Lord Peter Views the Body: A Collection of Mysteries, Page 3

  ‘By Jove!’ cried Varden, ‘I remember now being told something about a cablegram when I got out, but I never connected it with Loder. I thought it was just some stupidity of the Western Electric people.’

  ‘Quite so. Well, as soon as I’d got that, I popped along to Loder’s with a picklock in one pocket and an automatic in the other. The good Bunter went with me, and, if I didn’t return by a certain time, had orders to telephone for the police. So you see everything was pretty well covered. Bunter was the chauffeur who was waiting for you, Mr Varden, but you turned suspicious — I don’t blame you altogether — so all we could do was to forward your luggage along to the train.

  ‘On the way out we met the Loder servants en route for New York in a car, which showed us that we were on the right track, and also that I was going to have a fairly simple job of it.

  ‘You’ve heard all about my interview with Mr Varden. I really don’t think I could improve upon his account. When I’d seen him and his traps safely off the premises, I made for the studio. It was empty, so I opened the secret door, and, as I expected, saw a line of light under the workshop door at the far end of the passage.’

  ‘So Loder was there all the time?’

  Of course he was. I took my little pop-gun tight in my fist and opened the door very gently. Loder was standing between the tank and the switchboard, very busy indeed — so busy he didn’t hear me come in. His hands were black with graphite, a big heap of which was spread on a sheet on the floor, and he was engaged with a long, springy coil of copper wire, running to the output of the transformer. The big packing-case had been opened, and all the hooks were occupied.

  ‘Loder!’ I said.

  ‘He turned on me with a face like nothing human. “Wimsey!” he shouted, “what the hell are you doing here?”

  ‘ “I have come,” I said, “to tell you that I know how the apple gets into the dumpling.” And I showed him the automatic.

  ‘He gave a great yell and dashed at the switchboard, turning out the light, so that I could not see to aim. I heard him leap at me — and then there came in the darkness a crash and a splash — and a shriek such as I never heard — not in five years of war — and never want to hear again.

  ‘I groped forward for the switchboard. Of course, I turned on everything before I could lay my hand on the light, but I got it at last — a great white glare from the floodlight over the vat.

  ‘He lay there, still twitching faintly. Cyanide, you see, is about the swiftest and painfullest thing out. Before I could move to do anything, I knew he was dead — poisoned and drowned and dead. The coil of wire that had tripped him had gone into the vat with him. Without thinking, I touched it, and got a shock that pretty well staggered me. Then I realised that I must have turned on the current when I was hunting for the light. I looked into the vat again. As he fell, his dying hands had clutched at the wire. The coils were tight round his fingers, and the current was methodically depositing a film of copper all over his hands, which were blackened with the graphite.

  ‘I had just sense enough to realise that Loder was dead, and that it might be a nasty sort of look-out for me if the thing came out, for I’d certainly gone along to threaten him with a pistol.

  ‘I searched about till I found some solder and an iron. Then I went upstairs and called in Bunter, who had done his ten miles in record time. We went into the smoking-room and soldered the arm of that cursed figure into place again, as well as we could, and then we took everything back into the workshop. We cleaned off every finger-print and removed every trace of our presence. We left the light and the switchboard as they were, and returned to New York by an extremely roundabout route. The only thing we brought away with us was the facsimile of the Consular seal, and that we threw into the river.

  ‘Loder was found by the butler next morning. We read in the papers how he had fallen into the vat when engaged on some experiments in electro-plating. The ghastly fact was commented upon that the dead man’s hands were thickly coppered over. They couldn’t get it off without irreverent violence, so he was buried like that.

  ‘That’s all. Please, Armstrong, may I have my whisky-and-soda now?’

  ‘What happened to the couch?’ enquired Smith-Hartington presently.

  ‘I bought it in at the sale of Loder’s things,’ said Wimsey, ‘and got hold of a dear old Catholic priest I knew, to whom I told the whole story under strict vow of secrecy. He was a very sensible and feeling old bird; so one moonlight night Bunter and I carried the thing out in the car to his own little church, some miles out of the city, and gave it Christian burial in a corner of the graveyard. It seemed the best thing to do.’

