Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
glorious sensation that another fellow is takin’ all one’s own work off
one’s hands. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, what? Did you
find anything?”
“Not very much. I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally,
with all this rain, there wasn’t a sign. Of course, if this were a
detective story, there’d have been a convenient shower exactly an
hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only
have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being
real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints
in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along—and came to the jolly
conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might
have done it. All the staircases open on to the roof and the leads are
quite flat; you can walk along as easy as along Shaftesbury Avenue.
Still, I’ve got some evidence that the body did walk along there.”
“What’s that?”
Parker brought out his pocketbook and extracted a few shreds of
material, which he laid before his friend.
“One was caught in the gutter just above Thipps’s bathroom window,
another in a crack of the stone parapet just over it, and the rest
came from the chimney-stack behind, where they had caught in an iron
stanchion. What do you make of them?”
Lord Peter scrutinized them very carefully through his lens.
“Interesting,” he said, “damned interesting. Have you developed those
plates, Bunter?” he added, as that discreet assistant came in with the
post.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Caught anything?”
“I don’t know whether to call it anything or not, my lord,” said
Bunter, dubiously. “I’ll bring the prints in.”
“Do,” said Wimsey. “Hallo! here’s our advertisement about the gold
chain in the _Times_—very nice it looks: ‘Write,’phone or call 110,
Piccadilly.’ Perhaps it would have been safer to put a box number,
though I always think that the franker you are with people, the more
you’re likely to deceive ’em; so unused is the modern world to the open
hand and the guileless heart, what?”
“But you don’t think the fellow who left that chain on the body is
going to give himself away by coming here and inquiring about it?”
“I don’t, fathead,” said Lord Peter, with the easy politeness of the
real aristocracy; “that’s why I’ve tried to get hold of the jeweller
who originally sold the chain. See?” He pointed to the paragraph.
“It’s not an old chain—hardly worn at all. Oh, thanks, Bunter. Now,
see here, Parker, these are the finger-marks you noticed yesterday on
the window-sash and on the far edge of the bath. I’d overlooked them; I
give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is
Watson, and you need not say what you were just going to say, because
I admit it all. Now we shall—Hullo, hullo, hullo!”
The three men stared at the photographs.
“The criminal,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, “climbed over the roofs in
the wet and not unnaturally got soot on his fingers. He arranged the
body in the bath, and wiped away all traces of himself except two,
which he obligingly left to show us how to do our job. We learn from
a smudge on the floor that he wore india rubber boots, and from this
admirable set of finger-prints on the edge of the bath that he had the
usual number of fingers and wore rubber gloves. That’s the kind of man
he is. Take the fool away, gentlemen.”
He put the prints aside, and returned to an examination of the shreds
of material in his hand. Suddenly he whistled softly.
“Do you make anything of these, Parker?”
“They seemed to me to be ravellings of some coarse cotton stuff—a
sheet, perhaps, or an improvised rope.”
“Yes,” said Lord Peter—“yes. It may be a mistake—it may be _our_
mistake. I wonder. Tell me, d’you think these tiny threads are long
enough and strong enough to hang a man?”
He was silent, his long eyes narrowing into slits behind the smoke of
his pipe.
“What do you suggest doing this morning?” asked Parker.
“Well,” said Lord Peter, “it seems to me it’s about time I took a hand
in your job. Let’s go round to Park Lane and see what larks Sir Reuben
Levy was up to in bed last night.”
* * * * *
“And now, Mrs. Pemming, if you would be so kind as to give me a
blanket,” said Mr. Bunter, coming down into the kitchen, “and permit of
me hanging a sheet across the lower part of this window, and drawing
the screen across here, so—so as to shut off any reflections, if you
understand me, we’ll get to work.”
Sir Reuben Levy’s cook, with her eye upon Mr. Bunter’s gentlemanly
and well-tailored appearance, hastened to produce what was necessary.
Her visitor placed on the table a basket, containing a water-bottle,
a silver-backed hair-brush, a pair of boots, a small roll of linoleum,
and the “Letters of a Self-made Merchant to His Son,” bound in polished
morocco. He drew an umbrella from beneath his arm and added it to
the collection. He then advanced a ponderous photographic machine and
set it up in the neighbourhood of the kitchen range; then, spreading
a newspaper over the fair, scrubbed surface of the table, he began
to roll up his sleeves and insinuate himself into a pair of surgical
gloves. Sir Reuben Levy’s valet, entering at the moment and finding
him thus engaged, put aside the kitchenmaid, who was staring from a
front-row position, and inspected the apparatus critically. Mr. Bunter
nodded brightly to him, and uncorked a small bottle of grey powder.
“Odd sort of fish, your employer, isn’t he?” said the valet, carelessly.
“Very singular, indeed,” said Mr. Bunter. “Now, my dear,” he added,
ingratiatingly, to the kitchen-maid, “I wonder if you’d just pour
a little of this grey powder over the edge of the bottle while I’m
holding it—and the same with this boot—here, at the top—thank you,
Miss—what is your name? Price? Oh, but you’ve got another name besides
Price, haven’t you? Mabel, eh? That’s a name I’m uncommonly partial
to—that’s very nicely done, you’ve a steady hand, Miss Mabel—see that?
