Lord Peter Views the Body (28 page)

    ‘We were awful idiots to leave him with it, Gherkins, even for a moment. Luckily, there’s no harm done.’

    ‘You don’t think he found out anything while we were away, do you, uncle?’ gasped Gherkins, open-eyed.

    ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

    ‘Why?’

    ‘He offered me fifty pounds for it on the way to the door. Gave the game away. H’m! Bunter.’

    ‘My lord?’

    ‘Put this book in the safe and bring me back the keys. And you’d better set all the burglar alarms when you lock up.’

    ‘Oo-er!’ said Viscount St George.

On the third morning after the visit of Mr Wilberforce Pope, the viscount was seated at a very late breakfast in his uncle’s flat, after the most glorious and soul-satisfying night that ever boy experienced. He was almost too excited to eat the kidneys and bacon placed before him by Bunter, whose usual impeccable manner was not in the least impaired by a rapidly swelling and blackening eye.

    It was about two in the morning that Gherkins – who had not slept very well, owing to too lavish and grown-up a dinner and theatre the evening before – became aware of a stealthy sound somewhere in the direction of the fire-escape. He had got out of bed and crept very softly into Lord Peter’s room and woken him up. He had said: ‘Uncle Peter, I’m sure there’s burglars on the fire-escape.’ And Uncle Peter, instead of saying, ‘Nonsense, Gherkins, hurry up and get back to bed,’ had sat up and listened and said: ‘By Jove, Gherkins, I believe you’re right.’ And had sent Gherkins to call Bunter. And on his return, Gherkins, who had always regarded his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an undeniable automatic pistol.

    It was at this point that Lord Peter was apotheosed from the state of Quite Decent Uncle to that of Glorified Uncle. He said:

    ‘Look here, Gherkins, we don’t know how many of these blighters there’ll be, so you must be jolly smart and do anything I say sharp, on the word of command – even if I have to say “Scoot”. Promise?’

    Gherkins promised, with his heart thumping, and they sat waiting in the dark, till suddenly a little electric bell rang sharply just over the head of Lord Peter’s bed and a green light shone out.

    ‘The library window,’ said his lordship, promptly silencing the bell by turning a switch. ‘If they heard, they may think better of it. We’ll give them a few minutes.’

    They gave them five minutes, and then crept very quietly down the passage.

    ‘Go round by the dining-room, Bunter,’ said his lordship; ‘they may bolt that way.’

    With infinite precaution, he unlocked and opened the library door, and Gherkins noticed how silently the locks moved.

    A circle of light from an electric torch was moving slowly along the bookshelves. The burglars had obviously heard nothing of the counter-attack. Indeed, they seemed to have troubles enough of their own to keep their attention occupied. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Gherkins made out that one man was standing holding the torch, while the other took down and examined the books. It was fascinating to watch his apparently disembodied hands move along the shelves in the torch-light.

    The men muttered discontentedly. Obviously the job was proving a harder one than they had bargained for. The habit of ancient authors of abbreviating the titles on the backs of their volumes, or leaving them completely untitled, made things extremely awkward. From time to time the man with the torch extended his hands into the light. It held a piece of paper, which they anxiously compared with the title-page of a book. Then the volume was replaced and the tedious search went on.

    Suddenly some slight noise – Gherkins was sure
he
did not make it; it may have been Bunter in the dining-room – seemed to catch the ear of the kneeling man.

    ‘Wot’s that?’ he gasped, and his startled face swung round into view.

    ‘Hands up!’ said Lord Peter, and switched the light on.

    The second man made one leap for the dining-room door, where a smash and an oath proclaimed that he had encountered Bunter. The kneeling man shot his hands up like a marionette.

    ‘Gherkins,’ said Lord Peter, ‘do you think you can go across to that gentleman by the bookcase and relieve him of the article which is so inelegantly distending the right-hand pocket of his coat? Wait a minute. Don’t on any account get between him and my pistol, and mind you take the thing out
very
carefully. There’s no hurry. That’s splendid. Just point it at the floor while you bring it across, would you? Thanks. Bunter has managed for himself, I see. Now run into my bedroom, and in the bottom of my wardrobe you will find a bundle of stout cord. Oh! I beg your pardon; yes, put your hands down by all means. It must be very tiring exercise.’

