Bodies from the Library

by Tony Medawar

  Mr Blayne felt a tiny sting as the precious hilt twitched beneath his touch and he was conscious that its apex had lanced his flesh. That was a trifling matter. Stones cut en cabochon often did that; a faceted diamond never. It served him right for being careless. He should have remembered—especially so in this case, where the bulb of the stone was rested on metal while its needle crown jutted up in no wise guarded … Mr Blayne looked at the wet point of blood and rubbed it away. He was rather surprised, however, at the angry ache which had taken the tactile buds of his finger end in possession. He hoped to goodness the diamond was clean. But then a craftsman’s fervour made him busy with the uncannily complicated inner workings of the lock, and he did not trouble any more about the pain. He blew upon the quadridentate miracle in steel which responded to the diamond hilt—he blew into the hollows of the heart to dispel the cobwebbings. They were so very old that they resolved into grey and vicious follicles of dust at his breath.

  He sighed at last and put the treasure down.

  ‘Yes, veritable Cellini,’ he decided, ‘and madam, as you say, of his best period.’ He drew a writing pad across the desk. ‘And now for the—ah—formalities, shall we say? They must precede any transaction, as you’ll agree, madam. Might I have your card, and you can tell me anything you know of this girdle’s previous history?’

  The elderly lady deliberately squashed her stramonium cigarette on mahogany belonging to Messrs Blayne, Ridley and Cowperthwaite.

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Blayne, but I cannot answer either question. What is to be learned of the chiavacuore’s history you must discover from other sources. And my name won’t convey anything to you—I do not intend to give it. All I want to do is to sell the piece at the best possible price.’

  Although it cut Mr Blayne to the quick, he got to his feet and pushed the jewelled girdle across the desk.

  ‘The firm of Blayne, Ridley and Cowperthwaite never buy blind, madam. I, too, am sorry, but I must ask you to take this to some less scrupulous or more careless firm—’

  ‘A moment, Mr Blayne,’ the elderly lady squeaked at last. ‘Give me a moment, if you please. Perhaps you haven’t stopped to consider that there might be reasons of gravest policy underlying my apparent brusquerie. I am in no immediate hurry. Keep the girdle as long as you like; let your partners examine it and assess it … Make what inquiries you wish, and where you wish.’ Her head nodded almost sorrowfully, certainly reproachfully. ‘That ought to suffice, instead of my name and so forth, oughtn’t it?’

  ‘I really don’t care to …’

  ‘Do as I suggest, Mr Blayne.’ The lady was shrill and headlong in her pleading. ‘Please do—when you’ve decided to buy or not to buy, put an advertisement in the personal column of the Times newspaper—merely “Cellini, call”, and I’ll come here again for your attention.’

  My Lionel Blayne looked up, puzzled, yet half smiling. His austere and handsome face looked in calculating stillness above his smooth black clothing. ‘You have had all this matter pre-arranged, then?’ He was reluctant, but becoming convinced that the elderly lady hinted at the truth; that she really was in a quandary, and that the girdle was being disposed of for ‘reasons of policy’. ‘Dear me, it’s—it’s all so very odd and unconventional, but you know, I’m half inclined to take you at your word, madam.’

  ‘By all means do so.’ Now the elderly lady rose, and she spoke in a tune of words, fascinating. ‘I do not want to waste any more of your time—all I ask is that you will accept my position and be so kind as to—help me out in the way I suggest.’ She laughed gently and winningly. ‘I hope you don’t think I’ve come by the girdle dishonestly—’

  ‘Oh, no! My dear madam. No!’ That little laughter had tipped the beam. ‘Of course not!’ Mr Blayne touched his teeth with the forefinger he had cut—very strange how it pained him. ‘I think I will do as you ask. Tell me, what’s that message again?’

  ‘“Cellini, call”, that’s all that is necessary.’ The elderly lady pulled her tippet closer to her dun-coloured shoulders. ‘Only one more thing, Mr Blayne.’ The jeweller raises his grey eyebrows and waited. ‘Might I see you put the girdle away? Frankly, it’s not my sole responsibility. I will have to recount to someone else every incident of this interview. I cannot very well say I came away and left the girdle lying on your desk. Then, if you’ll be so good, I shall have to have a receipt.’

