Lord Peter Views the Body (25 page)

It is a rule on the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest that all Paris-Evreux trains, whether of Grande Vitesse or what Lord Peter Wimsey preferred to call Grande Paresse, shall halt for an interminable period at Dreux. The young man (now in navy-blue) watched his quarry safely into the refreshment-room, and slipped unobtrusively out of the station. In a quarter of an hour he was back – this time in a heavy motoring-coat, helmet, and goggles, at the wheel of a powerful hired Peugeot. Coming quietly on to the platform, he took up his station behind the wall of the
lampisterie
, whence he could keep an eye on the train and the buffet door. After fifteen minutes his patience was rewarded by the sight af his man again boarding the express, dressing-case in hand. The porters slammed the doors, crying: ‘Next stop Verneuil!’ The engine panted and groaned; the long train of grey-green carriages clanked slowly away. The motorist drew a breath of satisfaction, and, hurrying past the barrier, started up the car. He knew that he had a good eighty miles an hour under his bonnet, and there is no speed-limit in France.

Mon Souci, the seat of that eccentric and eremitical genius the Comte de Rueil, is situated three kilometres from Verneuil. It is a sorrowful and decayed château, desolate at the termination of its neglected avenue of pines. The mournful state of a nobility without an allegiance surrounds it. The stone nymphs droop greenly over their dry and mouldering fountains. An occasional peasant creaks with a single waggon-load of wood along the ill-forested glades. It has the atmosphere of sunset at all hours of the day. The woodwork is dry and gaping for lack of paint. Through the jalousies one sees the prim
salon
, with its beautiful and faded furniture. Even the last of its ill-dressed, ill-favoured women has withered away from Mon Souci, with her in-bred, exaggerated features and her long white gloves. But at the rear of the château a chimney smokes incessantly. It is the furnace of the laboratory, the only living and modern thing among the old and dying; the only place tended and loved, petted and spoiled, heir to the long solicitude which counts of a more light-hearted day had given to stable and kennel, portrait-gallery and ballroom. And below, in the cool cellar, lie row upon row the dusty bottles, each an enchanted glass coffin in which the Sleeping Beauty of the vine grows ever more ravishing in sleep.

    As the Peugeot came to a standstill in the courtyard, the driver observed with considerable surprise that he was not the count’s only visitor. An immense super-Renault, like a
merveilleuse
of the Directoire, all bonnet and no body, had been drawn so ostentatiously across the entrance as to embarrass the approach of any new-comer. Its glittering panels were embellished with a coat of arms, and the count’s elderly servant was at that moment staggering beneath the weight of two large and elaborate suit-cases, bearing in silver letters that could be read a mile away the legend: ‘Lord Peter Wimsey.’

    The Peugeot driver gazed with astonishment at this display, and grinned sardonically. ‘Lord Peter seems rather ubiquitous in this country,’ he observed to himself. Then, taking pen and paper from his bag, he busied himself with a little letter-writing. By the time that the suit-cases had been carried in, and the Renault had purred its smooth way to the outbuildings, the document was complete and enclosed in an envelope addressed to the Comte de Rueil. ‘The hoist with his own petard touch,’ said the young man, and, stepping up to the door, presented the envelope to the manservant.

    ‘I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to monsieur le comte,’ he said. ‘Will you have the obligingness to present it to him? My name is Bredon – Death Bredon.’

    The man bowed, and begged him to enter.

    ‘If monsieur will have the goodness to seat himself in the hall for a few moments. Monsieur le comte is engaged with another gentleman, but I will lose no time in making monsieur’s arrival known.’

    The young man sat down and waited. The windows of the hall looked out upon the entrance, and it was not long before the château’s sleep was disturbed by the hooting of yet another motor-horn. A station taxi-cab came noisily up the avenue. The man from the first-class carriage and the luggage labelled P. D. B. W. were deposited upon the doorstep. Lord Peter Wimsey dismissed the driver and rang the bell.

    ‘Now,’ said Mr Bredon, ‘the fun is going to begin!’ He effaced himself as far as possible in the shadow of a tall
armoire normande
.

