Lord Peter Views the Body (19 page)

    The path skirted two sides of the plough; then came another gate and another field, containing a long barrow of mangold wurzels and a couple of barns. At the sound of Polly’s hoofs, a man emerged from the nearest barn, with a paint-brush in his hand, and stood watching Wimsey’s approach.

    ‘ ’Morning!’ said the latter genially.

    ‘ ’Morning, sir.’

    ‘Fine day after the rain?’

    ‘Yes, it is, sir.’

    ‘I hope I’m not trespassing?’

    ‘Where was you wanting to go, sir?’

    ‘I thought, as a matter of fact – hullo!’

    ‘Anything wrong sir?’

    Wimsey shifted in the saddle.

    ‘I fancy this girth’s slipped a bit. It’s a new one.’ (This was a fact.) ‘Better have a look.’

    The man advanced to investigate, but Wimsey had dismounted and was tugging at the strap, with his head under the mare’s belly.

    ‘Yes, it wants taking up a trifle. Oh! Thanks most awfully. Is this a short cut to Abbotts Bolton, by the way?’

    ‘Not to the village, sir, though you can get through this way. It comes out by Mr Mortimer’s stables.’

    ‘Ah, yes. This his land?’

    ‘No, sir, it’s Mr Topham’s land, but Mr Mortimer rents this field and the next for fodder.’

    ‘Oh, yes.’ Wimsey peered across the hedge. ‘Lucerne, I suppose. Or clover.’

    ‘Clover, sir. And the mangolds is for the cattle.’

    ‘Oh – Mr Mortimer keeps cattle as well as horses?’

    ‘Yes, sir.’

    ‘Very jolly. Have a gasper?’ Wimsey had sidled across to the barn in his interest, and was gazing absently into its dark interior. It contained a number of farm implements and a black fly of antique construction, which seemed to be undergoing renovation with black varnish. Wimsey pulled some vestas from his pocket. The box was apparently damp, for, after one or two vain attempts he abandoned it, and struck a match on the wall of the barn. The flame, lighting up the ancient fly, showed it to be incongruously fitted with rubber tyres.

    ‘Very fine stud, Mr Mortimer’s, I understand,’ said Wimsey carelessly.

    ‘Yes, sir, very fine indeed.’

    ‘I suppose he hasn’t any greys, by any chance. My mother – queenly woman, Victorian ideas, and all that – is rather keen on greys. Sports a carriage and pay-ah, don’t you know.’

    ‘Yes, sir? Well, Mr Mortimer would be able to suit the lady, I think, sir. He has several greys.’

    ‘No? has he though? I must really go over and see him. Is it far?’

    ‘Matter of five or six miles by the fields, sir.’

    Wimsey looked at his watch.

    ‘Oh, dear! I’m really afraid it’s too far for this morning. I absolutely promised to get back to lunch. I must come over another day. Thanks
so
much. Is that girth right now? Oh, really, I’m immensely obliged. Get yourself a drink, won’t you and tell Mr Mortimer not to sell his greys till I’ve seen them. Well,
good
morning, and many thanks.’

    He set Polly Flinders on the homeward path and trotted gently away. Not till he was out of sight of the barn did he pull up and, stooping from the saddle, thoughtfully examine his boots. They were liberally plastered with bran.

    ‘I must have picked it up in the barn,’ said Wimsey. ‘Curious, if true. Why should Mr Mortimer be lashing the stuffing out of his greys in an old fly at the dead of night – and with muffled hoofs and no heads, to boot? It’s not a kind thing to do. It frightened Plunkett very much. It made me think I was drunk – a thought I hate to think. Ought I to tell the police? Are Mr Mortimer’s jokes any business of mine? What do
you
think, Polly?’

    The mare, hearing her name, energetically shook her head.

    ‘You think not? Perhaps you are right. Let us say that Mr Mortimer did it for a wager. Who am I to interfere with his amusements? All the same,’ added his lordship, ‘I’m glad to know it wasn’t Lumsden’s whisky.’

