Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey 03]

by Unnatural Death

  “No. I think you are right. Well, Mr. Trigg, I am much obliged to you for this information, which may turn out to be very valuable. And if Miss Grant should ring you up again—where did she call from, by the way?”

  “From call-boxes, each time. I know that, because the operator always tells one when the call is from a public box. I didn’t have the calls traced.”

  “No, of course not. Well, if she does it again, will you please make an appointment with her, and then let me know about it at once? A call to Scotland Yard will always find me.”

  Mr. Trigg promised that he would do this, and Parker took his leave.

  “And now we know,” thought Parker as he returned home, “that somebody—an odd unscrupulous somebody—was making inquiries about great-nieces in 1925. A word to Miss Climpson, I fancy, is indicated—just to find out whether Mary Whittaker has a scar on her right hand, or whether I’ve got to hunt up any more solicitors.”

  The hot streets seemed less oppressively oven-like than before. In fact, Parker was so cheered by his interview that he actually bestowed a cigarette-card upon the next urchin who accosted him.

  PART III

  THE MEDICO-LEGAL PROBLEM

  “There’s not a crime

  But takes its proper change out still in crime

  If once rung on the counter of this world.”

  E. B. BROWNING: AURORA LEIGH

  CHAPTER XIX

  GONE AWAY

  “There is nothing good or evil save in the will.”

  EPICTETUS

  “YOU WILL NOT, I imagine, deny,” observed Lord Peter, “that very odd things seem to happen to the people who are in a position to give information about the last days of Agatha Dawson. Bertha Gotobed dies suddenly, under suspicious circumstances; her sister thinks she sees Miss Whittaker lying in wait for her at Liverpool docks; Mr. Trigg is inveigled into a house of mystery and is semi-poisoned. I wonder what would have happened to Mr. Probyn, if he had been careless enough to remain in England.”

  “I deny nothing,” replied Parker. “I will only point out to you that during the month in which these disasters occurred to the Gotobed family, the object of your suspicions was in Kent with Miss Vera Findlater, who never left her side.”

  “As against that undoubted snag,” rejoined Wimsey, “I bring forward a letter from Miss Climpson, in which—amid a lot of rigmarole with which I will not trouble you—she informs me that upon Miss Whittaker’s right hand there is a scar, precisely similar to the one which Mr. Trigg describes.”

  “Is there? That does seem to connect Miss Whittaker pretty definitely with the Trigg business. But is it your theory that she is trying to polish off all the people who know anything about Miss Dawson? Rather a big job, don’t you think, for a single-handed female? And if so, why is Dr. Carr spared? and Nurse Philliter? and Nurse Forbes? And the other doctor chappie? And the rest of the population of Leahampton, if it comes to that?”

  “That’s an interesting point which had already occurred to me. I think I know why. Up to the present, the Dawson case has presented two different problems, one legal and one medical—the motive and the means, if you like that better. As far as opportunity goes, only two people figure as possibles—Miss Whittaker and Nurse Forbes. The Forbes woman had nothing to gain by killin’ a good patient, so for the moment we can wash her out.

  “Well now, as to the medical problem—the means. I must say that up to now that appears completely insoluble. I am baffled, Watson (said he, his hawk-like eyes gleaming angrily from under the half-closed lids). Even I am baffled. But not for long! (he cried, with a magnificent burst of self-confidence). My Honour (capital H) is concerned to track this Human Fiend (capitals) to its hidden source, and nail the whited sepulchre to the mast even though it crush me in the attempt! Loud applause. His chin sank broodingly upon his dressing-gown, and he breathed a few guttural notes into the bass saxophone which was the cherished companion of his solitary hours in the bathroom.”

  Parker ostentatiously took up the book which he had laid aside on Wimsey’s entrance.

  “Tell me when you’ve finished,” he said, caustically.

  “I’ve hardly begun. The means, I repeat, seems insoluble—and so the criminal evidently thinks. There has been no exaggerated mortality among the doctors and nurses. On that side of the business the lady feels herself safe. No. The motive is the weak point—hence the hurry to stop the mouths of the people who knew about the legal part of the problem.”

