Thrones, Dominations

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘That’s very helpful, sir. Now, the next morning – this morning, that is . . .’

  ‘I got up and had breakfast as usual. I was uneasy. Then I saw the story in The Times. I cancelled my morning’s appointments, and drove down to Hampton, to make sure she was all right . . .’ His voice began to shake.

  ‘Just a few more questions, sir, and then we’ll leave you in peace,’ said Charles. ‘When did you arrive at the bungalow?’

  ‘A little before nine. It takes about three-quarters of an hour to drive down there.’

  ‘And how did you get in?’

  ‘How? I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Did you enter the premises by the front door?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And was it locked? Did you let yourself in with a key?’

  ‘Yes. And yes. I have my own key to the bungalow.’

  ‘And what did you think when you saw the table?’ asked Wimsey, quietly interjecting.

  ‘The table? I didn’t see the table. I called out for her, and when she didn’t answer I went straight to the bedroom.’

  ‘And the bedroom door, Harwell, was it locked?’ asked Wimsey.

  ‘It was shut, but unlatched – I think it was swinging loose. I pushed it. And she was . . . she was . . .’ He fell silent.

  ‘Did you disturb or move anything in the room, Mr Harwell?’ asked Charles.

  Harwell didn’t answer at once. He was staring into space.

  ‘Mr Harwell, is there anything in the room, anything in the entire house, anything at all, which was not as you found it when we found it? Did you move anything?’

  ‘I took her up in my arms,’ he said, sadly. ‘I held her for a long while. Then I laid her back, and went for help.’

  ‘Just one more thing, sir. Did you by any chance lock the French door to the living-room some time that morning? Before leaving the house to fetch the police, perhaps?’

  ‘No, I—’ Harwell broke off, and coloured up. ‘There was a broken pane in it,’ he said. ‘I supposed that’s how – that’s how someone got in.’

  ‘The door was locked, sir, and the key not there,’ said Charles. ‘The broken pane indicates an attempt at forced entry, but it must have been unsuccessful.’

  ‘Oh, but I remember now!’ said Harwell. ‘Of course; I did lock the door. Just as you say, I locked it as I left for help, and put the key in my pocket.’

  As he spoke he produced the key, and handed it to Charles.

  ‘Thank you, sir, that is a great help,’ said Charles.

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Harwell. ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘Would you have any objection to letting us take your fingerprints, first, sir?’

  ‘My fingerprints? Why on earth?’

  ‘The police need to have the fingerprints of anyone who had a legitimate reason to be in the house,’ said Wimsey, ‘so as to be able to identify any prints that shouldn’t be there. Yours and your wife’s will be all over the place; the domestic help will have left prints everywhere. When we have eliminated those, the ones left over may include those of the murderer.’

  ‘I see. Very well, then.’

  ‘By the way, there was some domestic help, I take it?’

  ‘We didn’t keep anybody on. We used to find somebody in the village when we needed. I don’t know who she got this time.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir, we’ll find whoever it was,’ said Charles. ‘Now, when we’ve taken those prints, you should return home, or to your club, and make sure we know where to find you if you go anywhere else for more than half a day or so.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m fit to drive,’ said Harwell, holding out his hands to them, showing the tremor in them.

  ‘I’ll drive you back to town,’ said Wimsey. ‘I ought to be getting back. Bunter can bring the Daimler home when he’s ready. See you tomorrow, Charles?’

  ‘Certainly. Have no fear, Mr Harwell, we will catch the man who murdered your wife.’

  ‘Man?’ said Harwell, looking bewildered. ‘Some sort of animal. She was so beautiful. Some vile beast.’

  Peter came rapidly into the library, where Harriet was reading beside the fire.

  ‘They tell me you have been unwell,’ he said.

  ‘I was sick. It’s gone off now. I must have eaten something, I suppose. I’ve been famously looked after, Peter, don’t look so stricken! Mango put me to bed, and Mrs Trapp made me a plain rice pudding – she said that would stay down if anything would – and look at me now, as right as rain.’

  ‘This is a terrible shock,’ said Peter, sitting down.

