cost
on which Parker was carelessly spilling cigar ash;
your father was an upholsterer—Mr. Piggott, of Piggott
& Piggott, Liverpool—and you knew enough
about carpets to know that you couldn’t even guess
at the price of this one. When you moved your head
on the bulging silk cushion in the corner of the sofa,
it made you wish you shaved more often and more
carefully. The sofa was a monster—but even so, it
hardly seemed big enough to contain you. This Lord
Peter was not very tall—in fact, he was rather a small
man, but he didn’t look undersized. He looked right;
he made you feel that to be six-foot-three was rather
vulgarly assertive; you felt like Mother’s new drawing-room
curtains—all over great big blobs. But
everybody was very decent to you, and nobody said
anything you couldn’t understand, or sneered at you.
There were some frightfully deep-looking books on
the shelves all round, and you had looked into a great
folio Dante which was lying on the table, but your
hosts were talking quite ordinarily and rationally
about the sort of books you read yourself—clinking
good love stories and detective stories. You had read
a lot of those, and could give an opinion, and they
190
listened to what you had to say, though Lord Peter
had a funny way of talking about books, too, as if
the author had confided in him beforehand, and told
him how the story was put together, and which bit
was written first. It reminded you of the way old
Freke took a body to pieces.

“Thing I object to in detective stories,” said Mr.
Piggott, “is the way fellows remember every bloomin’
thing that’s happened to ’em within the last six
months. They’re always ready with their time of day
and was it rainin’ or not, and what were they doin’ on
such an’ such a day. Reel it all off like a page of
poetry. But one ain’t like that in real life, d’you think
so, Lord Peter?” Lord Peter smiled, and young Piggott,
instantly embarrassed, appealed to his earlier
acquaintance. “You know what I mean, Parker.
Come now. One day’s so like another, I’m sure I
couldn’t remember—well, I might remember yesterday,
p’r’aps, but I couldn’t be certain about what I
was doin’ last week if I was to be shot for it.”

“No,” said Parker, “and evidence given in police
statements sounds just as impossible. But they don’t
really get it like that, you know. I mean, a man
doesn’t just say, ‘Last Friday I went out at 10 a.m.
to buy a mutton chop. As I was turning into Mortimer
Street I noticed a girl of about twenty-two
with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a green
jumper, check skirt, Panama hat and black shoes,
riding a Royal Sunbeam Cycle at about ten miles an
hour turning the corner by the Church of St. Simon
and St. Jude on the wrong side of the road riding
191
towards the market place!’ It amounts to that, of
course, but it’s really wormed out of him by a series
of questions.”

“And in short stories,” said Lord Peter, “it has to
be put in statement form, because the real conversation
would be so long and twaddly and tedious, and
nobody would have the patience to read it. Writers
have to consider their readers, if any, y’see.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Piggott, “but I bet you most people
would find it jolly difficult to remember, even if you
asked ’em things. I should—of course, I know I’m a
bit of a fool, but then, most people are, ain’t they?
You know what I mean. Witnesses ain’t detectives,
they’re just average idiots like you and me.”

“Quite so,” said Lord Peter, smiling as the force of
the last phrase sank into its unhappy perpetrator;
“you mean, if I were to ask you in a general way
what you were doin’—say, a week ago today, you
wouldn’t be able to tell me a thing about it offhand?”

“No—I’m sure I shouldn’t.” He considered. “No.
I was in at the Hospital as usual, I suppose, and, being
Tuesday, there’d be a lecture on something or the
other—dashed if I know what—and in the evening I
went out with Tommy Pringle—no, that must have
been Monday—or was it Wednesday? I tell you, I
couldn’t swear to anything.”

“You do yourself an injustice,” said Lord Peter
gravely. “I’m sure, for instance, you recollect what
work you were doing in the dissecting-room on that
day, for example.”

“Lord, no! not for certain. I mean, I daresay it
192
might come back to me if I thought for a long time,
but I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law.”

“I’ll bet you half-a-crown to sixpence,” said Lord
Peter, “that you’ll remember within five minutes.”

“I’m sure I can’t.”

“We’ll see. Do you keep a notebook of the work
you do when you dissect? Drawings or anything?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Think of that. What’s the last thing you did in
it?”

“That’s easy, because I only did it this morning. It
was leg muscles.”

“Yes. Who was the subject?”

“An old woman of sorts; died of pneumonia.”

“Yes. Turn back the pages of your drawing book
in your mind. What came before that?”

“Oh, some animals—still legs; I’m doing motor
muscles at present. Yes. That was old Cunningham’s
demonstration on comparative anatomy. I did rather
a good thing of a hare’s legs and a frog’s, and rudimentary
legs on a snake.”

“Yes. Which day does Mr. Cunningham lecture?”

“Friday.”

“Friday; yes. Turn back again. What comes before
that?”

Mr. Piggott shook his head.

“Do your drawings of legs begin on the right-hand
page or the left-hand page? Can you see the first
drawing?”

“Yes—yes—I can see the date written at the top.
193
It’s a section of a frog’s hind leg, on the right-hand
page.”

“Yes. Think of the open book in your mind’s eye.
What is opposite to it?”

This demanded some mental concentration.

“Something round—coloured—oh, yes—it’s a
hand.”

“Yes. You went on from the muscles of the hand
and arm to leg- and foot-muscles?”

“Yes; that’s right. I’ve got a set of drawings of
arms.”

“Yes. Did you make those on the Thursday?”

“No; I’m never in the dissecting-room on Thursday.”

“On Wednesday, perhaps?”

“Yes; I must have made them on Wednesday. Yes;
I did. I went in there after we’d seen those tetanus
patients in the morning. I did them on Wednesday
afternoon. I know I went back because I wanted to
finish ’em. I worked rather hard—for me. That’s why
I remember.”

“Yes; you went back to finish them. When had
you begun them, then?”

“Why, the day before.”

“The day before. That was Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve lost count—yes, the day before Wednesday—yes,
Tuesday.”

“Yes. Were they a man’s arms or a woman’s arms?”

“Oh, a man’s arms.

“Yes; last Tuesday, a week ago today, you were
194
dissecting a man’s arms in the dissecting-room. Sixpence,
please.”

“By Jove!”

“Wait a moment. You know a lot more about it
than that. You’ve no idea how much you know. You
know what kind of man he was.”

“Oh, I never saw him complete, you know. I got
there a bit late that day, I remember. I’d asked for an
arm specially, because I was rather weak in arms, and
Watts—that’s the attendant—had promised to save
me one.”

“Yes. You have arrived late and found your arm
waiting for you. You are dissecting it—taking your
scissors and slitting up the skin and pinning it back.
Was it very young, fair skin?”

“Oh, no—no. Ordinary skin, I think—with dark
hairs on it—yes, that was it.”

“Yes. A lean, stringy arm, perhaps, with no extra
fat anywhere?”

“Oh, no—I was rather annoyed about that. I
wanted a good, muscular arm, but it was rather
poorly developed and the fat got in my way.”

“Yes; a sedentary man who didn’t do much manual
work.”

“That’s right.”

“Yes. You dissected the hand, for instance, and
made a drawing of it. You would have noticed any
hard calluses.”

“Oh, there was nothing of that sort.”

“No. But should you say it was a young man’s
arm? Firm young flesh and limber joints?”
195

“No—no.”

“No. Old and stringy, perhaps.”

“No. Middle-aged—with rheumatism. I mean,
there was a chalky deposit in the joints, and the fingers
were a bit swollen.”

“Yes. A man about fifty.”

“About that.”

“Yes. There were other students at work on the
same body.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Yes. And they made all the usual sort of jokes
about it.”

“I expect so—oh, yes!”

“You can remember some of them. Who is your
local funny man, so to speak?”

“Tommy Pringle.”

“What was Tommy Pringle’s doing?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Whereabouts was Tommy Pringle working?”

“Over by the instrument cupboard—by sink C.”

“Yes. Get a picture of Tommy Pringle in your
mind’s eye.”

Piggott began to laugh.

“I remember now. Tommy Pringle said the old
Sheeny—”

“Why did he call him a Sheeny?”

“I don’t know. But I know he did.”

“Perhaps he looked like it. Did you see his head?”

“No.”

“Who had the head?”

“I don’t know—oh, yes, I do, though. Old Freke
196
bagged the head himself, and little Bouncible Binns
was very cross about it, because he’d been promised
a head to do with old Scrooger.”

“I see. What was Sir Julian doing with the head?”

“He called us up and gave us a jaw on spinal haemorrhage
and nervous lesions.”

“Yes. Well, go back to Tommy Pringle.”

Tommy Pringle’s joke was repeated, not without
some embarrassment.

