Chapter 7

On returning to the flat just before lunch-time on the following morning, after a few confirmatory researches in Balham and the neighbourhood of Victoria Station, Lord Peter was greeted at the door by Mr. Bunter (who had gone straight home from Waterloo) with a telephone message and a severe and nursemaid-like eye.

“Lady Swaffham rang up, my lord, and said she hoped your lordship had not forgotten you were lunching with her.”

“I have forgotten, Bunter, and I mean to forget. I trust you told her I had succumbed to lethargic encephalitis suddenly, no flowers by request.”

“Lady Swaffham said, my lord, she was counting on you. She met the Duchess of Denver yesterday—”

“If my sister-in-law’s there I won’t go, that’s flat,” said Lord Peter.

“I beg your pardon, my lord, the Dowager Duchess.”

“What’s she doing in town?”

“I imagine she came up for the inquest, my lord.”

“Oh, yes—we missed that, Bunter.”

“Yes, my lord. Her Grace is lunching with Lady Swaffham.”

“Bunter, I can’t. I can’t, really. Say I’m in bed with whooping cough, and ask my mother to come round after lunch.”

“Very well, my lord. Mrs. Tommy Frayle will be at Lady Swaffham’s, my lord, and Mr. Milligan—”

“Mr. who?”

“Mr. John P. Milligan, my lord, and—”

“Good God, Bunter, why didn’t you say so before? Have I time to get there before he does? All right. I’m off. With a taxi I can just—”

“Not in those trousers, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, blocking the way to the door with deferential firmness.

“Oh, Bunter,” pleaded his lordship, “do let me—just this once. You don’t know how important it is.”

“Not on any account, my lord. It would be as much as my place is worth.”

“The trousers are all right, Bunter.”

“Not for Lady Swaffham’s, my lord. Besides, your lordship forgets the man that ran against you with a milk-can at Salisbury.”

And Mr. Bunter laid an accusing finger on a slight stain of grease showing across the light cloth.

“I wish to God I’d never let you grow into a privileged family retainer, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, dashing his walking- stick into the umbrella-stand. “You’ve no conception of the mistakes my mother may be making.”

Mr. Bunter smiled grimly and led his victim away.

When an immaculate Lord Peter was ushered, rather late for lunch, into Lady Swaffham’s drawing-room, the Dowager Duchess of Denver was seated on a sofa, plunged in intimate conversation with Mr. John P. Milligan of Chicago.

“I’m vurry pleased to meet you, Duchess,” had been that financier’s opening remark, “to thank you for your exceedingly kind invitation. I assure you it’s a compliment I deeply appreciate.”

The Duchess beamed at him, while conducting a rapid rally of all her intellectual forces.

“Do come and sit down and talk to me, Mr. Milligan,” she said. “I do so love talking to you great business men—let me see, is it a railway king you are or something about puss-in-the- corner—at least, I don’t mean that exactly, but that game one used to play with cards, all about wheat and oats, and there was a bull and a bear, too—or was it a horse?—no, a bear, because I remember one always had to try and get rid of it and it used to get so dreadfully crumpled and torn, poor thing, always being handed about, one got to recognise it, and then one had to buy a new pack—so foolish it must seem to you, knowing the real thing, and dreadfully noisy, but really excellent for breaking the ice with rather stiff people who didn’t know each other—I’m quite sorry it’s gone out.”

Mr. Milligan sat down.

“Wal, now,” he said, “I guess it’s as interesting for us business men to meet British aristocrats as it is for Britishers to meet American railway kings, Duchess. And I guess I’ll make as many mistakes talking your kind of talk as you would make if you were tryin’ to run a corner in wheat in Chicago. Fancy now, I called that fine lad of yours Lord Wimsey the other day, and he thought I’d mistaken him for his brother. That made me feel rather green.”

This was an unhoped-for lead. The Duchess walked warily.

“Dear boy,” she said, “I am so glad you met him, Mr. Milligan. Both my sons are a great comfort to me, you know, though, of course, Gerald is more conventional—just the right kind of person for the House of Lords, you know, and a splendid farmer. I can’t see Peter down at Denver half so well, though he is always going to all the right things in town, and very amusing sometimes, poor boy.”

“I was vurry much gratified by Lord Peter’s suggestion,” pursued Mr. Milligan, “for which I understand you are responsible, and I’ll surely be very pleased to come any day you like, though I think you’re flattering me too much.”

“Ah, well,” said the Duchess, “I don’t know if you’re the best judge of that, Mr. Milligan. Not that I know anything about business myself,” she added. “I’m rather old-fashioned for these days, you know, and I can’t pretend to do more than know a nice man when I see him; for the other things I rely on my son.”

The accent of this speech was so flattering that Mr. Milligan purred almost audibly, and said:

“Wal, Duchess, I guess that’s where a lady with a real, beautiful, old-fashioned soul has the advantage of these modern young blatherskites—there aren’t many men who wouldn’t be nice—to her, and even then, if they aren’t rock-bottom she can see through them.”

“But that leaves me where I was,” thought the Duchess. “I believe,” she said aloud, “that I ought to be thanking you in the name of the vicar of Duke’s Denver for a very munificent cheque which reached him yesterday for the Church Restoration Fund. He was so delighted and astonished, poor dear man.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Mr. Milligan, “we haven’t any fine old crusted buildings like yours over on our side, so it’s a privilege to be allowed to drop a little kerosene into the worm-holes when we hear of one in the old country suffering from senile decay. So when your lad told me about Duke’s Denver I took the liberty to subscribe without waiting for the Bazaar.”

“I’m sure it was very kind of you,” said the Duchess. “You are coming to the Bazaar, then?” she continued, gazing into his face appealingly.

“Sure thing,” said Mr. Milligan, with great promptness. “Lord Peter said you’d let me know for sure about the date, but we can always make time for a little bit of good work anyway. Of course I’m hoping to be able to avail myself of your kind invitation to stop, but if I’m rushed, I’ll manage anyhow to pop over and speak my piece and pop back again.”

“I hope so very much,” said the Duchess. “I must see what can be done about the date—of course, I can’t promise—”

“No, no,” said Mr. Milligan heartily. “I know what these things are to fix up. And then there’s not only me—there’s all the real big men of European eminence your son mentioned, to be consulted.”

The Duchess turned pale at the thought that any one of these illustrious persons might some time turn up in somebody’s drawing-room, but by this time she had dug herself in comfortably, and was even beginning to find her range.

“I can’t say how grateful we are to you,” she said; “it will be such a treat. Do tell me what you think of saying.”

“Wal—” began Mr. Milligan.

Suddenly everybody was standing up and a penitent voice was heard to say:

“Really, most awfully sorry, y’know—hope you’ll forgive me, Lady Swaffham, what? Dear lady, could I possibly forget an invitation from you? Fact is, I had to go an’ see a man down in Salisbury—absolutely true, ’pon my word, and the fellow wouldn’t let me get away. I’m simply grovellin’ before you, Lady Swaffham. Shall I go an’ eat my lunch in the corner?”

Lady Swaffham gracefully forgave the culprit.

“Your dear mother is here,” she said.

“How do, Mother?” said Lord Peter, uneasily.

“How are you, dear?” replied the Duchess. “You really oughtn’t to have turned up just yet. Mr. Milligan was just going to tell me what a thrilling speech he’s preparing for the Bazaar, when you came and interrupted us.”

Conversation at lunch turned, not unnaturally, on the Battersea inquest, the Duchess giving a vivid impersonation of Mrs. Thipps being interrogated by the Coroner.

“‘Did you hear anything unusual in the night?’ says the little man, leaning forward and screaming at her, and so crimson in the face and his ears sticking out so—just like a cherubim in that poem of Tennyson’s—or is a cherub blue?—perhaps it’s a seraphim I mean—anyway, you know what I mean, all eyes, with little wings on its head. And dear old Mrs. Thipps saying, ‘Of course I have, any time these eighty years,’ and such a sensation in court till they found out she thought he’d said, ‘Do you sleep without a light?’ and everybody laughing, and then the Coroner said quite loudly, ‘Damn the woman,’ and she heard that, I can’t think why, and said: ‘Don’t you get swearing, young man, sitting there in the presence of Providence, as you may say. I don’t know what young people are coming to nowadays’—and he’s sixty if he’s a day, you know,” said the Duchess.

By a natural transition, Mrs. Tommy Frayle referred to the man who was hanged for murdering three brides in a bath.

“I always thought that was so ingenious,” she said, gazing soulfully at Lord Peter, “and do you know, as it happened, Tommy had just made me insure my life, and I got so frightened, I gave up my morning bath and took to having it in the afternoon when he was in the House—I mean, when he was not in the house—not at home, I mean.”

“Dear lady,” said Lord Peter, reproachfully, “I have a distinct recollection that all those brides were thoroughly unattractive. But it was an uncommonly ingenious plan—the first time of askin’—only he shouldn’t have repeated himself.”

“One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers,” said Lady Swaffham. “Like dramatists, you know—so much easier in Shakespeare’s time, wasn’t it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I’m sure if I’d been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I’d have said: ‘Odsbodikins! There’s that girl again!’”

“That’s just what happened, as a matter of fact,” said Lord Peter. “You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you’ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas. Most people don’t associate anythin’—their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise and goin’ nowhere, but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?”

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Tommy Frayle, with a little scream, “what a blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all!”

“Y’see,” said Lord Peter, balancing a piece of duck on his fork and frowning, “it’s only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that, that people think things out logically. Or’nar’ly, if somebody tells you somethin’ out of the way, you just say, ‘By Jove!’ or ‘How sad!’ an’ leave it at that, an’ half the time you forget about it, ’nless somethin’ turns up afterwards to drive it home. F’r instance, Lady Swaffham, I told you when I came in that I’d been down to Salisbury, ’n’ that’s true, only I don’t suppose it impressed you much; ’n’ I don’t suppose it’d impress you much if you read in the paper tomorrow of a tragic discovery of a dead lawyer down in Salisbury, but if I went to Salisbury again next week ’n’ there was a Salisbury doctor found dead the day after, you might begin to think I was a bird of ill omen for Salisbury residents; and if I went there again the week after, ’n’ you heard next day that the see of Salisbury had fallen vacant suddenly, you might begin to wonder what took me to Salisbury, an’ why I’d never mentioned before that I had friends down there, don’t you see, an’ you might think of goin’ down to Salisbury yourself, an’ askin’ all kinds of people if they’d happened to see a young man in plum-coloured socks hangin’ round the Bishop’s Palace.”

“I daresay I should,” said Lady Swaffham.

“Quite. An’ if you found that the lawyer and the doctor had once upon a time been in business at Poggleton-on-the-Marsh when the Bishop had been vicar there, you’d begin to remember you’d once heard of me payin’ a visit to Poggleton-on-the- Marsh a long time ago, an’ you’d begin to look up the parish registers there an’ discover I’d been married under an assumed name by the vicar to the widow of a wealthy farmer, who’d died suddenly of peritonitis, as certified by the doctor, after the lawyer’d made a will leavin’ me all her money, and then you’d begin to think I might have very good reasons for gettin’ rid of such promisin’ blackmailers as the lawyer, the doctor an’ the bishop. Only, if I hadn’t started an association in your mind by gettin’ rid of ’em all in the same place, you’d never have thought of goin’ to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh, ’n’ you wouldn’t even have remembered I’d ever been there.”

“Were you ever there, Lord Peter?” inquired Mrs. Tommy, anxiously.

“I don’t think so,” said Lord Peter; “the name threads no beads in my mind. But it might, any day, you know.”

“But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things, I suppose—finding out what the person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”

“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham. “There’s that dreadful—perhaps I’d better not say it, though, for fear you should remember it later on.”

“Well, I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Peter, amiably. “You never know. It’d be beastly awkward if the person died suddenly tomorrow.”

“The difficulty with this Battersea case, I guess,” said Mr. Milligan, “is that nobody seems to have any associations with the gentleman in the bath.”

“So hard on poor Inspector Sugg,” said the Duchess. “I quite felt for the man, having to stand up there and answer a lot of questions when he had nothing at all to say.”

Lord Peter applied himself to the duck, having got a little behindhand. Presently he heard somebody ask the Duchess if she had seen Lady Levy.

“She is in great distress,” said the woman who had spoken, a Mrs. Freemantle, “though she clings to the hope that he will turn up. I suppose you knew him, Mr. Milligan—know him, I should say, for I hope he’s still alive somewhere.”

Mrs. Freemantle was the wife of an eminent railway director, and celebrated for her ignorance of the world of finance. Her faux pas in this connection enlivened the tea parties of City men’s wives.

“Wal, I’ve dined with him,” said Mr. Milligan, good-naturedly. “I think he and I’ve done our best to ruin each other, Mrs. Freemantle. If this were the States,” he added, “I’d be much inclined to suspect myself of having put Sir Reuben in a safe place. But we can’t do business that way in your old country; no, ma’am.”