  The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question

  THE UNPROFESSIONAL DETECTIVE CAREER of Lord Peter Wimsey was regulated (though the word has no particular propriety in this connection) by a persistent and undignified inquisitiveness. The habit of asking silly questions — natural, though irritating, in the immature male — remained with him long after his immaculate man, Bunter, had become attached to his service to shave the bristles from his chin and see to the due purchase and housing of Napoleon, brandies and Villar y Villar cigars. At the age of thirty-two his sister Mary christened him Elephant’s Child. It was his idiotic enquiries (before his brother, the Duke of Denver, who grew scarlet with mortification) as to what the Woolsack was really stuffed with that led the then Lord Chancellor idly to investigate the article in question, and to discover, tucked deep within its recesses, that famous diamond necklace of the Marchioness of Writtle, which had disappeared on the day Parliament was opened and been safely secreted by one of the cleaners. It was by a continual and personal badgering of the Chief Engineer at 2LO on the question of ‘Why is Oscillation and How is it Done?’ that his lordship incidentally unmasked the great Ploffsky gang of Anarchist conspirators, who were accustomed to converse in code by a methodical system of howls, superimposed (to the great annoyance of listeners in British and European stations) upon the London wave-length and duly relayed by 5XX over a radius of some five or six hundred miles. He annoyed persons of more leisure than decorum by suddenly taking into his head to descend to the Underground by way of the stairs, though the only exciting thing he ever actually found there were the bloodstained boots of the Sloane Square murderer; on the other hand when the drains were taken up at Glegg’s Folly, it was by hanging about and hindering the plumbers at their job that he accidentally made the discovery which hanged that detestable poisoner, William Girdlestone Chitty.

  Accordingly, it was with no surprise at all that the reliable Bunter, one April morning, received the announcement of an abrupt change of plan.

  They had arrived at the Gare St Lazare in good time to register the luggage. Their three months’ trip to Italy had been purely for enjoyment, and had been followed by a pleasant fortnight in Paris. They were now intending to pay a short visit to the Duc de Sainte-Croix in Rouen on their way back to England. Lord Peter paced the Salle des Pas Perdus for some time, buying an illustrated paper or two and eyeing the crowd. He bent an appreciative eye on a slim, shingled creature with the face of a Paris gamin, but was forced to admit to himself that her ankles were a trifle on the thick side; he assisted an elderly lady who was explaining to the bookstall clerk that she wanted a map of Paris and not a carte postale, consumed a quick cognac at one of the little green tables at the far end, and then decided he had better go down and see how Bunter was getting on.

  In half an hour Bunter and his porter had worked themselves up to the second place in the enormous queue — for, as usual, one of the weighing-machines was out of order. In front of them stood an agitated little group — the young woman Lord Peter had noticed in the Salle des Pas Perdus, a sallow-faced man of about thirty, their porter, and the registration official, who was peering eagerly through his little guichet.

  ‘Mais je te répète que je ne les ai pas,’ said the sallow man heatedly. ‘Voyons, voyons. C’est bien toi qui les as pris, n’est-ce-pas? Eh bien
, alors, comment veux-tu que je les aie, moi?’

  ‘Mais non, mais non, je te les ai bien donnés là-haut, avant d’aller chercher les journaux.’

  ‘Je t’assure que non. Enfin, c’est évident! J’ai cherché partout, que diable! Tu ne m’as rien donné, du tout, du tout’

  ‘Mais puisque je t’ai dit d’aller faire enregistrer les bagages! Ne faut-il pas que je t’aie bien remis les billets? Me prends-tu pour un imbécile? Va! On n’est pas dépourvu de sens! Mais regarde l’heure! Le train part à 11 h. 20 m. Cherche un peu, au moins.’

  ‘Mais puisque j’ai cherché partout — le gilet, rien! Le jacquet rien, rien! Le pardessus — rien! rien! rien! C’est toi —’

  Here the porter, urged by the frantic cries and stamping of the queue, and the repeated insults of Lord Peter’s porter, flung himself into the discussion.

