Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
or expectation of disappearing.”
“None—unless he was a most consummate actor. Whatever happened to
change his mind must have happened either at the mysterious appointment
which he kept after dinner, or while he was in bed between midnight and
5.30 a.m.”
“Well, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “what do you make of it?”
“Not in my department, my lord. Except that it is odd that a gentleman
who was too flurried or unwell to fold his clothes as usual should
remember to clean his teeth and put his boots out. Those are two things
that quite frequently get overlooked, my lord.”
“If you mean anything personal, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “I can
only say that I think the speech an unworthy one. It’s a sweet little
problem, Parker mine. Look here, I don’t want to butt in, but I should
dearly love to see that bedroom tomorrow. ’Tis not that I mistrust
thee, dear, but I should uncommonly like to see it. Say me not nay—take
another drop of brandy and a Villar Villar, but say not, say not nay!”
“Of course you can come and see it—you’ll probably find lots of things
I’ve overlooked,” said the other, equably, accepting the proffered
hospitality.
“Parker, acushla, you’re an honour to Scotland Yard. I look at you, and
Sugg appears a myth, a fable, an idiot-boy, spawned in a moonlight hour
by some fantastic poet’s brain. Sugg is too perfect to be possible.
What does he make of the body, by the way?”
“Sugg says,” replied Parker, with precision, “that the body died from
a blow on the back of the neck. The doctor told him that. He says it’s
been dead a day or two. The doctor told him that, too. He says it’s the
body of a well-to-do Hebrew of about fifty. Anybody could have told
him that. He says it’s ridiculous to suppose it came in through the
window without anybody knowing anything about it. He says it probably
walked in through the front door and was murdered by the household.
He’s arrested the girl because she’s short and frail-looking and quite
unequal to downing a tall and sturdy Semite with a poker. He’d arrest
Thipps, only Thipps was away in Manchester all yesterday and the day
before and didn’t come back till late last night—in fact, he wanted to
arrest him till I reminded him that if the body had been a day or two
dead, little Thipps couldn’t have done him in at 10.30 last night. But
he’ll arrest him tomorrow as an accessory—and the old lady with the
knitting, too, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Well, I’m glad the little man has so much of an alibi,” said Lord
Peter, “though if you’re only glueing your faith to cadaveric lividity,
rigidity, and all the other quiddities, you must be prepared to have
some sceptical beast of a prosecuting counsel walk slap-bang through
the medical evidence. Remember Impey Biggs defending in that Chelsea
tea-shop affair? Six bloomin’ medicos contradictin’ each other in
the box, an’ old Impey elocutin’ abnormal cases from Glaister and
Dixon Mann till the eyes of the jury reeled in their heads! ‘Are you
prepared to swear, Dr. Thingumtight, that the onset of rigor mortis
indicates the hour of death without the possibility of error?’ ‘So far
as my experience goes, in the majority of cases,’ says the doctor, all
stiff. ‘Ah!’ says Biggs, ‘but this is a Court of Justice, Doctor, not
a Parliamentary election. We can’t get on without a minority report.
The law, Dr. Thingumtight, respects the rights of the minority, alive
or dead.’ Some ass laughs, and old Biggs sticks his chest out and
gets impressive. ‘Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. My client—an
upright and honourable gentleman—is being tried for his life—for his
life, gentlemen—and it is the business of the prosecution to show his
guilt—if they can—without a shadow of doubt. Now, Dr. Thingumtight,
I ask you again, can you solemnly swear, without the least shadow of
doubt,—probable, possible shadow of doubt—that this unhappy woman met
her death neither sooner nor later than Thursday evening? A probable
opinion? Gentlemen, we are not Jesuits, we are straightforward
Englishmen. You cannot ask a British-born jury to convict any man on
the authority of a probable opinion.’ Hum of applause.”
“Biggs’s man was guilty all the same,” said Parker.
“Of course he was. But he was acquitted all the same, an’ what you’ve
just said is libel.” Wimsey walked over to the bookshelf and took down
a volume of Medical Jurisprudence. “‘Rigor mortis—can only be stated in
a very general way—many factors determine the result.’ Cautious brute.
‘On the average, however, stiffening will have begun—neck and jaw—5 to
6 hours after death’—m’m—‘in all likelihood have passed off in the bulk
of cases by the end of 36 hours. Under certain circumstances, however,
it may appear unusually early, or be retarded unusually long!’ Helpful,
ain’t it, Parker? ‘Brown-Séquard states ... 3½ minutes after death....
In certain cases not until lapse of 16 hours after death ... present
as long as 21 days thereafter.’ Lord! ‘Modifying factors—age—muscular
state—or febrile diseases—or where temperature of environment is
high’—and so on and so on—any bloomin’ thing. Never mind. You can run
the argument for what it’s worth to Sugg. _He_ won’t know any better.”
He tossed the book away. “Come back to facts. What did _you_ make of
the body?”
“Well,” said the detective, “not very much—I was puzzled—frankly. I
should say he had been a rich man, but self-made, and that his good
fortune had come to him fairly recently.”
“Ah, you noticed the calluses on the hands—I thought you wouldn’t miss
that.”
“Both his feet were badly blistered—he had been wearing tight shoes.”
“Walking a long way in them, too,” said Lord Peter, “to get such
blisters as that. Didn’t that strike you as odd, in a person evidently
well off?”
“Well, I don’t know. The blisters were two or three days old. He might
have got stuck in the suburbs one night, perhaps—last train gone and no
taxi—and had to walk home.”