That’s the finger marks—three there, and two here, and smudged over in
both places. No, don’t you touch ’em, my dear, or you’ll rub the bloom
off. We’ll stand ’em up here till they’re ready to have their portraits
taken. Now then, let’s take the hair-brush next. Perhaps, Mrs. Pemming,
you’d like to lift him up very carefully by the bristles.”
“By the bristles, Mr. Bunter?”
“If you please, Mrs. Pemming—and lay him here. Now, Miss Mabel,
another little exhibition of your skill, _if_ you please. No—we’ll try
lamp-black this time. Perfect. Couldn’t have done it better myself.
Ah! there’s a beautiful set. No smudges this time. That’ll interest
his lordship. Now the little book—no, I’ll pick that up myself—with
these gloves, you see, and by the edges—I’m a careful criminal, Mrs.
Pemming, I don’t want to leave any traces. Dust the cover all over,
Miss Mabel; now this side—that’s the way to do it. Lots of prints and
no smudges. All according to plan. Oh, please, Mr. Graves, you mustn’t
touch it—it’s as much as my place is worth to have it touched.”
“D’you have to do much of this sort of thing?” inquired Mr. Graves,
from a superior standpoint.
“Any amount,” replied Mr. Bunter, with a groan calculated to appeal to
Mr. Graves’s heart and unlock his confidence. “If you’d kindly hold one
end of this bit of linoleum, Mrs. Pemming, I’ll hold up this end while
Miss Mabel operates. Yes, Mr. Graves, it’s a hard life, valeting by day
and developing by night—morning tea at any time from 6.30 to 11, and
criminal investigation at all hours. It’s wonderful, the ideas these
rich men with nothing to do get into their heads.”
“I wonder you stand it,” said Mr. Graves. “Now there’s none of that
here. A quiet, orderly, domestic life, Mr. Bunter, has much to be
said for it. Meals at regular hours; decent, respectable families to
dinner—none of your painted women—and no valeting at night, there’s
_much_ to be said for it. I don’t hold with Hebrews as a rule, Mr.
Bunter, and of course I understand that you may find it to your
advantage to be in a titled family, but there’s less thought of that
these days, and I will say, for a self-made man, no one could call Sir
Reuben vulgar, and my lady at any rate is county—Miss Ford, she was,
one of the Hampshire Fords, and both of them always most considerate.”
“I agree with you, Mr. Graves—his lordship and me have never held with
being narrow-minded—why, yes, my dear, of course it’s a footmark, this
is the washstand linoleum. A good Jew can be a good man, that’s what
I’ve always said. And regular hours and considerate habits have a great
deal to recommend them. Very simple in his tastes, now, Sir Reuben,
isn’t he? for such a rich man, I mean.”
“Very simple indeed,” said the cook; “the meals he and her ladyship
have when they’re by themselves with Miss Rachel—well, there now—if it
wasn’t for the dinners, which is always good when there’s company, I’d
be wastin’ my talents and education here, if you understand me, Mr.
Bunter.”
Mr. Bunter added the handle of the umbrella to his collection, and
began to pin a sheet across the window, aided by the housemaid.
“Admirable,” said he. “Now, if I might have this blanket on the table
and another on a towel-horse or something of that kind by way of a
background—you’re very kind, Mrs. Pemming.... Ah! I wish his lordship
never wanted valeting at night. Many’s the time I’ve sat up till three
and four, and up again to call him early to go off Sherlocking at the
other end of the country. And the mud he gets on his clothes and his
boots!”
“I’m sure it’s a shame, Mr. Bunter,” said Mrs. Pemming, warmly. “Low,
I calls it. In my opinion, police-work ain’t no fit occupation for a
gentleman, let alone a lordship.”
“Everything made so difficult, too,” said Mr. Bunter nobly sacrificing
his employer’s character and his own feelings in a good cause; “boots
chucked into a corner, clothes hung up on the floor, as they say—”
“That’s often the case with these men as are born with a silver spoon
in their mouths,” said Mr. Graves. “Now, Sir Reuben, he’s never lost
his good old-fashioned habits. Clothes folded up neat, boots put
out in his dressing-room, so as a man could get them in the morning,
everything made easy.”
“He forgot them the night before last, though.”
“The clothes, not the boots. Always thoughtful for others, is Sir
Reuben. Ah! I hope nothing’s happened to him.”
“Indeed, no, poor gentleman,” chimed in the cook, “and as for what
they’re sayin’, that he’d ’ave gone out surrepshous-like to do
something he didn’t ought, well, I’d never believe it of him, Mr.
Bunter, not if I was to take my dying oath upon it.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Bunter, adjusting his arc-lamps and connecting them with
the nearest electric light, “and that’s more than most of us could say
of them as pays us.”
* * * * *
“Five foot ten,” said Lord Peter, “and not an inch more.” He peered
dubiously at the depression in the bed clothes, and measured it a
second time with the gentleman-scout’s vade-mecum. Parker entered this
particular in a neat pocketbook.
“I suppose,” he said, “a six-foot-two man _might_ leave a five-foot-ten
depression if he curled himself up.”
“Have you any Scotch blood in you, Parker?” inquired his colleague,
bitterly.
“Not that I know of,” replied Parker. “Why?”
“Because of all the cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded
devils I know,” said Lord Peter, “you are the most cautious,
ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded. Here am I, sweating my brains
out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and
disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a
single spark of enthusiasm.”
“Well, it’s no good jumping at conclusions.”