Lord Peter Views the Body (3 page)

    ‘“
What
about her, in the devil’s name?” I cried. “What do you know about her, anyway? She went off while I was at the war. What’s it to do with me?”

    ‘“Oh!” said the very odd young man, “I beg your pardon. Perhaps I have been relying too much on Loder’s judgement. Damned foolish; but the possibility of his being mistaken did not occur to me. He fancies you were Maria Morano’s lover when you were here last time.”

    ‘“Maria’s lover?” I said. “Preposterous! She went off with her man, whoever he was. He must know she didn’t go with me.”

    ‘“Maria never left the house,” said the young man, “and if you don’t get out of it this moment, I won’t answer for
your
ever leaving, either.”

    ‘“In God’s name,” I cried, exasperated, “what do you mean?”

    ‘The man turned and threw the blue cushions off the foot of the silver couch.

    ‘“Have you ever examined the toes of this?” he asked.

    ‘“Not particularly,” I said, more and more astonished. “Why should I?”

    ‘“Did you ever know Loder make any figure of her but this with that short toe on the left foot?” he went on.

    ‘Well, I did take a look at it then, and saw it was as he said – the left foot had a short second toe.

    ‘“So it is,” I said, “but, after all, why not?”

    ‘“Why not, indeed?” said the young man. “Wouldn’t you like to see why, of all the figures Loder made of Maria Morano, this is the only one that has the feet of the living woman?”

    ‘He picked up the poker.

    ‘“Look!” he said.

    ‘With a lot more strength than I should have expected from him, he brought the head of the poker down with a heavy crack on the silver couch. It struck one of the arms of the figure neatly at the elbow-joint, smashing a jagged hole in the silver. He wrenched at the arm and brought it away. It was hollow, and, as I am alive, I tell you there was a long, dry arm-bone inside it!’

    Varden paused, and put away a good mouthful of whisky.

    ‘Well?’ cried several breathless voices.

    ‘Well,’ said Varden, ‘I’m not ashamed to say I went out of that house like an old buck-rabbit that hears the man with the gun. There was a car standing just outside, and the driver opened the door. I tumbled in, and then it came over me that the whole thing might be a trap, and I tumbled out again and ran till I reached the trolley-cars. But I found my bags at the station next day, duly registered for Vancouver.

    ‘When I pulled myself together I did rather wonder what Loder was thinking about my disappearance, but I could no more have gone back into that horrible house than I could have taken poison. I left for Vancouver next morning, and from that day to this I never saw either of those men again. I’ve still not the faintest idea who the fair man was, or what became of him, but I heard in a roundabout way that Loder was dead – in some kind of an accident, I fancy.’

    There was a pause. Then:

    ‘It’s a damned good story, Mr Varden,’ said Armstrong – he was a dabbler in various kinds of handiwork, and was, indeed, chiefly responsible for Mr Arbuthnot’s motion to ban wireless – ‘but are you suggesting there was a complete skeleton inside that silver casting? Do you mean Loder put it into the core of the mould when the casting was done? It would be awfully difficult and dangerous – the slightest accident would have put him at the mercy of his workmen. And that statue must have been considerably over life-size to allow of the skeleton being well covered.’

    ‘Mr Varden has unintentionally misled you, Armstrong,’ said a quiet, husky voice suddenly from the shadow behind Varden’s chair. ‘The figure was not silver, but electro-plated on a copper base deposited direct on the body. The lady was Sheffield-plated, in fact. I fancy the soft parts of her must have been digested away with pepsin, or some preparation of the kind, after the process was complete, but I can’t be positive about that.’

    ‘Hullo, Wimsey,’ said Armstrong, ‘was that you came in just now? And why this confident pronouncement?’

    The effect of Wimsey’s voice on Varden had been extraordinary. He had leapt to his feet, and turned the lamp so as to light up Wimsey’s face.

    ‘Good evening, Mr Varden,’ said Lord Peter. ‘I’m delighted to meet you again and to apologise for my unceremonious behaviour on the occasion of our last encounter.’

