Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
the chisel now. Not much substance to these ’ere boards, sir.”
Several long creaks. A sob. The Duchess’s voice, kind but peremptory.
“Hush, Christine. You mustn’t cry.”
A mutter of voices. The lurching departure of the Dante demons—good,
decent demons in corduroy.
Dr. Grimbold’s voice—cool and detached as if in the consulting room.
“Now—have you got that lamp, Mr. Wingate? Thank you. Yes, here on
the table, please. Be careful not to catch your elbow in the flex,
Mr. Levett. It would be better, I think, if you came on this side.
Yes—yes—thank you. That’s excellent.”
The sudden brilliant circle of an electric lamp over the table. Dr.
Grimbold’s beard and spectacles. Mr. Levett blowing his nose. Parker
bending close. The Master of the Workhouse peering over him. The rest
of the room in the enhanced dimness of the gas-jets and the fog.
A low murmur of voices. All heads bent over the work.
Dr. Grimbold again—beyond the circle of the lamplight.
“We don’t want to distress you unnecessarily, Lady Levy. If you will
just tell us what to look for—the—? Yes, yes, certainly—and—yes—stopped
with gold? Yes—the lower jaw, the last but one on the right? Yes—no
teeth missing—no—yes? What kind of a mole? Yes—just over the left
breast? Oh, I beg your pardon, just under—yes—appendicitis? Yes—a
long one—yes—in the middle? Yes, I quite understand—a scar on the
arm? Yes, I don’t know if we shall be able to find that—yes—any little
constitutional weakness that might—? Oh, yes—arthritis—yes—thank you,
Lady Levy—that’s very clear. Don’t come unless I ask you to. Now,
Wingate.”
A pause. A murmur. “Pulled out? After death, you think—well, so do
I. Where is Dr. Colegrove? You attended this man in the workhouse?
Yes. Do you recollect—? No? You’re quite certain about that? Yes—we
mustn’t make a mistake, you know. Yes, but there are reasons why Sir
Julian can’t be present; I’m asking _you_, Dr. Colegrove. Well, you’re
certain—that’s all I want to know. Just bring the light closer, Mr.
Wingate, if you please. These miserable shells let the damp in so
quickly. Ah! what do you make of this? Yes—yes—well, that’s rather
unmistakable, isn’t it? Who did the head? Oh, Freke—of course. I was
going to say they did good work at St. Luke’s. Beautiful, isn’t it,
Dr. Colegrove? A wonderful surgeon—I saw him when he was at Guy’s. Oh,
no, gave it up years ago. Nothing like keeping your hand in. Ah—yes,
undoubtedly that’s it. Have you a towel handy, sir? Thank you. Over
the head, if you please—I think we might have another here. Now, Lady
Levy—I am going to ask you to look at a scar, and see if you recognise
it. I’m sure you are going to help us by being very firm. Take your
time—you won’t see anything more than you absolutely must.”
“Lucy, don’t leave me.”
“No, dear.”
A space cleared at the table. The lamplight on the Duchess’s white hair.
“Oh, yes—oh, yes! No, no—I couldn’t be mistaken. There’s that funny
little kink in it. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Oh, Lucy—Reuben!”
“Only a moment more, Lady Levy. The mole—”
“I—I think so—oh, yes, that is the very place.”
“Yes. And the scar—was it three-cornered, just above the elbow?”
“Yes, oh, yes.”
“Is this it?”
“Yes—yes—”
“I must ask you definitely, Lady Levy. Do you, from these three marks
identify the body as that of your husband?”
“Oh! I must, mustn’t I? Nobody else could have them just the same in
just those places? It is my husband. It is Reuben. Oh—”
“Thank you, Lady Levy. You have been very brave and very helpful.”
“But—I don’t understand yet. How did he come here? Who did this
dreadful thing?”
“Hush, dear,” said the Duchess; “the man is going to be punished.”
“Oh, but—how cruel! Poor Reuben! Who could have wanted to hurt him? Can
I see his face?”
“No, dear,” said the Duchess. “That isn’t possible. Come away—you
mustn’t distress the doctors and people.”
“No—no—they’ve all been so kind. Oh, Lucy!”
“We’ll go home, dear. You don’t want us any more, Dr. Grimbold?”
“No, Duchess, thank you. We are very grateful to you and to Lady Levy
for coming.”
There was a pause, while the two women went out, Parker, collected and
helpful, escorting them to their waiting car. Then Dr. Grimbold again:
“I think Lord Peter Wimsey ought to see—the correctness of his
deductions—Lord Peter—very painful—you may wish to see—yes, I was
uneasy at the inquest—yes—Lady Levy—remarkably clear evidence—yes—most
shocking case—ah, here’s Mr. Parker—you and Lord Peter Wimsey entirely
justified—do I really understand—? Really? I can hardly believe
it—so distinguished a man—as you say, when a great brain turns to
crime—yes—look here! Marvellous work—marvellous—somewhat obscured by
this time, of course—but the most beautiful sections—here, you see,
the left hemisphere—and here—through the corpus striatum—here again—the
very track of the damage done by the blow—wonderful—guessed it—saw the
effect of the blow as he struck it, you know—ah, I should like to see
_his_ brain, Mr. Parker—and to think that—heavens, Lord Peter, you
don’t know what a blow you have struck at the whole profession—the
whole civilized world! Oh, my dear sir! Can you ask me? My lips are
sealed of course—all our lips are sealed.”