  ‘Why, certainly—certainly, my dear madam.’ Blayne was fully convinced at last, hence indulgent. ‘You are in the right.’ He went to the door of a big green safe and selected two keys from a bunch he took out of his pocket. ‘I shall put the piece in here for the time being and give you your receipt. Then there will be insurance—but we’ll have to talk about that later.’

  Strange, thought Mr Blayne, how throbbing was that puncture in his forefinger. It seemed to be getting worse.

  ‘Ah, yes, I’d not thought of insurance.’ This was never the silken cold and level voice of the elderly lady, Mr Lionel Blayne decided. He confusedly told himself it was the honeyed crooning of some lithe houri—a talking down, a world of feathery bliss. ‘Certainly a point to be taken into consideration.’

  Mr Blayne was able to feel his well-known keys in hand, but was not conscious of seeing them. He felt extraordinarily blithe. What the devil did seeing things after—he had that crooning and the satin crash of daffodils within the noise of spring winds for his hearing. He had a wine warmth in his body and great laughter in his mind. Who the hell cared for the damned keys he would like to know—symbols of his pruned and rigid former life. He opened the door of the big green safe without knowledge of the act. What had he to do with safes in this existence? Why bother about keys and locks and metal caverns and such, when a pavilion of Tyrian flame and bat-hour shadows welcomed him to a languorous forgetfulness …

  Queer how a faint recollection started into his mind at the thought-sound of the word ‘key’. Somewhere (he was not concerned enough to determine where and when) a woman—a rodent-mouthed creature with a leprous veil—had tried to sell him a chiavacuore, the gemmed and golden ‘heart key’ of a bride long dead and of the dust of centuries. Whoever that bride had been she surely could not have had one-tenth of the radiantly faery beauty of the one who waited for him there—among the secrecies of shade and luscious peace in this pavonine pavilion where the sound of zephyred blossoms and warm music lived.

  He would give her all she asked of him. A belt of tawdry gold? Pah!—what was that to him? Why, of course she could have it—here, he laughed and waved his hands—she might have her choice of these as well—of these diamonds and pearls and emeralds and sapphire stones … Here … Let her take them while she may.

  And she took them.

  The fantastic robbery consummated on the premises of Messrs Blayne, Ridley and Cowperthwaite, Court Jewellers, of New Bond Street, West., bade fair to become a classic when it was referred to his Britannic Majesty’s Intelligence Service, Political—the Secret Service departments. Scotland Yard had routed it curiously throughout police ‘informations’. Its classification read:

  ‘M.O. 3–2,—Query—M.O. 2–3. (Shop) Jewellery

  Midday, December 16th.

  Stolen by: Shopbreaking: Trick.

  Particulars of property: Twenty-seven unmounted diamonds, one hundred and fourteen mounted diamonds, ninety-three single unmounted sapphires, eight emeralds, two necklaces of large and graduated pearls …’

  ‘You see,’ Professor Gregory Wanless, F.R.S., gently tapped on the flimsy report and smiled across at Major Helmerdyne, ‘the police cannot make up their minds about the job. You notice that they’ve listed it “Modus Operandi”, department three, class two. Then they’ve queried it as being a “two-two” crime. They don’t know, according to that, whether it was a larceny with violence or not.’

  ‘In other words,’ Major Helmerdyne spoke lazily, ‘poor old Lionel Blayne, despite his lifetime’s integrity and standing, is suspected of complicity—what?’

  �
�I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. Still, his yarn was so fantastic that he has never been wholly admitted as non-suspect.’

  ‘I don’t follow you in your finer shades, Professor; I’m sorry. However, that to one side, what’s your opinion? You’ve had tons of time to go through those reports,’ he indicated the complete dossier of the case, ‘and what have you to suggest?’

  Professor Wanless looked around his cosy chamber. Its dim lighting and serried books rather overawed Helmerdyne, the man of action. Wanless found it all an inspiration.

  ‘In my considered opinion, Helmerdyne, Mr Blayne had told the truth, and nothing but the truth. Think of the agony of mind he must have endured when he had to retail to smug and hard-headed police officers all the sensuous traffic of his Ming which held him impotent while the actual theft was committed. If he were inventing surely he would not have chosen such a peculiar line? I’m not going to labour the point—I accept it as cold truth, therefore my basis.’

