Have His Carcase (7 page)

be, for the whole alibi depended on its being heard to strike midnight at the

appropriate moment. Could the man who looked after it be made into an

accomplice? Who did look after town-hal clocks? (Why gloves? And had she

left her own finger-prints on the razor?) Was it, after al, going to be necessary

to go to Edinburgh? Perhaps there was no town-hal and no clock. A church-

clock would do, of course. But church-clocks and bodies in belfries had been

rather overdone lately. (It was odd about Mr Perkins. If the solution was

murder after al, could not the murderer have walked through the water to some

point? Perhaps she ought to have folowed the shore and not the coast-road.

Too late now, in any case.) And she had not properly worked out the speed of

the steam-yacht. One ought to know about these things. Lord Peter would

know, of course; he must have sailed in plenty of steam-yachts. It must be nice

to be
really
rich. Anybody who married Lord Peter would be rich, of course.

And he was amusing. Nobody could say he would be dul to live with. But the

trouble was that you never knew what anybody was like to live with except by

living with them. It wasn’t worth it. Not even to know al about steam-yachts. A

novelist couldn’t possibly marry al the people from whom she wanted

specialised information. Harriet pleased herself over the coffee with sketching

out the career of an American detective-novelist who contracted a fresh

marriage for each new book. For a book about poisons, she would marry an

analytical chemist; for a book about somebody’s wil, a solicitor; for a book

about strangling, a – a hangman, of course. There might be something in it. A

spoof book, of course. And the vilainess might do away with each husband by

the method described in the book she was working on at the time. Too

obvious? Wel, perhaps.

She got up from the table and made her way into a kind of large lounge,

where the middle space was cleared for dancing. A select orchestra occupied a

platform at one end, and smal tables were arranged al round the sides of the

room, where visitors could drink coffee or liqueurs and watch the dancing.

While she took her place and gave her order, the floor was occupied by a pair

of obviously professional dancers, giving an exhibition waltz. The man was tal

and fair, with sleek hair plastered closely to his head, and a queer, unhealthy

face with a wide, melancholy mouth. The girl, in an exaggerated gown of

petunia satin with an enormous bustle and a train, exhibited a mask of Victorian

coyness as she revolved languidly in her partner’s arms to the strains of the

‘Blue Danube’. ‘
Autres temps, autres moeurs
,’ thought Harriet. She looked

about the room. Long skirts and costumes of the seventies were in evidence –

and even ostrich feathers and fans. Even the coyness had its imitators. But it

was so obvious an imitation. The slender-seeming waists were made so, not by

savage tight-lacing, but by sheer expensive dressmaking. Tomorrow, on the

tennis-court, the short, loose tunic-frock would reveal them as the waists of

muscular young women of the day, despising al bonds. And the sidelong

glances, the down-cast eyes, the mock-modesty – masks, only. If this was the

‘return to womanliness’ hailed by the fashion-correspondents, it was to a quite

different kind of womanliness – set on a basis of economic independence.

Were men realy stupid enough to believe that the good old days of submissive

womanhood could be brought back by miliners’ fashions? ‘Hardly,’ thought

Harriet, ‘when they know perfectly wel that one has only to remove the train

and the bustle, get into a short skirt and walk off, with a job to do and money in

one’s pocket. Oh, wel, it’s a game, and presumably they al know the rules.’

The dancers twirled to a standstil with the conclusion of the waltz. The

instrumentalists tweaked a string and tightened a peg here and there and

rearranged their music, under cover of perfunctory applause. Then the male

dancer selected a partner from one of the nearer tables, while the petunia-clad

girl obeyed a summons from a stout manufacturer in tweeds on the other side of

the room. Another girl, a blonde in pale blue, rose from her solitary table near

the platform and led out an elderly man. Other visitors rose, accompanied by

their own partners, and took the floor to the strains of another waltz. Harriet

beckoned to the waiter and asked for more coffee.

