Whose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel

“Well!”said Mrs. Appledore, as the door closed behind him.

And—

“I thank the goodness and the grace

That on my birth have smiled,”

said Lord Peter, “and taught me to be bestially impertinent when I choose. Cat!”

Two a.m. saw Lord Peter Wimsey arrive in a friend’s car at the Dower House, Denver Castle, in company with a deaf and aged lady and an antique portmanteau.

“It’s very nice to see you, dear,” said the Dowager Duchess, placidly. She was a small, plump woman, with perfectly white hair and exquisite hands. In feature she was as unlike her second son as she was like him in character; her black eyes twinkled cheerfully, and her manners and movements were marked with a neat and rapid decision. She wore a charming wrap from Liberty’s, and sat watching Lord Peter eat cold beef and cheese as though his arrival in such incongruous circumstances and company were the most ordinary event possible, which with him, indeed, it was.

“Have you got the old lady to bed?” asked Lord Peter.

“Oh, yes, dear. Such a striking old person, isn’t she? And very courageous. She tells me she has never been in a motor-car before. But she thinks you a very nice lad, dear – that careful of her, you remind her of her own son. Poor little Mr. Thipps – whatever made your friend the inspector think he could have murdered anybody?”

“My friend the inspector – no, no more, thank you, Mother – is determined to prove that the intrusive person in Thipps’s bath is Sir Reuben Levy, who disappeared mysteriously from his house last night. His line of reasoning is: We’ve lost a middle-aged gentleman without any clothes on in Park Lane; we’ve found a middle-aged gentleman without any clothes on in Battersea. Therefore they’re one and the same person, Q.E.D., and put little Thipps in quod.”

“You’re very elliptical, dear,” said the Duchess, mildly. “Why should Mr. Thipps be arrested even if they are the same?”

“Sugg must arrest somebody,” said Lord Peter, “but there is one odd little bit of evidence come out which goes a long way to support Sugg’s theory, only that I know it to be no go by the evidence of my own eyes. Last night at about 9.15 a young woman was strollin’ up the Battersea Park Road for purposes best known to herself, when she saw a gentleman in a fur coat and top-hat saunterin’ along under an umbrella, lookin’ at the names of all the streets. He looked a bit out of place, so, not bein’ a shy girl, you see, she walked up to him, and said: ‘Good-evening.’ ‘Can you tell me, please,’ says the mysterious stranger, ‘whether this street leads into Prince of Wales Road?’ She said it did, and further asked him in a jocular manner what he was doing with himself and all the rest of it, only she wasn’t altogether so explicit about that part of the conversation, because she was unburdenin’ her heart to Sugg, d’you see, and he’s paid by a grateful country to have very pure, high-minded ideals, what? Anyway, the old boy said he couldn’t attend to her just then as he had an appointment. ‘I’ve got to go and see a man, my dear,’ was how she said he put it, and he walked on up Alexandra Avenue towards Prince of Wales Road. She was starin’ after him, still rather surprised, when she was joined by a friend of hers, who said: ‘It’s no good wasting your time with him – that’s Levy – I knew him when I lived in the West End, and the girls used to call him Peagreen Incorruptible’ – friend’s name suppressed, owing to implications of story, but girl vouches for what was said. She thought no more about it till the milkman brought news this morning of the excitement at Queen Caroline Mansions; then she went round, though not likin’ the police as a rule, and asked the man there whether the dead gentleman had a beard and glasses. Told he had glasses but no beard, she incautiously said: ‘Oh, then, it isn’t him,’ and the man said: ‘Isn’t who?’ and collared her. That’s her story. Sugg’s delighted, of course, and quodded Thipps on the strength of it.”

“Dear me,” said the Duchess, “I hope the poor girl won’t get into trouble.”