  ‘Of course he had credence for his tale at first while his finger was poisoned—’

  ‘Admittedly. That’s certainly quite a boggle in one’s path, as I recognise. Naturally the theory arose that a subtle poison the needle-tip of that pip of a diamond, that scimitar hilt, had affected his mind … a Borgia touch which rendered him incapable for the time being. But when it was proved that no poison was in his blood-stream, despite the appearance of the finger, the theory simply had to collapse.’

  ‘Granted.’ Helmerdyne sat back and closed his eyes. ‘I take it that you are working down, by process of elimination, to arrive at the cause of his state of mind.’

  ‘I am. The stramonium cigarette was the next item to be considered. As the woman had pressed it out in the mahogany top of the desk the fused varnish held quite enough ash for analysis. Stramonium and nothing else—bang goes any theory of hashish or opium drugging by inhalation.’

  ‘Oh, that’s cut out, don’t you agree, by the fact that the sinister dame smoked the cigarette herself … Doesn’t it follow that she would have been the one to suffer had it contained a powerful hypnotic and opiate drug?’

  Professor Wanless smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Not at all, my dear fellow—not at all! It’s far too complicated and wearing a subject to go into now, but it is quite possible for an habitual opiate smoker to be immune from fumes sufficiently potent to render a non-indulgent person, chancing to inhale them, unconscious. Take that as read and by the same token rid your mind of any suspicion attaching to that medicinal cigarette.’

  ‘It’s hard to accomplish. By closing down the avenues of the poisoned gem theory, and the drugged smoke theory, one is left, comparatively speaking, helpless.’

  ‘On the contrary, Helmerdyne, one is helped tremendously. Lionel Blayne was doped. He was suddenly possessed by a devil of a morality which confused his brain to its temporary ruin. That woman deliberately chose that one hour of the Bond Street day to make certain she would only have one victim to subdue. I believe her fantastic dress was also as deliberately chosen …

  ‘You mustn’t lose sight of the fact that she was a caricature. She had transgressed the bounds of mere eccentricity. Nor must you forget those medical students were holding a rag which provided her with a background of uncommonly useful kind. She was effaced, in general incongruity, by her particular—disguise.’ Wanless shot out the word. ‘It was only that—a perfect and baffling disguise.’

  ‘All right, have your way, Professor.’ Major Helmerdyne shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re eliminating to zero, aren’t you? What’s going to be left to work on?’

  ‘Loads of stuff! Good heavens, Helmerdyne, you don’t mean to tell me you’re exhausted of data already?’

  ‘Carry on!’ Helmerdyne laughed. ‘Take your pretty triumph, Wanless! I’m exhausted … what have you still in hand?’

  Professor Wanless fiddled with the papers of the dossier. He withdrew a water-coloured representation of a heraldic crest.

  ‘Here, have a look at this,’ he advised. ‘That’s from the College of Heralds—the armorial bearings of the family which once owned the chiavacuore, my lad.’

  Helmerdyne discarded his careless and listless attitude. He stifled an exclamation and sat bolt upright. His eyes shone, and once again he was caught in that thrill of admiration he held for this subtle master of intelligence work—Professor Gregory Wanless, sometime professor of physics and reader in natural philosophy …

  ‘Damn it!’ He took the Whatman paper from the scientist. ‘Are you going to swoozle us all again, Professor?’ Wanless chuckled and coughed. ‘I’m all agog, but I can’t make much out of this—whose crest is it?’

  ‘It is the crest of a girl of 15 years of age who proudly, let us hope, snapped that chiavacuore from the workshops of the master, Cellini, around her waist … on her marriage morning—on October the fourth, fifteen-hundred and fifty-five.’

  ‘The devil!’ Helmerdyne had difficulty in remaining in his chair. ‘You’re not going to tell me next that you’ve trodden out the history of that—that girdle?’

  ‘I’m afraid I had to,’ Wanless quietly stated. ‘It was definitely necessary.’

  ‘But—but how? Hang it all, man, it baffled the whole blessed guild of goldsmiths, let alone Museum people and what-not!’

  ‘Most of them forgot,’ Wanless cryptically and slowly murmured; ‘the world is very wide and also rather old. And, I’m afraid, hardly one of them paused to consider the sentimental side of the history of any chiavacuore—not this one in particular. I would also wager that none of them paid the slightest heed to Blayne’s signed statement to the effect that it’s “skin” showed by oxygeneous inference a century of negligence.