“Quite so. Was that all?”

“No. The chap who was working with Tommy
said that sort of thing came from over-feeding.”

“I deduce that Tommy Pringle’s partner was interested
in the alimentary canal.”

“Yes; and Tommy said, if he’d thought they’d feed
you like that he’d go to the workhouse himself.”

“Then the man was a pauper from the workhouse?”

“Well, he must have been, I suppose.”

“Are workhouse paupers usually fat and well-fed?”

“Well, no—come to think of it, not as a rule.”

“In fact, it struck Tommy Pringle and his friend
that this was something a little out of the way in a
workhouse subject?”

“Yes.”

“And if the alimentary canal was so entertaining
to these gentlemen, I imagine the subject had come
by his death shortly after a full meal.”

“Yes—oh, yes—he’d have had to, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “That’s in
197
your department, you know. That would be your
inference, from what they said.”

“Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”

“Yes; you wouldn’t, for example, expect them to
make that observation if the patient had been ill for
a long time and fed on slops.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you see, you really know a lot about it. On
Tuesday week you were dissecting the arm muscles
of a rheumatic middle-aged Jew, of sedentary habits,
who had died shortly after eating a heavy meal, of
some injury producing spinal haemorrhage and nervous
lesions, and so forth, and who was presumed to
come from the workhouse?”

“Yes.”

“And you could swear to those facts, if need
were?”

“Well, if you put it in that way, I suppose I could.”

“Of course you could.”

Mr. Piggott sat for some moments in contemplation.

“I say,” he said at last, “I did know all that, didn’t
I?”

“Oh, yes—you knew it all right—like Socrates’s
slave.”

“Who’s he?”

“A person in a book I used to read as a boy.”

“Oh—does he come in ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’?”

“No—another book—I daresay you escaped it. It’s
rather dull.”
198

“I never read much except Henty and Fenimore
Cooper at school…. But—have I got rather an
extra good memory, then?”

“You have a better memory than you credit yourself
with.”

“Then why can’t I remember all the medical stuff?
It all goes out of my head like a sieve.”

“Well, why can’t you?” said Lord Peter, standing
on the hearthrug and smiling down at his guest.

“Well,” said the young man, “the chaps who examine
one don’t ask the same sort of questions you
do.”

“No?”

“No—they leave you to remember all by yourself.
And it’s beastly hard. Nothing to catch hold of,
don’t you know? But, I say—how did you know
about Tommy Pringle being the funny man and—”

“I didn’t, till you told me.”

“No; I know. But how did you know he’d be there
if you did ask? I mean to say—I say,” said Mr. Piggott,
who was becoming mellowed by influences
themselves not unconnected with the alimentary
canal—“I say, are you rather clever, or am I rather
stupid?”

“No, no,” said Lord Peter, “it’s me. I’m always
askin’ such stupid questions, everybody thinks I must
mean somethin’ by ’em.”

This was too involved for Mr. Piggott.

“Never mind,” said Parker, soothingly, “he’s always
like that. You mustn’t take any notice. He
can’t help it. It’s premature senile decay, often observed
199
in the families of hereditary legislators. Go
away, Wimsey, and play us the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or
something.”

“That’s good enough, isn’t it?” said Lord Peter,
when the happy Mr. Piggott had been despatched
home after a really delightful evening.

“I’m afraid so,” said Parker. “But it seems almost
incredible.”

“There’s nothing incredible in human nature,” said
Lord Peter; “at least, in educated human nature.
Have you got that exhumation order?”

“I shall have it tomorrow. I thought of fixing up
with the workhouse people for tomorrow afternoon.
I shall have to go and see them first.”

“Right you are; I’ll let my mother know.”

“I begin to feel like you, Wimsey, I don’t like this
job.”

“I like it a deal better than I did.”

“You are really certain we’re not making a mistake?”

Lord Peter had strolled across to the window. The
curtain was not perfectly drawn, and he stood gazing
out through the gap into lighted Piccadilly. At
this he turned round:

“If we are,” he said, “we shall know tomorrow,
and no harm will have been done. But I rather think
you will receive a certain amount of confirmation on
your way home. Look here, Parker, d’you know, if
I were you I’d spend the night here. There’s a spare
bedroom; I can easily put you up.”

Parker stared at him.
200

“Do you mean—I’m likely to be attacked?”

“I think it very likely indeed.”

“Is there anybody in the street?”

“Not now; there was half-an-hour ago.”

“When Piggott left?”

“Yes.”

“I say—I hope the boy is in no danger.”

“That’s what I went down to see. I don’t think
so. Fact is, I don’t suppose anybody would imagine
we’d exactly made a confidant of Piggott. But I think
you and I are in danger. You’ll stay?”

“I’m damned if I will, Wimsey. Why should I
run away?”

“Bosh!” said Peter. “You’d run away all right if
you believed me, and why not? You don’t believe me.
In fact, you’re still not certain I’m on the right tack.
Go in peace, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t; I’ll dictate a message with my dying
breath to say I was convinced.”

“Well, don’t walk—take a taxi.”

“Very well, I’ll do that.”

“And don’t let anybody else get into it.”

“No.”

It was a raw, unpleasant night. A taxi deposited a
load of people returning from the theatre at the block
of flats next door, and Parker secured it for himself.
He was just giving the address to the driver, when a
man came hastily running up from a side street. He
was in evening dress and an overcoat. He rushed up,
signalling frantically.

“Sir—sir!—dear me! why, it’s Mr. Parker! How
201
fortunate! If you would be so kind—summoned from
the club—a sick friend—can’t find a taxi—everybody
going home from the theatre—if I might share
your cab—you are returning to Bloomsbury? I want
Russell Square—if I might presume—a matter of life
and death.”

He spoke in hurried gasps, as though he had been
running violently and far. Parker promptly stepped
out of the taxi.

“Delighted to be of service to you, Sir Julian,” he
said; “take my taxi. I am going down to Craven
Street myself, but I’m in no hurry. Pray make use
of the cab.”

“It’s extremely kind of you,” said the surgeon.
“I am ashamed—”

“That’s all right,” said Parker, cheerily. “I can
wait.” He assisted Freke into the taxi. “What number?
24 Russell Square, driver, and look sharp.”

The taxi drove off. Parker remounted the stairs and
rang Lord Peter’s bell.

“Thanks, old man,” he said. “I’ll stop the night,
after all.”

“Come in,” said Wimsey.

“Did you see that?” asked Parker.

“I saw something. What happened exactly?”

Parker told his story. “Frankly,” he said, “I’ve been
thinking you a bit mad, but now I’m not quite so
sure of it.”

Peter laughed.

“Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have
believed. Bunter, Mr. Parker will stay the night.”
202

“Look here, Wimsey, let’s have another look at this
business. Where’s that letter?”

Lord Peter produced Bunter’s essay in dialogue.
Parker studied it for a short time in silence.

“You know, Wimsey, I’m as full of objections to
this idea as an egg is of meat.”

“So’m I, old son. That’s why I want to dig up our
Chelsea pauper. But trot out your objections.”

“Well—”

“Well, look here, I don’t pretend to be able to fill
in all the blanks myself. But here we have two mysterious
occurrences in one night, and a complete
chain connecting the one with another through one
particular person. It’s beastly, but it’s not unthinkable.”

“Yes, I know all that. But there are one or two
quite definite stumbling-blocks.”

“Yes, I know. But, see here. On the one hand, Levy
disappeared after being last seen looking for Prince of
Wales Road at nine o’clock. At eight next morning
a dead man, not unlike him in general outline, is
discovered in a bath in Queen Caroline Mansions.
Levy, by Freke’s own admission, was going to see
Freke. By information received from Chelsea workhouse
a dead man, answering to the description
of the Battersea corpse in its natural state, was delivered
that same day to Freke. We have Levy with a
past, and no future, as it were; an unknown vagrant
with a future (in the cemetery) and no past, and
Freke stands between their future and their past.”

“That looks all right—”
203

“Yes. Now, further: Freke has a motive for getting
rid of Levy—an old jealousy.”

“Very old—and not much of a motive.”

