Unnatural death
“You can have the bottle,” said Wimsey. “May we ne’er lack a friend or a
bottle to give him, as Dick Swiveller says. But I earnestly beg that
before you caution your respectable young railway clerk that anything he
says may be taken down and used against him, you will cast your eye, and
your nose, upon this ham sandwich.”
“What’s wrong with it?” inquired Parker.
“Nothing. It appears to be in astonishingly good preservation, thanks to
this admirable oak-tree. The stalwart oak—for so many centuries
Britain’s bulwark against the invader! Heart of oak are our ships—not
hearts, by the way, as it is usually misquoted. But I am puzzled by the
incongruity between the sandwich and the rest of the outfit.”
“It’s an ordinary ham sandwich, isn’t it?”
“Oh, gods of the wine-flask and the board, how long? how long?—it is a
ham sandwich, Goth, but not an ordinary one. Never did it see Lyons’
kitchen, or the counter of the multiple store or the delicatessen shop
in the back street. The pig that was sacrificed to make this dainty
titbit fattened in no dull style, never knew the daily ration of
pig-wash or the not unmixed rapture of the domestic garbage-pail.
Observe the hard texture, the deep brownish tint of the lean; the rich
fat, yellow as a Chinaman’s cheek; the dark spot where the black treacle
cure has soaked in, to make a dish fit to lure Zeus from Olympus. And
tell me, man of no discrimination and worthy to be fed on boiled cod all
the year round, tell me how it comes that your little waitress and her
railway clerk come down to Epping Forest to regale themselves on
sandwiches made from coal-black, treacle-cured Bradenham ham, which long
ago ran as a young wild boar about the woodlands, till death translated
it to an incorruptible and more glorious body? I may add that it costs
about 3s. a pound uncooked—an argument which you will allow to be
weighty.”
“That’s odd, certainly,” said Parker. “I imagine that only rich people—”
“Only rich people or people who understand eating as a fine art,” said
Wimsey. “The two classes are by no means identical, though they
occasionally overlap.”
“It may be very important,” said Parker, wrapping the exhibits up
carefully. “We’d better go along now and see the body.”
The examination was not a very pleasant matter, for the weather had been
damp and warm and there had certainly been weasels. In fact, after a
brief glance, Wimsey left the two policemen to carry on alone, and
devoted his attention to the dead girl’s handbag. He glanced through the
letter from Evelyn Gotobed—(now Evelyn Cropper)——and noted down the
Canadian address. He turned the cutting of his own advertisement out of
an inner compartment, and remained for some time in consideration of the
£5 note which lay, folded up, side by side with a 10_s._ Treasury note,
7_s._, 8_d._ in silver and copper, a latch-key and a powder compacte.
“You’re having this note traced, Walmisley, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, my lord, certainly.”
“And the latch-key, I imagine, belongs to the girl’s lodgings.”
“No doubt it does. We have asked her landlady to come and identify the
body. Not that there’s any doubt about it, but just as a matter of
routine. She may give us some help. Ah!”—the Superintendent peered out
of the mortuary door—“I think this must be the lady.”
The stout and motherly woman who emerged from a taxi in charge of a
youthful policeman identified the body without difficulty, and amid many
sobs, as that of Bertha Gotobed. “Such a nice young lady,” she mourned.
“What a terrible thing, oh, dear! who would go to do a thing like that?
I’ve been in such a state of worriment ever since she didn’t come home
last Wednesday. I’m sure many’s the time I’ve said to myself I wished
I’d had my tongue cut out before I ever showed her that wicked
advertisement. Ah, I see you’ve got it there, sir. A dreadful thing it
is that people should be luring young girls away with stories about
something to their advantage. A sinful old devil—calling himself a
lawyer, too! When she didn’t come back and didn’t come back I wrote to
the wretch, telling him I was on his track and was coming round to have
the law on him as sure as my name’s Dorcas Gulliver. He wouldn’t have
got round me—not that I’d be the bird he was looking for, being
sixty-one come Mid-Summer Day—and so I told him.”
Lord Peter’s gravity was somewhat upset by this diatribe against the
highly respectable Mr. Murbles of Staple Inn, whose own version of Mrs.
Gulliver’s communication had been decently expurgated. “How shocked the
old boy must have been,” he murmured to Parker. “I’m for it next time I
see him.”
Mrs. Gulliver’s voice moaned on and on.
“Such respectable girls, both of them, and Miss Evelyn married to that
nice young man from Canada. Deary me, it will be a terrible upset for
her. And there’s poor John Ironsides, was to have married Miss Bertha,
the poor lamb, this very Whitsuntide as ever is. A very steady,
respectable man—a clurk on the Southern, which he always used to say,
joking like, ‘Slow but safe, like the Southern—that’s me, Mrs. G.’ T’ch,
t’ch—who’d a’ believed it? And it’s not as if she was one of the flighty
sort. I give her a latch-key gladly, for she’d sometimes be on late
duty, but never any staying out after her time. That’s why it worried me
so, her not coming back. There’s many nowadays as would wash one’s hands
and glad to be rid of them, knowing what they might be up to. No. When
the time passed and she didn’t come back, I said, Mark my words, I said,
she’s bin kidnapped, I said, by that Murbles.”
“Had she been long with you, Mrs. Gulliver?” asked Parker.
“Not above a fifteen month or so, she hadn’t, but bless you, I don’t
have to know a young lady fifteen days to know if she’s a good girl or
not. You gets to know by the look of ’em almost, when you’ve ’ad my
experience.”
“Did she and her sister come to you together?”
