Thrones, Dominations

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  ‘Are you offering it to us, Lady Peter?’

  ‘I suppose Peter ought to do that. I haven’t put it to him yet. I wanted to know if it would seem possible to you, before starting a hare. I am asking you whether you think it would work out well; whether you could imagine living here.’

  ‘Does Mervyn know about this?’

  ‘No; it is a female conspiracy. A shot at a practical answer.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought there could be one. Could this really be spared?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t doing any good at the moment, except to spiders. Peter employs an architect; you could, you and Bunter could, work out what you want . . .’

  ‘I don’t think I’m very good at decorating and things.’ Miss Fanshaw sounded dubious.

  ‘My mother-in-law would be in the seventh heaven if we asked her to do colour schemes and arrangements,’ said Harriet, smiling deeply at the thought of letting the Dowager Duchess have her head.

  Miss Fanshaw walked to the end of the room, and stood looking thoughtfully through the apple branches at the garden.

  ‘I can see this is a sort of solution,’ she said. ‘It would square the circle for Mervyn. And it’s very good of you to suggest it. But I don’t think it could work unless you and I were able to deal with any difficulties which might arise; unless we were to become firm friends.’

  ‘I look forward to that very much,’ said Harriet, holding out her hand.

  ‘You were rather slow to follow my lead into matrimony, old man,’ said the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot. ‘Couldn’t think what you were waiting for all that time, until I met her.’

  ‘I’m glad you appreciate her,’ said Wimsey, lightly, leaning over the table to refill Freddy’s champagne glass. ‘My family are deeply divided on the subject. Denver keeps eyeing her as a possible brood mare, and St George as a possible let-out from all his responsibilities. The Duchess gives us both the benefit of her iciest disapproval, and my mother sings her praises without cease. Bunter is unsettled by the whole thing and is thinking of leaving me . . . I need all the agreement I can get.’

  ‘Sorry to hear about Bunter,’ said Freddy. ‘That’s a blow. He’s been with you for ever, hasn’t he? What’s the rub?’

  ‘Like master, like man. He wants to get married himself.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Rotten for you. You can’t decently try to stop him, can you? But look here, Wimsey, I wasn’t actually making remarks about Harriet, but about Harwell. She passed it on to me that you wanted a bush telegraph message about him.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Have you got something for me?’

  ‘You were right. He has been raising money. Quite a bit of money. You know he has an interest in the Cranbourne Theatre?’

  ‘Can’t say that I did. Go on.’

  ‘He is part of a consortium that bought the freehold seven years ago. A freehold is serious collateral; not like interests in plays. Anyway, Harwell raised a loan recently; short term, and used his share in the Cranbourne as security. Seems he needed money to launch this new play by Amery, and his funds were tied up in existing productions. Or anyway, that’s the tale he told to my City friends. They found him his loan; he’s regarded as very sound. Can one ask why you wanted to know?’

  ‘Oh, you know what it’s like. Fellow’s wife found murdered, and one grows a gargantuan curiosity for everything about him.’

  ‘A very nasty business, that. Can’t help feeling sorry for the man. Lovely lady. Surely that one would be about love rather than money, Wimsey.’

  ‘Oh, they get rather tangled together sometimes,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Mm. Expect you’re right. Both very important things, of course. Get entangled when you’re married.’

  ‘Things all right with you and Rachel?’ asked Wimsey, looking sharply at his friend.

  ‘Top hole, thank you. I was only thinking ruefully about school fees, and dowries and such like. You’ll learn, given a bit of time. I always thought you were God’s own bachelor, and would keep bed and board apart for ever – would have laid bets on it – and now look what happens.’

  ‘Well, you may take Harriet out to lunch any time, subject to her acceptance, of course. I gather she enjoyed talking to you.’

  ‘Jolly glad to hear it. Awkward sort of thing, really, talking to a brainy woman. Don’t quite know what to say.’

  ‘You talk to her exactly as if she were a man,’ said Wimsey. ‘Forgive me if I rush off; I have to call at Scotland Yard.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Peter,’ said Charles Parker. ‘You remember that apparently vague suggestion from Harwell that Gaston Chapparelle might have been the mystery dinner guest?’