  “Yes, I see. Mrs. Cropper had started back to Canada, by the way. She doesn’t seem to have been molested at all.”

  “No—and that’s why I still think there was somebody on the watch in Liverpool. Mrs. Cropper was only worth silencing so long as she had told nobody her story. That is why I was careful to meet her and accompany her ostentatiously to Town.”

  “Oh, rot, Peter! Even if Miss Whittaker had been there—which we know she couldn’t have been—how was she to know that you were going to ask about the Dawson business? She doesn’t know you from Adam.”

  “She might have found out who Murbles was. The advertisement which started the whole business was in his name, you know.”

  “In that case, why hasn’t she attacked Murbles or you?”

  “Murbles is a wise old bird. In vain are nets spread in his sight. He is seeing no female clients, answering no invitations, and never goes out without an escort.”

  “I didn’t know he took it so seriously.”

  “Oh, yes. Murbles is old enough to have learnt the value of his own skin. As for me—have you noticed the remarkable similarity in some ways between Mr. Trigg’s adventure and my own little adventurelet, as you might say, in South Audley Street?”

  “What, with Mrs. Forrest?”

  “Yes. The secret appointment. The drink. The endeavour to get one to stay the night at all costs. I’m positive there was something in that sugar, Charles, that no sugar should contain—see Public Health (Adulteration of Food) Acts, various.”

  “You think Mrs. Forrest is an accomplice?”

  “I do. I don’t know what she has to gain by it—probably money. But I feel sure there is some connection. Partly because of Bertha Gotobed’s £5 note; partly because Mrs. Forrest’s story was a palpable fake—I’m certain the woman’s never had a lover, let alone a husband—you can’t mistake real inexperience; and chiefly because of the similarity of method. Criminals always tend to repeat their effects. Look at George Joseph Smith and his brides. Look at Neill Cream. Look at Armstrong and his tea-parties.”

  “Well, if there’s an accomplice, all the better. Accomplices generally end by giving the show away.”

  “True. And we are in a good position because up till now I don’t think they know that we suspect any connection between them.”

  “But I still think, you know, we ought to get some evidence that actual crimes have been committed. Call me finicking, if you like. If you could suggest a means of doing away with these people so as to leave no trace, I should feel happier about it.”

  “The means, eh?—Well, we do know something about it.”

  “As what?”

  “Well—take the two victims—”

  “Alleged.”

  “All right, old particular. The two alleged victims and the two (alleged) intended victims. Miss Dawson was ill and helpless; Bertha Gotobed possibly stupefied by a heavy meal and an unaccustomed quantity of wine; Trigg was given a sufficient dose of veronal to send him to sleep, and I was offered something of probably the same kind—I wish I could have kept the remains of that coffee. So we deduce from that, what?”

  “I suppose that it was a means of death which could only be used on somebody more or less helpless or unconscious.”

  “Exactly. As for instance, a hypodermic injection—only nothing appears to have been injected. Or a delicate operation of some kind—if we could only think of one to fit the case. Or the inhalation of something—such as chloroform—only we could find no traces of suffocation.”<
br />
  “Yes. That doesn’t get us very far, though.”

  “It’s something. Then, again, it may very well be something that a trained nurse would have learnt or heard about. Miss Whittaker was trained, you know—which, by the way, was what made it so easy for her to bandage up her own head and provide a pitiful and unrecognisable spectacle for the stupid Mr. Trigg.”

  “It wouldn’t have to be anything very out of the way—nothing, I mean, that only a trained surgeon could do, or that required very specialised knowledge.”

  “Oh, no. Probably something picked up in conversation with a doctor or the other nurses. I say, how about getting hold of Dr. Carr again? Or, no—if he’d got any ideas on the subject he’d have trotted ’em out before now. I know! I’ll ask Lubbock, the analyst. He’ll do. I’ll get in touch with him tomorrow.”

  “And meanwhile,” said Parker, “I suppose we just sit round and wait for somebody else to be murdered.”