  ‘The sentiment I speak of has it that to allow the bridal girdle of an ancestress to pass out of the keeping of a family is a deadly and fateful thing. Working on that supposition I granted myself that this chiavacuore, out of its sheer perfection and unknown history, must have belonged to a family of tremendous rank and wealth and exclusiveness, suddenly—or, rather recently—suffered in fortune. I postulated an Italian family.

  ‘You see I couldn’t get out of my mind Blayne’s report of the woman’s placing on the girdle—“after Cellini’s return from the foreign Court” and “in the hey-day of Cosimo the First”. Now, the woman wanted to show Blayne she knew as much of the piece as he could tell her. Natural vanity … but it led me to go into matters deeply. Cellini went to Florence from the French Court in fifteen-hundred and fifty-five, to be under the patronage of the Medicis, and to work for Cosimo.

  ‘Thinking of the Medicis, I remembered the heart and the jewel-jilted scimitar. A little research and I was made aware of an amazing fact: Here, in the girdle clasp, was the ornate heart of the Medici family crest, cloven by an alien scimitar—undoubtedly the crest of some other great house. Records again, Helmerdyne—records again. Soon I struck a charge of arms, where the escutcheon of Medici was impaled with the arms of another family; a natural heraldic ordinance to portray legitimate marriage.

  ‘Here I had working space. I traced a marriage of the date I have mentioned: a Medici girl with a foreign prince. I investigated the result of the union. Only one member of descending family survives—a man. Now I was in a fix. Recalling the doom which is supposed to fall on anyone selling or otherwise disposing of a chiavacuore—even allowing it to go out of personal possession for one hour—I had to argue that the visitor to Blayne’s shop on December the sixteenth—was that man!’

  ‘Oh, no!—no!—no! Wanless! Why, hang it all, that’s impossible! Hasn’t Blayne sworn to the moles and the slight hairs of the upper lip and the voice of an ugly elderly woman? Going by the book there can’t be any doubt about that!’

  ‘Mr Blayne, like the majority of us, is used to dealing with mankind in the ordinary. The fellow I have in mind is one of the most extraordinary persons alive today. He is of the wrong century; all wrong, in fact.’ Wanless regarded his cigar and once again glanced at the clock. �
��He is completely atavistic; a throwback to his Medici ancestry. He is delicately made yet exceptionally strong. He suffers from the historic Medici asthma and has the double voice of the breed—the man’s bass and the woman’s shrill treble—recall that from olden history, too.

  ‘Our suspect has had an extraordinary career as well. When he hasn’t been big game hunting he’s used up his peculiar energy in trekking the hinterlands of Borneo and the Fiji Islands. He knows a lot about—the hinterlands of Fiji …’

  Wanless broke off; the telephone had buzzed. He picked up the handpiece and held a quiet conversation with the downstairs offices. He smiled at length and turned to Major Helmerdyne.

  ‘Mr Lionel Blayne to see me, Helmerdyne. A man with a sense of punctuality. Dead on time.’ Again he troubled himself with inserts to the dossier of the strange case. ‘I won’t keep him long.’

  Mr Blayne had aged. His kindly and ascetic face had thickened and coarsened a little. His eyes were very dull and weary. But they did not remain so long after Wanless handed to him a photograph taken from the dossier.

  ‘You’ll notice I’ve done some tinkering with that, Mr Blayne—such as drawing a toque-shaped hat for its head, a pair of drop earrings and a pair of pince-nez. But tell me, do you recognise the general ensemble with some certainty?’

  There was no mistaking the effect the likeness had on Mr Blayne. He shot up in his place and went purple.

  ‘This is she,’ he shouted. ‘This is the woman—’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Blayne.’ The Professor carefully retrieved the card and as carefully filed it away. ‘Now sit down and don’t get so flurried. I believe we are on the verge of recovering your lost property, so it behoves you to be calm. My next question is equally simple.’ Blayne sat down again and regained his normal composure. ‘You state here,’ Wanless put on his spectacles and found the place, ‘that you found spiders’ webbing in the heart lock of this chiavacuore. Is that adhered to?’