“It must be exciting work doing business in America,” said Lord Peter.

“It is,” said Mr. Milligan. “I guess my brothers are having a good time there now. I’ll be joining them again before long, as soon as I’ve fixed up a little bit of work for them on this side.”

“Well, you mustn’t go till after my bazaar,” said the Duchess.

Lord Peter spent the afternoon in a vain hunt for Mr. Parker.

He ran him down eventually after dinner in Great Ormond Street.

Parker was sitting in an elderly but affectionate armchair, with his feet on the mantelpiece, relaxing his mind with a modern commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. He received Lord Peter with quiet pleasure, though without rapturous enthusiasm, and mixed him a whisky-and-soda. Peter took up the book his friend had laid down and glanced over the pages.

“All these men work with a bias in their minds, one way or other,” he said; “they find what they are looking for.”

“Oh, they do,” agreed the detective; “but one learns to discount that almost automatically, you know. When I was at college, I was all on the other side—Conybeare and Robertson and Drews and those people, you know, till I found they were all so busy looking for a burglar whom nobody had ever seen, that they couldn’t recognise the footprints of the household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning to be cautious.”

“Hum,” said Lord Peter, “theology must be good exercise for the brain then, for you’re easily the most cautious devil I know. But I say, do go on reading—it’s a shame for me to come and root you up in your off-time like this.”

“It’s all right, old man,” said Parker.

The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said:

“D’you like your job?”

The detective considered the question, and replied:

“Yes—yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it quite well—not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the mark and not get slack. And there’s a future to it. Yes, I like it. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Peter. “It’s a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it—up to a point. If it was all on paper I’d enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job—when one doesn’t know any of the people and it’s just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don’t seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin’ in, since I don’t have to make my livin’ by it. And I feel as if I oughtn’t ever to find it amusin’. But I do.”

Parker gave this speech his careful attention.

“I see what you mean,” he said.

“There’s old Milligan, f’r instance,” said Lord Peter. “On paper, nothin’ would be funnier than to catch old Milligan out. But he’s rather a decent old bird to talk to. Mother likes him. He’s taken a fancy to me. It’s awfully entertainin’ goin’ and pumpin’ him with stuff about a bazaar for church expenses, but when he’s so jolly pleased about it and that, I feel a worm. S’pose old Milligan has cut Levy’s throat and plugged him into the Thames. It ain’t my business.”

“It’s as much yours as anybody’s,” said Parker; “it’s no better to do it for money than to do it for nothing.”

“Yes, it is,” said Peter stubbornly. “Havin’ to live is the only excuse there is for doin’ that kind of thing.”

“Well, but look here!” said Parker. “If Milligan has cut poor old Levy’s throat for no reason except to make himself richer, I don’t see why he should buy himself off by giving £1,000 to Duke’s Denver church roof, or why he should be forgiven just because he’s childishly vain, or childishly snobbish.”

“That’s a nasty one,” said Lord Peter.

“Well, if you like, even because he has taken a fancy to you.”

“No, but—”

“Look here, Wimsey—do you think he has murdered Levy?”

“Well, he may have.”

“But do you think he has?”

“I don’t want to think so.”

“Because he has taken a fancy to you?”

“Well, that biases me, of course—”

“I daresay it’s quite a legitimate bias. You don’t think a callous murderer would be likely to take a fancy to you?”

“Well—besides, I’ve taken rather a fancy to him.”

“I daresay that’s quite legitimate, too. You’ve observed him and made a subconscious deduction from your observations, and the result is, you don’t think he did it. Well, why not? You’re entitled to take that into account.”

“But perhaps I’m wrong and he did do it.”

“Then why let your vainglorious conceit in your own power of estimating character stand in the way of unmasking the singularly cold-blooded murder of an innocent and lovable man?”

“I know—but I don’t feel I’m playing the game somehow.”

“Look here, Peter,” said the other with some earnestness, “suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?”

“That’s what I’m ashamed of, really,” said Lord Peter. “It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said the detective, “but that’s because you’re thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that’s childish. If you’ve any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That’s all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn’t any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent—what’s that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, ‘Well played—hard luck—you shall have your revenge tomorrow!’ Well, you can’t do it like that. Life’s not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You can’t be a sportsman. You’re a responsible person.”

“I don’t think you ought to read so much theology,” said Lord Peter. “It has a brutalizing influence.”

He got up and paced about the room, looking idly over the bookshelves. Then he sat down again, filled and lit his pipe, and said:

“Well, I’d better tell you about the ferocious and hardened Crimplesham.”

He detailed his visit to Salisbury. Once assured of his bona fides, Mr. Crimplesham had given him the fullest details of his visit to town.

“And I’ve substantiated it all,” groaned Lord Peter, “and unless he’s corrupted half Balham, there’s no doubt he spent the night there. And the afternoon was really spent with the bank people. And half the residents of Salisbury seem to have seen him off on Monday before lunch. And nobody but his own family or young Wicks seems to have anything to gain by his death. And even if young Wicks wanted to make away with him, it’s rather far-fetched to go and murder an unknown man in Thipps’s place in order to stick Crimplesham’s eyeglasses on his nose.”

“Where was young Wicks on Monday?” asked Parker.

“At a dance given by the Precentor,” said Lord Peter, wildly. “David—his name is David—dancing before the ark of the Lord in the face of the whole Cathedral Close.”

There was a pause.

“Tell me about the inquest,” said Wimsey.

Parker obliged with a summary of the evidence.

“Do you believe the body could have been concealed in the flat after all?” he asked. “I know we looked, but I suppose we might have missed something.”

“We might. But Sugg looked as well.”

“Sugg!”

“You do Sugg an injustice,” said Lord Peter; “if there had been any signs of Thipps’s complicity in the crime, Sugg would have found them.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because he was looking for them. He’s like your commentators on Galatians. He thinks that either Thipps, or Gladys Horrocks, or Gladys Horrocks’s young man did it. Therefore he found marks on the window sill where Gladys Horrocks’s young man might have come in or handed something in to Gladys Horrocks. He didn’t find any signs on the roof, because he wasn’t looking for them.”

“But he went over the roof before me.”

“Yes, but only in order to prove that there were no marks there. He reasons like this: Gladys Horrocks’s young man is a glazier. Glaziers come on ladders. Glaziers have ready access to ladders. Therefore Gladys Horrocks’s young man had ready access to a ladder. Therefore Gladys Horrocks’s young man came on a ladder. Therefore there will be marks on the window sill and none on the roof. Therefore he finds marks on the window sill but none on the roof. He finds no marks on the ground, but he thinks he would have found them if the yard didn’t happen to be paved with asphalt. Similarly, he thinks Mr. Thipps may have concealed the body in the box-room or elsewhere. Therefore you may be sure he searched the box-room and all the other places for signs of occupation. If they had been there he would have found them, because he was looking for them. Therefore, if he didn’t find them it’s because they weren’t there.”

“All right,” said Parker, “stop talking. I believe you.”

He went on to detail the medical evidence.

“By the way,” said Lord Peter, “to skip across for a moment to the other case, has it occurred to you that perhaps Levy was going out to see Freke on Monday night?”

“He was; he did,” said Parker, rather unexpectedly, and proceeded to recount his interview with the nerve-specialist.

“Humph!” said Lord Peter. “I say, Parker, these are funny cases, ain’t they? Every line of inquiry seems to peter out. It’s awfully exciting up to a point, you know, and then nothing comes of it. It’s like rivers getting lost in the sand.”

“Yes,” said Parker. “And there’s another one I lost this morning.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, I was pumping Levy’s secretary about his business. I couldn’t get much that seemed important except further details about the Argentine and so on. Then I thought I’d just ask round in the City about those Peruvian Oil shares, but Levy hadn’t even heard of them so far as I could make out. I routed out the brokers, and found a lot of mystery and concealment, as one always does, you know, when somebody’s been rigging the market, and at last I found one name at the back of it. But it wasn’t Levy’s.”

“No? Whose was it?”

“Oddly enough, Freke’s. It seems mysterious. He bought a lot of shares last week, in a secret kind of way, a few of them in his own name, and then quietly sold ’em out on Tuesday at a small profit—a few hundreds, not worth going to all that trouble about, you wouldn’t think.”

“Shouldn’t have thought he ever went in for that kind of gamble.”

“He doesn’t as a rule. That’s the funny part of it.”

“Well, you never know,” said Lord Peter; “people do these things just to prove to themselves or somebody else that they could make a fortune that way if they liked. I’ve done it myself in a small way.”

He knocked out his pipe and rose to go.

“I say, old man,” he said suddenly, as Parker was letting him out, “does it occur to you that Freke’s story doesn’t fit in awfully well with what Anderson said about the old boy having been so jolly at dinner on Monday night? Would you be, if you thought you’d got anything of that sort?”

“No, I shouldn’t,” said Parker; “but,” he added with his habitual caution, “some men will jest in the dentist’s waiting- room. You, for one.”

“Well, that’s true,” said Lord Peter, and went downstairs.

Chapter 8

Lord Peter reached home about midnight, feeling extraordinarily wakeful and alert. Something was jigging and worrying in his brain; it felt like a hive of bees, stirred up by a stick. He felt as though he were looking at a complicated riddle, of which he had once been told the answer but had forgotten it and was always on the point of remembering.

“Somewhere,” said Lord Peter to himself, “somewhere I’ve got the key to these two things. I know I’ve got it, only I can’t remember what it is. Somebody said it. Perhaps I said it. I can’t remember where, but I know I’ve got it. Go to bed, Bunter, I shall sit up a little. I’ll just slip on a dressing-gown.”

Before the fire he sat down with his pipe in his mouth and his jazz-coloured peacocks gathered about him. He traced out this line and that line of investigation—rivers running into the sand. They ran out from the thought of Levy, last seen at ten o’clock in Prince of Wales Road. They ran back from the picture of the grotesque dead man in Mr. Thipps’s bathroom—they ran over the roof, and were lost—lost in the sand. Rivers running into the sand—rivers running underground, very far down—

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

By leaning his head down, it seemed to Lord Peter that he could hear them, very faintly, lipping and gurgling somewhere in the darkness. But where? He felt quite sure that somebody had told him once, only he had forgotten.

He roused himself, threw a log on the fire, and picked up a book which the indefatigable Bunter, carrying on his daily fatigues amid the excitements of special duty, had brought from the Times Book Club. It happened to be Sir Julian Freke’s “Physiological Bases of the Conscience,” which he had seen reviewed two days before.

“This ought to send one to sleep,” said Lord Peter; “if I can’t leave these problems to my subconscious I’ll be as limp as a rag tomorrow.”

He opened the book slowly, and glanced carelessly through the preface.

“I wonder if that’s true about Levy being ill,” he thought, putting the book down; “it doesn’t seem likely. And yet—Dash it all, I’ll take my mind off it.”

He read on resolutely for a little.

“I don’t suppose Mother’s kept up with the Levys much,” was the next importunate train of thought. “Dad always hated self-made people and wouldn’t have ’em at Denver. And old Gerald keeps up the tradition. I wonder if she knew Freke well in those days. She seems to get on with Milligan. I trust Mother’s judgment a good deal. She was a brick about that bazaar business. I ought to have warned her. She said something once—”

He pursued an elusive memory for some minutes, till it vanished altogether with a mocking flicker of the tail. He returned to his reading.

Presently another thought crossed his mind aroused by a photograph of some experiment in surgery.

“If the evidence of Freke and that man Watts hadn’t been so positive,” he said to himself, “I should be inclined to look into the matter of those shreds of lint on the chimney.”

He considered this, shook his head and read with determination.

Mind and matter were one thing, that was the theme of the physiologist. Matter could erupt, as it were, into ideas. You could carve passions in the brain with a knife. You could get rid of imagination with drugs and cure an outworn convention like a disease. “The knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of the brain- cells, which is removable.” That was one phrase; and again:

“Conscience in man may, in fact, be compared to the sting of a hive-bee, which, so far from conducing to the welfare of its possessor, cannot function, even in a single instance, without occasioning its death. The survival-value in each case is thus purely social; and if humanity ever passes from its present phase of social development into that of a higher individualism, as some of our philosophers have ventured to speculate, we may suppose that this interesting mental phenomenon may gradually cease to appear; just as the nerves and muscles which once controlled the movements of our ears and scalps have, in all save a few backward individuals, become atrophied and of interest only to the physiologist.”

“By Jove!” thought Lord Peter, idly, “that’s an ideal doctrine for the criminal. A man who believed that would never—”

And then it happened—the thing he had been halfunconsciously expecting. It happened suddenly, surely, as unmistakably, as sunrise. He remembered—not one thing, nor another thing, nor a logical succession of things, but everything—the whole thing, perfect, complete, in all its dimensions as it were and instantaneously; as if he stood outside the world and saw it suspended in infinitely dimensional space. He no longer needed to reason about it, or even to think about it. He knew it.