  ‘Based on nothing but the way the man had looked at her? Yes, I do remember. It occurred to me that, after all, Harwell was paying the man to look at her.’

  ‘Well, you know what slaves to routine policemen are. I sent someone round to ask him where he was that evening . . .’

  ‘He says he was somewhere else, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, he does. But he won’t say where.’

  ‘Has he had it explained to him how important it might be?’

  ‘Naturally. He says it is a question of honour. I have brought him in to the Yard to try to overawe him, and it’s like trying to overawe a brick wall. You wouldn’t care to have a go at him, would you?’

  ‘I’ll try, Charles; but why should I succeed where you cannot?’

  ‘Oh, you know, honour, Peter; more up your street than mine.’

  Chapparelle was run to earth, with help from his cook, in the Garrick. He offered Wimsey a drink, and they settled in a corner of the smoking-room. Behind Chapparelle’s chair an enormous portrait of David Garrick in fancy dress outshone the mildly overdone dress of the Frenchman: his too elaborate tie, his gaudy studs, his spats and snakeskin shoes.

  ‘It is no good to ask me, Lord Peter,’ he said. ‘No good for the policeman to ask me, and no good for you – how you say it? Man for man.’

  ‘This is a rather serious matter, you know,’ said Wimsey. ‘I haven’t the least reason to think you involved in Mrs Harwell’s death, but if you won’t say where you were the police will have to decide whether to charge you with murder, or merely with obstructing them in the course of their duties. By comparison with the difficulties this will place you in, the admission that you were somewhere you ought not to have been . . .’

  ‘The difficulties for me if I tell you are une bagatelle,’ said Chapparelle. ‘It is even good for trade. Women like the frisson of being painted by a well-known seducer. But for the lady with whom I spend the night these difficulties would not be slight.’

  ‘A married woman, I take it?’

  Chapparelle inclined his head.

  ‘Look, old man, we must find a way round this,’ said Wimsey. ‘Otherwise you will find yourself subpoenaed, refusing to testify, and possibly in prison for contempt of court.’

  ‘I am ignorant of the law of the English,’ said Chapparelle. ‘But the laws of honour forbid me to drag a woman’s name in the mud. If I must go to prison, tant pis, I go to prison!’

  ‘But if someone were able in secrecy to ask the woman in question to say whether you were with her, and if she said yes, there would then be no need for any breach in discretion. The whole matter would be laid to rest.’

  ‘Can you imagine, milord, if you follow up a visit to a lady somewhat compromised by sending in the police?’

  ‘I was about to suggest,’ said Peter, ‘that you might like to trust me with your account of the evening of the 27th, and with the name of the lady. That I would then find a way, with the utmost delicacy, of asking her to confirm what you say, and that Inspector Parker would then rely on my word for it that your alibi is corroborated.’

  Chapparelle considered for some time. Then he said, ‘It is all for show, this reputation I have with women. If I painted women in Paris, I would not cause a stir. A Frenchwoman expects to be seriously regarded; it is her due. But your poor cold English beauties, for t
hem it is a thrill to stir the blood that someone looks at them for two seconds together; so I look hard, and I make a few remarks, and soon they are telling me that nobody has ever understood them before as I. It is pitiful, Lord Peter. If they are cold, these English women, it is because they are frozen with neglect.’

  ‘It is perfectly true,’ said Wimsey, reflectively, ‘that the English inclination for decorum and privacy can as easily conceal coldness and indifference as it can passion.’

  ‘It is this which makes your compatriots so interesting to paint,’ said Chapparelle. ‘Without concealment, where is the triumph of perception? But what I mean to say, milord, is that those that I paint I very seldom touch. My reputation in that department is greatly exaggerated. Only sometimes when the picture is finished there is a little crisis. Madame is very sad; she cannot believe that all that staring at her, all that agreeable attention to her person is merely professional. So it can happen that I pay her a little farewell visit, discreetly, you understand. I take a little gift with me. A souvenir of the sitting.’