    Varden took the proffered hand, but was speechless.

    ‘D’you mean to say, you mad mystery-monger, that
you
were Varden’s Great Unknown?’ demanded Bayes. ‘Ah, well,’ he added rudely, ‘we might have guessed it from his vivid description.’

    ‘Well, since you’re here,’ said Smith-Hartington, the
Morning Yell
man, ‘I think you ought to come across with the rest of the story.’

    ‘Was it just a joke?’ asked Judson.

    ‘Of course not,’ interrupted Pettifer, before Lord Peter had time to reply. ‘Why should it be? Wimsey’s seen enough queer things not to have to waste his time inventing them.’

    ‘That’s true enough,’ said Bayes. ‘Comes of having deductive powers and all that sort of thing, and always sticking one’s nose into things that are better not investigated.’

    ‘That’s all very well, Bayes,’ said his lordship, ‘but if I hadn’t just mentioned the matter to Mr Varden that evening, where would he be?’

    ‘Ah, where? That’s exactly what we want to know,’ demanded Smith-Hartington. ‘Come on, Wimsey, no shirking; we must have the tale.’

    ‘And the whole tale,’ added Pettifer.

    ‘And nothing but the tale,’ said Armstrong, dexterously whisking away the whisky-bottle and the cigars from under Lord Peter’s nose. ‘Get on with it, old son. Not a smoke do you smoke and not a sup do you sip till Burd Ellen is set free.’

    ‘Brute!’ said his lordship plaintively. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, with a change of tone, ‘it’s not really a story I want to get about. It might land me in a very unpleasant sort of position – manslaughter probably, and murder possibly.’

    ‘Gosh!’ said Bayes.

    ‘That’s all right,’ said Armstrong, ‘nobody’s going to talk. We can’t afford to lose you from the club, you know. Smith-Hartington will have to control his passion for copy, that’s all.’

    Pledges of discretion having been given all round, Lord Peter settled himself back and began his tale.

‘The curious case of Eric P. Loder affords one more instance of the strange manner in which some power beyond our puny human wills arranges the affairs of men. Call it Providence – call it Destiny—’

    ‘We’ll call it off,’ said Bayes; ‘you can leave out that part.’

    Lord Peter groaned and began again.

    ‘Well, the first thing that made me feel a bit inquisitive about Loder was a casual remark by a man at the Emigration Office in New York, where I happened to go about that silly affair of Mrs Bilt’s. He said, “What on earth is Eric Loder going to do in Australia? I should have thought Europe was more in his line.”

    ‘“Australia?” I said, “you’re wandering, dear old thing. He told me the other day he was off to Italy in three weeks’ time.”

    ‘“Italy, nothing,” he said, “he was all over our place today, asking about how you got to Sydney and what were the necessary formalities, and so on.”

    ‘“Oh,” I said, “I suppose he’s going by the Pacific route, and calling at Sydney on his way.” But I wondered why he hadn’t said so when I’d met him the day before. He had distinctly talked about sailing for Europe and doing Paris before he went on to Rome.

    ‘I felt so darned inquisitive that I went and called on Loder two nights later.

    ‘He seemed quite pleased to see me, and was full of his forthcoming trip. I asked him again about his route, and he told me quite distinctly he was going via Paris.

    ‘Well, that was that, and it wasn’t really any of my business, and we chatted about other things. He told me that Mr Varden was coming to stay with him before he went, and that he hoped to get him to pose for a figure before he left. He said he’d never seen a man so perfectly formed. “I meant to get him to do it before,” he said, “but war broke out, and he went and joined the army before I had time to start.”

    ‘He was lolling on that beastly couch of his at the time, and, happening to look round at him, I caught such a nasty sort of glitter in his eye that it gave me quite a turn. He was stroking the figure over the neck and grinning at it.

    ‘“None of your efforts in Sheffield plate, I hope,” said I.

    ‘“Well,” he said, “I thought of making a kind of companion to this,
The Sleeping Athlete
, you know, or something of that sort.”