“Shouldn’t think so,” said Lord Peter. “Thipps is the one that’s going to get it in the neck. Besides, he’s done a silly thing. I got that out of Sugg, too, though he was sittin’ tight on the information. Seems Thipps got into a confusion about the train he took back from Manchester. Said first he got home at 10.30. Then they pumped Gladys Horrocks, who let out he wasn’t back till after 11.45. Then Thipps, bein’ asked to explain the discrepancy, stammers and bungles and says, first, that he missed the train. Then Sugg makes inquiries at St. Pancras and discovers that he left a bag in the cloakroom there at ten. Thipps, again asked to explain, stammers worse an’ says he walked about for a few hours – met a friend – can’t say who – didn’t meet a friend – can’t say what he did with his time – can’t explain why he didn’t go back for his bag – can’t say what time he did get in – can’t explain how he got a bruise on his forehead. In fact, can’t explain himself at all. Gladys Horrocks interrogated again. Says, this time, Thipps came in at 10.30. Then admits she didn’t hear him come in. Can’t say why she didn’t hear him come in. Can’t say why she said first of all that she did hear him. Bursts into tears. Contradicts herself. Everybody’s suspicion roused. Quod ’em both.”

“As you put it, dear,” said the Duchess, “it all sounds very confusing, and not quite respectable. Poor little Mr. Thipps would be terribly upset by anything that wasn’t respectable.”

“I wonder what he did with himself,” said Lord Peter thoughtfully. “I really don’t think he was committing a murder. Besides, I believe the fellow has been dead a day or two, though it don’t do to build too much on doctors’ evidence. It’s an entertainin’ little problem.”

“Very curious, dear. But so sad about poor Sir Reuben. I must write a few lines to Lady Levy; I used to know her quite well, you know, dear, down in Hampshire, when she was a girl. Christine Ford, she was then, and I remember so well the dreadful trouble there was about her marrying a Jew. That was before he made his money, of course, in that oil business out in America. The family wanted her to marry Julian Freke, who did so well afterwards and was connected with the family, but she fell in love with this Mr. Levy and eloped with him. He was very handsome, then, you know, dear, in a foreign-looking way, but he hadn’t any means, and the Fords didn’t like his religion. Of course we’re all Jews nowadays, and they wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d pretended to be something else, like that Mr. Simons we met at Mrs. Porchester’s, who always tells everybody that he got his nose in Italy at the Renaissance, and claims to be descended somehow or other from La Bella Simonetta – so foolish, you know, dear – as if anybody believed it; and I’m sure some Jews are very good people, and personally I’d much rather they believed something, though of course it must be very inconvenient, what with not working on Saturdays and circumcising the poor little babies and everything depending on the new moon and that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name, and never being able to have bacon for breakfast. Still, there it was, and it was much better for the girl to marry him if she was really fond of him, though I believe young Freke was really devoted to her, and they’re still great friends. Not that there was ever a real engagement, only a sort of understanding with her father, but he’s never married, you know, and lives all by himself in that big house next to the hospital, though he’s very rich and distinguished now, and I know ever so many people have tried to get hold of him – there was Lady Mainwaring wanted him for that eldest girl of hers, though I remember saying at the time it was no use expecting a surgeon to be taken in by a figure that was all padding – they have so many opportunities of judging, you know, dear.”

“Lady Levy seems to have had the knack of makin’ people devoted to her,” said Peter. “Look at the pea-green incorruptible Levy.”

“That’s quite true, dear; she was a most delightful girl, and they say her daughter is just like her. I rather lost sight of them when she married, and you know your father didn’t care much about business people, but I know everybody always said they were a model couple. In fact it was a proverb that Sir Reuben was as well loved at home as he was hated abroad. I don’t mean in foreign countries, you know, dear – just the proverbial way of putting things – like ‘a saint abroad and a devil at home’ – only the other way on, reminding one of the Pilgrim’s Progress.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I daresay the old man made one or two enemies.”

“Dozens, dear – such a dreadful place, the City, isn’t it? Everybody Ishmaels together – though I don’t suppose Sir Reuben would like to be called that, would he? Doesn’t it mean illegitimate, or not a proper Jew, anyway? I always did get confused with those Old Testament characters.”

Lord Peter laughed and yawned.

“I think I’ll turn in for an hour or two,” he said. “I must be back in town at eight – Parker’s coming to breakfast.”

The Duchess looked at the clock, which marked five minutes to three.

“I’ll send up your breakfast at half-past six, dear,” she said. “I hope you’ll find everything all right. I told them just to slip a hot-water bottle in; those linen sheets are so chilly; you can put it out if it’s in your way.”