There is a game in which one is presented with a jumble of letters and is required to make a word out of them, as thus:

C O S S S S R I

The slow way of solving the problem is to try out all the permutations and combinations in turn, throwing away impossible conjunctions of letters, as:

S S S I R C

or

S C S R S O

Another way is to stare at the incoordinate elements until, by no logical process that the conscious mind can detect, or under some adventitious external stimulus, the combination:

S C I S S O R S

presents itself with calm certainty. After that, one does not even need to arrange the letters in order. The thing is done.

Even so, the scattered elements of two grotesque conundrums, flung higgledy-piggledy into Lord Peter’s mind, resolved themselves, unquestioned henceforward. A bump on the roof of the end house—Levy in a welter of cold rain talking to a prostitute in the Battersea Park Road—a single ruddy hair—lint bandages—Inspector Sugg calling the great surgeon from the dissecting-room of the hospital—Lady Levy with a nervous attack—the smell of carbolic soap—the Duchess’s voice—“not really an engagement, only a sort of understanding with her father”—shares in Peruvian Oil—the dark skin and curved, fleshy profile of the man in the bath—Dr. Grimbold giving evidence, “In my opinion, death did not occur for several days after the blow”—india-rubber gloves—even, faintly, the voice of Mr. Appledore, “He called on me, sir, with an anti-vivisectionist pamphlet”—all these things and many others rang together and made one sound, they swung together like bells in a steeple, with the deep tenor booming through the clamour:

“The knowledge of good and evil is a phenomenon of the brain, and is removable, removable, removable. The knowledge of good and evil is removable.”

Lord Peter Wimsey was not a young man who habitually took himself very seriously, but this time he was frankly appalled. “It’s impossible,” said his reason, feebly; “credo quia impossibile,” said his interior certainty with impervious self-satisfaction. “All right,” said conscience, instantly allying itself with blind faith, “what are you going to do about it?”

Lord Peter got up and paced the room: “Good Lord!” he said. “Good Lord!” He took down “Who’s Who” from the little shelf over the telephone and sought comfort in its pages:

FREKE, Sir Julian, Kt. cr. 1916; G.C.V.O. cr. 1919; K.C.V.O. 1917; K.C.B. 1918; M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., Dr. en Méd. Paris; D. Sci. Cantab.; Knight of Grace of the Order of S. John of Jerusalem; Consulting Surgeon of St. Luke’s Hospital, Battersea. b. Gryllingham, 16 March, 1872, only son of Edward Curzon Freke, Esq., of Gryll Court, Gryllingham. Educ. Harrow and Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Col. A.M.S.; late Member of the Advisory Board of the Army Medical Service. Publications: Some Notes on the Pathological Aspects of Genius, 1892; Statistical Contributions to the Study of Infantile Paralysis in England and Wales, 1894; Functional Disturbances of the Nervous System, 1899; Cerebro-Spinal Diseases, 1904; The Borderland of Insanity, 1906; An Examination into the Treatment of Pauper Lunacy in the United Kingdom, 1906; Modern Developments in Psycho-Therapy: A Criticism, 1910; Criminal Lunacy, 1914; The Application of Psycho-Therapy to the Treatment of Shell-Shock, 1917; An Answer to Professor Freud, with a Description of Some Experiments Carried Out at the Base Hospital at Amiens, 1919; Structural Modifications Accompanying the More Important Neuroses, 1920. Clubs: White’s; Oxford and Cambridge; Alpine, etc. Recreations: Chess, Mountaineering, Fishing. Address: 282, Harley Street and St. Luke’s House, Prince of Wales Road, Battersea Park, S.W.11.

He flung the book away. “Confirmation!” he groaned. “As if I needed it!”

He sat down again and buried his face in his hands. He remembered quite suddenly how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at Denver Castle—a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth—twitched it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his hardest—he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sèvres breakfast service had crashed down in one stupendous ruin—he remembered the horrified face of the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.

A log broke across and sank into a fluff of white ash. A belated motor-lorry rumbled past the window.

Mr. Bunter, sleeping the sleep of the true and faithful servant, was aroused in the small hours by a hoarse whisper, “Bunter!”

“Yes, my lord,” said Bunter, sitting up and switching on the light.

“Put that light out, damn you!” said the voice. “Listen—over there—listen—can’t you hear it?”

“It’s nothing, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, hastily getting out of bed and catching hold of his master; “it’s all right, you get to bed quick and I’ll fetch you a drop of bromide. Why, you’re all shivering—you’ve been sitting up too late.”

“Hush! no, no—it’s the water,” said Lord Peter with chattering teeth; “it’s up to their waists down there, poor devils. But listen! can’t you hear it? Tap, tap, tap—they’re mining us—but I don’t know where—I can’t hear—I can’t. Listen, you! There it is again—we must find it—we must stop it … Listen! Oh, my God! I can’t hear—I can’t hear anything for the noise of the guns. Can’t they stop the guns?”

“Oh, dear!” said Mr. Bunter to himself. “No, no—it’s all right, Major—don’t you worry.”

“But I hear it,” protested Peter.

“So do I,” said Mr. Bunter stoutly; “very good hearing, too, my lord. That’s our own sappers at work in the communication trench. Don’t you fret about that, sir.”

Lord Peter grasped his wrist with a feverish hand.

“Our own sappers,” he said; “sure of that?”

“Certain of it,” said Mr. Bunter, cheerfully.

“They’ll bring down the tower,” said Lord Peter.

“To be sure they will,” said Mr. Bunter, “and very nice, too. You just come and lay down a bit, sir—they’ve come to take over this section.”

“You’re sure it’s safe to leave it?” said Lord Peter.

“Safe as houses, sir,” said Mr. Bunter, tucking his master’s arm under his and walking him off to his bedroom.

Lord Peter allowed himself to be dosed and put to bed without further resistance. Mr. Bunter, looking singularly un- Bunterlike in striped pyjamas, with his stiff black hair ruffled about his head, sat grimly watching the younger man’s sharp cheekbones and the purple stains under his eyes.

“Thought we’d had the last of these attacks,” he said. “Been overdoin’ of himself. Asleep?” He peered at him anxiously. An affectionate note crept into his voice. “Bloody little fool!” said Sergeant Bunter.

Chapter 9

Mr. Parker, summoned the next morning to 110 Piccadilly, arrived to find the Dowager Duchess in possession. She greeted him charmingly.

“I am going to take this silly boy down to Denver for the week-end,” she said, indicating Peter, who was writing and only acknowledged his friend’s entrance with a brief nod. “He’s been doing too much—running about to Salisbury and places and up till all hours of the night—you really shouldn’t encourage him, Mr. Parker, it’s very naughty of you—waking poor Bunter up in the middle of the night with scares about Germans, as if that wasn’t all over years ago, and he hasn’t had an attack for ages, but there! Nerves are such funny things, and Peter always did have nightmares when he was quite a little boy—though very often of course it was only a little pill he wanted; but he was so dreadfully bad in 1918, you know, and I suppose we can’t expect to forget all about a great war in a year or two, and, really, I ought to be very thankful with both my boys safe. Still, I think a little peace and quiet at Denver won’t do him any harm.”

“Sorry you’ve been having a bad turn, old man,” said Parker, vaguely sympathetic; “you’re looking a bit seedy.”

“Charles,” said Lord Peter, in a voice entirely void of expression, “I am going away for a couple of days because I can be no use to you in London. What has got to be done for the moment can be much better done by you than by me. I want you to take this”—he folded up his writing and placed it in an envelope—“to Scotland Yard immediately and get it sent out to all the workhouses, infirmaries, police stations, Y.M.C.A.’s and so on in London. It is a description of Thipps’s corpse as he was before he was shaved and cleaned up. I want to know whether any man answering to that description has been taken in anywhere, alive or dead, during the last fortnight. You will see Sir Andrew Mackenzie personally, and get the paper sent out at once, by his authority; you will tell him that you have solved the problems of the Levy murder and the Battersea mystery”—Mr. Parker made an astonished noise to which his friend paid no attention—“and you will ask him to have men in readiness with a warrant to arrest a very dangerous and important criminal at any moment on your information. When the replies to this paper come in, you will search for any mention of St. Luke’s Hospital, or of any person connected with St. Luke’s Hospital, and you will send for me at once.

“Meanwhile you will scrape acquaintance—I don’t care how—with one of the students at St. Luke’s. Don’t march in there blowing about murders and police warrants, or you may find yourself in Queer Street. I shall come up to town as soon as I hear from you, and I shall expect to find a nice ingenuous Sawbones here to meet me.” He grinned faintly.

“D’you mean you’ve got to the bottom of this thing?” asked Parker.

“Yes. I may be wrong. I hope I am, but I know I’m not.”

“You won’t tell me?”

“D’you know,” said Peter, “honestly I’d rather not. I say I may be wrong—and I’d feel as if I’d libelled the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“Well, tell me—is it one mystery or two?”

“One.”

“You talked of the Levy murder. Is Levy dead?”

“God—yes!” said Peter, with a strong shudder.

The Duchess looked up from where she was reading the Tatler.

“Peter,” she said, “is that your ague coming on again? Whatever you two are chattering about, you’d better stop it at once if it excites you. Besides, it’s about time to be off.”

“All right, Mother,” said Peter. He turned to Bunter, standing respectfully in the door with an overcoat and suitcase. “You understand what you have to do, don’t you?” he said.

“Perfectly, thank you, my lord. The car is just arriving, your Grace.”

“With Mrs. Thipps inside it,” said the Duchess. “She’ll be delighted to see you again, Peter. You remind her so of Mr. Thipps. Good-morning, Bunter.”

“Good-morning, your Grace.”

Parker accompanied them downstairs.

When they had gone he looked blankly at the paper in his hand—then, remembering that it was Saturday and there was need for haste, he hailed a taxi.

“Scotland Yard!” he cried.

Tuesday morning saw Lord Peter and a man in a velveteen jacket swishing merrily through seven acres of turnip-tops, streaked yellow with early frosts. A little way ahead, a sinuous undercurrent of excitement among the leaves proclaimed the unseen yet ever-near presence of one of the Duke of Denver’s setter pups. Presently a partridge flew up with a noise like a police rattle, and Lord Peter accounted for it very creditably for a man who, a few nights before, had been listening to imaginary German sappers. The setter bounded foolishly through the turnips, and fetched back the dead bird.

“Good dog,” said Lord Peter.

Encouraged by this, the dog gave a sudden ridiculous gambol and barked, its ear tossed inside out over its head.

“Heel,” said the man in velveteen, violently. The animal sidled up, ashamed.

“Fool of a dog, that,” said the man in velveteen; “can’t keep quiet. Too nervous, my lord. One of old Black Lass’s pups.”

“Dear me,” said Peter, “is the old dog still going?”

“No, my lord; we had to put her away in the spring.”

Peter nodded. He always proclaimed that he hated the country and was thankful to have nothing to do with the family estates, but this morning he enjoyed the crisp air and the wet leaves washing darkly over his polished boots. At Denver things moved in an orderly way; no one died sudden and violent deaths except aged setters—and partridges, to be sure. He sniffed up the autumn smell with appreciation. There was a letter in his pocket which had come by the morning post, but he did not intend to read it just yet. Parker had not wired; there was no hurry.

He read it in the smoking-room after lunch. His brother was there, dozing over the Times—a good, clean Englishman, sturdy and conventional, rather like Henry VIII in his youth; Gerald, sixteenth Duke of Denver. The Duke considered his cadet rather degenerate, and not quite good form; he disliked his taste for police-court news.

The letter was from Mr. Bunter.

110, Piccadilly,

W.1.

MY LORD:

I write (Mr. Bunter had been carefully educated and knew that nothing is more vulgar than a careful avoidance of beginning a letter with the first person singular) as your lordship directed, to inform you of the result of my investigations.

I experienced no difficulty in becoming acquainted with Sir Julian Freke’s man-servant. He belongs to the same club as the Hon. Frederick Arbuthnot’s man, who is a friend of mine, and was very willing to introduce me. He took me to the club yesterday (Sunday) evening, and we dined with the man, whose name is John Cummings, and afterwards I invited Cummings to drinks and a cigar in the flat. Your lordship will excuse me doing this, knowing that it is not my habit, but it has always been my experience that the best way to gain a man’s confidence is to let him suppose that one takes advantage of one’s employer.

(“I always suspected Bunter of being a student of human nature,” commented Lord Peter.)

I gave him the best old port (“The deuce you did,” said Lord Peter), having heard you and Mr. Arbuthnot talk over it. (“Hum!” said Lord Peter.)

Its effects were quite equal to my expectations as regards the principal matter in hand, but I very much regret to state that the man had so little understanding of what was offered to him that he smoked a cigar with it (one of your lordship’s Villar Villars). You will understand that I made no comment on this at the time, but your lordship will sympathize with my feelings. May I take this opportunity of expressing my grateful appreciation of your lordship’s excellent taste in food, drink and dress? It is, if I may say so, more than a pleasure—it is an education, to valet and buttle your lordship.