Men, she thought, like the ilusion that woman is dependent on their

approbation and favour for her whole interest in life. But do they like the

reality? Not, thought Harriet, bitterly, when one is past one’s first youth. The

girl over there, exercising S.A. on a group of rather possessive-looking males,

wil turn into a predatory hag like the woman at the next table, if she doesn’t

find something to occupy her mind, always supposing that she has a mind. Then

the men wil say she puts the wind up them.

The ‘predatory hag’ was a lean woman, patheticaly made-up, dressed in an

exaggeration of the fashion which it would have been difficult for a girl of

nineteen to carry off successfuly. She had caught Harriet’s attention earlier by

her look of radiant, almost bridal exaltation. She was alone, but seemed to be

expecting somebody, for her gaze roamed incessantly about the room,

concentrating itself chiefly on the professionals’ table near the platform. Now

she appeared to be getting anxious. Her ringed hands twitched nervously, and

she lighted one cigarette after another, only to stub it out, half-smoked, snatch

at the mirror in her handbag, readjust her make-up, fidget, and then begin the

whole process again with another cigarette.

‘Waiting for her gigolo,’ diagnosed Harriet, with a kind of pitiful disgust. ‘The

frog-mouthed gentleman, I suppose. He seems to have better fish to fry.’

The waiter brought the coffee, and the woman at the next table caught him

on his way back.

‘Is Mr Alexis not here tonight?’

‘No, madam.’ The waiter looked a little nervous. ‘No. He is unavoidably

absent.’

‘Is he il?’

‘I do not think so, madam. The manager has just said he wil not be coming.’

‘Did he send no message?’

‘I could not say, madam.’ The waiter was fidgeting with his feet. ‘Mr

Antoine wil no doubt be happy . . .’

‘No, never mind. I am accustomed to Mr Alexis. His step suits me. It does

not matter.’

‘No, madam, thank you, madam.’

The waiter escaped. Harriet saw him exchange a word and a shrug with the

head waiter. Lips and eyebrows were eloquent. Harriet felt annoyed. Did one

come to this, then, if one did not marry? Making a public scorn of one’s self

before the waiters? She glanced again at the woman, who was rising to leave

the lounge. She wore a wedding-ring. Marriage did not save one, apparently.

Single, married, widowed, divorced, one came to the same end. She shivered a

little, and suddenly felt fed-up with the lounge and the dance-floor. She finished

her coffee and retired to the smaler lounge, where three stout women were

engaged in an interminable conversation about ilness, children and servants.

‘Poor Muriel –
quite
an invalid since the birth of her last baby. . . . I spoke

quite firmly, I said, “Now you quite understand, if you leave before your month

you wil be liable to me for the money.” . . . Twelve guineas a week, and the

surgeon’s fee was a hundred guineas. . . . Beautiful boys, both of them, but with

Ronnie at Eton and Wilfred at Oxford. . . . They oughtn’t to
let
boys run up

these bils . . . my dear,
pounds
thinner, I hardly knew her, but I wouldn’t care

to . . . some kind of electric heat treatment, too marvelous . . . and what with

rates and taxes and al this terrible unemployment. . . . You can’t argue with

nervous dyspepsia, but it makes things very difficult . . . left me high and dry

with the house ful of people, these girls have
no
gratitude.’

‘And these,’ thought Harriet, ‘are the happy ones, I suppose. Wel, dash it!

How about that town-clock?’

IV

THE EVIDENCE OF THE RAZOR

‘Well, thou art

A useful tool sometimes, thy tooth works quickly,

And if thou gnawest a secret from the heart

Thou tellest it not again.’

Death’s Jest-Book

Friday, 19 June

In spite of the horrors she had witnessed, which ought to have driven al sleep

away from the eyelids of any self-respecting female, Harriet slept profoundly in

her first-floor bedroom (with bathroom, balcony and view over Esplanade) and

came down to breakfast with a hearty appetite.

