Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
could make passionate love to his wife in the night and carry out his
plot to murder her in the morning. After all, he thinks conscience is a
sort of vermiform appendix. Chop it out and you’ll feel all the better.
Freke isn’t troubled by the usual conscientious deterrent. Witness his
own hand in his books. Now again. The man who went to Levy’s house in
his place knew the house: Freke knew the house; he was a red-haired
man, smaller than Levy, but not much smaller, since he could wear
his clothes without appearing ludicrous: you have seen Freke—you know
his height—about five-foot-eleven, I suppose, and his auburn mane; he
probably wore surgical gloves: Freke is a surgeon; he was a methodical
and daring man: surgeons are obliged to be both daring and methodical.
Now take the other side. The man who got hold of the Battersea corpse
had to have access to dead bodies. Freke obviously had access to
dead bodies. He had to be cool and quick and callous about handling a
dead body. Surgeons are all that. He had to be a strong man to carry
the body across the roofs and dump it in at Thipps’s window. Freke
is a powerful man and a member of the Alpine Club. He probably wore
surgical gloves and he let the body down from the roof with a surgical
bandage. This points to a surgeon again. He undoubtedly lived in the
neighbourhood. Freke lives next door. The girl you interviewed heard a
bump on the roof of the end house. That is the house next to Freke’s.
Every time we look at Freke, he leads somewhere, whereas Milligan and
Thipps and Crimplesham and all the other people we’ve honoured with our
suspicion simply led nowhere.”
“Yes; but it’s not quite so simple as you make out. What was Levy doing
in that surreptitious way at Freke’s on Monday night?”
“Well, you have Freke’s explanation.”
“Rot, Wimsey. You said yourself it wouldn’t do.”
“Excellent. It won’t do. Therefore Freke was lying. Why should he lie
about it, unless he had some object in hiding the truth?”
“Well, but why mention it at all?”
“Because Levy, contrary to all expectation, had been seen at the corner
of the road. That was a nasty accident for Freke. He thought it best to
be beforehand with an explanation—of sorts. He reckoned, of course, on
nobody’s ever connecting Levy with Battersea Park.”
“Well, then, we come back to the first question: Why did Levy go there?”
“I don’t know, but he was got there somehow. Why did Freke buy all
those Peruvian Oil shares?”
“I don’t know,” said Parker in his turn.
“Anyway,” went on Wimsey, “Freke expected him, and made arrangements to
let him in himself, so that Cummings shouldn’t see who the caller was.”
“But the caller left again at ten.”
“Oh, Charles! I did not expect this of you. This is the purest Suggery!
Who saw him go? Somebody said ‘Good-night’ and walked away down the
street. And you believe it was Levy because Freke didn’t go out of his
way to explain that it wasn’t.”
“D’you mean that Freke walked cheerfully out of the house to Park Lane,
and left Levy behind—dead or alive—for Cummings to find?”
“We have Cummings’s word that he did nothing of the sort. A few minutes
after the steps walked away from the house, Freke rang the library bell
and told Cummings to shut up for the night.”
“Then—”
“Well—there’s a side door to the house, I suppose—in fact, you know
there is—Cummings said so—through the hospital.”
“Yes—well, where was Levy?”
“Levy went up into the library and never came down. You’ve been in
Freke’s library. Where would you have put him?”
“In my bedroom next door.”
“Then that’s where he did put him.”
“But suppose the man went in to turn down the bed?”
“Beds are turned down by the housekeeper, earlier than ten o’clock.”
“Yes.... But Cummings heard Freke about the house all night.”
“He heard him go in and out two or three times. He’d expect him to do
that, anyway.”
“Do you mean to say Freke got all that job finished before three in the
morning?”
“Why not?”
“Quick work.”
“Well, call it quick work. Besides, why three? Cummings never saw him
again till he called him for eight o’clock breakfast.”
“But he was having a bath at three.”
“I don’t say he didn’t get back from Park Lane before three. But I
don’t suppose Cummings went and looked through the bathroom keyhole to
see if he was in the bath.”
Parker considered again.
“How about Crimplesham’s pince-nez?” he asked.
“That is a bit mysterious,” said Lord Peter.
“And why Thipps’s bathroom?”
“Why, indeed? Pure accident, perhaps—or pure devilry.”
“Do you think all this elaborate scheme could have been put together in
a night, Wimsey?”
“Far from it. It was conceived as soon as that man who bore a
superficial resemblance to Levy came into the workhouse. He had several
days.”
“I see.”
“Freke gave himself away at the inquest. He and Grimbold disagreed
about the length of the man’s illness. If a small man (comparatively
speaking) like Grimbold presumes to disagree with a man like Freke,
it’s because he is sure of his ground.”
“Then—if your theory is sound—Freke made a mistake.”
“Yes. A very slight one. He was guarding, with unnecessary caution,
against starting a train of thought in the mind of anybody—say, the
workhouse doctor. Up till then he’d been reckoning on the fact that
people don’t think a second time about anything (a body, say) that’s
once been accounted for.”
“What made him lose his head?”
“A chain of unforeseen accidents. Levy’s having been recognised—my
mother’s son having foolishly advertised in the _Times_ his connection
with the Battersea end of the mystery—Detective Parker (whose
photograph has been a little prominent in the illustrated press lately)
seen sitting next door to the Duchess of Denver at the inquest. His aim
in life was to prevent the two ends of the problem from linking up. And
there were two of the links, literally side by side. Many criminals are
wrecked by over-caution.”