Lord Peter bowed his head gravely.

“What on earth are you doing, Peter, sittin’ there noddin’ an’ grinnin’ like a what-you-may-call-it?” demanded the Duke, coming suddenly out of a snooze. “Someone writin’ pretty things to you, what?”

“Charming things,” said Lord Peter.

The Duke eyed him doubtfully.

“Hope to goodness you don’t go and marry a chorus beauty,” he muttered inwardly, and returned to the Times.

Over dinner I had set myself to discover Cummings’s tastes, and found them to run in the direction of the music-hall stage. During his first glass I drew him out in this direction, your lordship having kindly given me opportunities of seeing every performance in London, and I spoke more freely than I should consider becoming in the ordinary way in order to make myself pleasant to him. I may say that his views on women and the stage were such as I should have expected from a man who would smoke with your lordship’s port.

With the second glass I introduced the subject of your lordship’s inquiries. In order to save time I will write our conversation in the form of a dialogue, as nearly as possible as it actually took place.

Cummings: You seem to get many opportunities of seeing a bit of life, Mr. Bunter.

Bunter: One can always make opportunities if one knows how.

Cummings: Ah, it’s very easy for you to talk, Mr. Bunter. You’re not married, for one thing.

Bunter: I know better than that, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: So do I—now, when it’s too late. (He sighed heavily, and I filled up his glass.)

Bunter: Does Mrs. Cummings live with you at Battersea?

Cummings: Yes, her and me we do for my governor. Such a life! Not but what there’s a char comes in by the day. But what’s a char? I can tell you it’s dull all by ourselves in that d—d Battersea suburb.

Bunter: Not very convenient for the Halls, of course.

Cummings: I believe you. It’s all right for you, here in Piccadilly, right on the spot as you might say. And I daresay your governor’s often out all night, eh?

Bunter: Oh, frequently, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: And I daresay you take the opportunity to slip off yourself every so often, eh?

Bunter: Well, what do you think, Mr. Cummings?

Cummings: That’s it; there you are! But what’s a man to do with a nagging fool of a wife and a blasted scientific doctor for a governor, as sits up all night cutting up dead bodies and experimenting with frogs?

Bunter: Surely he goes out sometimes.

Cummings: Not often. And always back before twelve. And the way he goes on if he rings the bell and you ain’t there. I give you my word, Mr. Bunter.

Bunter: Temper?

Cummings: No-o-o—but looking through you, nasty-like, as if you was on that operating table of his and he was going to cut you up. Nothing a man could rightly complain of, you understand, Mr. Bunter, just nasty looks. Not but what I will say he’s very correct. Apologizes if he’s been inconsiderate. But what’s the good of that when he’s been and gone and lost you your night’s rest?

Bunter: How does he do that? Keeps you up late, you mean?

Cummings: Not him; far from it. House locked up and household to bed at half-past ten. That’s his little rule. Not but what I’m glad enough to go as a rule, it’s that dreary. Still, when I do go to bed I like to go to sleep.

Bunter: What does he do? Walk about the house?

Cummings: Doesn’t he? All night. And in and out of the private door to the hospital.

Bunter: You don’t mean to say, Mr. Cummings, a great specialist like Sir Julian Freke does night work at the hospital?

Cummings: No, no; he does his own work—research work, as you may say. Cuts people up. They say he’s very clever. Could take you or me to pieces like a clock, Mr. Bunter, and put us together again.

Bunter: Do you sleep in the basement, then, to hear him so plain?

Cummings: No; our bedroom’s at the top. But, Lord! what’s that? He’ll bang the door so you can hear him all over the house.

Bunter: Ah, many’s the time I’ve had to speak to Lord Peter about that. And talking all night. And baths.

Cummings: Baths? You may well say that, Mr. Bunter. Baths? Me and my wife sleep next to the cistern- room. Noise fit to wake the dead. All hours. When d’you think he chose to have a bath, no later than last Monday night, Mr. Bunter?

Bunter: I’ve known them to do it at two in the morning, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: Have you, now? Well, this was at three. Three o’clock in the morning we was waked up. I give you my word.

Bunter: You don’t say so, Mr. Cummings.

Cummings: He cuts up diseases, you see, Mr. Bunter, and then he don’t like to go to bed till he’s washed the bacilluses off, if you understand me. Very natural, too, I daresay. But what I say is, the middle of the night’s no time for a gentleman to be occupying his mind with diseases.

Bunter: These great men have their own way of doing things.

Cummings: Well, all I can say is, it isn’t my way.

(I could believe that, your lordship. Cummings has no signs of greatness about him, and his trousers are not what I would wish to see in a man of his profession.)

Bunter: Is he habitually as late as that, Mr. Cummings?

Cummings: Well, no, Mr. Bunter, I will say, not as a general rule. He apologized, too, in the morning, and said he would have the cistern seen to—and very necessary, in my opinion, for the air gets into the pipes, and the groaning and screeching as goes on is something awful. Just like Niagara, if you follow me, Mr. Bunter, I give you my word.

Bunter: Well, that’s as it should be, Mr. Cummings. One can put up with a great deal from a gentleman that has the manners to apologize. And, of course, sometimes they can’t help themselves. A visitor will come in unexpectedly and keep them late, perhaps.

Cummings: That’s true enough, Mr. Bunter. Now I come to think of it, there was a gentleman come in on Monday evening. Not that he came late, but he stayed about an hour, and may have put Sir Julian behindhand.

Bunter: Very likely. Let me give you some more port, Mr. Cummings. Or a little of Lord Peter’s old brandy.

Cummings: A little of the brandy, thank you, Mr. Bunter. I suppose you have the run of the cellar here. (He winked at me.)

“Trust me for that,” I said, and I fetched him the Napoleon. I assure your lordship it went to my heart to pour it out for a man like that. However, seeing we had got on the right tack, I felt it wouldn’t be wasted.

“I’m sure I wish it was always gentlemen that come here at night,” I said. (Your lordship will excuse me, I am sure, making such a suggestion.)

(“Good God,” said Lord Peter, “I wish Bunter was less thorough in his methods.”)

Cummings: Oh, he’s that sort, his lordship, is he? (He chuckled and poked me. I suppress a portion of his conversation here, which could not fail to be as offensive to your lordship as it was to myself. He went on:) No, it’s none of that with Sir Julian. Very few visitors at night, and always gentlemen. And going early as a rule, like the one I mentioned.

Bunter: Just as well. There’s nothing I find more wearisome, Mr. Cummings, than sitting up to see visitors out.

Cummings: Oh, I didn’t see this one out. Sir Julian let him out himself at ten o’clock or thereabouts. I heard the gentleman shout “Good-night” and off he goes.

Bunter: Does Sir Julian always do that?

Cummings: Well, that depends. If he sees visitors downstairs, he lets them out himself: if he sees them upstairs in the library, he rings for me.

Bunter: This was a downstairs visitor, then?

Cummings: Oh, yes. Sir Julian opened the door to him, I remember. He happened to be working in the hall. Though now I come to think of it, they went up to the library afterwards. That’s funny. I know they did, because I happened to go up to the hall with coals, and I heard them upstairs. Besides, Sir Julian rang for me in the library a few minutes later. Still, anyway, we heard him go at ten, or it may have been a bit before. He hadn’t only stayed about three-quarters of an hour. However, as I was saying, there was Sir Julian banging in and out of the private door all night, and a bath at three in the morning, and up again for breakfast at eight—it beats me. If I had all his money, curse me if I’d go poking about with dead men in the middle of the night. I’d find something better to do with my time, eh, Mr. Bunter—

I need not repeat any more of his conversation, as it became unpleasant and incoherent, and I could not bring him back to the events of Monday night. I was unable to get rid of him till three. He cried on my neck, and said I was the bird, and you were the governor for him. He said that Sir Julian would be greatly annoyed with him for coming home so late, but Sunday night was his night out and if anything was said about it he would give notice. I think he will be ill-advised to do so, as I feel he is not a man I could conscientiously recommend if I were in Sir Julian Freke’s place. I noticed that his boot-heels were slightly worn down.

I should wish to add, as a tribute to the great merits of your lordship’s cellar, that, although I was obliged to drink a somewhat large quantity both of the Cockburn ’68 and the 1800 Napoleon I feel no headache or other ill effects this morning.

Trusting that your lordship is deriving real benefit from the country air, and that the little information I have been able to obtain will prove satisfactory, I remain.

With respectful duty to all the family,

Obediently yours,

MERVYN BUNTER

“Y’know,” said Lord Peter thoughtfully to himself, “I sometimes think Mervyn Bunter’s pullin’ my leg. What is it, Soames?”

“A telegram, my lord.”

“Parker,” said Lord Peter, opening it. It said:

Description recognised Chelsea Workhouse. Unknown vagrant injured street accident Wednesday week. Died workhouse Monday. Delivered St. Luke’s same evening by order Freke. Much puzzled. PARKER.

“Hurray!” said Lord Peter, suddenly sparkling. “I’m glad I’ve puzzled Parker. Gives me confidence in myself. Makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes. ‘Perfectly simple, Watson.’ Dash it all, though! this is a beastly business. Still, it’s puzzled Parker.”

“What’s the matter?” asked the Duke, getting up and yawning.

“Marching orders,” said Peter, “back to town. Many thanks for your hospitality, old bird—I’m feelin’ no end better. Ready to tackle Professor Moriarty or Leon Kestrel or any of ’em.”

“I do wish you’d keep out of the police courts,” grumbled the Duke. “It makes it so dashed awkward for me, havin’ a brother makin’ himself conspicuous.”

“Sorry, Gerald,” said the other; “I know I’m a beastly blot on the ’scutcheon.”

“Why can’t you marry and settle down and live quietly, doin’ something useful?” said the Duke, unappeased.

“Because that was a wash-out as you perfectly well know,” said Peter; “besides,” he added cheerfully, “I’m bein’ no end useful. You may come to want me yourself, you never know. When anybody comes blackmailin’ you, Gerald, or your first deserted wife turns up unexpectedly from the West Indies, you’ll realize the pull of havin’ a private detective in the family. ‘Delicate private business arranged with tact and discretion. Investigations undertaken. Divorce evidence a specialty. Every guarantee!’ Come, now.”

“Ass!” said Lord Denver, throwing the newspaper violently into his armchair. “When do you want the car?”

“Almost at once. I say, Jerry, I’m taking Mother up with me.”

“Why should she be mixed up in it?”

“Well, I want her help.”

“I call it most unsuitable,” said the Duke.

The Dowager Duchess, however, made no objection.

“I used to know her quite well,” she said, “when she was Christine Ford. Why, dear?”

“Because,” said Lord Peter, “there’s a terrible piece of news to be broken to her about her husband.”

“Is he dead, dear?”

“Yes; and she will have to come and identify him.”

“Poor Christine.”

“Under very revolting circumstances, Mother.”

“I’ll come with you, dear.”

“Thank you, Mother, you’re a brick. D’you mind gettin’ your things on straight away and comin’ up with me? I’ll tell you about it in the car.”

Chapter 10

Mr. Parker, a faithful though doubting Thomas, had duly secured his medical student: a large young man like an overgrown puppy, with innocent eyes and a freckled face. He sat on the Chesterfield before Lord Peter’s library fire, bewildered in equal measure by his errand, his surroundings and the drink which he was absorbing. His palate, though untutored, was naturally a good one, and he realized that even to call this liquid a drink—the term ordinarily used by him to designate cheap whisky, post-war beer or a dubious glass of claret in a Soho restaurant—was a sacrilege; this was something outside normal experience: a genie in a bottle.

The man called Parker, whom he had happened to run across the evening before in the public-house at the corner of Prince of Wales Road, seemed to be a good sort. He had insisted on bringing him round to see this friend of his, who lived splendidly in Piccadilly. Parker was quite understandable; he put him down as a government servant, or perhaps something in the City. The friend was embarrassing; he was a lord, to begin with, and his clothes were a kind of rebuke to the world at large. He talked the most fatuous nonsense, certainly, but in a disconcerting way. He didn’t dig into a joke and get all the fun out of it; he made it in passing, so to speak, and skipped away to something else before your retort was ready. He had a truly terrible man- servant—the sort you read about in books—who froze the marrow in your bones with silent criticism. Parker appeared to bear up under the strain, and this made you think more highly of Parker; he must be more habituated to the surroundings of the great than you would think to look at him. You wondered what the carpet had cost on which Parker was carelessly spilling cigar ash; your father was an upholsterer—Mr. Piggott, of Piggott & Piggott, Liverpool—and you knew enough about carpets to know that you couldn’t even guess at the price of this one. When you moved your head on the bulging silk cushion in the corner of the sofa, it made you wish you shaved more often and more carefully. The sofa was a monster—but even so, it hardly seemed big enough to contain you. This Lord Peter was not very tall—in fact, he was rather a small man, but he didn’t look undersized. He looked right; he made you feel that to be six- foot-three was rather vulgarly assertive; you felt like Mother’s new drawing-room curtains—all over great big blobs. But everybody was very decent to you, and nobody said anything you couldn’t understand, or sneered at you. There were some frightfully deep-looking books on the shelves all round, and you had looked into a great folio Dante which was lying on the table, but your hosts were talking quite ordinarily and rationally about the sort of books you read yourself—clinking good love stories and detective stories. You had read a lot of those, and could give an opinion, and they listened to what you had to say, though Lord Peter had a funny way of talking about books, too, as if the author had confided in him beforehand, and told him how the story was put together, and which bit was written first. It reminded you of the way old Freke took a body to pieces.

