Out of this spate of words, Parker fixed on the one thing he had not heard before.
“What drops were those the Nurse gave him?”
“His own. He had them in his pocket.”
“Do you think she could possibly have given him too much? Was the quantity marked on the bottle?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea. You’d better ask her.”
“Yes, I shall want to see her, if you will kindly tell me where to find her.”
“I’ve got the address upstairs. Is that all you want?”
“I should just like, if I may, to see Lady Dormer’s room and the studio.”
“What for?”
“It’s just a matter of routine. We are under orders to see everything there is to see,” replied Parker, reassuringly.
They went upstairs. A door on the first-floor landing immediately opposite the head of the staircase led into a pleasant, lofty room, with old-fashioned bedroom furniture in it.
“This is my aunt’s room. She wasn’t really my aunt, of course, but I called her so.”
“Quite. Where does that second door lead to?”
“That’s the dressing-room. Nurse Armstrong slept there while Auntie was ill.”
Parker glanced in to the dressing-room, took in the arrangement of the bedroom and expressed himself satisfied.
She walked past him without acknowledgment while he held the door open. She was a sturdily-built girl, but moved with a languor distressing to watch — slouching, almost aggressively unalluring.
“You want to see the studio?”
“Please.”
She led the way down the six steps and along a short passage to the room which, as Parker already knew, was built out at the back over the kitchen premises. He mentally calculated the distance as he went.
The studio was large and well-lit by its glass roof. One end was furnished like a sitting-room; the other was left bare, and devoted to what Nellie called “mess.” A very ugly picture (in Parker’s opinion) stood on an easel. Other canvases were stacked round the walls. In one corner was a table covered with American cloth on which stood a gas-ring, protected by a tin plate, and a Bunsen burner.
“I’ll look up that address,” said Miss Dorland, indifferently, “I’ve got it here somewhere.”
She began to rummage in an untidy desk. Parker strolled up to the business end of the room, and explored it with eyes, nose and fingers.
The ugly picture on the easel was newly-painted; the smell told him that, and the dabs of paint on the palette were still soft and sticky. Work had been done there within the last two days, he was sure. The brushes had been stuck at random into a small pot of turpentine. He lifted them out; they were still clogged with paint. The picture itself was a landscape, he thought, roughly drawn and hot and restless in colour. Parker was no judge of art; he would have liked to get Wimsey’s opinion. He explored further. The table with the Bunsen burner was bare, but in a cupboard close by he discovered a quantity of chemical apparatus of the kind he remembered using at school. Everything had been tidily washed and stacked away. Nellie’s job, he imagined. There were a number of simple and familiar chemical substances in jars and packages, occupying a couple of shelves. They would probably have to be analyzed, he thought, to see if they were all they seemed. And what useless nonsense it all was, he thought to himself; anything suspicious would obviously have been destroyed weeks before. Still, there it was. A book in several volumes on the top shelf caught his attention: it was Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine. He took down a volume in which he noticed a paper mark. Opening it at the marked place, his eye fell upon the words: “Rigor mortis,” and, a little later on—“action of certain poisons.” He was about to read more, when he heard Miss Dorland’s voice just behind him.
“That’s all nothing,” she said, “I don’t do any of that muck now. It was just a passing craze. I paint, really. What do you think of this?” She indicated the unpleasant landscape.
Parker said it was very good.
“Are these your work, too?” he asked indicating the other canvases.
“Yes,” she said.
He turned a few of them to the light noticing at the same time how dusty they were. Nellie had scamped this bit of the work — or perhaps had been told not to touch. Miss Dorland showed a trifle more animation than she had done hitherto, while displaying her works. Landscape seemed to be rather a new departure; most of the canvases were figure-studies.
Mr. Parker thought that, on the whole, the artist had done wisely to turn to landscape. He was not well acquainted with the modern school of thought in painting, and had difficulty in expressing his opinion of these curious figures, with their faces like eggs and their limbs like rubber.
“That is the Judgment of Paris,” said Miss Dorland.
“Oh, yes,” said Parker. “And this?”