    The arms of the intruders being secured behind their backs with a neatness which Gherkins felt to be worthy of the best traditions of Sexton Blake, Lord Peter motioned his captives to sit down and despatched Bunter for whisky-and-soda.

    ‘Before we send for the police,’ said Lord Peter, ‘you would do me a great personal favour by telling me what you were looking for, and who sent you. Ah! thanks, Bunter. As our guests are not at liberty to use their hands, perhaps you would be kind enough to assist them to a drink. Now then, say when.’

    ‘Well, you’re a gentleman, guv’nor,’ said the First Burglar, wiping his mouth politely on his shoulder, the back of his hand not being available. ‘If we’d a known wot a job this wos goin’ ter be, blow me if we’d a touched it. The bloke said, ses ’e, “It’s takin’ candy from a baby,” ’e ses. “The gentleman’s a reg’lar softie,” ’e ses, “one o’ these ’ere sersiety toffs wiv a maggot fer old books,” that’s wot ’e ses, “an’ ef yer can find this ’ere old book fer me,” ’e ses, “there’s a pony fer yer.” Well! Sech a job!
’
E didn’t mention as ’ow there’d be five ’undred fousand bleedin’ ole books all as alike as a regiment o’ bleedin’ dragoons. Nor as ’ow yer kept a nice little machine-gun like that ’andy by the bedside,
nor
yet as ’ow yer was so bleedin’ good at tyin’ knots in a bit o’ string. No – ’e didn’t think ter mention them things.’

    ‘Deuced unsporting of him,’ said his lordship. ‘Do you happen to know the gentleman’s name?’

    ‘No – that was another o’ them things wot ’e didn’t mention.
’
E’s a stout, fair party, wiv ’orn rims to ’is goggles and a bald ’ead. One o’ these ’ere philanthropists, I reckon. A friend o’ mine, wot got inter trouble once, got work froo ’im, and the gentleman comes round and ses to ’im, ’e ses, “Could yet find me a couple o’ lads ter do a little job?” ’e ses, an’ my friend, finkin’ no ’arm, you see, guv’nor, but wot it might be a bit of a joke like, ’e gets ’old of my pal an’ me, an’ we meets the gentleman in a pub dahn Whitechapel way. W’ich we was ter meet ’im there again Friday night, us ’avin’ allowed that time fer ter git ’old of the book.’

    ‘The book being, if I may hazard a guess, the
Cosmographia Universalis?
’

    ‘Sumfink like that, guv’nor. I got its jaw-breakin’ name wrote down on a bit o’ paper, wot my pal ’ad in ’is ’and. Wot did yer do wiv that ’ere bit o’ paper, Bill?’

    ‘Well look here,’ said Lord Peter, ‘I’m afraid I must send for the police, but I think it likely, if you give us your assistance to get hold of your gentleman, whose name I strongly suspect to be Wilberforce Pope, that you will get off pretty easily. Telephone the police, Bunter, and then go and put something on that eye of yours. Gherkins, we’ll give these gentlemen another drink, and then I think perhaps you’d better hop back to bed; the fun’s over. No? Well, put a good thick coat on, there’s a good fellow, because what your mother will say to me if you catch a cold I don’t like to think.’

    So the police had come and taken the burglars away, and now Detective-Inspector Parker, of Scotland Yard, a great personal friend of Lord Peter’s, sat toying with a cup of coffee and listening to the story.

    ‘But what’s the matter with the jolly old book, anyhow, to make it so popular?’ he demanded.

    ‘I don’t know,’ replied Wimsey, ‘but after Mr Pope’s little visit the other day I got kind of intrigued about it and had a look through it. I’ve got a hunch it may turn out rather valuable, after all. Unsuspected beauties and all that sort of thing. If only Mr Pope had been a trifle more accurate in his facts, he might have got away with something to which I feel pretty sure he isn’t entitled. Anyway, when I’d seen – what I saw, I wrote off to Dr Conyers of Yelsall Manor, the late owner—’

    ‘Conyers, the cancer man?’

    ‘Yes. He’s done some pretty important research in his time, I fancy. Getting on now, though; about seventy-eight, I fancy. I hope he’s more honest than his nephew, with one foot in the grave like that. Anyway, I wrote (with Gherkin’s permission, naturally) to say we had the book and had been specially interested by something we found there, and would he be so obliging as to tell us something of its history. I also—’

    ‘But what did you find in it?’

