Unnatural death
At first she thought the flat was empty, but after ringing a second time
she heard footsteps. The door opened, and a heavily over-dressed and
peroxided lady made her appearance, whom Lord Peter would at once—and
embarrassingly—have recognised.
“I have come,” said Miss Climpson, wedging herself briskly in at the
doorway with the skill of the practised canvasser, “to try if I can
enlist your help for our Mission Settlement. May I come in? I am sure
you—”
“No thanks,” said Mrs. Forrest, shortly, and in a hurried, breathless
tone, as if there was somebody behind her who she was anxious should not
overhear her, “I’m not interested in Missions.”
She tried to shut the door. But Miss Climpson had seen and heard enough.
“Good gracious!” she cried, staring, “why, it’s—”
“Come in.” Mrs. Forrest caught her by the arm almost roughly and pulled
her over the threshold, slamming the door behind them.
“How extraordinary!” said Miss Climpson, “I hardly recognised you, Miss
Whittaker, with your hair like that.”
“You!” said Mary Whittaker. “You—of all people!” They sat facing one
another in the sitting-room with its tawdry pink silk cushions. “I knew
you were a meddler. How did you get here? Is there anyone with you?”
“No—yes—I just happened,” began Miss Climpson vaguely. One thought was
uppermost in her mind. “How did you get free? What happened? Who killed
Vera?” She knew she was asking her questions crudely and stupidly. “Why
are you disguised like that?”
“Who sent you?” reiterated Mary Whittaker.
“Who is the man with you?” pursued Miss Climpson. “Is he here? Did he do
the murder?”
“What man?”
“The man Vera saw leaving your flat. Did he—?”
“So that’s it. Vera told you. The liar. I thought I had been quick
enough.”
Suddenly, something which had been troubling Miss Climpson for weeks
crystallised and became plain to her. The expression in Mary Whittaker’s
eyes. A long time ago, Miss Climpson had assisted a relative to run a
boarding-house, and there had been a young man who paid his bill by
cheque. She had had to make a certain amount of unpleasantness about the
bill, and he had written the cheque unwillingly, sitting, with her eye
upon him, at the little plush-covered table in the drawing-room. Then he
had gone away—slinking out with his bag when no one was about. And the
cheque had come back, like the bad penny that it was. A forgery. Miss
Climpson had had to give evidence. She remembered now the odd, defiant
look with which the young man had taken up his pen for his first plunge
into crime. And to-day she was seeing it again—an unattractive mingling
of recklessness and calculation. It was with the look which had once
warned Wimsey and should have warned her. She breathed more quickly.
“Who was the man?”
“The man?” Mary Whittaker laughed suddenly. “A man called Templeton—no
friend of mine. It’s really funny that you should think he was a friend
of mine. I would have killed him if I could.”
“But where is he? What are you doing? Don’t you know that everybody is
looking for you? Why don’t you—?”
“That’s why!”
Mary Whittaker flung her ten o’clock edition of the _Evening Banner_,
which was lying on the sofa. Miss Climpson read the glaring headlines.
AMAZING NEW DEVELOPMENTS
IN CROW’S BEACH CRIME.
——
WOUNDS ON BODY INFLICTED AFTER DEATH.
——
FAKED FOOTPRINTS.
——
Miss Climpson gasped with amazement, and bent over the smaller type.
“How extraordinary!” she said, looking up quickly.
Not quite quickly enough. The heavy brass lamp missed her head indeed,
but fell numbingly on her shoulder. She sprang to her feet with a loud
shriek, just as Mary Whittaker’s strong white hands closed upon her
throat.
CHAPTER XXIII
—And Smote Him, Thus
“_’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door;_
_but ’tis enough, ’twill serve._”
_Romeo and Juliet_
Lord Peter missed both Miss Climpson’s communications. Absorbed in the
police inquiry, he never thought to go back to Leahampton. Bunter had
duly arrived with “Mrs. Merdle” on the Saturday evening. Immense police
activity was displayed in the neighbourhood of the downs, and at
Southampton and Portsmouth, in order to foster the idea that the
authorities supposed the “gang” to be lurking in those districts.
Nothing, as a matter of fact, was farther from Parker’s thoughts. “Let
her think she is safe,” he said, “and she’ll come back. It’s the
cat-and-mouse act for us, old man.” Wimsey fretted. He wanted the
analysis of the body to be complete and loathed the thought of the long
days he had to wait. And he had small hope of the result.
“It’s all very well sitting round with your large disguised policemen
outside Mrs. Forrest’s flat,” he said irritably, over the bacon and eggs
on Monday morning, “but you do realise, don’t you, that we’ve still got
no proof of murder. Not in one single case.”
“That’s so,” replied Parker, placidly.
“Well, doesn’t it make your blood boil?” said Wimsey.
“Hardly,” said Parker. “This kind of thing happens too often. If my
blood boiled every time there was a delay in getting evidence, I should
be in a perpetual fever. Why worry? It may be that perfect crime you’re
so fond of talking about—the one that leaves no trace. You ought to be
charmed with it.”
“Oh, I daresay. O Turpitude, where are the charms that sages have seen
in thy face? Time’s called at the Criminals’ Arms, and there isn’t a
drink in the place. Wimsey’s Standard Poets, with emendations by
Thingummy. As a matter of fact, I’m not at all sure that Miss Dawson’s
death _wasn’t_ the perfect crime—if only the Whittaker girl had stopped
at that and not tried to cover it up. If you notice, the deaths are
becoming more and more violent, elaborate and unlikely in appearance.