“People have been known to do that sort of thing.[D]
You’re thinking that people don’t keep up old jealousies
for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just
primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a
blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That
sticks. Humiliation. And we’ve all got a sore spot we
don’t like to have touched. I’ve got it. You’ve got it.
Some blighter said hell knew no fury like a woman
scorned. Stickin’ it on to women, poor devils. Sex is
every man’s loco spot—you needn’t fidget, you know
it’s true—he’ll take a disappointment, but not a
humiliation. I knew a man once who’d been turned
down—not too charitably—by a girl he was engaged
to. He spoke quite decently about her. I asked what
had become of her. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she married the
other fellow.’ And then burst out—couldn’t help
himself. ‘Lord, yes!’ he cried. ‘To think of it—jilted
for a Scotchman!’ I don’t know why he didn’t like
Scots, but that was what got him on the raw. Look
at Freke. I’ve read his books. His attacks on his antagonists
204
are savage. And he’s a scientist. Yet he can’t
bear opposition, even in his work, which is where any
first-class man is most sane and open-minded. Do
you think he’s a man to take a beating from any
man on a side-issue? On a man’s most sensitive
side-issue? People are opinionated about side-issues,
you know. I see red if anybody questions my judgment
about a book. And Levy—who was nobody
twenty years ago—romps in and carries off Freke’s
girl from under his nose. It isn’t the girl Freke would
bother about—it’s having his aristocratic nose put
out of joint by a little Jewish nobody.

“There’s another thing. Freke’s got another side-issue.
He likes crime. In that criminology book of his
he gloats over a hardened murderer. I’ve read it, and
I’ve seen the admiration simply glaring out between
the lines whenever he writes about a callous and successful
criminal. He reserves his contempt for the
victims or the penitents or the men who lose their
heads and get found out. His heroes are Edmond de la
Pommerais, who persuaded his mistress into becoming
an accessory to her own murder, and George Joseph
Smith of Brides-in-a-bath fame, who could make passionate
love to his wife in the night and carry out
his plot to murder her in the morning. After all, he
thinks conscience is a sort of vermiform appendix.
Chop it out and you’ll feel all the better. Freke isn’t
troubled by the usual conscientious deterrent. Witness
his own hand in his books. Now again. The man
who went to Levy’s house in his place knew the
house: Freke knew the house; he was a red-haired
205
man, smaller than Levy, but not much smaller, since
he could wear his clothes without appearing ludicrous:
you have seen Freke—you know his height—about
five-foot-eleven, I suppose, and his auburn
mane; he probably wore surgical gloves: Freke is a
surgeon; he was a methodical and daring man: surgeons
are obliged to be both daring and methodical.
Now take the other side. The man who got hold of
the Battersea corpse had to have access to dead
bodies. Freke obviously had access to dead bodies.
He had to be cool and quick and callous about
handling a dead body. Surgeons are all that. He had
to be a strong man to carry the body across the roofs
and dump it in at Thipps’s window. Freke is a powerful
man and a member of the Alpine Club. He
probably wore surgical gloves and he let the body
down from the roof with a surgical bandage. This
points to a surgeon again. He undoubtedly lived in
the neighbourhood. Freke lives next door. The girl
you interviewed heard a bump on the roof of the
end house. That is the house next to Freke’s. Every
time we look at Freke, he leads somewhere, whereas
Milligan and Thipps and Crimplesham and all the
other people we’ve honoured with our suspicion
simply led nowhere.”

“Yes; but it’s not quite so simple as you make out.
What was Levy doing in that surreptitious way at
Freke’s on Monday night?”

“Well, you have Freke’s explanation.”

“Rot, Wimsey. You said yourself it wouldn’t do.”

“Excellent. It won’t do. Therefore Freke was lying.
206
Why should he lie about it, unless he had some object
in hiding the truth?”

“Well, but why mention it at all?”

“Because Levy, contrary to all expectation, had
been seen at the corner of the road. That was a nasty
accident for Freke. He thought it best to be beforehand
with an explanation—of sorts. He reckoned, of
course, on nobody’s ever connecting Levy with Battersea
Park.”

“Well, then, we come back to the first question:
Why did Levy go there?”

“I don’t know, but he was got there somehow.
Why did Freke buy all those Peruvian Oil shares?”

“I don’t know,” said Parker in his turn.

“Anyway,” went on Wimsey, “Freke expected
him, and made arrangements to let him in himself,
so that Cummings shouldn’t see who the caller was.”

“But the caller left again at ten.”

“Oh, Charles! I did not expect this of you. This is
the purest Suggery! Who saw him go? Somebody said
‘Good-night’ and walked away down the street. And
you believe it was Levy because Freke didn’t go out
of his way to explain that it wasn’t.”

“D’you mean that Freke walked cheerfully out of
the house to Park Lane, and left Levy behind—dead
or alive—for Cummings to find?”

“We have Cummings’s word that he did nothing
of the sort. A few minutes after the steps walked
away from the house, Freke rang the library bell and
told Cummings to shut up for the night.”

“Then—”
207

“Well—there’s a side door to the house, I suppose—in
fact, you know there is—Cummings said so—through
the hospital.”

“Yes—well, where was Levy?”

“Levy went up into the library and never came
down. You’ve been in Freke’s library. Where would
you have put him?”

“In my bedroom next door.”

“Then that’s where he did put him.”

“But suppose the man went in to turn down the
bed?”

“Beds are turned down by the housekeeper, earlier
than ten o’clock.”

“Yes…. But Cummings heard Freke about the
house all night.”

“He heard him go in and out two or three times.
He’d expect him to do that, anyway.”

“Do you mean to say Freke got all that job finished
before three in the morning?”

“Why not?”

“Quick work.”

“Well, call it quick work. Besides, why three?
Cummings never saw him again till he called him for
eight o’clock breakfast.”

“But he was having a bath at three.”

“I don’t say he didn’t get back from Park Lane
before three. But I don’t suppose Cummings went
and looked through the bathroom keyhole to see if
he was in the bath.”

Parker considered again.

“How about Crimplesham’s pince-nez?” he asked.
208

“That is a bit mysterious,” said Lord Peter.

“And why Thipps’s bathroom?”

“Why, indeed? Pure accident, perhaps—or pure
devilry.”

“Do you think all this elaborate scheme could have
been put together in a night, Wimsey?”

“Far from it. It was conceived as soon as that man
who bore a superficial resemblance to Levy came into
the workhouse. He had several days.”

“I see.”

“Freke gave himself away at the inquest. He and
Grimbold disagreed about the length of the man’s
illness. If a small man (comparatively speaking) like
Grimbold presumes to disagree with a man like Freke,
it’s because he is sure of his ground.”

“Then—if your theory is sound—Freke made a
mistake.”

“Yes. A very slight one. He was guarding, with
unnecessary caution, against starting a train of
thought in the mind of anybody—say, the workhouse
doctor. Up till then he’d been reckoning on
the fact that people don’t think a second time about
anything (a body, say) that’s once been accounted
for.”

“What made him lose his head?”

“A chain of unforeseen accidents. Levy’s having
been recognised—my mother’s son having foolishly
advertised in the Times his connection with the Battersea
end of the mystery—Detective Parker (whose
photograph has been a little prominent in the illustrated
press lately) seen sitting next door to the
209
Duchess of Denver at the inquest. His aim in life was
to prevent the two ends of the problem from linking
up. And there were two of the links, literally side by
side. Many criminals are wrecked by over-caution.”

Parker was silent.
210

CHAPTER XI

“A regular pea-souper, by Jove,” said Lord Peter.

Parker grunted, and struggled irritably into an
overcoat.

“It affords me, if I may say so, the greatest satisfaction,”
continued the noble lord, “that in a collaboration
like ours all the uninteresting and disagreeable
routine work is done by you.”

Parker grunted again.

“Do you anticipate any difficulty about the warrant?”
inquired Lord Peter.

Parker grunted a third time.

“I suppose you’ve seen to it that all this business is
kept quiet?”

“Of course.”

“You’ve muzzled the workhouse people?”

“Of course.”

“And the police?”

“Yes.”

“Because, if you haven’t there’ll probably be nobody
to arrest.”

“My dear Wimsey, do you think I’m a fool?”

“I had no such hope.”

Parker grunted finally and departed.

Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante.
It afforded him no solace. Lord Peter was hampered
in his career as a private detective by a public-school
211
education. Despite Parker’s admonitions, he was not
always able to discount it. His mind had been warped
in its young growth by “Raffles” and “Sherlock
Holmes,” or the sentiments for which they stand.
He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.

“I am an amateur,” said Lord Peter.

Nevertheless, while communing with Dante, he
made up his mind.

In the afternoon he found himself in Harley Street.
Sir Julian Freke might be consulted about one’s
nerves from two till four on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Lord Peter rang the bell.

“Have you an appointment, sir?” inquired the man
who opened the door.

“No,” said Lord Peter, “but will you give Sir Julian
my card? I think it possible he may see me without
one.”