  ‘And on the evening of the 27th of last month you were paying a little visit?’

  Chapparelle passed across to Wimsey a page from his diary, on which was written a name. ‘Please to be gentil, please to be careful,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wimsey. ‘Your trust will not be misplaced. Ought I in self-defence to ask you when your portrait of my wife will be finished?’ A note of mockery had entered his voice.

  ‘Ah, but with Lady Peter it is altogether another case,’ said the painter. ‘It was La Bruyère, a countryman of mine, who said it: that when a plain-looking woman is loved it can only be very passionately. I keep out of the path of the real thing, Lord Peter, as I would keep out of the way of an avalanche, or out of the mouth of a volcano.’

  Mrs Hartley-Skeffington received Lord Peter in her pallid and austerely fashionable drawing-room. His request deeply dismayed her. ‘How could I admit to such a thing, Lord Peter? My husband would divorce me,’ she said. ‘I should be ruined. Nobody receives or consorts with a divorced woman.’

  ‘If Chapparelle’s alibi is confirmed,’ Lord Peter told her, ‘then he will be of no further interest to the police. It is only if it cannot be confirmed that he might have to be questioned under oath, and in public. The penalties to him in that situation might be severe.’

  She turned away from him. He waited quietly while she struggled with herself. Then she turned to him again.

  ‘He was with me that evening,’ she said, in a whisper.

  ‘I am very sorry to occasion pain or embarrassment,’ said Lord Peter, ‘but I must ask you exactly where and exactly when you were with him.’

  ‘He joined me at five o’clock, or a few minutes later. He left me again before daybreak; a little after five in the morning.’

  ‘And where was this?’

  She blushed deeply. ‘We were at the boat club. My husband and I have a boat at Weybridge. A cabin cruiser with berths . . . Before Easter there are very few people around . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lord Peter. ‘That would seem to deal with the matter.’ He rose to leave.

  ‘Lord Peter, wait. From something he said – that is, he let drop – I have reason to believe Mr Chapparelle had seen poor Mrs Harwell very shortly before he came to me. I am so very frightened, Lord Peter.’

  ‘But you are quite sure Chapparelle was with you by five?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I am. I was watching the clock; I was – God forgive me! – waiting for him eagerly.’

  ‘Then be assured he can have had nothing to do with what befell Mrs Harwell; she was certainly alive after five o’clock. Chapparelle is out of it; and therefore, Mrs Hartley-Skeffington, so are you. Try not to worry.’

  ‘That’s it, then. We shall arrest Claude Amery,’ said Chief Inspector Parker, when Peter reported to him, naming no names, but declaring himself satisfied.

  ‘I hate to see you make embarrassing mistakes, Charles,’ said Lord Peter, lugubriously. ‘Have you found some sound evidence against Amery?’

  ‘What would you call sound evidence?’ asked Parker.

  ‘His fingerprints in the bedroom? No? I thought not. There is nothing against Amery except his own story.’

  ‘Which he has changed under pressure, and will change again, I imagine, should we find another scrap of evidence. Oh, we found the dog, by the way. Throat severed, carcass buried in the compost heap.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Peter. ‘Look, Charles, try to imagine Amery doing that.’

  ‘It isn’t any harder to imagine than what he said he was doing, prowling around all night for no particular reason. We eliminate all that can be eliminated, and what remains is the answer, Wimsey. Amery remains.’

  ‘Well, we might be about to get our hands on another bit of evidence, Charles. Put your hat on and come home with me, and I will show you some missives from Harriet’s personal maid, who has been misrepresenting herself in Hampton.’

  Bunter met Wimsey and Charles in the hall.

  ‘I attended the auction at Knight Frank and Rutley, as instructed, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘We secured the Alice in Wonderland first edition. I took the liberty of paying a little above the amount you mentioned to me, however.’

  ‘Excellent. I didn’t think it would go to a thousand.’

  ‘Nine hundred and forty-five, my lord.’

  ‘You did quite right, Bunter. Be so good as not to mention it to her ladyship; I intend to hide it away against her birthday.’

