Have His Carcase

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘Who did he think his great-grandmother was, then?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know. He did go on so. He wrote it all down for me one day, but I said to him, “You make my head ache,” I said, “and besides, from what you say, none of your people were any better than they should have been,” I said, “so I don’t see what you’ve got to boast about. It doesn’t sound very respectable to me,” I said, “and if princesses with plenty of money can’t keep respectable,” I said, “I don’t see why anybody should put any blame on girls who have to earn their own living.” That’s what I told him.’

  ‘Very true indeed,’ said Wimsey. ‘He must have had a bit of a mania about it.’

  ‘Loopy,’ said Miss Garland, allowing the garment of refinement to slip aside for a moment. ‘I mean to say, I think he must have been a little silly about it, don’t you?’

  ‘He seems to have given more thought to the thing than it was worth. Wrote it all down, did he?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And then, one day he came bothering about it again. Asked me if I’d still got the paper he’d written. “I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not so frightfully interested in it as all that.” I said. “Do you think I keep every bit of your handwritting?” I said, “like the heroines in story-books?” I said. “Because,” I said, “let me tell you I don’t,” I said. “Anything that’s worth keeping, I’ll keep, but not rubbishing bits of paper.” ’

  Wimsey remembered that Alexis had offended Leila towards the end of their connection by a certain lack of generosity.

  ‘ “If you want things kept,” I said, “why don’t you give them to that old woman that’s so struck on you?” I said. “If you’re going to marry her,” I said, “she’s the right person to give things to,” I said, “if you want them kept,” And he said he particularly didn’t want the paper kept, and I said, “Well, then, what are you worrying about?” I said. So he said, if I hadn’t kept it, that was all right, then, and I said I reely didn’t know if I’d kept it or not, and he said, yes, but he wanted the paper burnt and I wasn’t to tell anybody about what he’d said – about his great-grandmother, I mean – and I said. “if you think I’ve nothing better to talk to my friends about than you and your great-grandmother,” I said, “you’re mistaken,” I said. Only fancy! Well, of course, after that, we weren’t such friends as we had been – at least, I wasn’t, though I will say he always was very fond of me. But I couldn’t stand the way he went on. Silly, I call it.’

  ‘And had you burnt the paper?’

  ‘Why, I’m sure I don’t know. You’re nearly as bad as he is, going on about the paper. What does the stupid paper matter, anyhow?’

  ‘Well,’ said Wimsey, ‘I’m inquisitive about papers. Still, if you’ve burnt it, you’ve burnt it. It’s a pity. If you could have found that paper, it might be worth–’

  The beautiful eyes of Leila directed their beams upon him like a pair of swivelling head-lamps rounding a corner on a murky night.

  ‘Yes?’ breathed Leila.

  ‘It might be worth having a look at,’ replied Wimsey, coolly. ‘Perhaps if you had a hunt among your odds-and-ends, you know –’

  Leila shrugged her shoulders. This sounded troublesome.

  ‘I can’t see what you want that old bit of paper for.’

  ‘Nor do I, till I see it. But we might have a shot at looking for it, eh, what?’

  He smiled. Leila smiled. She felt she had grasped the idea.

  ‘What? You and me? Oh, well! – but I don’t see that I could exactly take you round to my place, could I? I mean to say –’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be all right,’ said Wimsey, swiftly. ‘You’re surely not afraid of me. You see, I’m trying to do something, and I want your help.’

  ‘I’m sure, anything I can do – provided it’s nothing Mr da Soto would object to. He’s a terribly jealous boy, you know.’

  ‘I should be just the same in his place. Perhaps he would like to come too and help hunt for the paper?’

  Leila smiled and said she did not think that would be necessary, and the interview ended, where it was in any case doomed to end, in Leila’s crowded and untidy apartment.

  Drawers, bags, boxes, overflowing with intimate and multifarious litter which piled itself on the bed, streamed over the chairs and swirled ankle-deep upon the floor! Left to herself, Leila would have wearied of the search in ten minutes, but Wimsey, bullying, cajoling, flattering, holding out golden baits, kept her remorselessly to her task. Mr da Soto, arriving suddenly to find Wimsey holding an armful of lingerie, while Leila ferreted among a pile of crumpled bills and picture postcards which had been bundled into the bottom of a trunk, thought the scene was set for a little genteel blackmail and started to bluster. Wimsey told him curtly not to be a fool, pushed the lingerie into his reluctant hands and started to hunt through a pile of magazines and gramophone records.