He sat down in the beautiful room in which Sir
Julian’s patients awaited his healing counsel. It was
full of people. Two or three fashionably dressed
women were discussing shops and servants together,
and teasing a toy griffon. A big, worried-looking man
by himself in a corner looked at his watch twenty
times a minute. Lord Peter knew him by sight. It was
Wintrington, a millionaire, who had tried to kill himself
a few months ago. He controlled the finances of
five countries, but he could not control his nerves.
The finances of five countries were in Sir Julian
Freke’s capable hands. By the fireplace sat a soldierly-looking
young man, of about Lord Peter’s own age.
212
His face was prematurely lined and worn; he sat bolt
upright, his restless eyes darting in the direction of
every slightest sound. On the sofa was an elderly
woman of modest appearance, with a young girl. The
girl seemed listless and wretched; the woman’s look
showed deep affection, and anxiety tempered with a
timid hope. Close beside Lord Peter was another
younger woman, with a little girl, and Lord Peter
noticed in both of them the broad cheekbones and
beautiful grey, slanting eyes of the Slav. The child,
moving restlessly about, trod on Lord Peter’s patent-leather
toe, and the mother admonished her in French
before turning to apologize to Lord Peter.

“Mais je vous en prie, madame,” said the young
man, “it is nothing.”

“She is nervous, pauvre petite,” said the young
woman.

“You are seeking advice for her?”

“Yes. He is wonderful, the doctor. Figure to yourself,
monsieur, she cannot forget, poor child, the
things she has seen.” She leaned nearer, so that the
child might not hear. “We have escaped—from
starving Russia—six months ago. I dare not tell you—she
has such quick ears, and then, the cries, the
tremblings, the convulsions—they all begin again.
We were skeletons when we arrived—mon Dieu!—but
that is better now. See, she is thin, but she is not
starved. She would be fatter but for the nerves that
keep her from eating. We who are older, we forget—enfin,
on apprend à ne pas y penser—but these children!
213
When one is young, monsieur, tout ça impressionne
trop.”

Lord Peter, escaping from the thraldom of British
good form, expressed himself in that language in
which sympathy is not condemned to mutism.

“But she is much better, much better,” said the
mother, proudly; “the great doctor, he does marvels.”

“C’est un homme précieux,” said Lord Peter.

“Ah, monsieur, c’est un saint qui opère des miracles!
Nous prions pour lui, Natasha et moi, tous les
jours. N’est-ce pas, chérie? And consider, monsieur,
that he does it all, ce grand homme, cet homme illustre,
for nothing at all. When we come here, we
have not even the clothes upon our backs—we are
ruined, famished. Et avec ça que nous sommes de
bonne famille—mais hélas! monsieur, en Russie,
comme vous savez, ça ne vous vaut que des insultes—des
atrocités. Enfin! the great Sir Julian sees us, he
says—‘Madame, your little girl is very interesting to
me. Say no more. I cure her for nothing—pour ses
beaux yeux,’ a-t-il ajouté en riant. Ah, monsieur,
c’est un saint, un véritable saint! and Natasha is
much, much better.”

“Madame, je vous en félicite.”

“And you, monsieur? You are young, well, strong—you
also suffer? It is still the war, perhaps?”

“A little remains of shell-shock,” said Lord Peter.

“Ah, yes. So many good, brave, young men—”

“Sir Julian can spare you a few minutes, my lord,
if you will come in now,” said the servant.

Lord Peter bowed to his neighbour, and walked
214
across the waiting-room. As the door of the consulting-room
closed behind him, he remembered having
once gone, disguised, into the staff-room of a German
officer. He experienced the same feeling—the feeling
of being caught in a trap, and a mingling of bravado
and shame.

He had seen Sir Julian Freke several times from a
distance, but never close. Now, while carefully and
quite truthfully detailing the circumstances of his
recent nervous attack, he considered the man before
him. A man taller than himself, with immense
breadth of shoulder, and wonderful hands. A face
beautiful, impassioned and inhuman; fanatical, compelling
eyes, bright blue amid the ruddy bush of hair
and beard. They were not the cool and kindly eyes
of the family doctor, they were the brooding eyes of
the inspired scientist, and they searched one through.

“Well,” thought Lord Peter, “I shan’t have to be
explicit, anyhow.”

“Yes,” said Sir Julian, “yes. You had been working
too hard. Puzzling your mind. Yes. More than that,
perhaps—troubling your mind, shall we say?”

“I found myself faced with a very alarming contingency.”

“Yes. Unexpectedly, perhaps.”

“Very unexpected indeed.”

“Yes. Following on a period of mental and physical
strain.”

“Well—perhaps. Nothing out of the way.”
215

“Yes. The unexpected contingency was—personal
to yourself?”

“It demanded an immediate decision as to my own
actions—yes, in that sense it was certainly personal.”

“Quite so. You would have to assume some responsibility,
no doubt.”

“A very grave responsibility.”

“Affecting others besides yourself?”

“Affecting one other person vitally, and a very
great number indirectly.”

“Yes. The time was night. You were sitting in the
dark?”

“Not at first. I think I put the light out afterwards.”

“Quite so—that action would naturally suggest itself
to you. Were you warm?”

“I think the fire had died down. My man tells me
that my teeth were chattering when I went in to
him.”

“Yes. You live in Piccadilly?”

“Yes.”

“Heavy traffic sometimes goes past during the
night, I expect.”

“Oh, frequently.”

“Just so. Now this decision you refer to—you had
taken that decision.”

“Yes.”

“Your mind was made up?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You had decided to take the action, whatever it
was.”
216

“Yes.”

“Yes. It involved perhaps a period of inaction.”

“Of comparative inaction—yes.”

“Of suspense, shall we say?”

“Yes—of suspense, certainly.”

“Possibly of some danger?”

“I don’t know that that was in my mind at the
time.”

“No—it was a case in which you could not possibly
consider yourself.”

“If you like to put it that way.”

“Quite so. Yes. You had these attacks frequently
in 1918?”

“Yes—I was very ill for some months.”

“Quite. Since then they have recurred less frequently?”

“Much less frequently.”

“Yes—when did the last occur?”

“About nine months ago.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“I was being worried by certain family matters. It
was a question of deciding about some investments,
and I was largely responsible.”

“Yes. You were interested last year, I think, in
some police case?”

“Yes—in the recovery of Lord Attenbury’s emerald
necklace.”

“That involved some severe mental exercise?”

“I suppose so. But I enjoyed it very much.”

“Yes. Was the exertion of solving the problem
attended by any bad results physically?”
217

“None.”

“No. You were interested, but not distressed.”

“Exactly.”

“Yes. You have been engaged in other investigations
of the kind?”

“Yes. Little ones.”

“With bad results for your health?”

“Not a bit of it. On the contrary. I took up these
cases as a sort of distraction. I had a bad knock just
after the war, which didn’t make matters any better
for me, don’t you know.”

“Ah! you are not married?”

“No.”

“No. Will you allow me to make an examination?
Just come a little nearer to the light. I want to see
your eyes. Whose advice have you had till now?”

“Sir James Hodges’.”

“Ah! yes—he was a sad loss to the medical profession.
A really great man—a true scientist. Yes. Thank
you. Now I should like to try you with this little invention.”

“What’s it do?”

“Well—it tells me about your nervous reactions.
Will you sit here?”

The examination that followed was purely medical.
When it was concluded, Sir Julian said:

“Now, Lord Peter, I’ll tell you about yourself in
quite untechnical language—”

“Thanks,” said Peter, “that’s kind of you. I’m an
awful fool about long words.”
218

“Yes. Are you fond of private theatricals, Lord
Peter?”

“Not particularly,” said Peter, genuinely surprised.
“Awful bore as a rule. Why?”

“I thought you might be,” said the specialist, drily.
“Well, now. You know quite well that the strain you
put on your nerves during the war has left its mark
on you. It has left what I may call old wounds in
your brain. Sensations received by your nerve-endings
sent messages to your brain, and produced minute
physical changes there—changes we are only beginning
to be able to detect, even with our most delicate
instruments. These changes in their turn set up sensations;
or I should say, more accurately, that sensations
are the names we give to these changes of tissue
when we perceive them: we call them horror, fear,
sense of responsibility and so on.”

“Yes, I follow you.”

“Very well. Now, if you stimulate those damaged
places in your brain again, you run the risk of opening
up the old wounds. I mean, that if you get nerve-sensations
of any kind producing the reactions which
we call horror, fear, and sense of responsibility, they
may go on to make disturbance right along the old
channel, and produce in their turn physical changes
which you will call by the names you were accustomed
to associate with them—dread of German
mines, responsibility for the lives of your men,
strained attention and the inability to distinguish
small sounds through the overpowering noise of
guns.”
219

“I see.”