“Thing I object to in detective stories,” said Mr. Piggott, “is the way fellows remember every bloomin’ thing that’s happened to ’em within the last six months. They’re always ready with their time of day and was it rainin’ or not, and what were they doin’ on such an’ such a day. Reel it all off like a page of poetry. But one ain’t like that in real life, d’you think so, Lord Peter?” Lord Peter smiled, and young Piggott, instantly embarrassed, appealed to his earlier acquaintance. “You know what I mean, Parker. Come now. One day’s so like another, I’m sure I couldn’t remember—well, I might remember yesterday, p’r’aps, but I couldn’t be certain about what I was doin’ last week if I was to be shot for it.”

“No,” said Parker, “and evidence given in police statements sounds just as impossible. But they don’t really get it like that, you know. I mean, a man doesn’t just say, ‘Last Friday I went out at 10 a.m. to buy a mutton chop. As I was turning into Mortimer Street I noticed a girl of about twenty-two with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a green jumper, check skirt, Panama hat and black shoes, riding a Royal Sunbeam Cycle at about ten miles an hour turning the corner by the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude on the wrong side of the road riding towards the market place!’ It amounts to that, of course, but it’s really wormed out of him by a series of questions.”

“And in short stories,” said Lord Peter, “it has to be put in statement form, because the real conversation would be so long and twaddly and tedious, and nobody would have the patience to read it. Writers have to consider their readers, if any, y’see.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Piggott, “but I bet you most people would find it jolly difficult to remember, even if you asked ’em things. I should—of course, I know I’m a bit of a fool, but then, most people are, ain’t they? You know what I mean. Witnesses ain’t detectives, they’re just average idiots like you and me.”

“Quite so,” said Lord Peter, smiling as the force of the last phrase sank into its unhappy perpetrator; “you mean, if I were to ask you in a general way what you were doin’—say, a week ago today, you wouldn’t be able to tell me a thing about it offhand?”

“No—I’m sure I shouldn’t.” He considered. “No. I was in at the Hospital as usual, I suppose, and, being Tuesday, there’d be a lecture on something or the other—dashed if I know what—and in the evening I went out with Tommy Pringle—no, that must have been Monday—or was it Wednesday? I tell you, I couldn’t swear to anything.”

“You do yourself an injustice,” said Lord Peter gravely. “I’m sure, for instance, you recollect what work you were doing in the dissecting-room on that day, for example.”

“Lord, no! not for certain. I mean, I daresay it might come back to me if I thought for a long time, but I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law.”

“I’ll bet you half-a-crown to sixpence,” said Lord Peter, “that you’ll remember within five minutes.”

“I’m sure I can’t.”

“We’ll see. Do you keep a notebook of the work you do when you dissect? Drawings or anything?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Think of that. What’s the last thing you did in it?”

“That’s easy, because I only did it this morning. It was leg muscles.”

“Yes. Who was the subject?”

“An old woman of sorts; died of pneumonia.”

“Yes. Turn back the pages of your drawing book in your mind. What came before that?”

“Oh, some animals—still legs; I’m doing motor muscles at present. Yes. That was old Cunningham’s demonstration on comparative anatomy. I did rather a good thing of a hare’s legs and a frog’s, and rudimentary legs on a snake.”

“Yes. Which day does Mr. Cunningham lecture?”

“Friday.”

“Friday; yes. Turn back again. What comes before that?”

Mr. Piggott shook his head.

“Do your drawings of legs begin on the right-hand page or the left-hand page? Can you see the first drawing?”

“Yes—yes—I can see the date written at the top. It’s a section of a frog’s hind leg, on the right-hand page.”

“Yes. Think of the open book in your mind’s eye. What is opposite to it?”

This demanded some mental concentration.

“Something round—coloured—oh, yes—it’s a hand.”

“Yes. You went on from the muscles of the hand and arm to leg- and foot-muscles?”

“Yes; that’s right. I’ve got a set of drawings of arms.”

“Yes. Did you make those on the Thursday?”

“No; I’m never in the dissecting-room on Thursday.”

“On Wednesday, perhaps?”

“Yes; I must have made them on Wednesday. Yes; I did. I went in there after we’d seen those tetanus patients in the morning. I did them on Wednesday afternoon. I know I went back because I wanted to finish ’em. I worked rather hard—for me. That’s why I remember.”

“Yes; you went back to finish them. When had you begun them, then?”

“Why, the day before.”

“The day before. That was Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve lost count—yes, the day before Wednesday—yes, Tuesday.”

“Yes. Were they a man’s arms or a woman’s arms?”

“Oh, a man’s arms.”

“Yes; last Tuesday, a week ago today, you were dissecting a man’s arms in the dissecting-room. Sixpence, please.”

“By Jove!”

“Wait a moment. You know a lot more about it than that. You’ve no idea how much you know. You know what kind of man he was.”

“Oh, I never saw him complete, you know. I got there a bit late that day, I remember. I’d asked for an arm specially, because I was rather weak in arms, and Watts—that’s the attendant—had promised to save me one.”

“Yes. You have arrived late and found your arm waiting for you. You are dissecting it—taking your scissors and slitting up the skin and pinning it back. Was it very young, fair skin?”

“Oh, no—no. Ordinary skin, I think—with dark hairs on it—yes, that was it.”

“Yes. A lean, stringy arm, perhaps, with no extra fat anywhere?”

“Oh, no—I was rather annoyed about that. I wanted a good, muscular arm, but it was rather poorly developed and the fat got in my way.”

“Yes; a sedentary man who didn’t do much manual work.”

“That’s right.”

“Yes. You dissected the hand, for instance, and made a drawing of it. You would have noticed any hard calluses.”

“Oh, there was nothing of that sort.”

“No. But should you say it was a young man’s arm? Firm young flesh and limber joints?”

“No—no.”

“No. Old and stringy, perhaps.”

“No. Middle-aged—with rheumatism. I mean, there was a chalky deposit in the joints, and the fingers were a bit swollen.”

“Yes. A man about fifty.”

“About that.”

“Yes. There were other students at work on the same body.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Yes. And they made all the usual sort of jokes about it.”

“I expect so—oh, yes!”

“You can remember some of them. Who is your local funny man, so to speak?”

“Tommy Pringle.”

“What was Tommy Pringle’s doing?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Whereabouts was Tommy Pringle working?”

“Over by the instrument cupboard—by sink C.”

“Yes. Get a picture of Tommy Pringle in your mind’s eye.”

Piggott began to laugh.

“I remember now. Tommy Pringle said the old Sheeny—”

“Why did he call him a Sheeny?”

“I don’t know. But I know he did.”

“Perhaps he looked like it. Did you see his head?”

“No.”

“Who had the head?”

“I don’t know—oh, yes, I do, though. Old Freke bagged the head himself, and little Bouncible Binns was very cross about it, because he’d been promised a head to do with old Scrooger.”

“I see. What was Sir Julian doing with the head?”

“He called us up and gave us a jaw on spinal haemorrhage and nervous lesions.”

“Yes. Well, go back to Tommy Pringle.”

Tommy Pringle’s joke was repeated, not without some embarrassment.

“Quite so. Was that all?”

“No. The chap who was working with Tommy said that sort of thing came from over-feeding.”

“I deduce that Tommy Pringle’s partner was interested in the alimentary canal.”

“Yes; and Tommy said, if he’d thought they’d feed you like that he’d go to the workhouse himself.”

“Then the man was a pauper from the workhouse?”

“Well, he must have been, I suppose.”

“Are workhouse paupers usually fat and well-fed?”

“Well, no—come to think of it, not as a rule.”

“In fact, it struck Tommy Pringle and his friend that this was something a little out of the way in a workhouse subject?”

“Yes.”

“And if the alimentary canal was so entertaining to these gentlemen, I imagine the subject had come by his death shortly after a full meal.”

“Yes—oh, yes—he’d have had to, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “That’s in your department, you know. That would be your inference, from what they said.”

“Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”

“Yes; you wouldn’t, for example, expect them to make that observation if the patient had been ill for a long time and fed on slops.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you see, you really know a lot about it. On Tuesday week you were dissecting the arm muscles of a rheumatic middle- aged Jew, of sedentary habits, who had died shortly after eating a heavy meal, of some injury producing spinal haemorrhage and nervous lesions, and so forth, and who was presumed to come from the workhouse?”

“Yes.”

“And you could swear to those facts, if need were?”

“Well, if you put it in that way, I suppose I could.”

“Of course you could.”

Mr. Piggott sat for some moments in contemplation.

“I say,” he said at last, “I did know all that, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes—you knew it all right—like Socrates’s slave.”

“Who’s he?”

“A person in a book I used to read as a boy.”

“Oh—does he come in ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’?”

“No—another book—I daresay you escaped it. It’s rather dull.”

“I never read much except Henty and Fenimore Cooper at school … But—have I got rather an extra good memory, then?”

“You have a better memory than you credit yourself with.”

“Then why can’t I remember all the medical stuff? It all goes out of my head like a sieve.”

“Well, why can’t you?” said Lord Peter, standing on the hearthrug and smiling down at his guest.

“Well,” said the young man, “the chaps who examine one don’t ask the same sort of questions you do.”

“No?”

“No—they leave you to remember all by yourself. And it’s beastly hard. Nothing to catch hold of, don’t you know? But, I say—how did you know about Tommy Pringle being the funny man and—”

“I didn’t, till you told me.”

“No; I know. But how did you know he’d be there if you did ask? I mean to say—I say,” said Mr. Piggott, who was becoming mellowed by influences themselves not unconnected with the alimentary canal—“I say, are you rather clever, or am I rather stupid?”

“No, no,” said Lord Peter, “it’s me. I’m always askin’ such stupid questions, everybody thinks I must mean somethin’ by ’em.”

This was too involved for Mr. Piggott.

“Never mind,” said Parker, soothingly, “he’s always like that. You mustn’t take any notice. He can’t help it. It’s premature senile decay, often observed in the families of hereditary legislators. Go away, Wimsey, and play us the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or something.”

“That’s good enough, isn’t it?” said Lord Peter, when the happy Mr. Piggott had been despatched home after a really delightful evening.

“I’m afraid so,” said Parker. “But it seems almost incredible.”

“There’s nothing incredible in human nature,” said Lord Peter; “at least, in educated human nature. Have you got that exhumation order?”

“I shall have it tomorrow. I thought of fixing up with the workhouse people for tomorrow afternoon. I shall have to go and see them first.”

“Right you are; I’ll let my mother know.”

“I begin to feel like you, Wimsey, I don’t like this job.”

“I like it a deal better than I did.”

“You are really certain we’re not making a mistake?”

Lord Peter had strolled across to the window. The curtain was not perfectly drawn, and he stood gazing out through the gap into lighted Piccadilly. At this he turned round:

“If we are,” he said, “we shall know tomorrow, and no harm will have been done. But I rather think you will receive a certain amount of confirmation on your way home. Look here, Parker, d’you know, if I were you I’d spend the night here. There’s a spare bedroom; I can easily put you up.”

Parker stared at him.

“Do you mean—I’m likely to be attacked?”

“I think it very likely indeed.”

“Is there anybody in the street?”

“Not now; there was half-an-hour ago.”

“When Piggott left?”

“Yes.”

“I say—I hope the boy is in no danger.”

“That’s what I went down to see. I don’t think so. Fact is, I don’t suppose anybody would imagine we’d exactly made a confidant of Piggott. But I think you and I are in danger. You’ll stay?”

“I’m damned if I will, Wimsey. Why should I run away?”

“Bosh!” said Peter. “You’d run away all right if you believed me, and why not? You don’t believe me. In fact, you’re still not certain I’m on the right tack. Go in peace, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t; I’ll dictate a message with my dying breath to say I was convinced.”

“Well, don’t walk—take a taxi.”

“Very well, I’ll do that.”

“And don’t let anybody else get into it.”

“No.”

It was a raw, unpleasant night. A taxi deposited a load of people returning from the theatre at the block of flats next door, and Parker secured it for himself. He was just giving the address to the driver, when a man came hastily running up from a side street. He was in evening dress and an overcoat. He rushed up, signalling frantically.