  ‘Worse for you.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Didn’t you have to see the body?’

  ‘Yes. And that did give me a jolt, I confess. She was wearing one of those Breton collars like yours. I take it London is full of them?’

  ‘No; but I lent her some. They looked so good on her.’

  ‘Ah.’

  He fell silent. Harriet waited, sitting perfectly still, to see if he would tell her about the case. Of course he might not want to, and she was certainly not going to ask. But if he did not want to, something would have been lost. Perhaps he would think she could not bear the brutal discussion of someone she had known slightly. And having known Rosamund did, Harriet thought, make a difference – a considerable difference. When she had been involved in murder before – she did not count the murder of poor Philip Boyes, who had been her lover, that was far too complicated a situation; she was thinking of Mr Alexis, lying in a pool of blood on the shore at Wilvercombe – she had felt disgust and bafflement. Now she felt deep anger. What an outrage it was to hasten a fellow-creature into the dark!

  ‘Harriet, what did you mean, this afternoon,’ said Peter, breaking into her train of thought, ‘when you said you had got me worked out?’

  ‘Not you in toto, Peter,’ she said. ‘That will be the study of a lifetime. Just your detective urges.’

  ‘Would you be so good as to tell me your explanation?’ he said.

  His caution lay between them like a fog. She was still paying a price for having said, on their honeymoon, that surely it need not be he who investigated a body in the cellar. They had got straightened that time – or so she thought – but this was the next time, and he was treading carefully.

  ‘It’s noblesse oblige, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Most of the nobility would be astonished to hear it!’ he said, laughing.

  ‘When I was a child,’ she told him, ‘there was a man in the village who was tall and stout, and as strong as an ox. He would appear as if by magic whenever a job was afoot. Whenever a cart had a broken axle, or the vet couldn’t get an animal into a truck, or a car had run into a ditch, or there were bricks to unload, or a sick fat woman had to be carried up the cottage stairs to bed . . .’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure I follow your drift,’ said Peter.

  ‘His strength was his noblesse,’ she said. ‘It put him under an obligation to help with feats of muscle power.’

  ‘And in my case?’

  ‘In your case brains and privilege put you under an obligation to see justice done. I’ve got that clear, I think. And, Peter, I don’t just agree that you should do it; I admire you for it. I think you are right that your position entails responsibilities, and I’m rather proud of you for taking them up, and not just idling about.’

  ‘You make a very lucid advocate. When I conduct my own defence I make a very muddled job of it.’

  ‘Peter, you are not on trial. Who accuses you of anything?’

  ‘If you do not, none but my secret self.’

  ‘And, dearest, what charge does your secret self lay against you? Can you bring yourself to tell me?’

  ‘You alone in all the world,’ he answered. ‘I accuse myself of accepting and enjoying the title and rank and privilege – the unthinking automatic respect given me for reasons of birth – and not giving back value for them; not pulling my weight.’

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p; ‘Of that I acquit you,’ she said. ‘You may leave the court without a stain on your character. And after all, my lord, these titles, these thrones and dominations, were not of your choosing.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘And, Domina, I would not have chosen them. I would greatly have preferred to start shoulder to shoulder with others, or even handicapped. As it is, I am always in a false position; anything I can ever achieve is done by a form of cheating, is the result of an accident of birth.’

  ‘Not quite anything, Peter. In persuading me to marry you, you were handicapped.’

  ‘So I was,’ he said. ‘Several laps behind the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. But at least, I think you are saying, I can do an honest turn as a surrogate policeman. You don’t think the great detective is a frivolous pose – a rich man’s game?’

  ‘No; I think it is very serious. A matter of life and death, after all. What I haven’t got clear is how this connects with the war. I think it does, in some subterranean fashion.’

  ‘When you have seen people die,’ he said, ‘when you have seen at what abominable and appalling cost the peace and safety of England was secured, and then you see the peace squalidly broken, you see killing that has been perpetrated for vile and selfish motives. . .’

  ‘Oh, yes, I can see that,’ she said. ‘Beloved, I do see.’

