Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
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?”
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,” 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?”
“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_?”
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?”
“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’; ‘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:
CRIMPLESHAM AND WICKS,
_Solicitors_,
MILFORD HILL, SALISBURY,
17 November, 192—.
Sir,
With reference to your advertisement today in the
personal column of _The Times_, I am disposed to believe
that the eyeglasses and chain in question may be those
I lost on the L. B. & S. C. Electric Railway while
visiting London last Monday. I left Victoria by the
5.45 train, and did not notice my loss till I arrived at
Balham. This indication and the optician’s specification
of the glasses, which I enclose, should suffice at once
as an identification and a guarantee of my bona fides.
If the glasses should prove to be mine, I should be
greatly obliged to you if you would kindly forward them
to me by registered post, as the chain was a present
from my daughter, and is one of my dearest possessions.
Thanking you in advance for this kindness, and
regretting the trouble to which I shall be putting you,
I am,
Yours very truly,
THOS. CRIMPLESHAM
Lord Peter Wimsey,
110, Piccadilly, W.
(Encl.)
“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 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 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,