Lord Peter Views the Body (22 page)

    ‘Thank you, Winnie,’ said Martin. ‘No, Haviland – don’t trouble to explain. Winnie’s given the show away. So you knew – you
knew
about the will, and you deliberately hid it away and let the funeral go on. I’m immensely obliged to you – nearly as obliged as I am to the discreet Graham. Is it fraud or conspiracy or what, to conceal wills? Mr Frobisher-Pym will know.’

    ‘Dear, dear!’ said the magistrate. ‘Are you certain of your facts, Wimsey?’

    ‘Positive,’ said Wimsey, producing the
Nüremberg Chronicle
from under his arm. ‘Here’s the stain – you can see it yourself. Forgive me for having borrowed your property, Mr Burdock. I was rather afraid Mr Haviland might think this little discrepancy over in the still watches of the night, and decide to sell the
Chronicle
, or give it away, or even think it looked better without its back pages and cover. Allow me to return it to you, Mr Martin – intact. You will perhaps excuse my saying that I don’t very much admire any of the rôles in this melodrama. It throws, as Mr Picksniff would say, a sad light on human nature. But I resent extremely the way in which I was wangled up to that bookshelf and made to be the bright little independent witness who found the will. I may be an ass, Mr Haviland Burdock, but I’m not a bloody ass. Good night. I will wait in the car till you are all ready.’

    Wimsey stalked out with some dignity.

    Presently he was followed by the vicar and by Mr Frobisher-Pym.

    ‘Mortimer’s taking Haviland and his wife to the station,’ said the magistrate. ‘They’re going back to town at once. You can send their traps off in the morning, Hancock. We’d better make ourselves scarce.’

    Wimsey pressed the self-starter.

    As he did so, a man ran hastily down the steps and came up to him. It was Martin.

    ‘I say,’ he muttered. ‘You’ve done me a good turn – more than I deserve, I’m afraid. You must think I’m a damned swine. But I’ll see the old man decently put away, and I’ll share with Haviland. You mustn’t judge him too hardly, either. That wife of his is an awful woman. Run him over head and ears in debt. Bust up his business. I’ll see it’s all squared up. See? Don’t want you to think us too awful.’

    ‘Oh, right-ho!’ said Wimsey.

    He slipped in the clutch, and faded away into the wet, white fog.

THE VINDICTIVE STORY OF THE FOOTSTEPS THAT RAN

Mr Bunter withdrew his head from beneath the focusing cloth.

    ‘I fancy that will be quite adequate, sir,’ he said deferentially, ‘unless there are any further patients, if I may call them so, which you would wish put on record.’

    ‘Not today,’ replied the doctor. He took the last stricken rat gently from the table, and replaced it in its cage with an air of satisfaction. ‘Perhaps on Wednesday, if Lord Peter can kindly spare your services once again—’

    ‘What’s that?’ murmured his lordship, withdrawing his long nose from the investigation of a number of unattractive-looking glass jars. ‘Nice old dog,’ he added vaguely. ‘Wags his tail when you mention his name, what? Are these monkey-glands, Hartman, or a south-west elevation of Cleopatra’s duodenum?’

    ‘You don’t know anything, do you?’ said the young physician, laughing. ‘No use playing your bally-fool-with-an-eyeglass tricks on me, Wimsey. I’m up to them. I was saying to Bunter that I’d be no end grateful if you’d let him turn up again three days hence to register the progress of the specimens – always supposing they do progress, that is.’

    ‘Why ask, dear old thing?’ said his lordship. ‘Always a pleasure to assist a fellow-sleuth, don’t you know. Trackin’ down murderers – all in the same way of business and all that. All finished? Good egg! By the way, if you don’t have that cage mended you’ll lose one of your patients – Number 5. The last wire but one is workin’ loose – assisted by the intelligent occupant. Jolly little beasts, ain’t they? No need of dentists – wish I was a rat – wire much better for the nerves than that fizzlin’ drill.’

    Dr Hartman uttered a little exclamation.

    ‘How in the world did you notice that, Wimsey? I didn’t think you’d even looked at the cage.’

    ‘Built noticin’ – improved by practice,’ said Lord Peter, quietly. ‘Anythin’ wrong leaves a kind of impression on the eye; brain trots along afterwards with the warnin’. I saw that when we came in. Only just grasped it. Can’t say my mind was glued on the matter. Shows the victim’s improvin’, anyhow. All serene, Bunter?’

