Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
certainty with impervious self-satisfaction. “All right,” said
conscience, instantly allying itself with blind faith, “what are you
going to do about it?”
Lord Peter got up and paced the room: “Good Lord!” he said. “Good
Lord!” He took down “Who’s Who” from the little shelf over the
telephone and sought comfort in its pages:
FREKE, Sir Julian, Kt. _cr._ 1916; G.C.V.O. _cr._ 1919;
K.C.V.O. 1917; K.C.B. 1918; M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S.,
Dr. en Méd. Paris; D. Sci. Cantab.; Knight of Grace of
the Order of S. John of Jerusalem; Consulting Surgeon
of St. Luke’s Hospital, Battersea. _b._ Gryllingham,
16 March, 1872, _only son_ of Edward Curzon Freke,
Esq., of Gryll Court, Gryllingham. _Educ._ Harrow and
Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Col. A.M.S.; late Member
of the Advisory Board of the Army Medical Service.
_Publications_: Some Notes on the Pathological Aspects
of Genius, 1892; Statistical Contributions to the
Study of Infantile Paralysis in England and Wales,
1894; Functional Disturbances of the Nervous System,
1899; Cerebro-Spinal Diseases, 1904; The Borderland
of Insanity, 1906; An Examination into the Treatment
of Pauper Lunacy in the United Kingdom, 1906; Modern
Developments in Psycho-Therapy: A Criticism, 1910;
Criminal Lunacy, 1914; The Application of Psycho-Therapy
to the Treatment of Shell-Shock, 1917; An Answer to
Professor Freud, with a Description of Some Experiments
Carried Out at the Base Hospital at Amiens, 1919;
Structural Modifications Accompanying the More Important
Neuroses, 1920. _Clubs_: White’s; Oxford and Cambridge;
Alpine, etc. _Recreations_: Chess, Mountaineering,
Fishing. _Address_: 282, Harley Street and St. Luke’s
House, Prince of Wales Road, Battersea Park, S.W.11.
He flung the book away. “Confirmation!” he groaned. “As if I needed it!”
He sat down again and buried his face in his hands. He remembered quite
suddenly how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at
Denver Castle—a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously
beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver
urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling
in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth—twitched
it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons
rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his
hardest—he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn
and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sèvres breakfast service had
crashed down in one stupendous ruin—he remembered the horrified face of
the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.
A log broke across and sank into a fluff of white ash. A belated
motor-lorry rumbled past the window.
Mr. Bunter, sleeping the sleep of the true and faithful servant, was
aroused in the small hours by a hoarse whisper, “Bunter!”
“Yes, my lord,” said Bunter, sitting up and switching on the light.
“Put that light out, damn you!” said the voice. “Listen—over
there—listen—can’t you hear it?”
“It’s nothing, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, hastily getting out of bed
and catching hold of his master; “it’s all right, you get to bed quick
and I’ll fetch you a drop of bromide. Why, you’re all shivering—you’ve
been sitting up too late.”
“Hush! no, no—it’s the water,” said Lord Peter with chattering teeth;
“it’s up to their waists down there, poor devils. But listen! can’t you
hear it? Tap, tap, tap—they’re mining us—but I don’t know where—I can’t
hear—I can’t. Listen, you! There it is again—we must find it—we must
stop it.... Listen! Oh, my God! I can’t hear—I can’t hear anything for
the noise of the guns. Can’t they stop the guns?”
“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Bunter to himself. “No, no—it’s all right,
Major—don’t you worry.”
“But I hear it,” protested Peter.
“So do I,” said Mr. Bunter stoutly; “very good hearing, too, my lord.
That’s our own sappers at work in the communication trench. Don’t you
fret about that, sir.”
Lord Peter grasped his wrist with a feverish hand.
“Our own sappers,” he said; “sure of that?”
“Certain of it,” said Mr. Bunter, cheerfully.
“They’ll bring down the tower,” said Lord Peter.
“To be sure they will,” said Mr. Bunter, “and very nice, too. You just
come and lay down a bit, sir—they’ve come to take over this section.”
“You’re sure it’s safe to leave it?” said Lord Peter.
“Safe as houses, sir,” said Mr. Bunter, tucking his master’s arm under
his and walking him off to his bedroom.
Lord Peter allowed himself to be dosed and put to bed without further
resistance. Mr. Bunter, looking singularly un-Bunterlike in striped
pyjamas, with his stiff black hair ruffled about his head, sat grimly
watching the younger man’s sharp cheekbones and the purple stains under
his eyes.
“Thought we’d had the last of these attacks,” he said. “Been overdoin’
of himself. Asleep?” He peered at him anxiously. An affectionate note
crept into his voice. “Bloody little fool!” said Sergeant Bunter.
CHAPTER IX
Mr. Parker, summoned the next morning to 110 Piccadilly, arrived to
find the Dowager Duchess in possession. She greeted him charmingly.
“I am going to take this silly boy down to Denver for the week-end,”
she said, indicating Peter, who was writing and only acknowledged his
friend’s entrance with a brief nod. “He’s been doing too much—running
about to Salisbury and places and up till all hours of the night—you
really shouldn’t encourage him, Mr. Parker, it’s very naughty of
you—waking poor Bunter up in the middle of the night with scares about
Germans, as if that wasn’t all over years ago, and he hasn’t had an
attack for ages, but there! Nerves are such funny things, and Peter
always did have nightmares when he was quite a little boy—though very
often of course it was only a little pill he wanted; but he was so
dreadfully bad in 1918, you know, and I suppose we can’t expect to
forget all about a great war in a year or two, and, really, I ought to
be very thankful with both my boys safe. Still, I think a little peace
and quiet at Denver won’t do him any harm.”
