Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
this. Mrs. Thipps is staying with me—one of Peter’s eccentricities,
you know. Poor Christine! I must run round and see her. This is Mr.
Parker,” she added, “who is investigating that case.”
“Oh,” said Sir Julian, and paused. “Do you know,” he said in a low
voice to Parker, “I am very glad to meet you. Have you seen Lady Levy
yet?”
“I saw her this morning.”
“Did she ask you to go on with the inquiry?”
“Yes,” said Parker; “she thinks,” he added, “that Sir Reuben may be
detained in the hands of some financial rival or that perhaps some
scoundrels are holding him to ransom.”
“And is that _your_ opinion?” asked Sir Julian.
“I think it very likely,” said Parker, frankly.
Sir Julian hesitated again.
“I wish you would walk back with me when this is over,” he said.
“I should be delighted,” said Parker.
At this moment the jury returned and took their places, and there was a
little rustle and hush. The Coroner addressed the foreman and inquired
if they were agreed upon their verdict.
“We are agreed, Mr. Coroner, that deceased died of the effects of a
blow upon the spine, but how that injury was inflicted we consider that
there is not sufficient evidence to show.”
* * * * *
Mr. Parker and Sir Julian Freke walked up the road together.
“I had absolutely no idea until I saw Lady Levy this morning,” said the
doctor, “that there was any idea of connecting this matter with the
disappearance of Sir Reuben. The suggestion was perfectly monstrous,
and could only have grown up in the mind of that ridiculous police
officer. If I had had any idea what was in his mind I could have
disabused him and avoided all this.”
“I did my best to do so,” said Parker, “as soon as I was called in to
the Levy case—”
“Who called you in, if I may ask?” inquired Sir Julian.
“Well, the household first of all, and then Sir Reuben’s uncle, Mr.
Levy of Portman Square, wrote to me to go on with the investigation.”
“And now Lady Levy has confirmed those instructions?”
“Certainly,” said Parker in some surprise.
Sir Julian was silent for a little time.
“I’m afraid I was the first person to put the idea into Sugg’s head,”
said Parker, rather penitently. “When Sir Reuben disappeared, my first
step, almost, was to hunt up all the street accidents and suicides and
so on that had turned up during the day, and I went down to see this
Battersea Park body as a matter of routine. Of course, I saw that the
thing was ridiculous as soon as I got there, but Sugg froze on to the
idea—and it’s true there was a good deal of resemblance between the
dead man and the portraits I’ve seen of Sir Reuben.”
“A strong superficial likeness,” said Sir Julian. “The upper part of
the face is a not uncommon type, and as Sir Reuben wore a heavy beard
and there was no opportunity of comparing the mouths and chins, I can
understand the idea occurring to anybody. But only to be dismissed at
once. I am sorry,” he added, “as the whole matter has been painful to
Lady Levy. You may know, Mr. Parker, that I am an old, though I should
not call myself an intimate, friend of the Levys.”
“I understood something of the sort.”
“Yes. When I was a young man I—in short, Mr. Parker, I hoped once to
marry Lady Levy.” (Mr. Parker gave the usual sympathetic groan.) “I
have never married, as you know,” pursued Sir Julian. “We have remained
good friends. I have always done what I could to spare her pain.”
“Believe me, Sir Julian,” said Parker, “that I sympathize very much
with you and with Lady Levy, and that I did all I could to disabuse
Inspector Sugg of this notion. Unhappily, the coincidence of Sir
Reuben’s being seen that evening in the Battersea Park Road—”
“Ah, yes,” said Sir Julian. “Dear me, here we are at home. Perhaps
you would come in for a moment, Mr. Parker, and have tea or a
whisky-and-soda or something.”
Parker promptly accepted this invitation, feeling that there were other
things to be said.
The two men stepped into a square, finely furnished hall with a
fireplace on the same side as the door, and a staircase opposite. The
dining-room door stood open on their right, and as Sir Julian rang the
bell a man-servant appeared at the far end of the hall.
“What will you take?” asked the doctor.
“After that dreadfully cold place,” said Parker, “what I really want is
gallons of hot tea, if you, as a nerve specialist, can bear the thought
of it.”
“Provided you allow of a judicious blend of China in it,” replied
Sir Julian in the same tone, “I have no objection to make. Tea in the
library at once,” he added to the servant, and led the way upstairs.
“I don’t use the downstairs rooms much, except the dining-room,” he
explained as he ushered his guest into a small but cheerful library
on the first floor. “This room leads out of my bedroom and is more
convenient. I only live part of my time here, but it’s very handy for
my research work at the hospital. That’s what I do there, mostly. It’s
a fatal thing for a theorist, Mr. Parker, to let the practical work get
behindhand. Dissection is the basis of all good theory and all correct
diagnosis. One must keep one’s hand and eye in training. This place
is far more important to me than Harley Street, and some day I shall
abandon my consulting practice altogether and settle down here to cut
up my subjects and write my books in peace. So many things in this life
are a waste of time, Mr. Parker.”
Mr. Parker assented to this.
“Very often,” said Sir Julian, “the only time I get for any research
work—necessitating as it does the keenest observation and the faculties
at their acutest—has to be at night, after a long day’s work and by
artificial light, which, magnificent as the lighting of the dissecting
room here is, is always more trying to the eyes than daylight.