    ‘I don’t think we’ll tell him yet, Gherkins, shall we? I like to keep policemen guessing. As I was saying, when you so rudely interrupted me, I also asked him whether he knew anything about his good nephew’s offer to buy it back. His answer has just arrived. He says he knows of nothing specially interesting about the book. It has been in the library untold years, and the tearing out of the maps must have been done a long time ago by some family vandal. He can’t think why his nephew should be so keen on it, as he certainly never pored over it as a boy. In fact, the old man declares the engaging Wilberforce has never even set foot in Yelsall Manor to his knowledge. So much for the fire-breathing monsters and the pleasant Sunday afternoons.’

    ‘Naughty Wilberforce!’

    ‘M’m. Yes. So, after last night’s little dust-up, I wired the old boy we were tooling down to Yelsall to have a heart-to-heart talk with him about his picture-book and his nephew.’

    ‘Are you taking the book down with you?’ asked Parker. ‘I can give you a police escort for it if you like.’

    ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said Wimsey. ‘We don’t know where the insinuating Mr Pope may be hanging out, and I wouldn’t put it past him to make another attempt.’

    ‘Better be on the safe side,’ said Parker. ‘I can’t come myself, but I’ll send down a couple of men with you.’

    ‘Good egg,’ said Lord Peter. ‘Call up your myrmidons. We’ll get a car round at once. You’re coming, Gherkins, I suppose? God knows what your mother would say. Don’t ever be an uncle, Charles; it’s frightfully difficult to be fair to all parties.’

Yelsall Manor was one of those large, decaying country mansions which speak eloquently of times more spacious than our own. The original late Tudor construction had been masked by the addition of a wide frontage in the Italian manner, with a kind of classical portico surmounted by a pediment and approached by a semi-circular flight of steps. The grounds had originally been laid out in that formal manner in which grove nods to grove and each half duly reflects the other. A late owner, however, had burst out into the more eccentric sort of landscape gardening which is associated with the name of Capability Brown. A Chinese pagoda, somewhat resembling Sir William Chambers’s erection in Kew Gardens, but smaller, rose out of a grove of laurustinus towards the eastern extremity of the house, while at the rear appeared a large artificial lake, dotted with numerous islands, on which odd little temples, grottos, tea-houses, and bridges peeped out from among clumps of shrubs, once ornamental, but now sadly overgrown. A boat-house, with wide eaves like the designs on a willow-pattern plate, stood at one corner, its landing-stage fallen into decay and wreathed with melancholy weeds.

    ‘My disreputable old ancestor, Cuthbert Conyers, settled down here when he retired from the sea in 1732,’ said Dr Conyers, smiling faintly. ‘His elder brother died childless, so the black sheep returned to the fold with the determination to become respectable and found a family. I fear he did not succeed altogether. There were very queer tales as to where his money came from. He is said to have been a pirate, and to have sailed with the notorious Captain Blackbeard. In the village, to this day, he is remembered and spoken of as Cut-throat Conyers. It used to make the old man very angry, and there is an unpleasant story of his slicing the ears off a groom who had been heard to call him “Old Cut-throat”. He was not an uncultivated person, though. It was he who did the landscape-gardening round at the back, and he built the pagoda for his telescope. He was reputed to study the Black Art, and there were certainly a number of astrological works in the library with his name on the fly-leaf, but probably the telescope was only a remembrance of his seafaring days.

    ‘Anyhow, towards the end of his life he became more and more odd and morose. He quarrelled with his family, and turned his younger son out of doors with his wife and children. An unpleasant old fellow.

    ‘On his deathbed he was attended by the parson – a good, earnest, God-fearing sort of man, who must have put up with a deal of insult in carrying out what he firmly believed to be the sacred duty of reconciling the old man to this shamefully treated son. Eventually, “Old Cut-throat” relented so far as to make a will, leaving to the younger son “My treasure which I have buried in Munster.” The parson represented to him that it was useless to bequeath a treasure unless he also bequeathed the information where to find it, but the horrid old pirate only chuckled spitefully, and said that, as he had been at the pains to collect the treasure, his son might well be at the pains of looking for it. Further than that he would not go, and so he died, and I dare say went to a very bad place.