  ‘P’t-être qu’ m’sieur a bouté les billets dans son pantalon,’ he suggested.

  ‘Triple idiot!’ snapped the traveller, ‘je vous le demande — est-ce qu’on a jamais entendu parler de mettre des billets dans son pantalon? Jamais —’

  The French porter is a Republican, and, moreover, extremely ill-paid. The large tolerance of his English colleague is not for him.

  ‘Ah!’ said he, dropping two heavy bags and looking round for moral support. ‘Vous dîtes? En voilà du joli! Allons, mon p’tit, ce n’est pas parcequ’on porte un faux-col qu’on a le droit d’insulter les gens.’

  The discussion might have become a full-blown row, had not the young man discovered the missing tickets — incidentally, they were in his trousers-pocket after all — and continued the registration of his luggage, to the undisguised satisfaction of the crowd.

  ‘Bunter,’ said his lordship, who had turned his back on the group and was lighting a cigarette, ‘I am going to change the tickets. We shall go straight on to London. Have you got that snapshot affair of yours with you?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘The one you can work from your pocket without anyone noticing?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Get me a picture of those two.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘I will see to the luggage. Wire to the Duc that I am unexpectedly called home.’

  ‘Very good, my lord.’

  Lord Peter did not allude to the matter again till Bunter was putting his trousers in the press in their cabin on board the Normannia. Beyond ascertaining that the young man and woman who had aroused his curiosity were on the boat as second-class passengers, he had sedulously avoided contact with them.

  ‘Did you get that photograph?’

  ‘I hope so, my lord. As your lordship knows, the aim from the breast-pocket tends to be unreliable. I have made three attempts, and trust that one at least may prove to be not unsuccessful.’

  ‘How soon can you develop them?’

  ‘At once, if your lordship pleases. I have all the materials in my suit case.’

  ‘What fun!’ said Lord Peter, eagerly tying himself into a pair of mauve silk pyjamas. ‘May I hold the bottles and things?’

  Mr Bunter poured 3 ounces of water into an 8-ounce measure, and handed his master a glass rod and a minute packet.

  ‘If your lordship would be so good as to stir the contents of the white packet slowly into the water,’ he said, bolting the door, ‘and, when dissolved, add the contents of the blue packet.’

  ‘Just like a Seidlitz powder,’ said his lordship happily. ‘Does it fizz?’

  ‘Not much, my lord,’ replied the expert, shaking a quantity of hypo crystals into the hand-basin.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said Lord Peter. ‘I say, Bunter, it’s no end of a bore to dissolve.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ returned Bunter sedately. ‘I have always found that part of the process exceptionally tedious, my lord.’ Lord Peter jabbed viciously with the glass rod. ‘Just you wait,’ he said, in a vindictive tone, ‘till we get to Waterloo.’

  Three days later Lord Peter Wimsey sat in his book-lined sitting-room at MOA Piccadilly. The tall bunches of daffodils on the table smiled in the spring sunshine, and nodded to the breeze which danced in from the open window. The door opened, and his lordship glanced up from a handsome edition of the Contes de la Fontaine, whose handsome hand-coloured Fragonard plates he was examining with the aid of a lens.

  ‘Morning, Bunter. Anything doing?’

  ‘I have ascertained, my lord, that the young person in question has entered the service of the elder Duchess of Medway. Her name is Célestine Berger.’

  ‘You are less accurate than usual, Bunter. Nobody off the stage is called Célestine. You should say “under the name of Célestine Berger”. And the man?’

  ‘He is domiciled at this address in Guildford Street, Bloomsbury, my lord.’

  ‘Excellent, my Bunter. Now give me Who’s Who. Was it a very tiresome job?’

  ‘Not exceptionally so, my lord.’

  ‘One of these days I suppose I shall give you something to do which you will jib at,’ said his lordship, ‘and you will leave me and I shall cut my throat. Thanks. Run away and play. I shall lunch at the club.’