Chapter IV

“ – So there it is, Parker,” said Lord Peter, pushing his coffee-cup aside and lighting his after-breakfast pipe; “you may find it leads you to something, though it don’t seem to get me any further with my bathroom problem. Did you do anything more at that after I left?”

“No; but I’ve been on the roof this morning.”

“The deuce you have – what an energetic devil you are! I say, Parker, I think this co-operative scheme is an uncommonly good one. It’s much easier to work on someone else’s job than one’s own – gives one that delightful feelin’ of interferin’ and bossin’ about, combined with the glorious sensation that another fellow is takin’ all one’s own work off one’s hands. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, what? Did you find anything?”

“Not very much. I looked for any footmarks of course, but naturally, with all this rain, there wasn’t a sign. Of course, if this were a detective story, there’d have been a convenient shower exactly an hour before the crime and a beautiful set of marks which could only have come there between two and three in the morning, but this being real life in a London November, you might as well expect footprints in Niagara. I searched the roofs right along – and came to the jolly conclusion that any person in any blessed flat in the blessed row might have done it. All the staircases open on to the roof and the leads are quite flat; you can walk along as easy as along Shaftesbury Avenue. Still, I’ve got some evidence that the body did walk along there.”

“What’s that?”

Parker brought out his pocketbook and extracted a few shreds of material, which he laid before his friend.

“One was caught in the gutter just above Thipps’s bathroom window, another in a crack of the stone parapet just over it, and the rest came from the chimney-stack behind, where they had caught in an iron stanchion. What do you make of them?”

Lord Peter scrutinized them very carefully through his lens.

“Interesting,” he said, “damned interesting. Have you developed those plates, Bunter?” he added, as that discreet assistant came in with the post.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Caught anything?”

“I don’t know whether to call it anything or not, my lord,” said Bunter, dubiously. “I’ll bring the prints in.”

“Do,” said Wimsey. “Hallo! here’s our advertisement about the gold chain in the Times – very nice it looks: ‘Write, ’phone or call 110, Piccadilly.’ Perhaps it would have been safer to put a box number, though I always think that the franker you are with people, the more you’re likely to deceive ’em; so unused is the modern world to the open hand and the guileless heart, what?”

“But you don’t think the fellow who left that chain on the body is going to give himself away by coming here and inquiring about it?”

“I don’t, fathead,” said Lord Peter, with the easy politeness of the real aristocracy; “that’s why I’ve tried to get hold of the jeweller who originally sold the chain. See?” He pointed to the paragraph. “It’s not an old chain – hardly worn at all. Oh, thanks, Bunter. Now, see here, Parker, these are the finger-marks you noticed yesterday on the window-sash and on the far edge of the bath. I’d overlooked them; I give you full credit for the discovery, I crawl, I grovel, my name is Watson, and you need not say what you were just going to say, because I admit it all. Now we shall – Hullo, hullo, hullo!”

The three men stared at the photographs.

“The criminal,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, “climbed over the roofs in the wet and not unnaturally got soot on his fingers. He arranged the body in the bath, and wiped away all traces of himself except two, which he obligingly left to show us how to do our job. We learn from a smudge on the floor that he wore india rubber boots, and from this admirable set of finger-prints on the edge of the bath that he had the usual number of fingers and wore rubber gloves. That’s the kind of man he is. Take the fool away, gentlemen.”

He put the prints aside, and returned to an examination of the shreds of material in his hand. Suddenly he whistled softly.

“Do you make anything of these, Parker?”

“They seemed to me to be ravellings of some coarse cotton stuff – a sheet, perhaps, or an improvised rope.”

“Yes,” said Lord Peter – “yes. It may be a mistake – it may be our mistake. I wonder. Tell me, d’you think these tiny threads are long enough and strong enough to hang a man?”

He was silent, his long eyes narrowing into slits behind the smoke of his pipe.

“What do you suggest doing this morning?” asked Parker.

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “it seems to me it’s about time I took a hand in your job. Let’s go round to Park Lane and see what larks Sir Reuben Levy was up to in bed last night.”