Doubtless your own work has to be carried on under even more trying
conditions.”
“Yes, sometimes,” said Parker; “but then you see,” he added, “the
conditions are, so to speak, part of the work.”
“Quite so, quite so,” said Sir Julian; “you mean that the burglar, for
example, does not demonstrate his methods in the light of day, or plant
the perfect footmark in the middle of a damp patch of sand for you to
analyze.”
“Not as a rule,” said the detective, “but I have no doubt many of your
diseases work quite as insidiously as any burglar.”
“They do, they do,” said Sir Julian, laughing, “and it is my pride, as
it is yours, to track them down for the good of society. The neuroses,
you know, are particularly clever criminals—they break out into as many
disguises as—”
“As Leon Kestrel, the Master-Mummer,” suggested Parker, who read
railway-stall detective stories on the principle of the ’busman’s
holiday.
“No doubt,” said Sir Julian, who did not, “and they cover up their
tracks wonderfully. But when you can really investigate, Mr. Parker,
and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the
scalpel, you always find the footmarks—the little trail of ruin or
disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar
pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing
the surface symptoms—the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness,
conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a
murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit
of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical
irritation which has produced it.”
“You regard all these things as physical?”
“Undoubtedly. I am not ignorant of the rise of another school of
thought, Mr. Parker, but its exponents are mostly charlatans or
self-deceivers. ‘_Sie haben sich so weit darin eingeheimnisst_’
that, like Sludge the Medium, they are beginning to believe their own
nonsense. I should like to have the exploring of some of their brains,
Mr. Parker; I would show you the little faults and landslips in the
cells—the misfiring and short-circuiting of the nerves, which produce
these notions and these books. At least,” he added, gazing sombrely at
his guest, “at least, if I could not quite show you today, I shall be
able to do so tomorrow—or in a year’s time—or before I die.”
He sat for some minutes gazing into the fire, while the red light
played upon his tawny beard and struck out answering gleams from his
compelling eyes.
Parker drank tea in silence, watching him. On the whole, however, he
remained but little interested in the causes of nervous phenomena and
his mind strayed to Lord Peter, coping with the redoubtable Crimplesham
down in Salisbury. Lord Peter had wanted him to come: that meant,
either that Crimplesham was proving recalcitrant or that a clue wanted
following. But Bunter had said that tomorrow would do, and it was just
as well. After all, the Battersea affair was not Parker’s case; he had
already wasted valuable time attending an inconclusive inquest, and he
really ought to get on with his legitimate work. There was still Levy’s
secretary to see and the little matter of the Peruvian Oil to be looked
into. He looked at his watch.
“I am very much afraid—if you will excuse me—” he murmured.
Sir Julian came back with a start to the consideration of actuality.
“Your work calls you?” he said, smiling. “Well, I can understand that.
I won’t keep you. But I wanted to say something to you in connection
with your present inquiry—only I hardly know—I hardly like—”
Parker sat down again, and banished every indication of hurry from his
face and attitude.
“I shall be very grateful for any help you can give me,” he said.
“I’m afraid it’s more in the nature of hindrance,” said Sir Julian,
with a short laugh. “It’s a case of destroying a clue for you, and a
breach of professional confidence on my side. But since—accidentally—a
certain amount has come out, perhaps the whole had better do so.”
Mr. Parker made the encouraging noise which, among laymen, supplies the
place of the priest’s insinuating, “Yes, my son?”
“Sir Reuben Levy’s visit on Monday night was to me,” said Sir Julian.
“Yes?” said Mr. Parker, without expression.
“He found cause for certain grave suspicions concerning his health,”
said Sir Julian, slowly, as though weighing how much he could in
honour disclose to a stranger. “He came to me, in preference to his
own medical man, as he was particularly anxious that the matter should
be kept from his wife. As I told you, he knew me fairly well, and Lady
Levy had consulted me about a nervous disorder in the summer.”
“Did he make an appointment with you?” asked Parker.
“I beg your pardon,” said the other, absently.
“Did he make an appointment?”
“An appointment? Oh, no! He turned up suddenly in the evening after
dinner when I wasn’t expecting him. I took him up here and examined
him, and he left me somewhere about ten o’clock, I should think.”
“May I ask what was the result of your examination?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It might illuminate—well, conjecture as to his subsequent conduct,”
said Parker, cautiously. This story seemed to have little coherence
with the rest of the business, and he wondered whether coincidence was
alone responsible for Sir Reuben’s disappearance on the same night that
he visited the doctor.
“I see,” said Sir Julian. “Yes. Well, I will tell you in confidence
that I saw grave grounds of suspicion, but as yet, no absolute
certainty of mischief.”
“Thank you. Sir Reuben left you at ten o’clock?”
“Then or thereabouts. I did not at first mention the matter as it was
so very much Sir Reuben’s wish to keep his visit to me secret, and
there was no question of accident in the street or anything of that
kind, since he reached home safely at midnight.”
“Quite so,” said Parker.
“It would have been, and is, a breach of confidence,” said Sir Julian,