Unnatural death
“the time he went down and tried to get Miss Dawson to make her will.”
“I _don’t_,” said Wimsey, with energy, “but I’m pretty certain he tried
to explain matters to the old lady, only she was so terrified of the
very idea of a will she wouldn’t let him get a word in. But I fancy old
Probyn was too downy a bird to tell the heir that her only chance of
gettin’ the dollars was to see that her great-aunt died off before the
Act went through. Would _you_ tell anybody that, Mr. Towkington?”
“Not if I knew it,” said that gentleman, grinning.
“It would be highly undesirable,” agreed Mr. Murbles.
“Anyway,” said Wimsey, “we can easily find out. Probyn’s in Italy—I was
going to write to him, but perhaps you’d better do it, Murbles. And, in
the meanwhile, Charles and I will think up a way to find whoever it was
that did give Miss Whittaker an opinion on the matter.”
“You’re not forgetting, I suppose,” said Parker, rather dryly, “that
before pinning down a murder to any particular motive, it is usual to
ascertain that a murder has been committed? So far, all we know is that,
after a careful post-mortem analysis, two qualified doctors have agreed
that Miss Dawson died a natural death.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep on saying the same thing, Charles. It bores me
so. It’s like the Raven never flitting which, as the poet observes,
still is sitting, still is sitting, inviting one to heave the pallid
bust of Pallas at him and have done with it. You wait till I publish my
epoch-making work: _The Murderer’s Vade-Mecum, or 101 Ways of Causing
Sudden Death_. That’ll show you I’m not a man to be trifled with.”
“Oh, well!” said Parker.
But he saw the Chief Commissioner next morning and reported that he was
at last disposed to take the Dawson case seriously.
CHAPTER XV
Temptation of St. Peter
Pierrot: “_Scaramel, I am tempted._”
Scaramel: “_Always yield to temptation._”
L. Housman, _Prunella_
As Parker came out from the Chief Commissioner’s room, he was caught by
an officer.
“There’s been a lady on the ’phone to you,” he said. “I told her to ring
up at 10:30. It’s about that now.”
“What name?”
“A Mrs. Forrest. She wouldn’t say what she wanted.”
“Odd,” thought Parker. His researches in the matter had been so
unfruitful that he had practically eliminated Mrs. Forrest from the
Gotobed mystery—merely keeping her filed, as it were, in the back of his
mind for future reference. It occurred to him, whimsically, that she had
at length discovered the absence of one of her wine-glasses and was
ringing him up in a professional capacity. His conjectures were
interrupted by his being called to the telephone to answer Mrs.
Forrest’s call.
“Is that Detective-Inspector Parker?—I’m so sorry to trouble you, but
could you give me Mr. Templeton’s address?”
“Templeton?” said Parker, momentarily puzzled.
“Wasn’t it Templeton—the gentleman who came with you to see me?”
“Oh, yes, of course—I beg your pardon—I—the matter had slipped my
memory. Er—you want his address?”
“I have some information which I think he will be glad to hear.”
“Oh, yes. You can speak quite freely to me, you know, Mrs. Forrest.”
“Not _quite_ freely,” purred the voice at the other end of the wire,
“you are rather official, you know. I should prefer just to write to Mr.
Templeton privately, and leave it to him to take up with you.”
“I see.” Parker’s brain worked briskly. It might be inconvenient to have
Mrs. Forrest writing to Mr. Templeton at 110A, Piccadilly. The letter
might not be delivered. Or, if the lady were to take it into her head to
call and discovered that Mr. Templeton was not known to the porter, she
might take alarm and bottle up her valuable information.
“I think,” said Parker, “I ought not, perhaps, to give you Mr.
Templeton’s address without consulting him. But you could ’phone him—”
“Oh, yes, that would do. Is he in the book?”
“No—but I can give you his private number.”
“Thank you very much. You’ll forgive my bothering you.”
“No trouble at all.” And he named Lord Peter’s number.
Having rung off, he waited a moment and then called the number himself.
“Look here, Wimsey,” he said, “I’ve had a call from Mrs. Forrest. She
wants to write to you. I wouldn’t give the address, but I’ve given her
your number, so if she calls and asks for Mr. Templeton, you will
remember who you are, won’t you?”
“Righty-ho! Wonder what the fair lady wants.”
“It’s probably occurred to her that she might have told a better story,
and she wants to work off a few additions and improvements on you.”
“Then she’ll probably give herself away. The rough sketch is frequently
so much more convincing than the worked-up canvas.”
“Quite so. I couldn’t get anything out of her myself.”
“No. I expect she’s thought it over and decided that it’s rather unusual
to employ Scotland Yard to ferret out the whereabouts of errant
husbands. She fancies there’s something up, and that I’m a nice
soft-headed imbecile whom she can easily pump in the absence of the
official Cerberus.”
“Probably. Well, you’ll deal with the matter. I’m going to make a search
for that solicitor.”
“Rather a vague sort of search, isn’t it?”
“Well, I’ve got an idea which may work out. I’ll let you know if I get
any results.”
Mrs. Forrest’s call duly came through in about twenty minutes’ time.
Mrs. Forrest had changed her mind. Would Mr. Templeton come round and
see her that evening—about 9 o’clock, if that was convenient? She had
thought the matter over and preferred not to put her information on
paper.
Mr. Templeton would be very happy to come round. He had no other
engagement. It was no inconvenience at all. He begged Mrs. Forrest not
to mention it.