  ‘Very good, my lord. And Mango has returned, in a state of some excitement, if I may be allowed an observation.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Lord Peter. ‘We shall hear her out at once. Tell her to come to the library in ten minutes, will you?’

  ‘Very good, my lord.’

  ‘Oh, and be there yourself, Bunter. This is a council of war.’

  Peter shed his coat and hat, and bounded up the stairs in search of Harriet. He found her already in the library, serenely reading Markham’s Handbook of Forensic Medicine.

  ‘You are about to be interrupted by an incursion of news,’ he said. ‘Prepare to meet thy doom. Well, not thine, of course, but quite probably somebody’s. And here’s Charles.’

  ‘How good to see you, Charles.’

  Peter handed Charles Mango’s two reports.

  ‘You expect Mango to have discovered something deeply revealing?’ Harriet asked. She was exhilarated by Peter’s sudden eagerness.

  ‘I expect her to have discovered the identity of the person whom Rosamund Harwell intended to dine with her,’ said Peter. ‘The joker in the pack. The person, whoever he may be, who can displace Claude Amery as the obvious suspect. We shall see. Ah; see the conquering heroine come. Come in, Mango, and sit down. This is Chief Inspector Parker. He is in charge of the investigation. I have shown him your letters.’

  ‘I’d rather not sit down, my lord, if you wouldn’t mind,’ said Mango, primly.

  ‘Just as you like,’ said Peter. ‘Now, tell us all you can.’

  ‘Well, my lord, my lady, Chief Inspector, Mr Bunter, it wasn’t any too easy. I was determined to get hold of the note directly from Mary, and not have an arrangement in which Rose delivered it to me. I might have been doing Rose an injustice, but I thought the note was an embarrassment to her. It was only the note that had made Mary so frightened about keeping her agreement with Rose not to split on her. Without the note, it was only a little plot between two girls to let one of them have a quiet evening. With the note – and Rose had asked Mary to destroy it . . . Anyway, I managed to cut Rose out of it. I winkled out of them what they were doing the following morning, this morning, that is. Rose had to sit with her father, while her mother went shopping, and Mary had promised to do some ironing.

  So this morning I just walked round to call on Mary, and the moment she was alone with me, and Rose’s beady eye not on her, she ran upstairs and fetched the note for me. ‘You’ve no idea what a relief it is to be rid of it,’ sh
e said. ‘It’s been giving me nightmares, Miss Mango, ever since I first clapped eyes on it.’

  ‘The suspense is killing us, Mango,’ said Lord Peter. ‘To whom is it addressed?’

  ‘See for yourself, my lord,’ said Mango. She reached into her bag and produced a small envelope, which she handed to Lord Peter.

  He held it out so that everyone could see it. It was a lilac-tinted paper, and had been addressed in a sprawling, distinctive hand: ‘Laurence Harwell, Esq.’

  There was a silence. Then Peter reached for a paper-knife, and eased the envelope open. It had been lightly gummed, and he lifted the flap without tearing it.

  ‘Gloves, Bunter,’ he said.

  Bunter brought him a pair of lightweight, suede gloves, and he put them on. Then he eased the sheet of paper out of the envelope, and spread it out on the table. All four of them leaned over to read it.

  Dearest Laurence,

  Missing you awfully. Do come down to supper here tonight, and we can go home together tomorrow morning.

  Your rose of all the world,

  Rosamund

  ‘You know,’ said Peter, ‘if it wasn’t for that blasted alibi, I could say exactly what happened. Exactly. Probably not murder, wouldn’t you say, Charles? Manslaughter, like that case Harriet dug out of The Times the other day. After all, the poor blighter didn’t actually get this note. He just went down unexpectedly, shall we surmise, and saw his wife in her pretty white dress, and the table laid for two . . .’

  Harriet met Mango’s eyes, and the two women frowned slightly.

  ‘Peter, was she wearing . . .?’ Harriet began.

  But, ‘No, he didn’t,’ Charles was saying doggedly. ‘Victim seen alive a good hour after Harwell was into his flat, locked in for the night. We have been over and over it with those hall porters, and we can’t shake them. You are barking up the wrong tree, Wimsey.’