Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
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 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 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. “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. 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 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 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 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 my wardrobe. When is there a good train to
Salisbury, Bunter?”