‘This is the library,’ said Haviland, ushering in his guests. ‘A fine room – and a fine collection of books, I’m told, though literature isn’t much in my line. It wasn’t much in the governor’s line, either, I’m afraid. The place wants doing up, as you see. I don’t know whether Martin will take it in hand. It’s a job that’ll cost money, of course.’

    Wimsey shivered a little as he gazed round, more from sympathy than from cold, though a white November fog lay curled against the tall windows, and filtered damply through the frames.

    A long, mouldering room, in the frigid neo-classical style, the library was melancholy enough in the sunless grey afternoon, even without the signs of neglect which wrung the book-collector’s heart. The walls, panelled to half their height with book-cases, ran up in plaster to the moulded ceiling. Damp had blotched them into grotesque shapes, and here and there were ugly cracks and squamous patches, from which the plaster had fallen in yellowish flakes. A wet chill seemed to ooze from the books, from the calf bindings peeling and perishing, from the stains of greenish mildew which spread horridly from volume to volume. The curious musty odour of decayed leather and damp paper added to the general cheerlessness of the atmosphere.

    ‘Oh, dear, dear!’ said Wimsey, peering dismally into this sepulchre of forgotten learning, With his shoulders hunched like the neck-feathers of a chilly bird, with his long nose and half-shut eyes, he resembled a dilapidated heron, brooding over the stagnation of a wintry pool.

    ‘What a freezing-cold place,’ exclaimed Mrs Hancock. ‘You really ought to scold Mrs Lovall, Mr Burdock. When she was put in here as caretaker, I said to my husband – didn’t I, Philip? – that your father had chosen the laziest woman in Little Doddering. She ought to have kept up big fires here,
at least
twice a week! It’s really shameful, the way she has let things go.’

    ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ agreed Haviland.

    Wimsey said nothing. He was nosing along the shelves, every now and then taking a volume down and glancing at it.

    ‘It was always rather a depressing room,’ went on Haviland. ‘I remember, when I was a kid, it used to overawe me rather. Martin and I used to browse about among the books, you know, but I think we were always afraid that something or somebody would stalk out upon us from the dark corners. What’s that you’ve got there, Lord Peter? Oh,
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
Dear me! How those pictures did terrify me in the old days! And there was a
Pilgrim’s Progress
, with a most alarming picture of Apollyon straddling over the whole breadth of the way, which gave me many nightmares. Let me see. It used to live over in this bay, I think. Yes, here it is. How it does bring it all back, to be sure! Is it valuable, by the way?’

    ‘No, not really. But this first edition of Burton is worth money; badly spotted, though – you’d better send it to be cleaned. And this is an extremely fine Boccaccio; take care of it.’

    ‘John Boccace –
The Dance of Machabree
. It’s a good title, anyhow. Is that the same Boccaccio that wrote the naughty stories?’

    ‘Yes,’ said Wimsey, a little shortly. He resented this attitude towards Boccaccio.

    ‘Never read them,’ said Haviland, with a wink at his wife, ‘but I’ve seen ’em in the windows of those surgical shops – so I suppose they’re naughty, eh? The vicar’s looking shocked.’

    ‘Oh, not at all,’ said Mr Hancock, with a conscientious assumption of broad-mindedness. ‘
Et ego in Arcadia
–
that is to say, one doesn’t enter the Church without undergoing a classical education, and making the acquaintance of much more worldly authors even than Boccaccio. Those woodcuts are very fine, to my uninstructed eye.’

    ‘Very fine indeed,’ said Wimsey.

    ‘There’s another old book I remember, with jolly pictures,’ said Haviland. ‘A chronicle of some sort – what’s ’is name – place in Germany –
you
know – where that hangman came from. They published his diary the other day. I read it, but it wasn’t very exciting; not half as gruesome as old Harrison Ainsworth. What’s the name of the place?’

    ‘Nüremberg?’ suggested Wimsey.

    ‘That’s it, of course – the
Nüremberg Chronicle
. I wonder if that’s still in its old place. It was over here by the window, if I remember rightly.’

    He led the way to the end of the bays, which ran up close against a window. Here the damp seemed to have done its worst. A pane of glass was broken, and rain had blown in.