The way back through the burial ground. Fog again, and the squeal of
wet gravel.
“Are your men ready, Charles?”
“They have gone. I sent them off when I saw Lady Levy to the car.”
“Who is with them?”
“Sugg.”
“Sugg?”
“Yes—poor devil. They’ve had him up on the mat at headquarters for
bungling the case. All that evidence of Thipps’s about the night club
was corroborated, you know. That girl he gave the gin-and-bitters to
was caught, and came and identified him, and they decided their case
wasn’t good enough, and let Thipps and the Horrocks girl go. Then
they told Sugg he had overstepped his duty and ought to have been more
careful. So he ought, but he can’t help being a fool. I was sorry for
him. It may do him some good to be in at the death. After all, Peter,
you and I had special advantages.”
“Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. Whoever goes won’t get there in time.
Sugg’s as good as another.”
But Sugg—an experience rare in his career—was in time.
* * * * *
Parker and Lord Peter were at 110 Piccadilly. Lord Peter was playing
Bach and Parker was reading Origen when Sugg was announced.
“We’ve got our man, sir,” said he.
“Good God!” said Peter. “Alive?”
“We were just in time, my lord. We rang the bell and marched straight
up past his man to the library. He was sitting there doing some
writing. When we came in, he made a grab for his hypodermic, but we
were too quick for him, my lord. We didn’t mean to let him slip through
our hands, having got so far. We searched him thoroughly and marched
him off.”
“He is actually in gaol, then?”
“Oh, yes—safe enough—with two warders to see he doesn’t make away with
himself.”
“You surprise me, Inspector. Have a drink.”
“Thank you, my lord. I may say that I’m very grateful to you—this
case was turning out a pretty bad egg for me. If I was rude to your
lordship—”
“Oh, it’s all right, Inspector,” said Lord Peter, hastily. “I don’t see
how you could possibly have worked it out. I had the good luck to know
something about it from other sources.”
“That’s what Freke says.” Already the great surgeon was a common
criminal in the inspector’s eyes—a mere surname. “He was writing a full
confession when we got hold of him, addressed to your lordship. The
police will have to have it, of course, but seeing it’s written for
you, I brought it along for you to see first. Here it is.”
He handed Lord Peter a bulky document.
“Thanks,” said Peter. “Like to hear it, Charles?”
“Rather.”
Accordingly Lord Peter read it aloud.
CHAPTER XIII
Dear Lord Peter—When I was a young man I used to play chess with an
old friend of my father’s. He was a very bad, and a very slow, player,
and he could never see when a checkmate was inevitable, but insisted
on playing every move out. I never had any patience with that kind of
attitude, and I will freely admit now that the game is yours. I must
either stay at home and be hanged or escape abroad and live in an idle
and insecure obscurity. I prefer to acknowledge defeat.
If you have read my book on “Criminal Lunacy,” you will remember that
I wrote: “In the majority of cases, the criminal betrays himself
by some abnormality attendant upon this pathological condition of
the nervous tissues. His mental instability shows itself in various
forms: an overweening vanity, leading him to brag of his achievement;
a disproportionate sense of the importance of the offence, resulting
from the hallucination of religion, and driving him to confession;
egomania, producing the sense of horror or conviction of sin, and
driving him to headlong flight without covering his tracks; a reckless
confidence, resulting in the neglect of the most ordinary precautions,
as in the case of Henry Wainwright, who left a boy in charge of the
murdered woman’s remains while he went to call a cab, or on the other
hand, a nervous distrust of apperceptions in the past, causing him to
revisit the scene of the crime to assure himself that all traces have
been as safely removed as _his own judgment knows them to be_. I will
not hesitate to assert that a perfectly sane man, not intimidated by
religious or other delusions, could always render himself perfectly
secure from detection, provided, that is, that the crime were
sufficiently premeditated and that he were not pressed for time or
thrown out in his calculations by purely fortuitous coincidence.
You know as well as I do, how far I have made this assertion good
in practice. The two accidents which betrayed me, I could not by any
possibility have foreseen. The first was the chance recognition of Levy
by the girl in the Battersea Park Road, which suggested a connection
between the two problems. The second was that Thipps should have
arranged to go down to Denver on the Tuesday morning, thus enabling
your mother to get word of the matter through to you before the body
was removed by the police and to suggest a motive for the murder out
of what she knew of my previous personal history. If I had been able
to destroy these two accidentally forged links of circumstance, I will
venture to say that you would never have so much as suspected me, still
less obtained sufficient evidence to convict.
Of all human emotions, except perhaps those of hunger and fear,
the sexual appetite produces the most violent, and, under some
circumstances, the most persistent reactions; I think, however, I am
right in saying that at the time when I wrote my book, my original
sensual impulse to kill Sir Reuben Levy had already become profoundly
modified by my habits of thought. To the animal lust to slay and
the primitive human desire for revenge, there was added the rational
intention of substantiating my own theories for the satisfaction of
myself and the world. If all had turned out as I had planned, I should
have deposited a sealed account of my experiment with the Bank of
England, instructing my executors to publish it after my death. Now
that accident has spoiled the completeness of my demonstration, I
entrust the account to you, whom it cannot fail to interest, with the
request that you will make it known among scientific men, in justice to
my professional reputation.
The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money
and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make
the second. During my early career, though I was fairly well-off, I
had not absolute command of circumstance. Accordingly I devoted myself
to my profession, and contented myself with keeping up a friendly