  “It’s beastly, isn’t it? I still feel poor Bertha Gotobed’s blood on my head, so to speak. I say!”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve practically got clear proof on the Trigg business. Couldn’t you put the lady in quod on a charge of burglary while we think out the rest of the dope? It’s often done. It was a burglary, you know. She broke into a house after dark and appropriated a scuttleful of coal to her own use. Trigg could identify her—he seems to have paid the lady particular attention on more than one occasion—and we could rake up his taxi-man for corroborative detail.”

  Parker pulled at his pipe for a few minutes.

  “There’s something in that,” he said finally. “I think perhaps it’s worthwhile putting it before the authorities. But we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry, you know. I wish we were further ahead with our other proofs. There’s such a thing as Habeas Corpus—you can’t hold on to people indefinitely just on a charge of stealing coal—”

  “There’s the breaking and entering, don’t forget that. It’s burglary, after all. You can get penal servitude for life for burglary.”

  “But it all depends on the view the law takes of the coal. It might decide that there was no original intention of stealing coal, and treat the thing as a mere misdemeanour or civil trespass. Anyhow, we don’t really want a conviction for stealing coal. But I’ll see what they think about it at our place, and meanwhile I’ll get hold of Trigg again and try and find the taxi-driver. And Trigg’s doctor. We might get it as an attempt to murder Trigg, or at least to inflict grievous bodily harm. But I should like some more evidence about—”

  “Cuckoo! So should I. But I can’t manufacture evidence out of nothing. Dash it all, be reasonable. I’ve built you up a case out of nothing. Isn’t that handsome enough? Base ingratitude—that’s what’s the matter with you.”

  Parker’s inquiries took some time, and June lingered into its longest days.

  Chamberlin and Levine flew the Atlantic, and Segrave bade farewell to Brooklands. The Daily Yell wrote anti-Red leaders and discovered a plot, somebody laid claim to a marquisate, and a Czecho-Slovakian pretended to swim the Channel. Hammond out-graced Grace, there was an outburst of murder at Moscow, Foxlaw won the Gold Cup and the earth opened at Oxhey and swallowed up somebody’s front garden. Oxford decided that women were dangerous, and the electric hare consented to run at the White City. England’s supremacy was challenged at Wimbledon, and the House of Lords made the gesture of stooping to conquer.

  Meanwhile, Lord Peter’s projected magnum opus on a-hundred-and-one ways of causing sudden death had advanced by the accumulation of a mass of notes which flowed all over the library at the flat, and threatened to engulf Bunter, whose task it was to file and cross-reference and generally to produce order from chaos. Oriental scholars and explorers were button-holed in clubs and strenuously pumped on the subject of abstruse native poisons; horrid experiments performed in German laboratories were communicated in unreadable documents; and the life of Sir James Lubbock, who had the misfortune to be a particular friend of Lord Peter’s, was made a burden to him with daily inquiries as to the post-mortem detection of such varying substances as chloroform, curare, hydrocyanic acid gas and diethylsulphonmethylethylmethane.

  “But surely there must be something which kills without leaving a trace,” pleaded Lord Peter, when at length informed that the persecution must cease. “A thing in such universal demand—surely it is not beyond the wit of scientists to invent it. It must exist. Why isn’t it properly advertised? There ought to be a company to exploit it. It’s simply ridiculous. Why, it’s a thing one might be wantin’ one’s self any day.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Sir James Lubbock. “Plenty of poisons leave no particular post-mortem appearances. And plenty of them—especially the vegetable ones—are difficult to find by analysis, unless you know what you are looking for. For instance, if you’re testing for arsenic, that test won’t tell you whether strychnine is present or not. And if you’re testing for strychnine, you won’t find morphia. You’ve got to try one test after another till you hit the right one. And of course there are certain poisons for which no recognised tests exist.”

  “I know all that,” said Wimsey. “I’ve tested things myself. But these poisons with no recognised test—how do you set about proving that they’re there?”

  “Well, of course, you’d take the symptoms into account, and so on. You would look at the history of the case.”

  “Yes—but I want a poison that doesn’t produce any symptoms. Except death, of course—if you call that a symptom. Isn’t there a poison with no symptoms and no test? Something that just makes you go off, Pouf! like that?”