“This effect would be increased by extraneous circumstances
producing other familiar physical sensations—night,
cold or the rattling of heavy traffic, for
instance.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. The old wounds are nearly healed, but not
quite. The ordinary exercise of your mental faculties
has no bad effect. It is only when you excite the injured
part of your brain.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Yes. You must avoid these occasions. You must
learn to be irresponsible, Lord Peter.”

“My friends say I’m only too irresponsible already.”

“Very likely. A sensitive nervous temperament
often appears so, owing to its mental nimbleness.”

“Oh!”

“Yes. This particular responsibility you were
speaking of still rests upon you?”

“Yes, it does.”

“You have not yet completed the course of action
on which you have decided?”

“Not yet.”

“You feel bound to carry it through?”

“Oh, yes—I can’t back out of it now.”

“No. You are expecting further strain?”

“A certain amount.”

“Do you expect it to last much longer?”

“Very little longer now.”
220

“Ah! Your nerves are not all they should be.”

“No?”

“No. Nothing to be alarmed about, but you must
exercise care while undergoing this strain, and afterwards
you should take a complete rest. How about a
voyage in the Mediterranean or the South Seas or
somewhere?”

“Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

“Meanwhile, to carry you over the immediate
trouble I will give you something to strengthen your
nerves. It will do you no permanent good, you understand,
but it will tide you over the bad time. And I
will give you a prescription.”

“Thank you.”

Sir Julian got up and went into a small surgery
leading out of the consulting-room. Lord Peter
watched him moving about—boiling something and
writing. Presently he returned with a paper and a
hypodermic syringe.

“Here is the prescription. And now, if you will
just roll up your sleeve, I will deal with the necessity
of the immediate moment.”

Lord Peter obediently rolled up his sleeve. Sir
Julian Freke selected a portion of his forearm and
anointed it with iodine.

“What’s that you’re goin’ to stick into me. Bugs?”

The surgeon laughed.

“Not exactly,” he said. He pinched up a portion
of flesh between his finger and thumb. “You’ve had
this kind of thing before, I expect.”
221

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter. He watched the cool
fingers, fascinated, and the steady approach of the
needle. “Yes—I’ve had it before—and, d’you know—I
don’t care frightfully about it.”

He had brought up his right hand, and it closed
over the surgeon’s wrist like a vice.

The silence was like a shock. The blue eyes did not
waver; they burned down steadily upon the heavy
white lids below them. Then these slowly lifted; the
grey eyes met the blue—coldly, steadily—and held
them.

When lovers embrace, there seems no sound in the
world but their own breathing. So the two men
breathed face to face.

“As you like, of course, Lord Peter,” said Sir Julian,
courteously.

“Afraid I’m rather a silly ass,” said Lord Peter,
“but I never could abide these little gadgets. I had
one once that went wrong and gave me a rotten bad
time. They make me a bit nervous.”

“In that case,” replied Sir Julian, “it would certainly
be better not to have the injection. It might
rouse up just those sensations which we are desirous
of avoiding. You will take the prescription, then, and
do what you can to lessen the immediate strain as far
as possible.”

“Oh, yes—I’ll take it easy, thanks,” said Lord
Peter. He rolled his sleeve down neatly. “I’m much
obliged to you. If I have any further trouble I’ll look
in again.”

“Do—do—” said Sir Julian, cheerfully. “Only
222
make an appointment another time. I’m rather
rushed these days. I hope your mother is quite well.
I saw her the other day at that Battersea inquest. You
should have been there. It would have interested
you.”
223

CHAPTER XII

The vile, raw fog tore your throat and ravaged
your eyes. You could not see your feet. You
stumbled in your walk over poor men’s graves.

The feel of Parker’s old trench-coat beneath your
fingers was comforting. You had felt it in worse
places. You clung on now for fear you should get
separated. The dim people moving in front of you
were like Brocken spectres.

“Take care, gentlemen,” said a toneless voice out
of the yellow darkness, “there’s an open grave just
hereabouts.”

You bore away to the right, and floundered in a
mass of freshly turned clay.

“Hold up, old man,” said Parker.

“Where is Lady Levy?”

“In the mortuary; the Duchess of Denver is with
her. Your mother is wonderful, Peter.”

“Isn’t she?” said Lord Peter.

A dim blue light carried by somebody ahead wavered
and stood still.

“Here you are,” said a voice.

Two Dantesque shapes with pitchforks loomed
up.

“Have you finished?” asked somebody.

“Nearly done, sir.” The demons fell to work again
with the pitchforks—no, spades.
224

Somebody sneezed. Parker located the sneezer and
introduced him.

“Mr. Levett represents the Home Secretary. Lord
Peter Wimsey. We are sorry to drag you out on such
a day, Mr. Levett.”

“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Mr. Levett,
hoarsely. He was muffled to the eyes.

The sound of the spades for many minutes. An
iron noise of tools thrown down. Demons stooping
and straining.

A black-bearded spectre at your elbow. Introduced.
The Master of the Workhouse.

“A very painful matter, Lord Peter. You will forgive
me for hoping you and Mr. Parker may be mistaken.”

“I should like to be able to hope so too.”

Something heaving, straining, coming up out of
the ground.

“Steady, men. This way. Can you see? Be careful
of the graves—they lie pretty thick hereabouts. Are
you ready?”

“Right you are, sir. You go on with the lantern.
We can follow you.”

Lumbering footsteps. Catch hold of Parker’s
trench-coat again. “That you, old man? Oh, I beg
your pardon, Mr. Levett—thought you were
Parker.”

“Hullo, Wimsey—here you are.”

More graves. A headstone shouldered crookedly
aslant. A trip and jerk over the edge of the rough
grass. The squeal of gravel under your feet.
225

“This way, gentlemen, mind the step.”

The mortuary. Raw red brick and sizzling gas-jets.
Two women in black, and Dr. Grimbold. The coffin
laid on the table with a heavy thump.

“’Ave you got that there screw-driver, Bill?
Thank ’ee. Be keerful wi’ the chisel now. Not much
substance to these ’ere boards, sir.”

Several long creaks. A sob. The Duchess’s voice,
kind but peremptory.

“Hush, Christine. You mustn’t cry.”

A mutter of voices. The lurching departure of the
Dante demons—good, decent demons in corduroy.

Dr. Grimbold’s voice—cool and detached as if in
the consulting room.

“Now—have you got that lamp, Mr. Wingate?
Thank you. Yes, here on the table, please. Be careful
not to catch your elbow in the flex, Mr. Levett. It
would be better, I think, if you came on this side.
Yes—yes—thank you. That’s excellent.”

The sudden brilliant circle of an electric lamp over
the table. Dr. Grimbold’s beard and spectacles. Mr.
Levett blowing his nose. Parker bending close. The
Master of the Workhouse peering over him. The rest
of the room in the enhanced dimness of the gas-jets
and the fog.

A low murmur of voices. All heads bent over the
work.

Dr. Grimbold again—beyond the circle of the
lamplight.

“We don’t want to distress you unnecessarily, Lady
Levy. If you will just tell us what to look for—the—?
226
Yes, yes, certainly—and—yes—stopped with gold?
Yes—the lower jaw, the last but one on the right?
Yes—no teeth missing—no—yes? What kind of a
mole? Yes—just over the left breast? Oh, I beg your
pardon, just under—yes—appendicitis? Yes—a long
one—yes—in the middle? Yes, I quite understand—a
scar on the arm? Yes, I don’t know if we shall be
able to find that—yes—any little constitutional
weakness that might—? Oh, yes—arthritis—yes—thank
you, Lady Levy—that’s very clear. Don’t
come unless I ask you to. Now, Wingate.”

A pause. A murmur. “Pulled out? After death,
you think—well, so do I. Where is Dr. Colegrove?
You attended this man in the workhouse? Yes. Do
you recollect—? No? You’re quite certain about
that? Yes—we mustn’t make a mistake, you know.
Yes, but there are reasons why Sir Julian can’t be
present; I’m asking you, Dr. Colegrove. Well, you’re
certain—that’s all I want to know. Just bring the
light closer, Mr. Wingate, if you please. These miserable
shells let the damp in so quickly. Ah! what
do you make of this? Yes—yes—well, that’s rather
unmistakable, isn’t it? Who did the head? Oh, Freke—of
course. I was going to say they did good work
at St. Luke’s. Beautiful, isn’t it, Dr. Colegrove? A
wonderful surgeon—I saw him when he was at Guy’s.
Oh, no, gave it up years ago. Nothing like keeping
your hand in. Ah—yes, undoubtedly that’s it. Have
you a towel handy, sir? Thank you. Over the head,
if you please—I think we might have another here.
Now, Lady Levy—I am going to ask you to look at
227
a scar, and see if you recognise it. I’m sure you are
going to help us by being very firm. Take your time—you
won’t see anything more than you absolutely
must.”