    ‘Everything perfectly satisfactory, I trust, my lord,’ replied the manservant. He had packed up his camera and plates, and was quietly restoring order in the little laboratory, whose fittings – compact as those of an ocean liner – had been disarranged for the experiment.

    ‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘I am enormously obliged to you, Lord Peter, and to Bunter too. I am hoping for a great result from these experiments, and you cannot imagine how valuable an assistance it will be to me to have a really good series of photographs. I can’t afford this sort of thing – yet,’ he added, his rather haggard young face wistful as he looked at the great camera, ‘and I can’t do the work at the hospital. There’s no time; I’ve got to be here. A struggling G.P. can’t afford to let his practice go, even in Bloomsbury. There are times when even a half-crown visit makes all the difference between making both ends meet and having an ugly hiatus.’

    ‘As Mr Micawber said,’ replied Wimsey, ‘“Income twenty pounds, expenditure nineteen, nineteen, six – result: happiness; expenditure twenty pounds, ought, six – result: misery.” Don’t prostrate yourself in gratitude, old bean; nothin’ Bunter loves like messin’ round with pyro and hyposulphite. Keeps his hand in. All kinds of practice welcome. Finger-prints and process plates spell seventh what-you-may-call-it of bliss, but focal-plane work on scurvy-ridden rodents (good phrase!) acceptable if no crime forthcoming. Crimes have been rather short lately. Been eatin’ our heads off, haven’t we, Bunter? Don’t know what’s come over London. I’ve taken to prying into my neighbour’s affairs to keep from goin’ stale. Frightened the postman into a fit the other day by askin’ him how his young lady at Croydon was. He’s a married man, livin’ in Great Ormond Street.’

    ‘How did you know?’

    ‘Well, I didn’t really. But he lives just opposite to a friend of mine – Inspector Parker; and his wife – not Parker’s; he’s unmarried; the postman’s, I mean – asked Parker the other day whether the flyin’ shows at Croydon went on all night. Parker, bein’ flummoxed, said “No,” without thinkin’. Bit of a giveaway, what? Thought I’d give the poor devil a word in season, don’t you know. Uncommonly thoughtless of Parker.’

    The doctor laughed. ‘You’ll stay to lunch, won’t you?’ he said. ‘Only cold meat and salad, I’m afraid. My woman won’t come Sundays. Have to answer my own door. Deuced unprofessional, I’m afraid, but it can’t be helped.’

    ‘Pleasure,’ said Wimsey, as they emerged from the laboratory and entered the dark little flat by the back door. ‘Did you build this place on?’

    ‘No,’ said Hartman; ‘the last tenant did that. He was an artist. That’s why I took the place. It comes in very useful, ramshackle as it is, though this glass roof is a bit sweltering on a hot day like this. Still, I had to have something on the ground floor, cheap, and it’ll do till times get better.’

    ‘Till your vitamin experiments make you famous, eh?’ said Peter cheerfully. ‘You’re goin’ to be the comin’ man, you know. Feel it in my bones. Uncommonly neat little kitchen you’ve got, anyhow.’

    ‘It does,’ said the doctor. ‘The lab makes it a bit gloomy, but the woman’s only here in the daytime.’

    He led the way into a narrow little dining-room, where the table was laid for a cold lunch. The one window at the end farthest from the kitchen looked out into Great James Street. The room was little more than a passage, and full of doors – the kitchen door, a door in the adjacent wall leading into the entrance-hall, and a third on the opposite side, through which his visitor caught a glimpse of a moderate-sized consulting-room.

    Lord Peter Wimsey and his host sat down to table, and the doctor expressed a hope that Mr Bunter would sit down with them. That correct person, however, deprecated any such suggestion.

    ‘If I might venture to indicate my own preference, sir,’ he said, ‘it would be to wait upon you and his lordship in the usual manner.’

    ‘It’s no use,’ said Wimsey. ‘Bunter likes me to know my place. Terrorisin’ sort of man, Bunter. Can’t call my soul my own. Carry on, Bunter; we wouldn’t presume for the world.’

    Mr Bunter handed the salad, and poured out the water with a grave decency appropriate to a crusted old tawny port.

    It was a Sunday afternoon in that halcyon summer of 1921. The sordid little street was almost empty. The ice-cream man alone seemed thriving and active. He leaned luxuriously on the green post at the corner, in the intervals of driving a busy trade. Bloomsbury’s swarm of able-bodied and able-voiced infants was still; presumably within-doors, eating steamy Sunday dinners inappropriate to the tropical weather. The only disturbing sounds came from the flat above, where heavy footsteps passed rapidly to and fro.