Parker was silent.
CHAPTER XI
“A regular pea-souper, by Jove,” said Lord Peter.
Parker grunted, and struggled irritably into an overcoat.
“It affords me, if I may say so, the greatest satisfaction,”
continued the noble lord, “that in a collaboration like ours all the
uninteresting and disagreeable routine work is done by you.”
Parker grunted again.
“Do you anticipate any difficulty about the warrant?” inquired Lord
Peter.
Parker grunted a third time.
“I suppose you’ve seen to it that all this business is kept quiet?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve muzzled the workhouse people?”
“Of course.”
“And the police?”
“Yes.”
“Because, if you haven’t there’ll probably be nobody to arrest.”
“My dear Wimsey, do you think I’m a fool?”
“I had no such hope.”
Parker grunted finally and departed.
Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no
solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective
by a public-school education. Despite Parker’s admonitions, he was
not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young
growth by “Raffles” and “Sherlock Holmes,” or the sentiments for which
they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.
“I am an amateur,” said Lord Peter.
Nevertheless, while communing with Dante, he made up his mind.
* * * * *
In the afternoon he found himself in Harley Street. Sir Julian Freke
might be consulted about one’s nerves from two till four on Tuesdays
and Fridays. Lord Peter rang the bell.
“Have you an appointment, sir?” inquired the man who opened the door.
“No,” said Lord Peter, “but will you give Sir Julian my card? I think
it possible he may see me without one.”
He sat down in the beautiful room in which Sir Julian’s patients
awaited his healing counsel. It was full of people. Two or three
fashionably dressed women were discussing shops and servants together,
and teasing a toy griffon. A big, worried-looking man by himself in
a corner looked at his watch twenty times a minute. Lord Peter knew
him by sight. It was Wintrington, a millionaire, who had tried to
kill himself a few months ago. He controlled the finances of five
countries, but he could not control his nerves. The finances of five
countries were in Sir Julian Freke’s capable hands. By the fireplace
sat a soldierly-looking young man, of about Lord Peter’s own age. His
face was prematurely lined and worn; he sat bolt upright, his restless
eyes darting in the direction of every slightest sound. On the sofa
was an elderly woman of modest appearance, with a young girl. The girl
seemed listless and wretched; the woman’s look showed deep affection,
and anxiety tempered with a timid hope. Close beside Lord Peter was
another younger woman, with a little girl, and Lord Peter noticed in
both of them the broad cheekbones and beautiful grey, slanting eyes
of the Slav. The child, moving restlessly about, trod on Lord Peter’s
patent-leather toe, and the mother admonished her in French before
turning to apologize to Lord Peter.
“Mais je vous en prie, madame,” said the young man, “it is nothing.”
“She is nervous, pauvre petite,” said the young woman.
“You are seeking advice for her?”
“Yes. He is wonderful, the doctor. Figure to yourself, monsieur, she
cannot forget, poor child, the things she has seen.” She leaned nearer,
so that the child might not hear. “We have escaped—from starving
Russia—six months ago. I dare not tell you—she has such quick ears,
and then, the cries, the tremblings, the convulsions—they all begin
again. We were skeletons when we arrived—mon Dieu!—but that is better
now. See, she is thin, but she is not starved. She would be fatter
but for the nerves that keep her from eating. We who are older, we
forget—enfin, on apprend à ne pas y penser—but these children! When one
is young, monsieur, tout ça impressionne trop.”
Lord Peter, escaping from the thraldom of British good form, expressed
himself in that language in which sympathy is not condemned to mutism.
“But she is much better, much better,” said the mother, proudly; “the
great doctor, he does marvels.”
“C’est un homme précieux,” said Lord Peter.
“Ah, monsieur, c’est un saint qui opère des miracles! Nous prions
pour lui, Natasha et moi, tous les jours. N’est-ce pas, chérie? And
consider, monsieur, that he does it all, ce grand homme, cet homme
illustre, for nothing at all. When we come here, we have not even
the clothes upon our backs—we are ruined, famished. Et avec ça que
nous sommes de bonne famille—mais hélas! monsieur, en Russie, comme
vous savez, ça ne vous vaut que des insultes—des atrocités. Enfin!
the great Sir Julian sees us, he says—‘Madame, your little girl is
very interesting to me. Say no more. I cure her for nothing—pour ses
beaux yeux,’ a-t-il ajouté en riant. Ah, monsieur, c’est un saint, un
véritable saint! and Natasha is much, much better.”
“Madame, je vous en félicite.”
“And you, monsieur? You are young, well, strong—you also suffer? It is
still the war, perhaps?”
“A little remains of shell-shock,” said Lord Peter.
“Ah, yes. So many good, brave, young men—”
“Sir Julian can spare you a few minutes, my lord, if you will come in
now,” said the servant.
Lord Peter bowed to his neighbour, and walked across the waiting-room.
As the door of the consulting-room closed behind him, he remembered
having once gone, disguised, into the staff-room of a German officer.
He experienced the same feeling—the feeling of being caught in a trap,
and a mingling of bravado and shame.
* * * * *
He had seen Sir Julian Freke several times from a distance, but
never close. Now, while carefully and quite truthfully detailing
the circumstances of his recent nervous attack, he considered the