  The book which Bunter had handed his employer indeed bore the words Who’s Who engrossed upon its cover, but it was to be found in no public library and in no bookseller’s shop. It was a bulky manuscript, closely filled, in part with the small print-like handwriting of Mr Bunter, in part with Lord Peter’s neat and altogether illegible hand. It contained biographies of the most unexpected people, and the most unexpected facts about the most obvious people. Lord Peter turned to a very long entry under the name of the Dowager Duchess of Medway. It appeared to make satisfactory reading, for after a time he smiled, closed the book, and went to the telephone.

  ‘Yes — this is the Duchess of Medway. Who is it?’

  The deep, harsh old voice pleased Lord Peter. He could see the imperious face and upright figure of what had been the most famous beauty in the London of the ’sixties.

  ‘It’s Peter Wimsey, duchess.’

  ‘Indeed, and how do you do, young man? Back from your Continental jaunting?’

  ‘Just home — and longing to lay my devotion at the feet of the most fascinating lady in England.’

  ‘God bless my soul, child, what do you want?’ demanded the duchess. ‘Boys like you don’t flatter an old woman for nothing.’

  ‘I want to tell you my sins, duchess.’

  ‘You should have lived in the great days,’ said the voice appreciatively. ‘Your talents are wasted on the young fry.’

  ‘That is why I want to talk to you, duchess.’

  ‘Well, my dear, if you’ve committed any sins worth hearing I shall enjoy your visit.’

  ‘You are as exquisite in kindness as in charm. I am coming this afternoon.’

  ‘I will be at home to you and no one else. There.’

  ‘Dear lady, I kiss your hands,’ said Lord Peter, and he heard a deep chuckle as the duchess rang off.

  ‘You may say what you like, duchess,’ said Lord Peter from his reverential position on the fender-stool, ‘but you are the youngest grandmother in London, not excepting my own mother.’

  ‘Dear Honoria is the merest child,’ said the duchess. ‘I have twenty years more experience of life, and have arrived at the age when we boast of them. I have every intention of being a great-grandmother before I die. Sylvia is being married in a fortnight’s time, to that stupid son of Attenbury’s.’

  ‘Abcock?’

  ‘Yes. He keeps the worst hunters I ever saw, and doesn’t know still champagne from sauterne. But Sylvia is stupid, too, poor child, so I dare say they will get on charmingly. In my day one had to have either brains or beauty to get on — preferably both. Nowadays nothing seems to be required but a total lack of figure. But all the sense went out of society with the House of Lords’ veto. I except you, Peter. You have talents. It is a pity you do not employ them in politics.’

  ‘Dear lady, God forbid.’

  ‘Perh
aps you are right, as things are. There were giants in my day. Dear Dizzy. I remember so well, when his wife died, how hard we all tried to get him — Medway had died the year before — but he was wrapped up in that stupid Bradford woman, who had never even read a line of one of his books, and couldn’t have understood ’em if she had. And now we have Abcock standing for Midhurst, and married to Sylvia!’

  ‘You haven’t invited me to the wedding, duchess dear. I’m so hurt,’ sighed his lordship.

  ‘Bless you, child, I didn’t send out the invitations, but I suppose your brother and that tiresome wife of his will be there. You must come, of course, if you want to. I had no idea you had a passion for weddings.’

  ‘Hadn’t you?’ said Peter. ‘I have a passion for this one. I want to see Lady Sylvia wearing white satin and the family lace and diamonds, and to sentimentalise over the days when my fox-terrier bit the stuffing out of her doll.’

  ‘Very well, my dear, you shall. Come early and give me your support. As for the diamonds, if it weren’t a family tradition, Sylvia shouldn’t wear them. She has the impudence to complain of them.’

  ‘I thought they were some of the finest in existence.’

  ‘So they are. But she says the settings are ugly and old-fashioned, and she doesn’t like diamonds, and they won’t go with her dress. Such nonsense. Whoever heard of a girl not liking diamonds? She wants to be something romantic and moonshiny in pearls. I have no patience with her.’