  Curiously enough, it was da Soto who found the paper. Leila’s interest in the business seemed rather to cool after his arrival – was it possible that she had had other designs upon Lord Peter, with which Luis’ sulky presence interfered? – whereas da Soto, suddenly tumbling to the notion that the production of the paper might turn out to be of value to somebody, gradually became more and more interested.

  ‘I wouldn’t be that surprised, honey-bunch,’ he observed, ‘If you left it in one of those story-books you’re always reading, same like you always do with your bus-tickets.’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ said Wimsey, eagerly.

  They turned their attention to a shelf stacked with cheap fiction and penny novelettes. The volumes yielded quite a surprising collection, not only of bus-tickets, but also of cinema-ticket counterfoils, bills, chocolate-papers, envelopes, picture-cards, cigarette-cards and other assorted book-markers, and at length da Soto, taking The Girl who gave All by the spine and administering a brisk shake, shot out from between its passionate leaves a folded sheet of writing-paper.

  ‘What do you say to that?’ he inquired, picking it up quickly. ‘If that isn’t the fellow’s handwriting you can call me a deaf-and-dumb elephant with four left feet.’

  Leila grabbed the paper from him.

  ‘Yes, that’s it, all right,’ she observed. ‘A lot of stuff, if you ask me. I never could make head or tail of it, but if it’s any good to you, you’re welcome to it.’

  Wimsey cast a rapid glance at the spidery lines of the family tree which sprawled from top to bottom of the sheet.

  ‘So that’s who he thought he was. Yes – I’m glad you didn’t chuck this away, Miss Garland. It may clear things up quite a lot.’

  Here Mr da Soto was understood to say something about dollars.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Wimsey. ‘It’s lucky it’s me and not Inspector Umpelty, isn’t it? Umpelty might run you in for suppressing important evidence.’ He grinned in da Soto’s baffled face. ‘But I won’t say – seeing that Miss Garland has turned her place upside-down to oblige me – that she mightn’t get a new frock out of it if she’s a good girl. Now, listen to me, my child. When did you say Alexis gave you this?’

  ‘Oh, ages ago. When him and me were first friends. I can’t remember exactly. But I know it’s donkey’s years since I read that silly old book.’

  ‘Donkey’s years being, I take it, rather less than a year ago – unless you knew Alexis before he came to Wilvercombe.’

  ‘That’s right. Wait a minute. Look! Here’s a bit of a cinema-ticket stuck in at another page, with the date on it. Ooh, yes! November 15th – that’s right. I remember now. We went to the pictures and then Paul came round to see me afterwards and told me a lot about himself. It was the same evening. He expected me to be terribly excited about it all.’

  ‘November; you’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  ‘At any rate, it was some time before those funny letters started to come for him?’

  ‘Oh, yes, ages. And after the letters started to come, he shut up about it, and wanted his silly old paper
back. I told you that before.’

  ‘I know you did. All right. Now, sit down. I want to look at this.’

  This was the paper:

  ‘H’m!’ said Wimsey. ‘I wonder where he got this from. I never knew that Nicholas I married anybody but Charlotte-Louise of Prussia.’

  ‘I remember about that,’ said Leila. ‘Paul said that that marriage couldn’t be proved. He kept on about that. He said, if only it could be proved he’d be a prince or something. He was always worrying over that Charlotte-person – horrid old wretch she must have been, too. Why, she was forty-five if she was a day, and then she went and had a baby. I wonder it didn’t kill her. It ought to have, I’m sure.’

  ‘Nicholas I must have been quite a kid at the time. Let’s see – 1815 – that would be when he was in Paris after the Waterloo business. Yes, I see – Charlotte’s father was something to do with the French legation; that fits in all right. I suppose he had this illegitimate daughter of Duke Francis pushed off on to him when he was in Saxe-Coburg. She went back and lived with him in Paris and had seven children, and the youngest of them was Charlotte, who, I suppose, somehow got hold of the young Emperor and cradle-snatched him.’