    ‘Who’s the merry-and-bright bloke above?’ enquired Lord Peter presently. ‘Not an early riser, I take it. Not that anybody is on a Sunday mornin’. Why an inscrutable Providence ever inflicted such a ghastly day on people livin’ in town I can’t imagine. I ought to be in the country, but I’ve got to meet a friend at Victoria this afternoon. Such a day to choose. . . . Who’s the lady? Wife or accomplished friend? Gather she takes a properly submissive view of woman’s duties in the home, either way. That’s the bedroom overhead, I take it.’

    Hartman looked at Lord Peter in some surprise.

    ‘’Scuse my beastly inquisitiveness, old thing,’ said Wimsey. ‘Bad habit. Not my business.’

    ‘How did you –?’

    ‘Guesswork,’ said Lord Peter, with disarming frankness. ‘I heard the squawk of an iron bedstead on the ceiling and a heavy fellow get out with a bump, but it may quite well be a couch or something. Anyway, he’s been potterin’ about in his stocking feet over these few feet of floor for the last half-hour, while the woman has been clatterin’ to and fro, in and out of the kitchen and away into the sittin’-room, with her high heels on, ever since we’ve been here. Hence deduction as to domestic habits of the first-floor tenants.’

    ‘I thought,’ said the doctor, with an aggrieved expression, ‘you’d been listening to my valuable exposition of the beneficial effects of Vitamin B, and Lind’s treatment of scurvy with fresh lemons in 1755.’

    ‘I was listenin’,’ agreed Lord Peter hastily, ‘but I heard the footsteps as well. Fellow’s toddled into the kitchen – only wanted the matches, though; he’s gone off into the sittin’-room and left her to carry on the good work. What was I sayin’? Oh, yes! You see, as I was sayin’ before, one hears a thing or sees it without knowin’ or thinkin’ about it. Then afterwards one starts meditatin’, and it all comes back, and one sorts out one’s impressions. Like those plates of Bunter’s. Picture all there, l – la – what’s the word I want, Bunter?’

    ‘Latent, my lord.’

    ‘That’s it. My right-hand man, Bunter; couldn’t do a thing without him. The picture’s latent till you put the developer on. Same with the brain. No mystery. Little grey books all my respected grandmother! Little grey matter’s all you want to remember things with. As a matter of curiosity, was I right about those people above?’

    ‘Perfectly. The man’s a gas-company’s inspector. A bit surly, but devoted (after his own fashion) to his wife. I mean, he doesn’t mind hulking in bed on a Sunday morning and letting her do the chores, but he spends all the money he can spare on giving her pretty hats and fur coats and what not. They’ve only been married about six months. I was called in to her when she had a touch of flu in the spring, and he was almost off his head with anxiety. She’s a lovely little woman, I must say – Italian. He picked her up in some eating-place in Soho, I believe. Glorious dark hair and eyes: Venus sort of figure; proper contours in all the right places; good skin – all that sort of thing. She was a bit of a draw to that restaurant while she was there, I fancy. Lively. She had an old admirer round here one day – awkward little Italian fellow, with a knife – active as a monkey. Might have been unpleasant, but I happened to be on the spot, and her husband came along. People are always laying one another out in these streets. Good for business, of course, but one gets tired of tying up broken heads and slits in the jugular. Still, I suppose the girl can’t help being attractive, though I don’t say she’s what you might call stand-offish in her manner. She’s sincerely fond of Brotherton, I think, though – that’s his name.’

    Wimsey nodded inattentively. ‘I suppose life is a bit monotonous here,’ he said.

    ‘Professionally, yes. Births and drunks and wife-beatings are pretty common. And all the usual ailments, of course. Just at present. I’m living on infant diarrhoea chiefly – bound to, this hot weather, you know. With the autumn, flu and bronchitis set in. I may get an occasional pneumonia. Legs, of course, and varicose veins – God!’ cried the doctor explosively, ‘if only I could get away, and do my experiments!’

    ‘Ah!’ said Peter, ‘where’s that eccentric old millionaire with a mysterious disease, who always figures in the novels? A lightning diagnosis – a miraculous cure – “God bless you, doctor, here are five thousand pounds” – Harley Street—’