  “Certainly not,” said the analyst, rather annoyed—for your medical analyst lives by symptoms and tests, and nobody likes suggestions that undermine the very foundations of his profession—“not even old age or mental decay. There are always symptoms.”

  Fortunately, before the symptoms of mental decay could become too pronounced in Lord Peter, Parker sounded the call to action.

  “I’m going down to Leahampton with a warrant,” he said. “I may not use it, but the chief thinks it might be worthwhile to make an inquiry. What with the Battersea mystery and the Daniels business, and Bertha Gotobed, there seems to be a feeling that there have been too many unexplained tragedies this year, and the Press have begun yelping again, blast them! There’s an article in John Citizen this week, with a poster: ‘Ninety-six Murderers at Large,’ and the Evening Views is starting its reports with ‘Six weeks have now passed, and the police are no nearer the solution—’ you know the kind of thing. We’ll simply have to get some sort of move on. Do you want to come?”

  “Certainly—a breath of country air would do me good, I fancy. Blow away, the cobwebs, don’t you know. It might even inspire me to invent a good way of murderin’ people. ‘O Inspiration, solitary child, warbling thy native wood-notes wild—’ Did somebody write that, or did I invent it? It sounds reminiscent, somehow.”

  Parker, who was out of temper, replied rather shortly, and intimated that the police car would be starting for Leahampton in an hour’s time.

  “I will be there,” said Wimsey, “though, mind you, I hate being driven by another fellow. It feels so unsafe. Never mind. I will be bloody, bold and resolute, as Queen Victoria said to the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

  They reached Leahampton without any incident to justify Lord Peter’s fears. Parker had brought another officer with him, and on the way they picked up the Chief Constable of the County, who appeared very dubiously disposed towards their errand. Lord Peter, observing their array of five strong men, going out to seize upon one young woman, was reminded of the Marquise de Brinvilliers—(“What! all that water for a little person like me?”)—but this led him back to the subject of poison, and he remained steeped in thought and gloom till the car drew up before the house in Wellington Avenue.

  Parker got out, and went up the path with the Chief Constable. The door was opened to them by a frightened looking
maid, who gave a little shriek at sight of them.

  “Oh, sir! have you come to say something’s happened to Miss Whittaker?”

  “Isn’t Miss Whittaker at home, then?”

  “No, sir. She went out in the car with Miss Vera Findlater on Monday—that’s four days back, sir, and she hasn’t come home, nor Miss Findlater neither, and I’m frightened something’s happened to them. When I see you, sir, I thought you was the police come to say there had been an accident. I didn’t know what to do, sir.”

  “Skipped, by God!” was Parker’s instant thought, but he controlled his annoyance, and asked:

  “Do you know where they were going?”

  “Crow’s Beach, Miss Whittaker said, sir.”

  “That’s a good fifty miles,” said the Chief Constable. “Probably they’ve just decided to stay there a day or two.”

  “More likely gone in the opposite direction,” thought Parker.

  “They didn’t take no things for the night, sir. They went off about ten in the morning. They said they was going to have lunch there and come home in the evening. And Miss Whittaker hasn’t written nor nothing. And her always so particular. Cook and me, we didn’t know what—”

  “Oh, well, I expect it’s all right,” said the Chief Constable. “It’s a pity, as we particularly wanted to see Miss Whittaker. When you hear from her, you might say Sir Charles Pillington called with a friend.”

  “Yes, sir. But please, sir, what ought we to do, sir?”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry. I’ll have inquiries made. I’m the Chief Constable, you know, and I can soon find out whether there’s been an accident or anything. But if there had been, depend upon it we should have heard about it. Come, my girl, pull yourself together, there’s nothing to cry about. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.”

  But Sir Charles looked disturbed. Coming on top of Parker’s arrival in the district, the thing had an unpleasant look about it.

  Lord Peter received the news cheerfully.

  “Good,” said he, “joggle ’em up. Keep ’em moving. That’s the spirit. Always like it when somethin’ happens. My worst suspicions are goin’ to be justified. That always makes one feel so important and virtuous, don’t you think? Wonder why she took the girl with her, though. By the way, we’d better look up the Findlaters. They may have heard something.”