  ‘ “The old beast!” I said to Paul, when he took up with this Mrs Weldon. “Well,” I said, “marrying old hags must run in your family,” I said. But he wouldn’t hear anything against Great-Great-Grandma Charlotte. She was something quite out of the way, by his account of it. A sort of what’s-her-name.’

  ‘Ninon de l’Enclos?’

  ‘Yes, I daresay – if that’s the old wretch who went on having lovers till she was about a hundred and fifty. I don’t think it’s nice at all. I can’t think what the men were thinking about. Potty, they must have been, if you ask me. Anyway, what you said is about right. She was a widow several times over – Charlotte, I mean. She married some Count or other or General Somebody – I forget – and had something to do with politics.’

  ‘Everybody in Paris in 1815 had to do with politics,’ said Wimsey. ‘I can see Charlotte all right, playing her cards carefully among the new nobility. Well, this elderly beauty marries, or doesn’t marry, the young Tsar and produces a daughter and calls her Nicolaevna after her illustrious papa. Being in France, they call the child Nicole. What happens next? Old Charlotte goes on playing her cards well, and, having tasted royal blood, so to speak, thinks she’ll worm herself in on the Bourbons. There are no legitimate princes she can bag for her daughter, but she thinks the wrong side of the blanket better than being left out in the cold, and marries the girl off to some little accident of Louis-Phillippe’s.’

  ‘A nice set of people they must have been in those days!’

  ‘So-so. I daresay Charlotte may really have thought she was married to Nicholas, and been frightfully disappointed at finding her claims set aside. They must have been one too many for her there – Nicholas and his diplomats. Just when she thought she had hooked her fish so well – the fading beauty, with her wit and charm, pulling off the biggest coup of her life – making herself Empress. France was in confusion, the Empire broken, and those who had climbed to power on the eagle’s wings falling with his fall – who knew what would happen to the intriguing widow of one of Napoleon’s counts or generals? – but Russia! The double-headed eagle still had all his pinions –’

  ‘How you do go on!’ said Miss Garland, impatiently. ‘It doesn’t sound a bit likely to me. If you ask me, I think Paul made it all up out of those books he was so fond of.’

  ‘Very probably,’ admitted Wimsey. ‘I only mean that it was a good story. Colourful, vivid stuff, with costume effects and plenty of human interest. And it fits in reasonably well from the historical point of view. You’re quite sure you heard all about it in November?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m sure.’

  ‘My opinion of Paul Alexis’ powers of invention is going up. Romantic fiction should have been his line. Anyhow, we’ll pass all that. Here’s Charlotte, still clinging to this idea about morganatic marriages and thrones, and marrying her daughter Nicole to this Bourbon fellow, Gaston. Nothing unlikely about that. He’d come in between the Prince de Joinville and the Duc d’Aumale as regards age, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. Now, what happens to Nicole? She has a daughter – the family seems to have run to daughters – called Mélanie. I wonder what happened to Gaston and Nicole under the second Empire. Nothing is said about Gaston’s profession. Probably he accepted the fait accompli and kept his royalist leanings and origin quiet. At any rate, in 1871, his daughter Louise marries a Russian – that’s a throw-back to the old stock. Let’s see – 1871. What do I connect with 1871? Of course – the Franco-Prussian War, and Russia’s behaving rather unkindly to France about the Treaty of Paris. Alas! I fear Louise went over, horse, foot and artillery, to the enemy! Possibly this Stefan Ivanovitch came to Paris in some diplomatic connection about the time of the Treaty of Berlin, Goodness knows!’

  Leila Garland yawned dreadfully.

  ‘Louise has a daughter, anyhow,’ pursued Wimsey, wrapped up in his speculation. ‘And she marries another Russian. Presumably they are living in Russia again now. Mélanie is the daughter’s name, and the husband is Alexis, Gregorovitch, and they are the parents of Paul Alexis, otherwise Goldschmidt, who is rescued from the Russian revolution, brought over to England and naturalised, becomes a hotel gigolo and is murdered on the Flat-Iron Rock – why?’

  ‘Goodness knows,’ said Leila, and yawned again.

  Wimsey, making sure that Leila had really told him all she knew, gathered up his precious piece of paper and carried the whole problem away to Harriet.