  ‘Justice is a terrible thing,’ he said, ‘but injustice is worse.’

  He came suddenly towards her, and knelt in front of her chair, putting his arms round her knees, and laying his head in her lap. When he spoke again his voice was muffled in the folds of her dress. ‘Dearest, do you want me to discuss this case with you? Or would you rather not?’

  ‘I’d rather you did, if you can bear to.’

  ‘It’s what you can bear that I was thinking of. I would spare you distressing topics, if I could.’

  ‘Nothing you could tell me would be as bad as the thought that there was some subject we couldn’t talk over together. That would be really hateful.’

  ‘It is to be the marriage of true minds we try for?’ he said, looking up at her.

  ‘I thought it was; yes.’

  ‘Then so it shall be. We’ll bear it out even to the edge of doom— Yes, Meredith, what is it?’

  ‘Dinner is served, my lord.’

  ‘Later,’ said Peter, getting up and extending her his hand. ‘I will tell you all later.’

  ‘You rang, my lord?’ Bunter entered the drawing-room, where his master was sitting over a goodnight glass of brandy. Harriet, who had eaten a reassuringly hearty dinner, had gone promptly to bed, pleading tiredness.

  ‘Pour yourself a brandy, Bunter, and come and sit down,’ said Wimsey. ‘I want to hear all about Mrs Chanter and Hampton society.’

  ‘Yes, my lord, thank you, my lord,’ said Bunter, doing as he was told. ‘I learned a good deal that may not be to the point, my lord.’

  ‘Spill all the beans, Bunter, and we’ll sort them out later,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Well, sir, it seems as if the Harwells have been a great disappointment to their neighbours. Mrs Chanter’s employers, a Mr and Mrs Sugden, were thrilled when the bungalow next door was sold to the Harwells, because the family are more than somewhat stage-struck. They thought that there would be a continuous stream of famous actors and actresses flowing past their front door, on their way to lavish parties in next door’s drawing-room and garden. They had even bought a new book with a leatherette binding in the hope of autographs. And then it turned out that the Harwells were very quiet when they were in Hampton, and that that was not often; in fact they were hardly ever there.

  ‘ “What they want to go to all that expense for, just for a few weekends in summer, I’ll never know!” Mrs Chanter said. “And as for famous guests – well, there hadn’t been none spotted, not but what Mrs Harwell, the poor lady, was as lovely as Dorothy Lamour herself.” I am repeating her exact words, my lord.’

  ‘Very convincing, Bunter.’

  ‘There was a good deal in a similar vein to listen to, my lord, because Mrs Sugden has a daughter who is in the theatre, an actress with a great future, I was given to understand. However, it is Mrs Chanter’s daughter who might interest us, because she has served as a maid and housekeeper from time to time when the Harwells required someone. She is a young woman called Rose, my lord. I understand that she is a good girl, who helps to look after her father while Mrs Chanter is at work, but who takes any casual jobs she can get to earn herself some pin money. The family are respectable folk, Mrs Chanter assures me, but very hard up owing to Mr Chanter’s having fallen off a ladder and being unable to work at his trade for some years past.’

  ‘Aha, Bunter mine – at last some inside information. Was Rose asked to do for Mrs Harwell this time?’

  ‘She was asked to air the house and light the fires the day Mrs Harwell arrived, and then told to make herself scarce, I gather. On the second day she came in first thing to make the bed, and clear the ashes, and then was asked to return in the afternoon to help with the table for supper. She was told she would not be required for more than an hour in the afternoon, because the supper dishes could be washed up the following morning. I gather neither Rose nor Mrs Chanter were surprised at this, because Mrs Harwell did not usually do anything for herself.’

  ‘But perhaps if the Harwells were very seldom there, Mrs Chanter and family had not seen enough of them to know their habits well?’

  ‘Perhaps not, my lord. I did not see Rose herself, but Mrs Chanter felt involved enough to be very upset. She had jumped to the conclusion, my lord, that the crime was perpetrated by a rapist, who had been lurking in the district, and she became very agitated in case Rose too might be in danger; then she consoled herself with the thought that Rose’s young man would be likely to protect her, since he is in the habit of walking her home if they are out after dark.’