“Possibly.”
“There were some little red marks all over his back and one leg I
couldn’t quite account for.”
“I saw them.”
“What did you make of them?”
“I’ll tell you afterwards. Go on.”
“He was very long-sighted—oddly long-sighted for a man in the prime
of life; the glasses were like a very old man’s. By the way, they
had a very beautiful and remarkable chain of flat links chased with a
pattern. It struck me he might be traced through it.”
“I’ve just put an advertisement in the _Times_ about it,” said Lord
Peter. “Go on.”
“He had had the glasses some time—they had been mended twice.”
“Beautiful, Parker, beautiful. Did you realize the importance of that?”
“Not specially, I’m afraid—why?”
“Never mind—go on.”
“He was probably a sullen, ill-tempered man—his nails were filed down
to the quick as though he habitually bit them, and his fingers were
bitten as well. He smoked quantities of cigarettes without a holder. He
was particular about his personal appearance.”
“Did you examine the room at all? I didn’t get a chance.”
“I couldn’t find much in the way of footprints. Sugg & Co. had tramped
all over the place, to say nothing of little Thipps and the maid, but
I noticed a very indefinite patch just behind the head of the bath, as
though something damp might have stood there. You could hardly call it
a print.”
“It rained hard all last night, of course.”
“Yes; did you notice that the soot on the window-sill was vaguely
marked?”
“I did,” said Wimsey, “and I examined it hard with this little fellow,
but I could make nothing of it except that something or other had
rested on the sill.” He drew out his monocle and handed it to Parker.
“My word, that’s a powerful lens.”
“It is,” said Wimsey, “and jolly useful when you want to take a good
squint at somethin’ and look like a bally fool all the time. Only it
don’t do to wear it permanently—if people see you full-face they say:
‘Dear me! how weak the sight of that eye must be!’ Still, it’s useful.”
“Sugg and I explored the ground at the back of the building,” went on
Parker, “but there wasn’t a trace.”
“That’s interestin’. Did you try the roof?”
“No.”
“We’ll go over it tomorrow. The gutter’s only a couple of feet off the
top of the window. I measured it with my stick—the gentleman-scout’s
vade-mecum, I call it—it’s marked off in inches. Uncommonly handy
companion at times. There’s a sword inside and a compass in the head.
Got it made specially. Anything more?”
“Afraid not. Let’s hear your version, Wimsey.”
“Well, I think you’ve got most of the points. There are just one or
two little contradictions. For instance, here’s a man wears expensive
gold-rimmed pince-nez and has had them long enough to be mended twice.
Yet his teeth are not merely discoloured, but badly decayed and look as
if he’d never cleaned them in his life. There are four molars missing
on one side and three on the other and one front tooth broken right
across. He’s a man careful of his personal appearance, as witness his
hair and his hands. What do you say to that?”
“Oh, these self-made men of low origin don’t think much about teeth,
and are terrified of dentists.”
“True; but one of the molars has a broken edge so rough that it had
made a sore place on the tongue. Nothing’s more painful. D’you mean
to tell me a man would put up with that if he could afford to get the
tooth filed?”
“Well, people are queer. I’ve known servants endure agonies rather than
step over a dentist’s doormat. How did you see that, Wimsey?”
“Had a look inside; electric torch,” said Lord Peter. “Handy little
gadget. Looks like a matchbox. Well—I daresay it’s all right, but
I just draw your attention to it. Second point: Gentleman with hair
smellin’ of Parma violet and manicured hands and all the rest of it,
never washes the inside of his ears. Full of wax. Nasty.”
“You’ve got me there, Wimsey; I never noticed it. Still—old bad habits
die hard.”
“Right oh! Put it down at that. Third point: Gentleman with the
manicure and the brilliantine and all the rest of it suffers from
fleas.”
“By Jove, you’re right! Flea-bites. It never occurred to me.”
“No doubt about it, old son. The marks were faint and old, but
unmistakable.”
“Of course, now you mention it. Still, that might happen to anybody. I
loosed a whopper in the best hotel in Lincoln the week before last. I
hope it bit the next occupier!”
“Oh, all these things _might_ happen to anybody—separately. Fourth
point: Gentleman who uses Parma violet for his hair, etc., etc., washes
his body in strong carbolic soap—so strong that the smell hangs about
twenty-four hours later.”
“Carbolic to get rid of the fleas.”
“I will say for you, Parker, you’ve an answer for everything. Fifth
point: Carefully got-up gentleman, with manicured, though masticated,
finger-nails, has filthy black toe-nails which look as if they hadn’t
been cut for years.”
“All of a piece with habits as indicated.”
“Yes, I know, but such habits! Now, sixth and last point: This
gentleman with the intermittently gentlemanly habits arrives in the
middle of a pouring wet night, and apparently through the window, when
he has already been twenty-four hours dead, and lies down quietly in
Mr. Thipps’s bath, unseasonably dressed in a pair of pince-nez. Not
a hair on his head is ruffled—the hair has been cut so recently that
there are quite a number of little short hairs stuck on his neck and
the sides of the bath—and he has shaved so recently that there is a
line of dried soap on his cheek—”
“Wimsey!”
“Wait a minute—and _dried soap in his mouth_.”
Bunter got up and appeared suddenly at the detective’s elbow, the
respectful man-servant all over.
“A little more brandy, sir?” he murmured.
“Wimsey,” said Parker, “you are making me feel cold all over.” He
emptied his glass—stared at it as though he were surprised to find