“Lucy, don’t leave me.”

“No, dear.”

A space cleared at the table. The lamplight on the
Duchess’s white hair.

“Oh, yes—oh, yes! No, no—I couldn’t be mistaken.
There’s that funny little kink in it. I’ve seen
it hundreds of times. Oh, Lucy—Reuben!”

“Only a moment more, Lady Levy. The mole—”

“I—I think so—oh, yes, that is the very place.”

“Yes. And the scar—was it three-cornered, just
above the elbow?”

“Yes, oh, yes.”

“Is this it?”

“Yes—yes—”

“I must ask you definitely, Lady Levy. Do you,
from these three marks identify the body as that of
your husband?”

“Oh! I must, mustn’t I? Nobody else could have
them just the same in just those places? It is my
husband. It is Reuben. Oh—”

“Thank you, Lady Levy. You have been very brave
and very helpful.”

“But—I don’t understand yet. How did he come
here? Who did this dreadful thing?”

“Hush, dear,” said the Duchess; “the man is going
to be punished.”
228

“Oh, but—how cruel! Poor Reuben! Who could
have wanted to hurt him? Can I see his face?”

“No, dear,” said the Duchess. “That isn’t possible.
Come away—you mustn’t distress the doctors and
people.”

“No—no—they’ve all been so kind. Oh, Lucy!”

“We’ll go home, dear. You don’t want us any
more, Dr. Grimbold?”

“No, Duchess, thank you. We are very grateful to
you and to Lady Levy for coming.”

There was a pause, while the two women went out,
Parker, collected and helpful, escorting them to their
waiting car. Then Dr. Grimbold again:

“I think Lord Peter Wimsey ought to see—the correctness
of his deductions—Lord Peter—very painful—you
may wish to see—yes, I was uneasy at the
inquest—yes—Lady Levy—remarkably clear evidence—yes—most
shocking case—ah, here’s Mr.
Parker—you and Lord Peter Wimsey entirely justified—do
I really understand—? Really? I can hardly
believe it—so distinguished a man—as you say, when
a great brain turns to crime—yes—look here! Marvellous
work—marvellous—somewhat obscured by
this time, of course—but the most beautiful sections—here,
you see, the left hemisphere—and here—through
the corpus striatum—here again—the very
track of the damage done by the blow—wonderful—guessed
it—saw the effect of the blow as he struck
it, you know—ah, I should like to see his brain, Mr.
Parker—and to think that—heavens, Lord Peter, you
don’t know what a blow you have struck at the whole
229
profession—the whole civilized world! Oh, my dear
sir! Can you ask me? My lips are sealed of course—all
our lips are sealed.”

The way back through the burial ground. Fog
again, and the squeal of wet gravel.

“Are your men ready, Charles?”

“They have gone. I sent them off when I saw Lady
Levy to the car.”

“Who is with them?”

“Sugg.”

“Sugg?”

“Yes—poor devil. They’ve had him up on the mat
at headquarters for bungling the case. All that evidence
of Thipps’s about the night club was corroborated,
you know. That girl he gave the gin-and-bitters
to was caught, and came and identified him,
and they decided their case wasn’t good enough, and
let Thipps and the Horrocks girl go. Then they told
Sugg he had overstepped his duty and ought to have
been more careful. So he ought, but he can’t help
being a fool. I was sorry for him. It may do him
some good to be in at the death. After all, Peter, you
and I had special advantages.”

“Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. Whoever goes won’t
get there in time. Sugg’s as good as another.”

But Sugg—an experience rare in his career—was
in time.

Parker and Lord Peter were at 110 Piccadilly.
Lord Peter was playing Bach and Parker was reading
Origen when Sugg was announced.
230

“We’ve got our man, sir,” said he.

“Good God!” said Peter. “Alive?”

“We were just in time, my lord. We rang the bell
and marched straight up past his man to the library.
He was sitting there doing some writing. When we
came in, he made a grab for his hypodermic, but we
were too quick for him, my lord. We didn’t mean to
let him slip through our hands, having got so far. We
searched him thoroughly and marched him off.”

“He is actually in gaol, then?”

“Oh, yes—safe enough—with two warders to see
he doesn’t make away with himself.”

“You surprise me, Inspector. Have a drink.”

“Thank you, my lord. I may say that I’m very
grateful to you—this case was turning out a pretty
bad egg for me. If I was rude to your lordship—”

“Oh, it’s all right, Inspector,” said Lord Peter,
hastily. “I don’t see how you could possibly have
worked it out. I had the good luck to know something
about it from other sources.”

“That’s what Freke says.” Already the great surgeon
was a common criminal in the inspector’s eyes—a
mere surname. “He was writing a full confession
when we got hold of him, addressed to your lordship.
The police will have to have it, of course, but
seeing it’s written for you, I brought it along for you
to see first. Here it is.”

He handed Lord Peter a bulky document.

“Thanks,” said Peter. “Like to hear it, Charles?”

“Rather.”

Accordingly Lord Peter read it aloud.
231

CHAPTER XIII

Dear Lord Peter—When I was a young man I
used to play chess with an old friend of my father’s.
He was a very bad, and a very slow, player, and he
could never see when a checkmate was inevitable,
but insisted on playing every move out. I never had
any patience with that kind of attitude, and I will
freely admit now that the game is yours. I must
either stay at home and be hanged or escape abroad
and live in an idle and insecure obscurity. I prefer to
acknowledge defeat.

If you have read my book on “Criminal Lunacy,”
you will remember that I wrote: “In the majority
of cases, the criminal betrays himself by some abnormality
attendant upon this pathological condition of
the nervous tissues. His mental instability shows itself
in various forms: an overweening vanity, leading him
to brag of his achievement; a disproportionate sense
of the importance of the offence, resulting from the
hallucination of religion, and driving him to confession;
egomania, producing the sense of horror or conviction
of sin, and driving him to headlong flight
without covering his tracks; a reckless confidence,
resulting in the neglect of the most ordinary precautions,
as in the case of Henry Wainwright, who
left a boy in charge of the murdered woman’s remains
while he went to call a cab, or on the other
232
hand, a nervous distrust of apperceptions in the past,
causing him to revisit the scene of the crime to assure
himself that all traces have been as safely removed
as his own judgment knows them to be. I will not
hesitate to assert that a perfectly sane man, not intimidated
by religious or other delusions, could always
render himself perfectly secure from detection, provided,
that is, that the crime were sufficiently premeditated
and that he were not pressed for time or
thrown out in his calculations by purely fortuitous
coincidence.

You know as well as I do, how far I have made
this assertion good in practice. The two accidents
which betrayed me, I could not by any possibility
have foreseen. The first was the chance recognition of
Levy by the girl in the Battersea Park Road, which
suggested a connection between the two problems.
The second was that Thipps should have arranged to
go down to Denver on the Tuesday morning, thus
enabling your mother to get word of the matter
through to you before the body was removed by the
police and to suggest a motive for the murder out of
what she knew of my previous personal history. If
I had been able to destroy these two accidentally
forged links of circumstance, I will venture to say
that you would never have so much as suspected me,
still less obtained sufficient evidence to convict.

Of all human emotions, except perhaps those of
hunger and fear, the sexual appetite produces the
most violent, and, under some circumstances, the
most persistent reactions; I think, however, I am
233
right in saying that at the time when I wrote my
book, my original sensual impulse to kill Sir Reuben
Levy had already become profoundly modified by
my habits of thought. To the animal lust to slay
and the primitive human desire for revenge, there was
added the rational intention of substantiating my
own theories for the satisfaction of myself and the
world. If all had turned out as I had planned, I
should have deposited a sealed account of my experiment
with the Bank of England, instructing my executors
to publish it after my death. Now that accident
has spoiled the completeness of my demonstration,
I entrust the account to you, whom it cannot
fail to interest, with the request that you will make
it known among scientific men, in justice to my professional
reputation.

The really essential factors of success in any undertaking
are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the
man who can make the first can make the second.
During my early career, though I was fairly well-off,
I had not absolute command of circumstance.
Accordingly I devoted myself to my profession, and
contented myself with keeping up a friendly connection
with Reuben Levy and his family. This enabled
me to remain in touch with his fortunes and
interests, so that, when the moment for action should
arrive, I might know what weapons to use.