“Sir—sir!—dear me! why, it’s Mr. Parker! How fortunate! If you would be so kind—summoned from the club—a sick friend—can’t find a taxi—everybody going home from the theatre—if I might share your cab—you are returning to Bloomsbury? I want Russell Square—if I might presume—a matter of life and death.”

He spoke in hurried gasps, as though he had been running violently and far. Parker promptly stepped out of the taxi.

“Delighted to be of service to you, Sir Julian,” he said; “take my taxi. I am going down to Craven Street myself, but I’m in no hurry. Pray make use of the cab.”

“It’s extremely kind of you,” said the surgeon. “I am ashamed—”

“That’s all right,” said Parker, cheerily. “I can wait.” He assisted Freke into the taxi. “What number? 24 Russell Square, driver, and look sharp.”

The taxi drove off. Parker remounted the stairs and rang Lord Peter’s bell.

“Thanks, old man,” he said. “I’ll stop the night, after all.”

“Come in,” said Wimsey.

“Did you see that?” asked Parker.

“I saw something. What happened exactly?”

Parker told his story. “Frankly,” he said, “I’ve been thinking you a bit mad, but now I’m not quite so sure of it.”

Peter laughed.

“Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Bunter, Mr. Parker will stay the night.”

“Look here, Wimsey, let’s have another look at this business. Where’s that letter?”

Lord Peter produced Bunter’s essay in dialogue. Parker studied it for a short time in silence.

“You know, Wimsey, I’m as full of objections to this idea as an egg is of meat.”

“So’m I, old son. That’s why I want to dig up our Chelsea pauper. But trot out your objections.”

“Well—”

“Well, look here, I don’t pretend to be able to fill in all the blanks myself. But here we have two mysterious occurrences in one night, and a complete chain connecting the one with another through one particular person. It’s beastly, but it’s not unthinkable.”

“Yes, I know all that. But there are one or two quite definite stumbling-blocks.”

“Yes, I know. But, see here. On the one hand, Levy disappeared after being last seen looking for Prince of Wales Road at nine o’clock. At eight next morning a dead man, not unlike him in general outline, is discovered in a bath in Queen Caroline Mansions. Levy, by Freke’s own admission, was going to see Freke. By information received from Chelsea workhouse a dead man, answering to the description of the Battersea corpse in its natural state, was delivered that same day to Freke. We have Levy with a past, and no future, as it were; an unknown vagrant with a future (in the cemetery) and no past, and Freke stands between their future and their past.”

“That looks all right—”

“Yes. Now, further: Freke has a motive for getting rid of Levy—an old jealousy.”

“Very old—and not much of a motive.”

“People have been known to do that sort of thing.^* You’re thinking that people don’t keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we’ve all got a sore spot we don’t like to have touched. I’ve got it. You’ve got it. Some blighter said hell knew no fury like a woman scorned. Stickin’ it on to women, poor devils. Sex is every man’s loco spot—you needn’t fidget, you know it’s true—he’ll take a disappointment, but not a humiliation. I knew a man once who’d been turned down—not too charitably—by a girl he was engaged to. He spoke quite decently about her. I asked what had become of her. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she married the other fellow.’ And then burst out—couldn’t help himself. ‘Lord, yes!’ he cried. ‘To think of it—jilted for a Scotchman!’ I don’t know why he didn’t like Scots, but that was what got him on the raw. Look at Freke. I’ve read his books. His attacks on his antagonists are savage. And he’s a scientist. Yet he can’t bear opposition, even in his work, which is where any first-class man is most sane and open-minded. Do you think he’s a man to take a beating from any man on a side-issue? On a man’s most sensitive side-issue? People are opinionated about side-issues, you know. I see red if anybody questions my judgment about a book. And Levy—who was nobody twenty years ago—romps in and carries off Freke’s girl from under his nose. It isn’t the girl Freke would bother about—it’s having his aristocratic nose put out of joint by a little Jewish nobody.

“There’s another thing. Freke’s got another side-issue. He likes crime. In that criminology book of his he gloats over a hardened murderer. I’ve read it, and I’ve seen the admiration simply glaring out between the lines whenever he writes about a callous and successful criminal. He reserves his contempt for the victims or the penitents or the men who lose their heads and get found out. His heroes are Edmond de la Pommerais, who persuaded his mistress into becoming an accessory to her own murder, and George Joseph Smith of Brides-in-a-bath fame, who 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 11

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 man before him. A man taller than himself, with immense breadth of shoulder, and wonderful hands. A face beautiful, impassioned and inhuman; fanatical, compelling eyes, bright blue amid the ruddy bush of hair and beard. They were not the cool and kindly eyes of the family doctor, they were the brooding eyes of the inspired scientist, and they searched one through.

“Well,” thought Lord Peter, “I shan’t have to be explicit, anyhow.”

“Yes,” said Sir Julian, “yes. You had been working too hard. Puzzling your mind. Yes. More than that, perhaps—troubling your mind, shall we say?”

“I found myself faced with a very alarming contingency.”

“Yes. Unexpectedly, perhaps.”

“Very unexpected indeed.”

“Yes. Following on a period of mental and physical strain.”

“Well—perhaps. Nothing out of the way.”

“Yes. The unexpected contingency was—personal to yourself ?”

“It demanded an immediate decision as to my own actions—yes, in that sense it was certainly personal.”

“Quite so. You would have to assume some responsibility, no doubt.”

“A very grave responsibility.”

“Affecting others besides yourself ?”

“Affecting one other person vitally, and a very great number indirectly.”

“Yes. The time was night. You were sitting in the dark?”

“Not at first. I think I put the light out afterwards.”

“Quite so—that action would naturally suggest itself to you. Were you warm?”

“I think the fire had died down. My man tells me that my teeth were chattering when I went in to him.”

“Yes. You live in Piccadilly?”

“Yes.”

“Heavy traffic sometimes goes past during the night, I expect.”

“Oh, frequently.”

“Just so. Now this decision you refer to—you had taken that decision.”

“Yes.”

“Your mind was made up?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You had decided to take the action, whatever it was.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. It involved perhaps a period of inaction.”

“Of comparative inaction—yes.”

“Of suspense, shall we say?”

“Yes—of suspense, certainly.”

“Possibly of some danger?”

“I don’t know that that was in my mind at the time.”

“No—it was a case in which you could not possibly consider yourself.”

“If you like to put it that way.”

“Quite so. Yes. You had these attacks frequently in 1918?”

“Yes—I was very ill for some months.”

“Quite. Since then they have recurred less frequently?”

“Much less frequently.”

“Yes—when did the last occur?”

“About nine months ago.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“I was being worried by certain family matters. It was a question of deciding about some investments, and I was largely responsible.”

“Yes. You were interested last year, I think, in some police case?”

“Yes—in the recovery of Lord Attenbury’s emerald necklace.”

“That involved some severe mental exercise?”

“I suppose so. But I enjoyed it very much.”

“Yes. Was the exertion of solving the problem attended by any bad results physically?”

“None.”

“No. You were interested, but not distressed.”

“Exactly.”

“Yes. You have been engaged in other investigations of the kind?”

“Yes. Little ones.”

“With bad results for your health?”

“Not a bit of it. On the contrary. I took up these cases as a sort of distraction. I had a bad knock just after the war, which didn’t make matters any better for me, don’t you know.”

“Ah! you are not married?”

“No.”

“No. Will you allow me to make an examination? Just come a little nearer to the light. I want to see your eyes. Whose advice have you had till now?”

“Sir James Hodges’.”

“Ah! yes—he was a sad loss to the medical profession. A really great man—a true scientist. Yes. Thank you. Now I should like to try you with this little invention.”

“What’s it do?”

“Well—it tells me about your nervous reactions. Will you sit here?”

The examination that followed was purely medical. When it was concluded, Sir Julian said:

“Now, Lord Peter, I’ll tell you about yourself in quite untechnical language—”

“Thanks,” said Peter, “that’s kind of you. I’m an awful fool about long words.”

“Yes. Are you fond of private theatricals, Lord Peter?”

“Not particularly,” said Peter, genuinely surprised. “Awful bore as a rule. Why?”

“I thought you might be,” said the specialist, drily. “Well, now. You know quite well that the strain you put on your nerves during the war has left its mark on you. It has left what I may call old wounds in your brain. Sensations received by your nerve-endings sent messages to your brain, and produced minute physical changes there—changes we are only beginning to be able to detect, even with our most delicate instruments. These changes in their turn set up sensations; or I should say, more accurately, that sensations are the names we give to these changes of tissue when we perceive them: we call them horror, fear, sense of responsibility and so on.”

“Yes, I follow you.”

“Very well. Now, if you stimulate those damaged places in your brain again, you run the risk of opening up the old wounds. I mean, that if you get nerve-sensations of any kind producing the reactions which we call horror, fear, and sense of responsibility, they may go on to make disturbance right along the old channel, and produce in their turn physical changes which you will call by the names you were accustomed to associate with them—dread of German mines, responsibility for the lives of your men, strained attention and the inability to distinguish small sounds through the overpowering noise of guns.”

“I see.”

“This effect would be increased by extraneous circumstances producing other familiar physical sensations—night, cold or the rattling of heavy traffic, for instance.”

“Yes.”

“Yes. The old wounds are nearly healed, but not quite. The ordinary exercise of your mental faculties has no bad effect. It is only when you excite the injured part of your brain.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Yes. You must avoid these occasions. You must learn to be irresponsible, Lord Peter.”

“My friends say I’m only too irresponsible already.”

“Very likely. A sensitive nervous temperament often appears so, owing to its mental nimbleness.”

“Oh!”

“Yes. This particular responsibility you were speaking of still rests upon you?”

“Yes, it does.”

“You have not yet completed the course of action on which you have decided?”

“Not yet.”

“You feel bound to carry it through?”

“Oh, yes—I can’t back out of it now.”

“No. You are expecting further strain?”

“A certain amount.”

“Do you expect it to last much longer?”

“Very little longer now.”

“Ah! Your nerves are not all they should be.”

“No?”

“No. Nothing to be alarmed about, but you must exercise care while undergoing this strain, and afterwards you should take a complete rest. How about a voyage in the Mediterranean or the South Seas or somewhere?”

“Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

“Meanwhile, to carry you over the immediate trouble I will give you something to strengthen your nerves. It will do you no permanent good, you understand, but it will tide you over the bad time. And I will give you a prescription.”

“Thank you.”

Sir Julian got up and went into a small surgery leading out of the consulting-room. Lord Peter watched him moving about—boiling something and writing. Presently he returned with a paper and a hypodermic syringe.

“Here is the prescription. And now, if you will just roll up your sleeve, I will deal with the necessity of the immediate moment.”

Lord Peter obediently rolled up his sleeve. Sir Julian Freke selected a portion of his forearm and anointed it with iodine.

“What’s that you’re goin’ to stick into me. Bugs?”

The surgeon laughed.

“Not exactly,” he said. He pinched up a portion of flesh between his finger and thumb. “You’ve had this kind of thing before, I expect.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter. He watched the cool fingers, fascinated, and the steady approach of the needle. “Yes—I’ve had it before—and, d’you know—I don’t care frightfully about it.”

He had brought up his right hand, and it closed over the surgeon’s wrist like a vice.

The silence was like a shock. The blue eyes did not waver; they burned down steadily upon the heavy white lids below them. Then these slowly lifted; the grey eyes met the blue—coldly, steadily—and held them.

When lovers embrace, there seems no sound in the world but their own breathing. So the two men breathed face to face.

“As you like, of course, Lord Peter,” said Sir Julian, courteously.

“Afraid I’m rather a silly ass,” said Lord Peter, “but I never could abide these little gadgets. I had one once that went wrong and gave me a rotten bad time. They make me a bit nervous.”

“In that case,” replied Sir Julian, “it would certainly be better not to have the injection. It might rouse up just those sensations which we are desirous of avoiding. You will take the prescription, then, and do what you can to lessen the immediate strain as far as possible.”

“Oh, yes—I’ll take it easy, thanks,” said Lord Peter. He rolled his sleeve down neatly. “I’m much obliged to you. If I have any further trouble I’ll look in again.”

“Do—do—” said Sir Julian, cheerfully. “Only make an appointment another time. I’m rather rushed these days. I hope your mother is quite well. I saw her the other day at that Battersea inquest. You should have been there. It would have interested you.”

Chapter 12

The vile, raw fog tore your throat and ravaged your eyes. You could not see your feet. You stumbled in your walk over poor men’s graves.

The feel of Parker’s old trench-coat beneath your fingers was comforting. You had felt it in worse places. You clung on now for fear you should get separated. The dim people moving in front of you were like Brocken spectres.

“Take care, gentlemen,” said a toneless voice out of the yellow darkness, “there’s an open grave just hereabouts.”

You bore away to the right, and floundered in a mass of freshly turned clay.

“Hold up, old man,” said Parker.

“Where is Lady Levy?”