Would Mr. Templeton be so very good as not to tell anybody about his
visit? Mr. Forrest and his sleuths were continually on the watch to get
Mrs. Forrest into trouble, and the decree absolute was due to come up in
a month’s time. Any trouble with the King’s Proctor would be positively
disastrous. It would be better if Mr. Templeton would come by
Underground to Bond Street, and proceed to the flats on foot, so as not
to leave a car standing outside the door or put a taxi-driver into a
position to give testimony against Mrs. Forrest.
Mr. Templeton chivalrously promised to obey these directions.
Mrs. Forrest was greatly obliged, and would expect him at nine o’clock.
“Bunter!”
“My lord.”
“I am going out to-night. I’ve been asked not to say where, so I won’t.
On the other hand, I’ve got a kind of feelin’ that it’s unwise to
disappear from mortal ken, so to speak. Anything might happen. One might
have a stroke, don’t you know. So I’m going to leave the address in a
sealed envelope. If I don’t turn up before to-morrow mornin’, I shall
consider myself absolved from all promises, what?”
“Very good, my lord.”
“And if I’m not to be found at that address, there wouldn’t be any harm
in tryin’—say Epping Forest, or Wimbledon Common.”
“Quite so, my lord.”
“By the way, you made the photographs of those finger-prints I brought
you some time ago?”
“Oh, yes, my lord.”
“Because possibly Mr. Parker may be wanting them presently for some
inquiries he will be making.”
“I quite understand, my lord.”
“Nothing whatever to do with my excursion to-night, you understand.”
“Certainly not, my lord.”
“And now you might bring me Christie’s catalogue. I shall be attending a
sale there and lunching at the club.”
And, detaching his mind from crime, Lord Peter bent his intellectual and
financial powers to outbidding and breaking a ring of dealers, an
exercise very congenial to his mischievous spirit.
Lord Peter duly fulfilled the conditions imposed upon him, and arrived
on foot at the block of flats in South Audley Street. Mrs. Forrest, as
before, opened the door to him herself. It was surprising, he
considered, that, situated as she was, she appeared to have neither maid
nor companion. But then, he supposed, a chaperon, however disarming of
suspicion in the eyes of the world, might prove venal. On the whole,
Mrs. Forrest’s principle was a sound one: no accomplices. Many
transgressors, he reflected, had
“_died because they never knew
These simple little rules and few._”
Mrs. Forrest apologised prettily for the inconvenience to which she was
putting Mr. Templeton.
“But I never know when I am not spied upon,” she said. “It is sheer
spite, you know. Considering how my husband has behaved to me, I think
it is monstrous—don’t you?”
Her guest agreed that Mr. Forrest must be a monster, jesuitically,
however, reserving the opinion that the monster might be a fabulous one.
“And now you will be wondering why I have brought you here,” went on the
lady. “Do come and sit on the sofa. Will you have whisky or coffee?”
“Coffee, please.”
“The fact is,” said Mrs. Forrest, “that I’ve had an idea since I saw
you. I—you know, having been much in the same position myself” (with a
slight laugh) “I felt _so much_ for your friend’s wife.”
“Sylvia,” put in Lord Peter with commendable promptitude. “Oh, yes.
Shocking temper and so on, but possibly some provocation. Yes, yes,
quite. Poor woman. Feels things—extra sensitive—highly-strung and all
that, don’t you know.”
“Quite so.” Mrs. Forrest nodded her fantastically turbanned head.
Swathed to the eyebrows in gold tissue, with only two flat crescents of
yellow hair plastered over her cheek-bones, she looked, in an exotic
smoking-suit of embroidered tissue, like a young prince out of the
Arabian Nights. Her heavily ringed hands busied themselves with the
coffee-cups.
“Well—I felt that your inquiries were really serious, you know, and
though, as I told you, it had nothing to do with me, I was interested
and mentioned the matter in a letter to—to my friend, you see, who was
with me that night.”
“Just so,” said Wimsey, taking the cup from her, “yes—er—that was
very—er—it was kind of you to be interested.”
“He—my friend—is abroad at the moment. My letter had to follow him, and
I only got his reply to-day.”
Mrs. Forrest took a sip or two of coffee as though to clear her
recollection.
“His letter rather surprised me. He reminded me that after dinner he had
felt the room rather close, and had opened the sitting-room window—that
window, there—which overlooks South Audley Street. He noticed a car
standing there—a small closed one, black or dark blue or some such
colour. And while he was looking idly at it—the way one does, you
know—he saw a man and woman come out of this block of flats—not this
door, but one or two along to the left—and get in and drive off. The man
was in evening dress and he thought it might have been your friend.”
Lord Peter, with his coffee-cup at his lips, paused and listened with
great attention.
“Was the girl in evening dress, too?”
“No—that struck my friend particularly. She was in just a plain little
dark suit, with a hat on.”
Lord Peter recalled to mind as nearly as possible Bertha Gotobed’s
costume. Was this going to be real evidence at last?
“Th—that’s very interesting,” he stammered. “I suppose your friend
couldn’t give any more exact details of the dress?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Forrest, regretfully, “but he said the man’s arm was
round the girl as though she was feeling tired or unwell, and he heard
him say, ‘That’s right—the fresh air will do you good.’ But you’re not
drinking your coffee.”
“I beg your pardon—” Wimsey recalled himself with a start. “I was
dreamin’—puttin’ two and two together, as you might say. So he was along
here at the time—the artful beggar. Oh, the coffee. D’you mind if I put
this away and have some without sugar?”