Meanwhile, I carefully studied criminology in fiction
and fact—my work on “Criminal Lunacy” was
a side-product of this activity—and saw how, in
every murder, the real crux of the problem was the
234
disposal of the body. As a doctor, the means of death
were always ready to my hand, and I was not likely
to make any error in that connection. Nor was I
likely to betray myself on account of any illusory
sense of wrong-doing. The sole difficulty would be
that of destroying all connection between my personality
and that of the corpse. You will remember
that Michael Finsbury, in Stevenson’s entertaining
romance, observes: “What hangs people is the unfortunate
circumstance of guilt.” It became clear
to me that the mere leaving about of a superfluous
corpse could convict nobody, provided that nobody
was guilty in connection with that particular corpse.
Thus the idea of substituting the one body for the
other was early arrived at, though it was not till I
obtained the practical direction of St. Luke’s Hospital
that I found myself perfectly unfettered in the
choice and handling of dead bodies. From this period
on, I kept a careful watch on all the material brought
in for dissection.

My opportunity did not present itself until the
week before Sir Reuben’s disappearance, when the
medical officer at the Chelsea workhouse sent word
to me that an unknown vagrant had been injured
that morning by the fall of a piece of scaffolding,
and was exhibiting some very interesting nervous and
cerebral reactions. I went round and saw the case, and
was immediately struck by the man’s strong superficial
resemblance to Sir Reuben. He had been heavily
struck on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth
and fifth cervical vertebrae and heavily bruising the
235
spinal cord. It seemed highly unlikely that he could
ever recover, either mentally or physically, and in any
case there appeared to me to be no object in indefinitely
prolonging so unprofitable an existence. He
had obviously been able to support life until recently,
as he was fairly well nourished, but the state of his
feet and clothing showed that he was unemployed,
and under present conditions he was likely to remain
so. I decided that he would suit my purpose very
well, and immediately put in train certain transactions
in the City which I had already sketched out in
my own mind. In the meantime, the reactions mentioned
by the workhouse doctor were interesting, and
I made careful studies of them, and arranged for the
delivery of the body to the hospital when I should
have completed my preparations.

On the Thursday and Friday of that week I made
private arrangements with various brokers to buy the
stock of certain Peruvian Oil-fields, which had gone
down almost to waste-paper. This part of my experiment
did not cost me very much, but I contrived
to arouse considerable curiosity, and even a mild
excitement. At this point I was of course careful not
to let my name appear. The incidence of Saturday
and Sunday gave me some anxiety lest my man should
after all die before I was ready for him, but by the
use of saline injections I contrived to keep him alive
and, late on Sunday night, he even manifested disquieting
symptoms of at any rate a partial recovery.

On Monday morning the market in Peruvians
opened briskly. Rumours had evidently got about
236
that somebody knew something, and this day I was
not the only buyer in the market. I bought a couple
of hundred more shares in my own name, and left
the matter to take care of itself. At lunch time I
made my arrangements to run into Levy accidentally
at the corner of the Mansion House. He expressed
(as I expected) his surprise at seeing me in that part
of London. I simulated some embarrassment and suggested
that we should lunch together. I dragged him
to a place a bit off the usual beat, and there ordered
a good wine and drank of it as much as he might suppose
sufficient to induce a confidential mood. I asked
him how things were going on ’Change. He said, “Oh,
all right,” but appeared a little doubtful, and asked
me whether I did anything in that way. I said I had
a little flutter occasionally, and that, as a matter of
fact, I’d been put on to rather a good thing. I glanced
round apprehensively at this point, and shifted my
chair nearer to his.

“I suppose you don’t know anything about Peruvian
Oil, do you?” he said.

I started and looked round again, and leaning
across to him, said, dropping my voice:

“Well, I do, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want
it to get about. I stand to make a good bit on it.”

“But I thought the thing was hollow,” he said;
“it hasn’t paid a dividend for umpteen years.”

“No,” I said, “it hasn’t, but it’s going to. I’ve got
inside information.” He looked a bit unconvinced,
and I emptied off my glass, and edged right up to his
ear.
237

“Look here,” I said, “I’m not giving this away to
everyone, but I don’t mind doing you and Christine a
good turn. You know, I’ve always kept a soft place
in my heart for her, ever since the old days. You got
in ahead of me that time, and now it’s up to me to
heap coals of fire on you both.”

I was a little excited by this time, and he thought
I was drunk.

“It’s very kind of you, old man,” he said, “but
I’m a cautious bird, you know, always was. I’d like
a bit of proof.”

And he shrugged up his shoulders and looked like
a pawnbroker.

“I’ll give it to you,” I said, “but it isn’t safe here.
Come round to my place tonight after dinner, and
I’ll show you the report.”

“How d’you get hold of it?” said he.

“I’ll tell you tonight,” said I. “Come round after
dinner—any time after nine, say.”

“To Harley Street?” he asked, and I saw that he
meant coming.

“No,” I said, “to Battersea—Prince of Wales Road;
I’ve got some work to do at the hospital. And look
here,” I said, “don’t you let on to a soul that you’re
coming. I bought a couple of hundred shares today,
in my own name, and people are sure to get wind of
it. If we’re known to be about together, someone’ll
twig something. In fact, it’s anything but safe talking
about it in this place.”

“All right,” he said, “I won’t say a word to anybody.
238
I’ll turn up about nine o’clock. You’re sure
it’s a sound thing?”

“It can’t go wrong,” I assured him. And I meant
it.

We parted after that, and I went round to the
workhouse. My man had died at about eleven o’clock.
I had seen him just after breakfast, and was not surprised.
I completed the usual formalities with the
workhouse authorities, and arranged for his delivery
at the hospital at about seven o’clock.

In the afternoon, as it was not one of my days to
be in Harley Street, I looked up an old friend who
lives close to Hyde Park, and found that he was just
off to Brighton on some business or other. I had tea
with him, and saw him off by the 5.35 from Victoria.
On issuing from the barrier it occurred to me to purchase
an evening paper, and I thoughtlessly turned
my steps to the bookstall. The usual crowds were
rushing to catch suburban trains home, and on moving
away I found myself involved in a contrary
stream of travellers coming up out of the Underground,
or bolting from all sides for the 5.45 to Battersea
Park and Wandsworth Common. I disengaged
myself after some buffeting and went home in a taxi;
and it was not till I was safely seated there that I
discovered somebody’s gold-rimmed pince-nez involved
in the astrakhan collar of my overcoat. The
time from 6.15 to seven I spent concocting something
to look like a bogus report for Sir Reuben.

At seven I went through to the hospital, and found
the workhouse van just delivering my subject at the
239
side door. I had him taken straight up to the theatre,
and told the attendant, William Watts, that I intended
to work there that night. I told him I would
prepare the body myself—the injection of a preservative
would have been a most regrettable complication.
I sent him about his business, and then
went home and had dinner. I told my man that I
should be working in the hospital that evening, and
that he could go to bed at 10.30 as usual, as I could
not tell whether I should be late or not. He is used
to my erratic ways. I only keep two servants in the
Battersea house—the man-servant and his wife, who
cooks for me. The rougher domestic work is done by
a charwoman, who sleeps out. The servants’ bedroom
is at the top of the house, overlooking Prince of Wales
Road.

As soon as I had dined I established myself in the
hall with some papers. My man had cleared dinner
by a quarter past eight, and I told him to give me
the syphon and tantalus; and sent him downstairs.
Levy rang the bell at twenty minutes past nine, and
I opened the door to him myself. My man appeared
at the other end of the hall, but I called to him that
it was all right, and he went away. Levy wore an
overcoat with evening dress and carried an umbrella.
“Why, how wet you are!” I said. “How did you
come?” “By ’bus,” he said, “and the fool of a conductor
forgot to put me down at the end of the
road. It’s pouring cats and dogs and pitch-dark—I
couldn’t see where I was.” I was glad he hadn’t taken
a taxi, but I had rather reckoned on his not doing so.
240
“Your little economies will be the death of you one
of these days,” I said. I was right there, but I hadn’t
reckoned on their being the death of me as well. I
say again, I could not have foreseen it.

I sat him down by the fire, and gave him a whisky.
He was in high spirits about some deal in Argentines
he was bringing off the next day. We talked money
for about a quarter of an hour and then he said:

“Well, how about this Peruvian mare’s-nest of
yours?”

“It’s no mare’s-nest,” I said; “come and have a
look at it.”