“In the mortuary; the Duchess of Denver is with her. Your mother is wonderful, Peter.”

“Isn’t she?” said Lord Peter.

A dim blue light carried by somebody ahead wavered and stood still.

“Here you are,” said a voice.

Two Dantesque shapes with pitchforks loomed up.

“Have you finished?” asked somebody.

“Nearly done, sir.” The demons fell to work again with the pitchforks—no, spades.

Somebody sneezed. Parker located the sneezer and introduced him.

“Mr. Levett represents the Home Secretary. Lord Peter Wimsey. We are sorry to drag you out on such a day, Mr. Levett.”

“It’s all in the day’s work,” said Mr. Levett, hoarsely. He was muffled to the eyes.

The sound of the spades for many minutes. An iron noise of tools thrown down. Demons stooping and straining.

A black-bearded spectre at your elbow. Introduced. The Master of the Workhouse.

“A very painful matter, Lord Peter. You will forgive me for hoping you and Mr. Parker may be mistaken.”

“I should like to be able to hope so too.”

Something heaving, straining, coming up out of the ground.

“Steady, men. This way. Can you see? Be careful of the graves—they lie pretty thick hereabouts. Are you ready?”

“Right you are, sir. You go on with the lantern. We can follow you.”

Lumbering footsteps. Catch hold of Parker’s trench-coat again. “That you, old man? Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Levett—thought you were Parker.”

“Hullo, Wimsey—here you are.”

More graves. A headstone shouldered crookedly aslant. A trip and jerk over the edge of the rough grass. The squeal of gravel under your feet.

“This way, gentlemen, mind the step.”

The mortuary. Raw red brick and sizzling gas-jets. Two women in black, and Dr. Grimbold. The coffin laid on the table with a heavy thump.

“’Ave you got that there screw-driver, Bill? Thank ’ee. Be keerful wi’ 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 13

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 connection with Reuben Levy and his family. This enabled me to remain in touch with his fortunes and interests, so that, when the moment for action should arrive, I might know what weapons to use.

Meanwhile, I carefully studied criminology in fiction and fact—my work on “Criminal Lunacy” was a side-product of this activity—and saw how, in every murder, the real crux of the problem was the disposal of the body. As a doctor, the means of death were always ready to my hand, and I was not likely to make any error in that connection. Nor was I likely to betray myself on account of any illusory sense of wrong-doing. The sole difficulty would be that of destroying all connection between my personality and that of the corpse. You will remember that Michael Finsbury, in Stevenson’s entertaining romance, observes: “What hangs people is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt.” It became clear to me that the mere leaving about of a superfluous corpse could convict nobody, provided that nobody was guilty in connection with that particular corpse. Thus the idea of substituting the one body for the other was early arrived at, though it was not till I obtained the practical direction of St. Luke’s Hospital that I found myself perfectly unfettered in the choice and handling of dead bodies. From this period on, I kept a careful watch on all the material brought in for dissection.

My opportunity did not present itself until the week before Sir Reuben’s disappearance, when the medical officer at the Chelsea workhouse sent word to me that an unknown vagrant had been injured that morning by the fall of a piece of scaffolding, and was exhibiting some very interesting nervous and cerebral reactions. I went round and saw the case, and was immediately struck by the man’s strong superficial resemblance to Sir Reuben. He had been heavily struck on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae and heavily bruising the spinal cord. It seemed highly unlikely that he could ever recover, either mentally or physically, and in any case there appeared to me to be no object in indefinitely prolonging so unprofitable an existence. He had obviously been able to support life until recently, as he was fairly well nourished, but the state of his feet and clothing showed that he was unemployed, and under present conditions he was likely to remain so. I decided that he would suit my purpose very well, and immediately put in train certain transactions in the City which I had already sketched out in my own mind. In the meantime, the reactions mentioned by the workhouse doctor were interesting, and I made careful studies of them, and arranged for the delivery of the body to the hospital when I should have completed my preparations.

On the Thursday and Friday of that week I made private arrangements with various brokers to buy the stock of certain Peruvian Oil-fields, which had gone down almost to waste- paper. This part of my experiment did not cost me very much, but I contrived to arouse considerable curiosity, and even a mild excitement. At this point I was of course careful not to let my name appear. The incidence of Saturday and Sunday gave me some anxiety lest my man should after all die before I was ready for him, but by the use of saline injections I contrived to keep him alive and, late on Sunday night, he even manifested disquieting symptoms of at any rate a partial recovery.

On Monday morning the market in Peruvians opened briskly. Rumours had evidently got about that somebody knew something, and this day I was not the only buyer in the market. I bought a couple of hundred more shares in my own name, and left the matter to take care of itself. At lunch time I made my arrangements to run into Levy accidentally at the corner of the Mansion House. He expressed (as I expected) his surprise at seeing me in that part of London. I simulated some embarrassment and suggested that we should lunch together. I dragged him to a place a bit off the usual beat, and there ordered a good wine and drank of it as much as he might suppose sufficient to induce a confidential mood. I asked him how things were going on ’Change. He said, “Oh, all right,” but appeared a little doubtful, and asked me whether I did anything in that way. I said I had a little flutter occasionally, and that, as a matter of fact, I’d been put on to rather a good thing. I glanced round apprehensively at this point, and shifted my chair nearer to his.

“I suppose you don’t know anything about Peruvian Oil, do you?” he said.

I started and looked round again, and leaning across to him, said, dropping my voice:

“Well, I do, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want it to get about. I stand to make a good bit on it.”

“But I thought the thing was hollow,” he said; “it hasn’t paid a dividend for umpteen years.”

“No,” I said, “it hasn’t, but it’s going to. I’ve got inside information.” He looked a bit unconvinced, and I emptied off my glass, and edged right up to his ear.

“Look here,” I said, “I’m not giving this away to everyone, but I don’t mind doing you and Christine a good turn. You know, I’ve always kept a soft place in my heart for her, ever since the old days. You got in ahead of me that time, and now it’s up to me to heap coals of fire on you both.”

I was a little excited by this time, and he thought I was drunk.

“It’s very kind of you, old man,” he said, “but I’m a cautious bird, you know, always was. I’d like a bit of proof.”

And he shrugged up his shoulders and looked like a pawnbroker.

“I’ll give it to you,” I said, “but it isn’t safe here. Come round to my place tonight after dinner, and I’ll show you the report.”

“How d’you get hold of it?” said he.

“I’ll tell you tonight,” said I. “Come round after dinner—any time after nine, say.”

“To Harley Street?” he asked, and I saw that he meant coming.

“No,” I said, “to Battersea—Prince of Wales Road; I’ve got some work to do at the hospital. And look here,” I said, “don’t you let on to a soul that you’re coming. I bought a couple of hundred shares today, in my own name, and people are sure to get wind of it. If we’re known to be about together, someone’ll twig something. In fact, it’s anything but safe talking about it in this place.”

“All right,” he said, “I won’t say a word to anybody. I’ll turn up about nine o’clock. You’re sure it’s a sound thing?”

“It can’t go wrong,” I assured him. And I meant it.

We parted after that, and I went round to the workhouse. My man had died at about eleven o’clock. I had seen him just after breakfast, and was not surprised. I completed the usual formalities with the workhouse authorities, and arranged for his delivery at the hospital at about seven o’clock.

In the afternoon, as it was not one of my days to be in Harley Street, I looked up an old friend who lives close to Hyde Park, and found that he was just off to Brighton on some business or other. I had tea with him, and saw him off by the 5:35 from Victoria. On issuing from the barrier it occurred to me to purchase an evening paper, and I thoughtlessly turned my steps to the bookstall. The usual crowds were rushing to catch suburban trains home, and on moving away I found myself involved in a contrary stream of travellers coming up out of the Underground, or bolting from all sides for the 5:45 to Battersea Park and Wandsworth Common. I disengaged myself after some buffeting and went home in a taxi; and it was not till I was safely seated there that I discovered somebody’s gold-rimmed pince-nez involved in the astrakhan collar of my overcoat. The time from 6:15 to seven I spent concocting something to look like a bogus report for Sir Reuben.

At seven I went through to the hospital, and found the workhouse van just delivering my subject at the side door. I had him taken straight up to the theatre, and told the attendant, William Watts, that I intended to work there that night. I told him I would prepare the body myself—the injection of a preservative would have been a most regrettable complication. I sent him about his business, and then went home and had dinner. I told my man that I should be working in the hospital that evening, and that he could go to bed at 10:30 as usual, as I could not tell whether I should be late or not. He is used to my erratic ways. I only keep two servants in the Battersea house—the man-servant and his wife, who cooks for me. The rougher domestic work is done by a charwoman, who sleeps out. The servants’ bedroom is at the top of the house, overlooking Prince of Wales Road.

As soon as I had dined I established myself in the hall with some papers. My man had cleared dinner by a quarter past eight, and I told him to give me the syphon and tantalus; and sent him downstairs. Levy rang the bell at twenty minutes past nine, and I opened the door to him myself. My man appeared at the other end of the hall, but I called to him that it was all right, and he went away. Levy wore an overcoat with evening dress and carried an umbrella. “Why, how wet you are!” I said. “How did you come?” “By ’bus,” he said, “and the fool of a conductor forgot to put me down at the end of the road. It’s pouring cats and dogs and pitch-dark—I couldn’t see where I was.” I was glad he hadn’t taken a taxi, but I had rather reckoned on his not doing so. “Your little economies will be the death of you one of these days,” I said. I was right there, but I hadn’t reckoned on their being the death of me as well. I say again, I could not have foreseen it.

I sat him down by the fire, and gave him a whisky. He was in high spirits about some deal in Argentines he was bringing off the next day. We talked money for about a quarter of an hour and then he said:

“Well, how about this Peruvian mare’s-nest of yours?”

“It’s no mare’s-nest,” I said; “come and have a look at it.”

I took him upstairs into the library, and switched on the centre light and the reading lamp on the writing table. I gave him a chair at the table with his back to the fire, and fetched the papers I had been faking, out of the safe. He took them, and began to read them, poking over them in his short-sighted way, while I mended the fire. As soon as I saw his head in a favourable position I struck him heavily with the poker, just over the fourth cervical. It was delicate work calculating the exact force necessary to kill him without breaking the skin, but my professional experience was useful to me. He gave one loud gasp, and tumbled forward on to the table quite noiselessly. I put the poker back, and examined him. His neck was broken, and he was quite dead. I carried him into my bedroom and undressed him. It was about ten minutes to ten when I had finished. I put him away under my bed, which had been turned down for the night, and cleared up the papers in the library. Then I went downstairs, took Levy’s umbrella, and let myself out at the hall door, shouting “Good-night” loudly enough to be heard in the basement if the servants should be listening. I walked briskly away down the street, went in by the hospital side door, and returned to the house noiselessly by way of the private passage. It would have been awkward if anybody had seen me then, but I leaned over the back stairs and heard the cook and her husband still talking in the kitchen. I slipped back into the hall, replaced the umbrella in the stand, cleared up my papers there, went up into the library and rang the bell. When the man appeared I told him to lock up everything except the private door to the hospital. I waited in the library until he had done so, and about 10:30 I heard both servants go up to bed. I waited a quarter of an hour longer and then went through to the dissecting-room. I wheeled one of the stretcher tables through the passage to the house door, and then went to fetch Levy. It was a nuisance having to get him downstairs, but I had not liked to make away with him in any of the ground-floor rooms, in case my servant should take a fancy to poke his head in during the few minutes that I was out of the house, or while locking up. Besides, that was a flea-bite to what I should have to do later. I put Levy on the table, wheeled him across to the hospital and substituted him for my interesting pauper. I was sorry to have to abandon the idea of getting a look at the latter’s brain, but I could not afford to incur suspicion. It was still rather early, so I knocked down a few minutes getting Levy ready for dissection. Then I put my pauper on the table and trundled him over to the house. It was now five past eleven, and I thought I might conclude that the servants were in bed. I carried the body into my bedroom. He was rather heavy, but less so than Levy, and my Alpine experience had taught me how to handle bodies. It is as much a matter of knack as of strength, and I am, in any case, a powerful man for my height. I put the body into the bed—not that I expected anyone to look in during my absence, but if they should they might just as well see me apparently asleep in bed. I drew the clothes a little over his head, stripped, and put on Levy’s clothes, which were fortunately a little big for me everywhere, not forgetting to take his spectacles, watch and other oddments. At a little before half-past eleven I was in the road looking for a cab. People were just beginning to come home from the theatre, and I easily secured one at the corner of Prince of Wales Road. I told the man to drive me to Hyde Park Corner. There I got out, tipped him well, and asked him to pick me up again at the same place in an hour’s time. He assented with an understanding grin, and I walked on up Park Lane. I had my own clothes with me in a suitcase, and carried my own overcoat and Levy’s umbrella. When I got to No. 9A there were lights in some of the top windows. I was very nearly too early, owing to the old man’s having sent the servants to the theatre. I waited about for a few minutes, and heard it strike the quarter past midnight. The lights were extinguished shortly after, and I let myself in with Levy’s key.