    ‘“You’d much better cast it,” I said. “Why did you put the stuff on so thick? It destroys the fine detail.”

    ‘That annoyed him. He never liked to hear any objection made to that work of art.

    ‘“This was experimental,” he said. “I mean the next to be a real masterpiece. You’ll see.”

    ‘We’d got to about that point when the butler came in to ask should he make up a bed for me, as it was such a bad night. We hadn’t noticed the weather particularly, though it had looked a bit threatening when I started from New York. However, we now looked out, and saw that it was coming down in sheets and torrents. It wouldn’t have mattered, only that I’d only brought a little open racing car and no overcoat, and certainly the prospect of five miles in that downpour wasn’t altogether attractive. Loder urged me to stay, and I said I would.

    ‘I was feeling a bit fagged, so I went to bed right off. Loder said he wanted to do a bit of work in the studio first, and I saw him depart along the corridor.

    ‘You won’t allow me to mention Providence, so I’ll only say it was a very remarkable thing that I should have woken up at two in the morning to find myself lying in a pool of water. The man had stuck a hot-water bottle into the bed, because it hadn’t been used just lately, and the beastly thing had gone and unstoppered itself. I lay awake for ten minutes in the deeps of damp misery before I had sufficient strength of mind to investigate. Then I found it was hopeless – sheets, blankets, mattress, all soaked. I looked at the arm-chair, and then I had a brilliant idea. I remembered there was a lovely great divan in the studio, with a big skin rug and a pile of cushions. Why not finish the night there? I took the little electric torch which always goes about with me, and started off.

    ‘The studio was empty, so I supposed Loder had finished and trotted off to roost. The divan was there, all right, with a screen drawn partly across it, so I rolled myself up under the rug and prepared to snooze off.

    ‘I was just getting beautifully sleepy again when I heard footsteps, not in the passage, but apparently on the other side of the room. I was surprised, because I didn’t know there was any way out in that direction. I lay low, and presently I saw a streak of light appear from the cupboard where Loder kept his tools and things. The streak widened, and Loder emerged, carrying an electric torch. He closed the cupboard door very gently after him, and padded across the studio. He stopped before the easel and uncovered it; I could see him through a crack in the screen. He stood for some minutes gazing at a sketch on the easel, and then gave one of the nastiest gurgly laughs I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing. If I’d ever seriously thought of announcing my unauthorised presence, I abandoned all idea of it then. Presently he covered the easel again, and went out by the door at which I had come in.

    ‘I waited till I was sure he had gone, and then got up – uncommonly quietly, I may say. I tiptoed over to the easel to see what the fascinating work of art was. I saw at once it was the design for the figure of
The Sleeping Athlete
, and as I looked at it I felt a sort of horrid conviction stealing over me. It was an idea which seemed to begin in my stomach, and work its way up to the roots of my hair.

    ‘My family say I’m too inquisitive. I can only say that wild horses wouldn’t have kept me from investigating that cupboard. With the feeling that something absolutely vile might hop out at me – I was a bit wrought up, and it was a rotten time of night – I put a heroic hand on the door knob.

    ‘To my astonishment, the thing wasn’t even locked. It opened at once, to show a range of perfectly innocent and orderly shelves, which couldn’t possibly have held Loder.

    ‘My blood was up, you know, by this time, so I hunted round for the spring-lock which I knew must exist, and found it without much difficulty. The back of the cupboard swung noiselessly inwards, and I found myself at the top of a narrow flight of stairs.

    ‘I had the sense to stop and see that the door could be opened from the inside before I went any farther, and I also selected a good stout pestle which I found on the shelves as a weapon in case of accident. Then I closed the door and tripped with elf-like lightness down that jolly old staircase.

    ‘There was another door at the bottom, but it didn’t take me long to fathom the secret of that. Feeling frightfully excited, I threw it boldly open, with the pestle ready for action.’

    ‘However, the room seemed to be empty. My torch caught the gleam of something liquid, and then I found the wall-switch.