“Sorry you’ve been having a bad turn, old man,” said Parker, vaguely
sympathetic; “you’re looking a bit seedy.”
“Charles,” said Lord Peter, in a voice entirely void of expression,
“I am going away for a couple of days because I can be no use to you
in London. What has got to be done for the moment can be much better
done by you than by me. I want you to take this”—he folded up his
writing and placed it in an envelope—“to Scotland Yard immediately and
get it sent out to all the workhouses, infirmaries, police stations,
Y.M.C.A.’s and so on in London. It is a description of Thipps’s corpse
as he was before he was shaved and cleaned up. I want to know whether
any man answering to that description has been taken in anywhere, alive
or dead, during the last fortnight. You will see Sir Andrew Mackenzie
personally, and get the paper sent out at once, by his authority; you
will tell him that you have solved the problems of the Levy murder and
the Battersea mystery”—Mr. Parker made an astonished noise to which his
friend paid no attention—“and you will ask him to have men in readiness
with a warrant to arrest a very dangerous and important criminal at any
moment on your information. When the replies to this paper come in, you
will search for any mention of St. Luke’s Hospital, or of any person
connected with St. Luke’s Hospital, and you will send for me at once.
“Meanwhile you will scrape acquaintance—I don’t care how—with one of
the students at St. Luke’s. Don’t march in there blowing about murders
and police warrants, or you may find yourself in Queer Street. I shall
come up to town as soon as I hear from you, and I shall expect to find
a nice ingenuous Sawbones here to meet me.” He grinned faintly.
“D’you mean you’ve got to the bottom of this thing?” asked Parker.
“Yes. I may be wrong. I hope I am, but I know I’m not.”
“You won’t tell me?”
“D’you know,” said Peter, “honestly I’d rather not. I say I _may_ be
wrong—and I’d feel as if I’d libelled the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“Well, tell me—is it one mystery or two?”
“One.”
“You talked of the Levy murder. Is Levy dead?”
“God—yes!” said Peter, with a strong shudder.
The Duchess looked up from where she was reading the _Tatler_.
“Peter,” she said, “is that your ague coming on again? Whatever you two
are chattering about, you’d better stop it at once if it excites you.
Besides, it’s about time to be off.”
“All right, Mother,” said Peter. He turned to Bunter, standing
respectfully in the door with an overcoat and suitcase. “You understand
what you have to do, don’t you?” he said.
“Perfectly, thank you, my lord. The car is just arriving, your Grace.”
“With Mrs. Thipps inside it,” said the Duchess. “She’ll be delighted
to see you again, Peter. You remind her so of Mr. Thipps. Good-morning,
Bunter.”
“Good-morning, your Grace.”
Parker accompanied them downstairs.
When they had gone he looked blankly at the paper in his hand—then,
remembering that it was Saturday and there was need for haste, he
hailed a taxi.
“Scotland Yard!” he cried.
* * * * *
Tuesday morning saw Lord Peter and a man in a velveteen jacket swishing
merrily through seven acres of turnip-tops, streaked yellow with early
frosts. A little way ahead, a sinuous undercurrent of excitement among
the leaves proclaimed the unseen yet ever-near presence of one of
the Duke of Denver’s setter pups. Presently a partridge flew up with
a noise like a police rattle, and Lord Peter accounted for it very
creditably for a man who, a few nights before, had been listening to
imaginary German sappers. The setter bounded foolishly through the
turnips, and fetched back the dead bird.
“Good dog,” said Lord Peter.
Encouraged by this, the dog gave a sudden ridiculous gambol and barked,
its ear tossed inside out over its head.
“Heel,” said the man in velveteen, violently. The animal sidled up,
ashamed.
“Fool of a dog, that,” said the man in velveteen; “can’t keep quiet.
Too nervous, my lord. One of old Black Lass’s pups.”
“Dear me,” said Peter, “is the old dog still going?”
“No, my lord; we had to put her away in the spring.”
Peter nodded. He always proclaimed that he hated the country and
was thankful to have nothing to do with the family estates, but this
morning he enjoyed the crisp air and the wet leaves washing darkly over
his polished boots. At Denver things moved in an orderly way; no one
died sudden and violent deaths except aged setters—and partridges, to
be sure. He sniffed up the autumn smell with appreciation. There was a
letter in his pocket which had come by the morning post, but he did not
intend to read it just yet. Parker had not wired; there was no hurry.
* * * * *
He read it in the smoking-room after lunch. His brother was there,
dozing over the _Times_—a good, clean Englishman, sturdy and
conventional, rather like Henry VIII in his youth; Gerald, sixteenth
Duke of Denver. The Duke considered his cadet rather degenerate, and
not quite good form; he disliked his taste for police-court news.
The letter was from Mr. Bunter.
110, Piccadilly,
W.1.
My Lord:
I write (Mr. Bunter had been carefully educated and knew
that nothing is more vulgar than a careful avoidance of
beginning a letter with the first person singular) as
your lordship directed, to inform you of the result of
my investigations.
I experienced no difficulty in becoming acquainted with
Sir Julian Freke’s man-servant. He belongs to the same