  ‘But it’s simply silly,’ said that practical young woman when she saw it. ‘Even if Alexis’ great-great-grandmother had been married to Nicholas I fifty times over, he wouldn’t have been the heir to the throne. Why, there are heaps and heaps of people nearer than he was – the Grand-Duke Dmitri, for instance, and all sorts of people.’

  ‘Oh? Of course. But you can always persuade people into believing what they want to, you know. Some sort of tradition about it must have been handed down in the family from old Charlotte – you know what people are when they get these genealogical bugs in their heads. I know a fellow who’s a draper’s assistant in Leeds, who very earnestly told me once that he ought really to be King of England, if he could only find the record of somebody’s marriage to Perkin Warbeck. The trifling accident of a few intervening changes of dynasty didn’t worry him at all. He really thought he had only to state his case in the House of Lords to have the crown handed to him on a gold plate. And as for all the other claimants, Alexis would probably be told that they’d all abdicated in his favour. Besides, if he really believed in this family tree of his, he’d say that his claim was better than theirs, and that his great-great-grandmother was the only legitimate descendant of Nicholas I. I don’t think there was a Salic Law in Russia to prevent his claiming through the female line. Anyhow, it’s perfectly clear now how the trap was baited. If only we could get hold of the papers that Alexis sent to “Boris”! But they’ll have been destroyed, as sure as eggs is eggs.’

  Inspector Umpelty, accompanied by Chief Inspector Parker, of Scotland Yard, rang the bell at No. 17 Popcorn Street, Kensington, and was admitted without difficulty. It was obliging of Chief Inspector Parker to be taking a personal interest in the matter, though Umpelty felt he could have done with a less distinguished escort – but the man was Lord Peter’s brother-in-law and no doubt felt a peculiar interest in the case. At any rate, Mr Parker seemed disposed to leave the provincial inspector a free hand with his inquiries.

  Mrs Morecambe tripped into the room, smiling graciously.

  ‘Good morning. Won’t you sit down? Is it something about this Wilvercombe business again?’

  ‘Well, yes, madam. There appears to be some slight misunderstanding.’ The Inspector brought out a notebook and cleared his throat. ‘About this gentleman, Mr Henry Weldon, to whom you gave a lift on the Thursday morning. I th
ink you said that you drove him in to the Market Square?’

  ‘Why, yes. It is the Market Square, isn’t it? Just outside the town, with a sort of green and a building with a clock on it?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Umpelty, disconcerted. ‘No; that’s not the Market Square – it’s the fair-ground, where they have the football matches and the flower show. Was that where you put him down?’

  ‘Why, yes. I’m sorry. I quite thought it was the Market Square.’

  ‘Well, it’s called the Old Market. But what they call the Market Square now is the square in the centre of the town, where the point-constable stands.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I’m afraid I’ve been giving you misleading information.’ Mrs Morecambe smiled. ‘Is that a very dreadful offence?’

  ‘It might have serious consequences, of course,’ said the Inspector, ‘but nobody can’t help a genuine mistake. Still, I’m glad to have it cleared up. Now, just as a matter of routine, madam, what did you yourself do that morning in Wilvercombe?’

  Mrs Morecambe considered, with her head on one side.

  ‘Oh, I did some shopping, and I went to the Winter Gardens, and I had a cup of coffee at the Oriental Café – nothing very special.’

  ‘Did you happen to buy any gentleman’s collars?’

  ‘Collars?’ Mrs Morecambe looked surprised. Really, Inspector, you seem to have been going into my movements very thoroughly. Surely I’m not suspected of anything?’

  ‘Matter of routine, madam,’ replied the Inspector, stolidly; he licked his pencil.

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t buy any collars. I looked at some.’

  ‘Oh, you looked at some?’

  ‘Yes; but they hadn’t the sort my husband wanted.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Do you remember the name of the shop?’

  ‘Yes – Rogers & something – Rogers & Peabody, I think.’

  ‘Now, madam.’ The Inspector looked up from his notebook and stared sternly at her. ‘Would it surprise you to learn that the assistant at Rogers & Peabody’s says that a lady dressed in the same style as yourself and answering your description, bought the collars there that morning and had the parcel taken out to the car?’