It had been my original intention, when I thought over this plan of murder, to let Levy disappear from the study or the dining-room, leaving only a heap of clothes on the hearth-rug. The accident of my having been able to secure Lady Levy’s absence from London, however, made possible a solution more misleading, though less pleasantly fantastic. I turned on the hall light, hung up Levy’s wet overcoat and placed his umbrella in the stand. I walked up noisily and heavily to the bedroom and turned off the light by the duplicate switch on the landing. I knew the house well enough, of course. There was no chance of my running into the man-servant. Old Levy was a simple old man, who liked doing things for himself. He gave his valet little work, and never required any attendance at night. In the bedroom I took off Levy’s gloves and put on a surgical pair, so as to leave no tell-tale finger-prints. As I wished to convey the impression that Levy had gone to bed in the usual way, I simply went to bed. The surest and simplest method of making a thing appear to have been done is to do it. A bed that has been rumpled about with one’s hands, for instance, never looks like a bed that has been slept in. I dared not use Levy’s brush, of course, as my hair is not of his colour, but I did everything else. I supposed that a thoughtful old man like Levy would put his boots handy for his valet, and I ought to have deduced that he would fold up his clothes. That was a mistake, but not an important one. Remembering that well-thought-out little work of Mr. Bentley’s, I had examined Levy’s mouth for false teeth, but he had none. I did not forget, however, to wet his toothbrush.

At one o’clock I got up and dressed in my own clothes by the light of my own pocket torch. I dared not turn on the bedroom lights, as there were light blinds to the windows. I put on my own boots and an old pair of goloshes outside the door. There was a thick Turkey carpet on the stairs and hall-floor, and I was not afraid of leaving marks. I hesitated whether to chance the banging of the front door, but decided it would be safer to take the latchkey. (It is now in the Thames. I dropped it over Battersea Bridge the next day.) I slipped quietly down, and listened for a few minutes with my ear to the letter-box. I heard a constable tramp past. As soon as his steps had died away in the distance I stepped out and pulled the door gingerly to. It closed almost soundlessly, and I walked away to pick up my cab. I had an overcoat of much the same pattern as Levy’s, and had taken the precaution to pack an opera hat in my suitcase. I hoped the man would not notice that I had no umbrella this time. Fortunately the rain had diminished for the moment to a sort of drizzle, and if he noticed anything he made no observation. I told him to stop at 50 Overstrand Mansions, and I paid him off there, and stood under the porch till he had driven away. Then I hurried round to my own side door and let myself in. It was about a quarter to two, and the harder part of my task still lay before me.

My first step was so to alter the appearance of my subject as to eliminate any immediate suggestion either of Levy or of the workhouse vagrant. A fairly superficial alteration was all I considered necessary, since there was not likely to be any hue- and-cry after the pauper. He was fairly accounted for, and his deputy was at hand to represent him. Nor, if Levy was after all traced to my house, would it be difficult to show that the body in evidence was, as a matter of fact, not his. A clean shave and a little hair-oiling and manicuring seemed sufficient to suggest a distinct personality for my silent accomplice. His hands had been well washed in hospital, and though calloused, were not grimy. I was not able to do the work as thoroughly as I should have liked, because time was getting on. I was not sure how long it would take me to dispose of him, and moreover, I feared the onset of rigor mortis, which would make my task more difficult. When I had him barbered to my satisfaction, I fetched a strong sheet and a couple of wide roller bandages, and fastened him up carefully, padding him with cotton wool wherever the bandages might chafe or leave a bruise.

Now came the really ticklish part of the business. I had already decided in my own mind that the only way of conveying him from the house was by the roof. To go through the garden at the back in this soft wet weather was to leave a ruinous trail behind us. To carry a dead man down a suburban street in the middle of the night seemed outside the range of practical politics. On the roof, on the other hand, the rain, which would have betrayed me on the ground, would stand my friend.

To reach the roof, it was necessary to carry my burden to the top of the house, past my servants’ room, and hoist him out through the trap-door in the box-room roof. Had it merely been a question of going quietly up there myself, I should have had no fear of waking the servants, but to do so burdened by a heavy body was more difficult. It would be possible, provided that the man and his wife were soundly asleep, but if not, the lumbering tread on the narrow stair and the noise of opening the trap-door would be only too plainly audible. I tiptoed delicately up the stair and listened at their door. To my disgust I heard the man give a grunt and mutter something as he moved in his bed.

I looked at my watch. My preparations had taken nearly an hour, first and last, and I dared not be too late on the roof. I determined to take a bold step and, as it were, bluff out an alibi. I went without precaution against noise into the bathroom, turned on the hot and cold water taps to the full and pulled out the plug.

My household has often had occasion to complain of my habit of using the bath at irregular night hours. Not only does the rush of water into the cistern disturb any sleepers on the Prince of Wales Road side of the house, but my cistern is afflicted with peculiarly loud gurglings and thumpings, while frequently the pipes emit a loud groaning sound. To my delight, on this particular occasion, the cistern was in excellent form, honking, whistling and booming like a railway terminus. I gave the noise five minutes’ start, and when I calculated that the sleepers would have finished cursing me and put their heads under the clothes to shut out the din, I reduced the flow of water to a small stream and left the bathroom, taking good care to leave the light burning and lock the door after me. Then I picked up my pauper and carried him upstairs as lightly as possible.

The box-room is a small attic on the side of the landing opposite to the servants’ bedroom and the cistern-room. It has a trap-door, reached by a short, wooden ladder. I set this up, hoisted up my pauper and climbed up after him. The water was still racing into the cistern, which was making a noise as though it were trying to digest an iron chain, and with the reduced flow in the bathroom the groaning of the pipes had risen almost to a hoot. I was not afraid of anybody hearing other noises. I pulled the ladder through on to the roof after me.

Between my house and the last house in Queen Caroline Mansions there is a space of only a few feet. Indeed, when the Mansions were put up, I believe there was some trouble about ancient lights, but I suppose the parties compromised somehow. Anyhow, my seven-foot ladder reached well across. I tied the body firmly to the ladder, and pushed it over till the far end was resting on the parapet of the opposite house. Then I took a short run across the cistern-room and the box-room roof, and landed easily on the other side, the parapet being happily both low and narrow.

The rest was simple. I carried my pauper along the flat roofs, intending to leave him, like the hunchback in the story, on someone’s staircase or down a chimney. I had got about half way along when I suddenly thought, “Why, this must be about little Thipps’s place,” and I remembered his silly face, and his silly chatter about vivisection. It occurred to me pleasantly how delightful it would be to deposit my parcel with him and see what he made of it. I lay down and peered over the parapet at the back. It was pitch-dark and pouring with rain again by this time, and I risked using my torch. That was the only incautious thing I did, and the odds against being seen from the houses opposite were long enough. One second’s flash showed me what I had hardly dared to hope—an open window just below me.

I knew those flats well enough to be sure it was either the bathroom or the kitchen. I made a noose in a third bandage that I had brought with me, and made it fast under the arms of the corpse. I twisted it into a double rope, and secured the end to the iron stanchion of a chimney-stack. Then I dangled our friend over. I went down after him myself with the aid of a drain-pipe and was soon hauling him in by Thipps’s bathroom window.

By that time I had got a little conceited with myself, and spared a few minutes to lay him out prettily and make him shipshape. A sudden inspiration suggested that I should give him the pair of pince-nez which I had happened to pick up at Victoria. I came across them in my pocket while I was looking for a penknife to loosen a knot, and I saw what distinction they would lend his appearance, besides making it more misleading. I fixed them on him, effaced all traces of my presence as far as possible, and departed as I had come, going easily up between the drain-pipe and the rope.

I walked quietly back, re-crossed my crevasse and carried in my ladder and sheet. My discreet accomplice greeted me with a reassuring gurgle and thump. I didn’t make a sound on the stairs. Seeing that I had now been having a bath for about three-quarters of an hour, I turned the water off, and enabled my deserving domestics to get a little sleep. I also felt it was time I had a little myself.

First, however, I had to go over to the hospital and make all safe there. I took off Levy’s head, and started to open up the face. In twenty minutes his own wife could not have recognised him. I returned, leaving my wet goloshes and mackintosh by the garden door. My trousers I dried by the gas stove in my bedroom, and brushed away all traces of mud and brickdust. My pauper’s beard I burned in the library.

I got a good two hours’ sleep from five to seven, when my man called me as usual. I apologized for having kept the water running so long and so late, and added that I thought I would have the cistern seen to.

I was interested to note that I was rather extra hungry at breakfast, showing that my night’s work had caused a certain wear-and-tear of tissue. I went over afterwards to continue my dissection. During the morning a peculiarly thick-headed police inspector came to inquire whether a body had escaped from the hospital. I had him brought to me where I was, and had the pleasure of showing him the work I was doing on Sir Reuben Levy’s head. Afterwards I went round with him to Thipps’s and was able to satisfy myself that my pauper looked very convincing.

As soon as the Stock Exchange opened I telephoned my various brokers, and by exercising a little care, was able to sell out the greater part of my Peruvian stock on a rising market. Towards the end of the day, however, buyers became rather unsettled as a result of Levy’s death, and in the end I did not make more than a few hundreds by the transaction.

Trusting I have now made clear to you any point which you may have found obscure, and with congratulations on the good fortune and perspicacity which have enabled you to defeat me, I remain, with kind remembrances to your mother,

Yours very truly,

JULIAN FREKE

Post-Scriptum: My will is made, leaving my money to St. Luke’s Hospital, and bequeathing my body to the same institution for dissection. I feel sure that my brain will be of interest to the scientific world. As I shall die by my own hand, I imagine that there may be a little difficulty about this. Will you do me the favour, if you can, of seeing the persons concerned in the inquest, and obtaining that the brain is not damaged by an unskilful practitioner at the post-mortem, and that the body is disposed of according to my wish?

By the way, it may be of interest to you to know that I appreciated your motive in calling this afternoon. It conveyed a warning, and I am acting upon it in spite of the disastrous consequences to myself. I was pleased to realize that you had not underestimated my nerve and intelligence, and refused the injection. Had you submitted to it, you would, of course, never have reached home alive. No trace would have been left in your body of the injection, which consisted of a harmless preparation of strychnine, mixed with an almost unknown poison, for which there is at present no recognised test, a concentrated solution of sn—

At this point the manuscript broke off.

“Well, that’s all clear enough,” said Parker.

“Isn’t it queer?” said Lord Peter. “All that coolness, all those brains—and then he couldn’t resist writing a confession to show how clever he was, even to keep his head out of the noose.”

“And a very good thing for us,” said Inspector Sugg, “but Lord bless you, sir, these criminals are all alike.”

“Freke’s epitaph,” said Parker, when the Inspector had departed. “What next, Peter?”

“I shall now give a dinner party,” said Lord Peter, “to Mr. John P. Milligan and his secretary and to Messrs. Crimplesham and Wicks. I feel they deserve it for not having murdered Levy.”

“Well, don’t forget the Thippses,” said Mr. Parker.

“On no account,” said Lord Peter, “would I deprive myself of the pleasure of Mrs. Thipps’s company. Bunter!”

“My lord?”

“The Napoleon brandy.”

____________________________________

*This is the first Florence edition, 1481, by Niccolo di Lorenzo. Lord Peter’s collection of printed Dantes is worth inspection. It includes, besides the famous Aldine 8vo. of 1502, the Naples folio of 1477–“edizione rarissima,” according to Colomb. This copy has no history, and Mr. Parker’s private belief is that its present owner conveyed it away by stealth from somewhere or other. Lord Peter’s own account is that he “picked it up in a little place in the hills,” when making a walking-tour through Italy.

†Lord Peter’s wits were wool-gathering. The book is in the possession of Earl Spencer. The Brocklebury copy is incomplete, the last five signatures being altogether missing, but is unique in possessing the colophon.

* Apollonios Rhodios. Lorenzobodi Alopa. Firenze. 1496. (4to.) The excitement attendant on the solution of the Battersea Mystery did not prevent Lord Peter from securing this rare work before his departure for Corsica.

* Lord Peter was not without authority for his opinion: “With respect to the alleged motive, it is of great importance to see whether there was a motive for committing such a crime, or whether there was not, or whether there is an improbability of its having been committed so strong as not to be overpowered by positive evidence. But if there be any motive which can be assigned, I am bound to tell you that the inadequacy of that motive is of little importance. We know, from the experience of criminal courts, that atrocious crimes of this sort have been committed from very slight motives; not merely from malice and revenge, but to gain a small pecuniary advantage, and to drive off for a time pressing difficulties.”–L. C. J. Campbell, summing up in Reg. v. Palmer, Shorthand Report, p. 308 C. C. C., May, 1856, Sess. Pa. 5. (Italics mine. D. L. S.)