She secured a copy of the
Morning Star
, and was deep in the perusal of her

own interview (with photograph) on the front page, when a familiar voice

addressed her:

‘Good morning, Sherlock. Where is the dressing-gown? How many pipes of

shag have you consumed? The hypodermic is on the dressing-room table.’

‘How in the world,’ demanded Harriet, ‘did
you
get here?’

‘Car,’ said Lord Peter, briefly. ‘Have they produced the body?’

‘Who told you about the body?’

‘I nosed it from afar. Where the carcase is, there shal be eagles gathered

together. May I join you over the bacon-and-eggs?’

‘By al means,’ said Harriet. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘From London – like a bird that hears the cal of its mate.’

‘I didn’t—’ began Harriet.

‘I didn’t mean you. I meant the corpse. But stil, talking of mates, wil you

marry me?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘I thought not, but I felt I might as wel ask the question. Did you say they

had found the body?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘I don’t expect they wil, then, for a bit. There’s a regular sou’wester blowing

great guns. Tiresome for them. Can’t have an inquest without a body. You must

produce the body, as it says in the Have-His-Carcase Act.’

‘No, but realy,’ protested Harriet, ‘how did you hear about it?’

‘Salcombe Hardy rang me up from the
Morning Star
. Said “my Miss Vane”

had found a corpse, and did I know anything about it. I said I knew nothing

about it and that Miss Vane was unhappily not mine – yet. So I buzzed off, and

here I am. I brought Saly Hardy down with me. I expect that’s what he realy

rang me up for. Smart old bird, Saly – always on the spot.’

‘He told you where to find me, I suppose.’

‘Yes – he seemed to know al about it. I was rather hurt. Fancy having to

ask the
Morning Star
where the pole-star of one’s own heaven has gone to.

Hardy seemed to know al about it. How do these things get into the papers?’

‘I rang them up myself,’ replied Harriet. ‘First-class publicity, you know, and

al that.’

‘So it is,’ agreed Wimsey, helping himself lavishly to butter. ‘Rang ’em up,

did you, with al the gory details?’

‘Naturaly; that was the first thing I thought of.’

‘You’re a woman of business. But does it not, pardon me, indicate a certain

coarsening of the fibres?’

‘Obviously,’ said Harriet. ‘My fibres at this moment resemble coconut

matting.’

‘Without even “Welcome” written across them. But, look here, beloved,

bearing in mind that I’m a corpse-fan, don’t you think you might, as man to

man, have let me in on the ground-floor?’

‘If you put it that way,’ admitted Harriet, rather ashamed of herself, ‘I

certainly might. But I thought—’

‘Women
will
let the personal element creep in,’ said Wimsey, acutely. ‘Wel,

al I can say is, you owe it to me to make up for it now.
All
the details, please.’

‘I’m tired of giving details,’ grumbled Harriet, perversely.

‘You’l be tireder before the police and the newspaper lads have finished

with you. I have been staving off Salcombe Hardy with the greatest difficulty.

He is in the lounge. The
Banner
and the
Clarion
are in the smoking room.

They had a fast car. The
Courier
is coming by train (it’s a nice, respectable,

old-fashioned paper), and the
Thunderer
and the
Comet
are hanging about

outside the bar, hoping you may be persuaded to offer them something. The

three people arguing with the commissionaire are, I fancy, local men. The

photographic contingent have gone down en masse, packed in a single Morris,

to record the place where the body was found, which, as the tide is wel up,

they wil not see. Tel me al, here and now, and I wil organise your publicity for

you.’

‘Very wel,’ said Harriet, ‘I tel thee al, I can no more.’

She pushed her plate aside and took up a clean knife.

‘This,’ she said, ‘is the coast-road from Lesston Hoe to Wilvercombe. The

shore bends about like this—’ She took up the pepper-pot.

‘Try salt,’ suggested Wimsey. ‘Less irritatin’ to the nasal tissues.’