  ‘Quite right too,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Apart from Rose, my lord, there is a gardener-handyman who comes in once a week, whether the Harwells are in occupation or not, to keep the garden tidy. Mrs Chanter makes him a cup of tea, and takes it over mid-morning when Rose Cottage is empty. She doesn’t hold with asking a man to work all morning without so much as tea and a biscuit.’

  ‘Very proper sentiments. She didn’t happen to say if she had heard anything unusual during the hours of darkness on the night of the 27th?’

  ‘I enquired about that, my lord. But Mrs Chanter does not live in at Mon Repos, she comes in daily all day. She lives with her husband and daughter in one of those little terraced cottages at the foot of the lane; we passed them on the way up to Rose Cottage. You might have noticed them, my lord, on the left.’

  ‘I can’t say that I did, Bunter. I am becoming a careless beast these days.’

  ‘There is no reason why you should have noticed, my lord. Mrs Chanter lives well out of earshot of Rose Cottage. She did, however, hear a car at some time during the night. It seems that the leafiness of the lane, my lord, means that it is favoured by young people in cars looking for a quiet place to park for a little while, well out of the scope of street lights. The residents on the lane all resent the disturbance. It being a cul-de-sac, they feel entitled not to be subjected to noise from the passing trade. Mrs Chanter was annoyed at being woken by a car, but she had not looked at her alarm clock, and could give me no indication of the time. She recommended talking to Rose, but Rose did not return home while I was there. We should bear in mind, my lord, that a car passing the terraced cottages could have been going to any point on the lane; there are more than a dozen houses there all told.’

  ‘Or it could, as you say, have been carrying roaming lovers, looking for a quiet spot to park a car,’ said Wimsey. ‘All the same, Bunter, we should spin down to Hampton again, and have a word with Rose, don’t you think?’

  ‘It might be worth while,’ said Bunter.

  ‘How did your prints turn out?’ asked Wimsey.

  ‘In res
pect of fingerprints, my lord, very well. I have a number of very clear prints from various places in the house which can be compared with those obtained by the police. In respect of the impressions in the pillows, my lord, less good, I am afraid. The sheen on the satin has produced white-outs on the prints.’

  ‘You need not attempt to impress me with technicalities, Bunter, I am deeply respectful already. What is a white-out?’

  ‘The effect is, my lord, to make the twin depressions which we observed in the bedding hard to discern clearly on the prints. I am going to a meeting of the Bayswater Photographic Society on Saturday evening, if I am not required here, at which I will seek the advice of other photographers, some of them very good professional photographers, my lord, as to how to make clearer prints.’

  ‘Well, do your best, Bunter. This could be important, and the state of those pillows might be temporary. I mean, mightn’t they puff themselves up again after a while?’

  ‘I don’t think that feathers rebound perceptibly of their own account,’ said Bunter thoughtfully. ‘But the slightest agitation . . .’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I’m off to bed now, Bunter. Goodnight.’

  Extract from the diary of Honoria Lucasta, Dowager Duchess of Denver:

  27th February

  Seems to be scandal about the King already; French newspapers full of it, according to Paul. Paul very difficult these days – becoming impossibly eccentric. (Gerald says it comes of living abroad among benighted foreigners.) First Paul rushed home for the King’s funeral, and then rushed back to France again, complaining of the cold, and the price of wine. Now he keeps sending me clippings from French newspapers about King and Mrs Simpson. Would have thought his famous broad mind might have managed a mistress or two for the King without fussing. Also Paul very angry with President Roosevelt over Neutrality Law. Wonder if living in France really is giving him peculiar opinions. On reflection suppose not, he has been peculiar for years. Says Americans all over Paris purporting to be interested in civilisation, and yet determined to leave Europe to stew in own juice. Went with Hartley-Skeffingtons to see new Chaplin film, Modern Times. Pathé News showed Herr Hitler opening Winter Olympics; thought Hitler very like Chaplin, and wondered why Germans don’t laugh. Suppose it isn’t funny, really.