I took him upstairs into the library, and switched
on the centre light and the reading lamp on the writing
table. I gave him a chair at the table with his back
to the fire, and fetched the papers I had been faking,
out of the safe. He took them, and began to read
them, poking over them in his short-sighted way,
while I mended the fire. As soon as I saw his head in
a favourable position I struck him heavily with the
poker, just over the fourth cervical. It was delicate
work calculating the exact force necessary to kill
him without breaking the skin, but my professional
experience was useful to me. He gave one loud gasp,
and tumbled forward on to the table quite noiselessly.
I put the poker back, and examined him. His
neck was broken, and he was quite dead. I carried
him into my bedroom and undressed him. It was
about ten minutes to ten when I had finished. I put
him away under my bed, which had been turned
down for the night, and cleared up the papers in the
241
library. Then I went downstairs, took Levy’s umbrella,
and let myself out at the hall door, shouting
“Good-night” loudly enough to be heard in the basement
if the servants should be listening. I walked
briskly away down the street, went in by the hospital
side door, and returned to the house noiselessly by
way of the private passage. It would have been awkward
if anybody had seen me then, but I leaned over
the back stairs and heard the cook and her husband
still talking in the kitchen. I slipped back into the
hall, replaced the umbrella in the stand, cleared up
my papers there, went up into the library and rang
the bell. When the man appeared I told him to lock
up everything except the private door to the hospital.
I waited in the library until he had done so, and about
10.30 I heard both servants go up to bed. I waited
a quarter of an hour longer and then went through
to the dissecting-room. I wheeled one of the stretcher
tables through the passage to the house door, and
then went to fetch Levy. It was a nuisance having
to get him downstairs, but I had not liked to make
away with him in any of the ground-floor rooms, in
case my servant should take a fancy to poke his head
in during the few minutes that I was out of the
house, or while locking up. Besides, that was a flea-bite
to what I should have to do later. I put Levy on
the table, wheeled him across to the hospital and substituted
him for my interesting pauper. I was sorry
to have to abandon the idea of getting a look at the
latter’s brain, but I could not afford to incur suspicion.
It was still rather early, so I knocked down a
242
few minutes getting Levy ready for dissection. Then
I put my pauper on the table and trundled him over
to the house. It was now five past eleven, and I
thought I might conclude that the servants were in
bed. I carried the body into my bedroom. He was
rather heavy, but less so than Levy, and my Alpine
experience had taught me how to handle bodies. It is
as much a matter of knack as of strength, and I am,
in any case, a powerful man for my height. I put the
body into the bed—not that I expected anyone to
look in during my absence, but if they should they
might just as well see me apparently asleep in bed.
I drew the clothes a little over his head, stripped, and
put on Levy’s clothes, which were fortunately a little
big for me everywhere, not forgetting to take his
spectacles, watch and other oddments. At a little before
half-past eleven I was in the road looking for a
cab. People were just beginning to come home from
the theatre, and I easily secured one at the corner of
Prince of Wales Road. I told the man to drive me to
Hyde Park Corner. There I got out, tipped him well,
and asked him to pick me up again at the same place
in an hour’s time. He assented with an understanding
grin, and I walked on up Park Lane. I had my own
clothes with me in a suitcase, and carried my own
overcoat and Levy’s umbrella. When I got to No. 9A
there were lights in some of the top windows. I was
very nearly too early, owing to the old man’s having
sent the servants to the theatre. I waited about for a
few minutes, and heard it strike the quarter past midnight.
243
The lights were extinguished shortly after, and
I let myself in with Levy’s key.

It had been my original intention, when I thought
over this plan of murder, to let Levy disappear from
the study or the dining-room, leaving only a heap of
clothes on the hearth-rug. The accident of my having
been able to secure Lady Levy’s absence from London,
however, made possible a solution more misleading,
though less pleasantly fantastic. I turned on
the hall light, hung up Levy’s wet overcoat and
placed his umbrella in the stand. I walked up noisily
and heavily to the bedroom and turned off the light
by the duplicate switch on the landing. I knew the
house well enough, of course. There was no chance
of my running into the man-servant. Old Levy was a
simple old man, who liked doing things for himself.
He gave his valet little work, and never required any
attendance at night. In the bedroom I took off Levy’s
gloves and put on a surgical pair, so as to leave no
tell-tale finger-prints. As I wished to convey the impression
that Levy had gone to bed in the usual way,
I simply went to bed. The surest and simplest method
of making a thing appear to have been done is to do
it. A bed that has been rumpled about with one’s
hands, for instance, never looks like a bed that has
been slept in. I dared not use Levy’s brush, of course,
as my hair is not of his colour, but I did everything
else. I supposed that a thoughtful old man like Levy
would put his boots handy for his valet, and I ought
to have deduced that he would fold up his clothes.
That was a mistake, but not an important one. Remembering
244
that well-thought-out little work of Mr.
Bentley’s, I had examined Levy’s mouth for false
teeth, but he had none. I did not forget, however, to
wet his tooth-brush.

At one o’clock I got up and dressed in my own
clothes by the light of my own pocket torch. I dared
not turn on the bedroom lights, as there were light
blinds to the windows. I put on my own boots and
an old pair of goloshes outside the door. There was
a thick Turkey carpet on the stairs and hall-floor,
and I was not afraid of leaving marks. I hesitated
whether to chance the banging of the front door,
but decided it would be safer to take the latchkey.
(It is now in the Thames. I dropped it over Battersea
Bridge the next day.) I slipped quietly down, and
listened for a few minutes with my ear to the letter-box.
I heard a constable tramp past. As soon as his
steps had died away in the distance I stepped out
and pulled the door gingerly to. It closed almost
soundlessly, and I walked away to pick up my cab.
I had an overcoat of much the same pattern as Levy’s,
and had taken the precaution to pack an opera hat
in my suitcase. I hoped the man would not notice
that I had no umbrella this time. Fortunately the rain
had diminished for the moment to a sort of drizzle,
and if he noticed anything he made no observation.
I told him to stop at 50 Overstrand Mansions, and I
paid him off there, and stood under the porch till he
had driven away. Then I hurried round to my own
side door and let myself in. It was about a quarter to
245
two, and the harder part of my task still lay before
me.

My first step was so to alter the appearance of my
subject as to eliminate any immediate suggestion
either of Levy or of the workhouse vagrant. A fairly
superficial alteration was all I considered necessary,
since there was not likely to be any hue-and-cry after
the pauper. He was fairly accounted for, and his
deputy was at hand to represent him. Nor, if Levy
was after all traced to my house, would it be difficult
to show that the body in evidence was, as a matter
of fact, not his. A clean shave and a little hair-oiling
and manicuring seemed sufficient to suggest a distinct
personality for my silent accomplice. His hands had
been well washed in hospital, and though calloused,
were not grimy. I was not able to do the work as
thoroughly as I should have liked, because time was
getting on. I was not sure how long it would take
me to dispose of him, and moreover, I feared the
onset of rigor mortis, which would make my task
more difficult. When I had him barbered to my satisfaction,
I fetched a strong sheet and a couple of wide
roller bandages, and fastened him up carefully, padding
him with cotton wool wherever the bandages
might chafe or leave a bruise.

Now came the really ticklish part of the business.
I had already decided in my own mind that the only
way of conveying him from the house was by the
roof. To go through the garden at the back in this
soft wet weather was to leave a ruinous trail behind
us. To carry a dead man down a suburban street in
246
the middle of the night seemed outside the range of
practical politics. On the roof, on the other hand,
the rain, which would have betrayed me on the
ground, would stand my friend.

To reach the roof, it was necessary to carry my
burden to the top of the house, past my servants’
room, and hoist him out through the trap-door in the
box-room roof. Had it merely been a question of
going quietly up there myself, I should have had no
fear of waking the servants, but to do so burdened by
a heavy body was more difficult. It would be possible,
provided that the man and his wife were soundly
asleep, but if not, the lumbering tread on the narrow
stair and the noise of opening the trap-door would be
only too plainly audible. I tiptoed delicately up the
stair and listened at their door. To my disgust I heard
the man give a grunt and mutter something as he
moved in his bed.

I looked at my watch. My preparations had taken
nearly an hour, first and last, and I dared not be too
late on the roof. I determined to take a bold step and,
as it were, bluff out an alibi. I went without precaution
against noise into the bathroom, turned on the
hot and cold water taps to the full and pulled out
the plug.

My household has often had occasion to complain
of my habit of using the bath at irregular night
hours. Not only does the rush of water into the cistern
disturb any sleepers on the Prince of Wales Road
side of the house, but my cistern is afflicted with
peculiarly loud gurglings and thumpings, while frequently
247
the pipes emit a loud groaning sound. To
my delight, on this particular occasion, the cistern
was in excellent form, honking, whistling and booming
like a railway terminus. I gave the noise five
minutes’ start, and when I calculated that the sleepers
would have finished cursing me and put their heads
under the clothes to shut out the din, I reduced the
flow of water to a small stream and left the bathroom,
taking good care to leave the light burning and lock
the door after me. Then I picked up my pauper and
carried him upstairs as lightly as possible.