    ‘Good evening,’ said the new-comer to the manservant, in admirable French. ‘I am Lord Peter Wimsey. I arrive upon the invitation of Monsieur le comte de Rueil. Monsieur le comte is at liberty?’

    ‘Milord Peter Wimsey? Pardon, monsieur, but I do not understand. Milord de Wimsey is already arrived and is with monsieur le comte at this moment.’

    ‘You surprise me,’ said the other, with complete imperturbability, ‘for certainly no one but myself has any right to that name. It seems as though some person more ingenious than honest has had the bright idea of impersonating me.’

    The servant was clearly at a loss.

    ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘monsieur can show his
papiers d’identité
.’

    ‘Although it is somewhat unusual to produce one’s credentials on the doorstep when paying a private visit,’ replied his lordship, with unaltered good humour. ‘I have not the slightest objection. Here is my passport, here is
a permis de séjour
granted to me in Paris, here my visiting-card, and here a quantity of correspondence addressed to me at the Hôtel Meurice, Paris, at my flat in Piccadilly, London, at the Marlborough Club, London, and at my brother’s house at King’s Denver. Is that sufficiently in order?’

    The servant perused the documents carefully, appearing particularly impressed by the
permis de séjour
.

    ‘It appears there is some mistake,’ he murmured dubiously; ‘if monsieur will follow me, I will acquaint monsieur le comte.’

    They disappeared through the folding doors at the back of the hall, and Bredon was left alone.

    ‘Quite a little boom in Richmonds today,’ he observed, ‘each of us more unscrupulous than the last. The occasion obviously calls for a refined subtlety of method.’

    After what he judged to be a hectic ten minutes in the count’s library, the servant reappeared, searching for him.

    ‘Monsieur le comte’s compliments, and would monsieur step this way?’

    Bredon entered the room with a jaunty step. He had created for himself the mastery of this situation. The count, a thin, elderly man, his fingers deeply stained with chemicals, sat, with a perturbed expression, at his desk. In two arm-chairs sat the two Wimseys. Bredon noted that, while the Wimsey he had seen in the train (whom he mentally named Peter I) retained his unruffled smile, Peter II (he of the Renault) had the flushed and indignant air of an Englishman affronted. The two men were superficially alike – both fair, lean, and long-nosed, with the nondescript, inelastic face which predominates in any assembly of well-bred Anglo-Saxons.

    ‘Mr Bredon,’ said the count, ‘I am charmed to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and regret that I must at once call upon you for a service as singular as it is important. You have presented to me a letter of introduction from your cousin, Lord Peter Wimsey. Will you now be good enough to inform me which of these gentlemen he is?’

    Bredon let his glance pass slowly from the one claimant to the other, meditating what answer would best serve his own ends. One, at any rate, of the men in this room was a formidable intellect, trained in the detection of imposture.

    ‘Well?’ said Peter II. ‘Are you going to acknowledge me, Bredon?’

    Peter I extracted a cigarette from a silver case. ‘Your confederate does not seem very well up in his part,’ he remarked, with a quiet smile at Peter II.

    ‘Monsieur le comte,’ said Bredon, ‘I regret extremely that I cannot assist you in the matter. My acquaintance with my cousin, like your own, has been made and maintained entirely through correspondence on a subject of common interest. My profession,’ he added, ‘has made me unpopular with my family.’

    There was a very slight sigh of relief somewhere. The false Wimsey – whichever he was – had gained a respite. Bredon smiled.

    ‘An excellent move, Mr Bredon,’ said Peter I, ‘but it will hardly explain – Allow me.’ He took the letter from the count’s hesitating hand. ‘It will hardly explain the fact that the ink of this letter of recommendation, dated three weeks ago, is even now scarcely dry – though I congratulate you on the very plausible imitation of my handwriting.’

    ‘If
you
can forge my handwriting,’ said Peter II, ‘so can this Mr Bredon.’ He read the letter aloud over his double’s shoulder.