“They did. They come to me when they was lookin’ for work in London. And
they could a’ fallen into a deal worse hands I can tell you, two young
things from the country, and them that fresh and pretty looking.”
“They were uncommonly lucky, I’m sure, Mrs. Gulliver,” said Lord Peter,
“and they must have found it a great comfort to be able to confide in
you and get your good advice.”
“Well, I think they did,” said Mrs. Gulliver, “not that young people
nowadays seems to want much guidance from them as is older. Train up a
child and away she go, as the Good Book says. But Miss Evelyn, that’s
now Mrs. Cropper—she’d had this London idea put into her head, and up
they comes with the idea of bein’ made ladies of, havin’ only been in
service before, though what’s the difference between serving in one of
them tea-shops at the beck of all the nasty tagrag and bobtail and
serving in a lady’s home, I _don’t_ see, except that you works harder
and don’t get your meals so comfortable. Still, Miss Evelyn, she was
always the go-ahead one of the two, and she did very well for herself, I
will say, meetin’ Mr. Cropper as used to take his breakfast regular at
the Corner House every morning and took a liking to the girl in the most
honourable way.”
“That was very fortunate. Have you any idea what gave them the notion of
coming to town?”
“Well, now, sir, it’s funny you should ask that, because it was a thing
I never could understand. The lady as they used to be in service with,
down in the country, she put it into Miss Evelyn’s head. Now, sir,
wouldn’t you think that with good service that ’ard to come by, she’d
have done all she could to keep them with her? But no! There was a bit
of trouble one day, it seems, over Bertha—this poor girl here, poor
lamb—it do break one’s ’eart to see her like that, don’t it, sir?—over
Bertha ’avin’ broke an old teapot—a very valuable one by all accounts,
and the lady told ’er she couldn’t put up with ’avin’ her things broke
no more. So she says: ‘You’ll ’ave to go,’ she says, ‘but,’ she says,
‘I’ll give you a very good character and you’ll soon get a good place.
And I expect Evelyn’ll want to go with you,’ she says, ‘so I’ll have to
find someone else to do for me,’ she says. ‘But,’ she says, ‘why not go
to London? You’ll do better there and have a much more interesting life
than what you would at home,’ she says. And the end of it was, she
filled ’em up so with stories of how fine a place London was and how
grand situations was to be had for the asking, that they was mad to go,
and she give them a present of money and behaved very handsome, take it
all round.”
“H’m,” said Wimsey, “she seems to have been very particular about her
teapot. Was Bertha a great crockery-breaker?”
“Well, sir, she never broke nothing of mine. But this Miss
Whittaker—that was the name—she was one of these opinionated ladies, as
will ’ave their own way in everythink. A fine temper she ’ad, or so poor
Bertha said, though Miss Evelyn—her as is now Mrs. Cropper—_she_ always
’ad an idea as there was somethink at the back of it. Miss Evelyn was
always the sharp one, as you might say. But there, sir, we all ’as our
peculiarities, don’t we? It’s my own belief as the lady had somebody of
her own choice as she wanted to put in the place of Bertha—that’s this
one—and Evelyn—as is now Mrs. Cropper, you understand me—and she jest
trampled up an excuse, as they say, to get rid of ’em.”
“Very possibly,” said Wimsey. “I suppose, Inspector, Evelyn Gotobed—”
“Now Mrs. Cropper,” put in Mrs. Gulliver with a sob.
“Mrs. Cropper, I should say—has been communicated with?”
“Oh, yes, my lord. We cabled her at once.”
“Good. I wish you’d let me know when you hear from her.”
“We shall be in touch with Inspector Parker, my lord, of course.”
“Of course. Well, Charles, I’m going to leave you to it. I’ve got a
telegram to send. Or will you come with me?”
“Thanks, no,” said Parker. “To be frank, I don’t like your methods of
driving. Being in the Force, I prefer to keep on the windy side of the
law.”
“Windy is the word for you,” said Peter. “I’ll see you in Town, then.”
CHAPTER VII
Ham and Brandy
“_Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are._”
Brillat-Savarin
“Well,” said Wimsey, as Parker was ushered in that same evening by
Bunter, “have you got anything fresh?”
“Yes, I’ve got a new theory of the crime, which knocks yours into a
cocked hat. I’ve got evidence to support it, too.”
“Which crime, by the way?”
“Oh, the Epping Forest business. I don’t believe the old Dawson person
was murdered at all. That’s just an idea of yours.”
“I see. And you’re now going to tell me that Bertha Gotobed was got hold
of by the White Slave people.”
“How did you know?” asked Parker, a little peevishly.
“Because Scotland Yard have two maggots which crop up whenever anything
happens to a young woman. Either it’s White Slavery or Dope
Dens—sometimes both. You are going to say it’s both.”
“Well, I was, as a matter of fact. It so often is, you know. We’ve
traced the £5 note.”
“That’s important, anyhow.”
“Yes. It seems to me to be the clue to the whole thing. It is one of a
series paid out to a Mrs. Forrest, living in South Audley Street. I’ve
been round to make some inquiries.”
“Did you see the lady?”
“No, she was out. She usually is, I’m told. In fact, her habits seem to
be expensive, irregular and mysterious. She has an elegantly furnished
flat over a flower-shop.”
“A service flat?”
“No. One of the quiet kind, with a lift you work yourself. She only
turns up occasionally, mostly in the evenings, spends a night or two and
departs. Food ordered in from Fortnum and Mason’s. Bills paid promptly
by note or cheque. Cleaning done by an elderly female who comes in about