Telephone again. If the Post Office accounts don’t show a handsome
profit on telephones this year it won’t be your fault.”
“It’s the cap and shoes,” said Parker, mildly. “They’ve traced them.
They were ordered from an outfitter’s in Stepney, to be sent to the Rev.
H. Dawson, Peveril Hotel, Bloomsbury, to await arrival.”
“The Peveril again!”
“Yes. I recognise the hand of Mr. Trigg’s mysterious charmer. The Rev.
Hallelujah Dawson’s card, with message ‘Please give parcel to bearer,’
was presented by a District Messenger next day, with a verbal
explanation that the gentleman found he could not get up to Town after
all. The messenger, obeying instructions received by telephone, took the
parcel to a lady in a nurse’s dress on the platform at Charing Cross.
Asked to describe the lady, he said she was tall and wore blue glasses
and the usual cloak and bonnet. So that’s that.”
“How were the goods paid for?”
“Postal order, purchased at the West Central office at the busiest
moment of the day.”
“And when did all this happen?”
“That’s the most interesting part of the business. Last month, shortly
before Miss Whittaker and Miss Findlater returned from Kent. This plot
was well thought out beforehand.”
“Yes. Well, that’s something more for you to pin on to Mrs. Forrest. It
looks like proof of conspiracy, but whether it’s proof of murder—”
“It’s _meant_ to look like a conspiracy of Cousin Hallelujah’s, I
suppose. Oh, well, we shall have to trace the letters and the typewriter
that wrote them and interrogate all these people, I suppose. God! what a
grind! Hullo! Come in! Oh, it’s you, doctor?”
“Excuse my interrupting your breakfast,” said Dr. Faulkner, “but early
this morning, while lying awake, I was visited with a bright idea. So I
had to come and work it off on you while it was fresh. About the blow on
the head and the marks on the arms, you know. Do you suppose they served
a double purpose? Besides making it look like the work of a gang, could
they be hiding some other, smaller mark? Poison, for instance, could be
injected, and the mark covered up by scratches and cuts inflicted after
death.”
“Frankly,” said Parker, “I wish I could think it. It’s a very sound idea
and may be the right one. Our trouble is, that in the two previous
deaths which we have been investigating, and which we are inclined to
think form a part of the same series as this one, there have been no
signs or traces of poison discoverable in the bodies at all by any
examination or analysis that skill can devise. In fact, not only no
proof of poison, but no proof of anything but natural death.”
And he related the cases in fuller detail.
“Odd,” said the doctor. “And you think this may turn out the same way.
Still, in this case the death can’t very well have been natural—or why
these elaborate efforts to cover it up?”
“It wasn’t,” said Parker; “the proof being that—as we now know—the plot
was laid nearly two months ago.”
“But the method!” cried Wimsey, “the method! Hang it all—here are all we
people with our brilliant brains and our professional reputations—and
this half-trained girl out of a hospital can beat the lot of us. How was
it done?”
“It’s probably something so simple and obvious that it’s never occurred
to us,” said Parker. “The sort of principle you learn when you’re in the
fourth form and never apply to anything. Rudimentary. Like that
motor-cycling imbecile we met up at Crofton, who sat in the rain and
prayed for help because he’d never heard of an air-lock in his feed. Now
I daresay that boy had learnt—What’s the matter with you?”
“My God!” cried Wimsey. He smashed his hand down among the breakfast
things, upsetting his cup. “My God! But that’s it! You’ve got it—you’ve
done it—Obvious? God Almighty—it doesn’t need a doctor. A garage hand
could have told you. People die of it every day. Of course, it was an
air-lock in the feed.”
“Bear up, doctor,” said Parker, “he’s always like this when he gets an
idea. It wears off in time. D’you mind explaining yourself, old thing?”
Wimsey’s pallid face was flushed. He turned on the doctor.
“Look here,” he said, “the body’s a pumping engine, isn’t it? The jolly
old heart pumps the blood round the arteries and back through the veins
and so on, doesn’t it? That’s what keeps things working, what? Round and
home again in two minutes—that sort of thing?”
“Certainly.”
“Little valve to let the blood out; ’nother little valve to let it
in—just like an internal combustion engine, which it is?”
“Of course.”
“And s’posin’ that stops?”
“You die.”
“Yes. Now, look here. S’posin’ you take a good big hypodermic, empty,
and dig it into one of the big arteries and push the handle—what would
happen? What would happen, doctor? You’d be pumpin’ a big air-bubble
into your engine feed, wouldn’t you? What would become of your
circulation, then?”
“It would stop it,” said the doctor, without hesitation. “That is why
nurses have to be particular to fill the syringe properly, especially
when doing an intra-venous injection.”
“I _knew_ it was the kind of thing you learnt in the fourth form. Well,
go on. Your circulation would stop—it would be like an embolism in its
effect, wouldn’t it?”
“Only if it was in a main artery, of course. In a small vein the blood
would find a way round. That is why” (this seemed to be the doctor’s
favourite opening) “that is why it is so important that
embolisms—blood-clots—should be dispersed as soon as possible and not
left to wander about the system.”
“Yes—yes—but the air-bubble, doctor—in a main artery—say the femoral or
the big vein in the bend of the elbow—that would stop the circulation,
wouldn’t it? How soon?”
“Why, at once. The heart would stop beating.”
“And then?”