    ‘“Monsieur le comte – I have the honour to present to you my friend and cousin, Mr Death Bredon, who, I understand, is to be travelling in your part of France next month. He is very anxious to view your interesting library. Although a journalist by profession, he really knows something about books.” I am delighted to learn for the first time that I have such a cousin. An interviewer’s trick, I fancy, monsieur le comte. Fleet Street appears well informed about our family names. Possibly it is equally well informed about the object of my visit to Mon Souci?’

    ‘If,’ said Bredon boldly, ‘you refer to the acquisition of the de Rueil formula for poison gas for the British Government, I can answer for my own knowledge, though possibly the rest of Fleet Street is less completely enlightened.’ He weighed his words carefully now, warned by his slip. The sharp eyes and detective ability of Peter I alarmed him far more than the caustic tongue of Peter II.

    The count uttered an exclamation of dismay.

    ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘one thing is obvious – that there has been somewhere a disastrous leakage of information. Which of you is the Lord Peter Wimsey to whom I should entrust the formula I do not know. Both of you are supplied with papers of identity; both appear completely instructed in this matter; both of your handwritings correspond with the letters I have previously received from Lord Peter, and both of you have offered me the sum agreed upon in Bank of England notes. In addition, this third gentleman arrives endowed with an equal facility in handwritings, an introductory letter surrounded by most suspicious circumstances, and a degree of acquaintance with this whole matter which alarms me. I can see but one solution. All of you must remain here at the château while I send to England for some elucidation of this mystery. To the genuine Lord Peter I offer my apologies, and assure him that I will endeavour to make his stay as agreeable as possible. Will this satisfy you? It will? I am delighted to hear it. My servants will show you to your bedrooms, and dinner will be at half-past seven.’

‘It is delightful to think,’ said Mr Bredon, as he fingered his glass and passed it before his nostrils with the air of a connoisseur, ‘that whichever of these gentlemen has the right to the name which he assumes is assured tonight of a truly Olympian satisfaction.’ His impudence had returned to him, and he challenged the company with an air. ‘Your callers, monsieur le comte, are as well known among men endowed with a palate as your talents among men of science. No eloquence could say more.’

    The two Lord Peters murmured assent.

    ‘I am the more pleased by your commendation,’ said the count, ‘that it suggests to me a little test which, with your kind co-operation, will, I think, assist us very much in determining which of you gentlemen is Lord Peter Wimsey and which his talented impersonator. Is it not matter of common notoriety that Lord Peter has a palate for wine almost unequalled in Europe?’

    ‘You flatter me, monsieur Ie comte,’ said Peter II modestly.

    ‘I wouldn’t like to say unequalled,’ said Peter I, chiming in like a well-trained duet; ‘let’s call it fair to middling. Less liable to misconstruction and all that.’

    ‘Your lordship does yourself an injustice,’ said Bredon, addressing both men with impartial deference. ‘The bet which you won from Mr Frederick Arbuthnot at the Egotist’s Club, when he challenged you to name the vintage years of seventeen wines blindfold, received its due prominence in the
Evening Wire
.’

    ‘I was in extra form that night,’ said Peter I.

    ‘A fluke,’ laughed Peter II.

    ‘The test I propose, gentlemen, is on similar lines,’ pursued the count, ‘though somewhat less strenuous. There are six courses ordered for dinner tonight. With each we will drink a different wine, which my butler shall bring in with the label concealed. You shall each in turn give me your opinion upon the vintage. By this means we shall perhaps arrive at something, since the most brilliant forger – of which I gather I have at least two at my table tonight – can scarcely forge a palate for wine. If too hazardous a mixture of wines should produce a temporary incommodity in the morning, you will, I feel sure, suffer it for this once in the cause of truth.’

    The two Wimseys bowed.

    ‘
In vino veritas
,’ said Mr Bredon, with a laugh. He at least was well seasoned, and foresaw opportunities for himself.

    ‘Accident, and my butler, having placed you at my right hand, monsieur,’ went on the count, addressing Peter I, ‘I will ask you to begin by pronouncing, as accurately as may be, upon the wine which you have just drunk.’