    ‘Now where has it gone to? A big book, it was, with a stamped leather binding. I’d like to see the old
Chronicle
again. I haven’t set eyes on it for donkey’s years.’

    His glance roamed vaguely over the shelves. Wimsey, with the book-lover’s instinct, was the first to spot the
Chronicle
, wedged at the extreme end of the shelf, against the outer wall. He hitched his finger into the top edge of the spine, but finding that the rotting leather was ready to crumble at a touch, he dislodged a neighbouring book and drew the
Chronicle
gently out, using his whole hand.

    ‘Here he is – in pretty bad condition, I’m afraid. Hullo!’

    As he drew the book away from the wall, a piece of folded parchment came away with it and fell at his feet. He stooped and picked it up.

    ‘I say, Burdock – isn’t this what you’ve been looking for?’

    Haviland Burdock, who had been rooting about on one of the lower shelves, straightened himself quickly, his face red from stooping.

    ‘By jove!’ he said, turning first redder and then pale with excitement. ‘Look at this, Winnie. It’s the governor’s will. What an extraordinary thing! Whoever would have thought of looking for it here, of all places?’

    ‘Is it really the will?’ cried Mrs Hancock.

    ‘No doubt about it, I should say,’ observed Wimsey coolly. ‘Last Will and Testament of Simon Burdock.’ He stood, turning the grimy document over and over in his hands, looking from the endorsement to the plain side of the folded parchment.

    ‘Well, well!’ said Mr Hancock. ‘How strange! It seems almost providential that you should have taken that book down.’

    ‘What does the will say?’ demanded Mrs Burdock, in some excitement.

    ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Wimsey, handing it over to her. ‘Yes, as you say, Mr Hancook, it does almost seem as if I was meant to find it.’ He glanced down again at the
Chronicle
, mournfully tracing with his finger the outline of a damp stain which had rotted the cover and spread to the inner pages, almost obliterating the colophon.

    Haviland Burdock meanwhile had spread the will out on the nearest table. His wife leaned over his shoulder. The Hancocks, barely controlling their curiosity, stood near, awaiting the result. Wimsey, with an elaborate pretence of non-interference in this family matter, examined the wall against which the
Chronicle
had stood, feeling its moist surface and examining the damp-stains. They had assumed the appearance of a grinning face. He compared them with the corresponding mark on the book, and shook his head desolately over the damage.

    Mr Frobisher-Pym, who had wandered away some time before and was absorbed in an ancient book of farriery, now approached, and enquired what the excitement was about

    ‘Listen to this!’ cried Haviland. His voice was quiet, but a suppressed triumph throbbed in it and glittered from his eyes.

    ‘“I bequeath everything of which I die possessed” – there’s a lot of enumeration of properties here, which doesn’t matter – “to my eldest son, Martin”—’

    Mr Frobisher-Pym whistled.

    ‘Listen! “To my eldest son Martin, for so long as my body shall remain above ground. But so soon as I am buried, I direct that the whole of this property shall revert to my younger son Haviland absolutely”—’

    ‘Good God!’ said Mr Frobisher-Pym.

    ‘There’s a lot more,’ said Haviland ‘but that’s the gist of it.’

    ‘Let me see,’ said the magistrate.

    He took the will from Haviland, and read it through with a frowning face.

    ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘No possible doubt about it. Martin has had his property and lost it again. How very curious. Up till yesterday everything belonged to him, though nobody knew it. Now it is all yours, Burdock. This certainly is the strangest will I ever saw. Just fancy that. Martin the heir, up to the time of the funeral. And now – well, Burdock, I must congratulate you.’

    ‘Thank you,’ said Haviland. ‘It is very unexpected.’ He laughed unsteadily.

    ‘But what a queer idea!’ cried Mrs Burdock. ‘Suppose Martin had been at home. It almost seems a mercy that he wasn’t, doesn’t it? I mean, it would all have been so awkward. What would have happened if he had tried to stop the funeral, for instance?’

    ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hancock. ‘Could he have done anything? Who decides about funerals?’

    ‘The executors, as a rule,’ said Mr Frobisher-Pym.