“Oh, just a study of a woman dressing, It’s not very good. I think this portrait of Mrs. Mitcham is rather decent, though.”
Parker stared aghast; it might possibly be a symbolic representation of Mrs. Mitcham’s character, for it was very hard and spiky; but it looked more like a Dutch doll, with its triangular nose, like a sharp-edged block of wood, and its eyes mere dots in an expanse of liver-coloured cheek.
“It’s not very like her,” he said, doubtfully.
“It’s not meant to be.”
“This seems better — I mean, I like this better,” said Parker, turning the next picture up hurriedly.
“Oh, that’s nothing — just a fancy head.”
Evidently this picture — the head of a rather cadaverous man, with a sinister smile and a slight cast in the eye — was despised — a Philistine backsliding, almost like a human being. It was put away, and Parker tried to concentrate his attention on a “Madonna and Child” which, to Parker’s simple evangelical mind, seemed an abominable blasphemy.
Happily, Miss Dorland soon wearied, even of her paintings, and flung them all back into the corner.
“D’you want anything else?” she demanded abruptly. “Here’s that address.”
Parker took it.
“Just one more question,” he said looking her hard in the eyes. “Before Lady Dormer died — before General Fentiman came to see her — did you know what provision she had made for you and for him in her will?”
The girl stared back at him, and he saw panic come into her eyes. It seemed to flow all over her like a wave. She clenched her hands at her sides, and her miserable eyes dropped beneath his gaze, shifting as though looking for a way out.
“Well?” said Parker.
“No!” she said. “No! of course not. Why should I?” Then, surprisingly, a dull crimson flush flooded her sallow cheeks and ebbed away, leaving her looking like death.
“Go away,” she said, furiously, “you make me sick.”
Chapter XVIII
Picture-Cards
“So I’ve put a man in and had all the things in that cupboard taken away for examination,” said Parker.
Lord Peter shook his head.
“I wish I had been there,” he said, “I should have liked to see those paintings. However—”
“They might have conveyed something to you,” said Parker, “you’re artistic. You can come along and look at them any time, of course. But it’s the time factor that’s worrying me, you know. Supposing she gave the old boy digitalin in his B and S, why should it wait all that time before working? According to the books, it ought to have popped him off in about an hour’s time. It was a biggish dose, according to Lubbock.”
“I know. I think you’re up against a snag there. That’s why I should have liked to see the pictures.”
Parker considered this apparent non sequitur for a few moments and gave it up.
“George Fentiman—” he began.
“Yes,” said Wimsey, “George Fentiman. I must be getting emotional in my old age, Charles, for I have an unconquerable dislike to examining the question of George Fentiman’s opportunities.”
“Bar Robert,” pursued Parker, ruthlessly, “he was the last interested person to see General Fentiman.”
“Yes — by the way, we have only Robert’s unsupported word for what happened in that last interview between him and the old man.”
“Come, Wimsey — you’re not going to pretend that Robert had any interest in his grandfather’s dying before Lady Dormer. On the contrary.”
“No — but he might have had some interest in his dying before he made a will. Those notes on that bit of paper. The larger share was to go to George. That doesn’t entirely agree with what Robert said. And if there was no will, Robert stood to get everything.”
“So he did. But by killing the General then, he made sure of getting nothing at all.”
“That’s the awkwardness. Unless he thought Lady Dormer was already dead. But I don’t see how he could have thought that. Or unless—”
“Well?”
“Unless he gave his grandfather a pill or something to be taken at some future time, and the old boy took it too soon by mistake.”
“That idea of a delayed-action pill is the most tiresome thing about this case. It makes almost anything possible.”
“Including, of course, the theory of its being given to him by Miss Dorland.”
“That’s what I’m going to interview the nurse about, the minute I can get hold of her. But we’ve got away from George.”
“You’re right. Let’s face George. I don’t want to, though. Like the lady in Maeterlinck who’s running round the table while her husband tries to polish her off with a hatchet, I am not gay. George is the nearest in point of time. In fact he fits very well in point of time. He parted from General Fentiman at about half-past six, and Robert found Fentiman dead at about eight o’clock. So allowing the stuff was given in a pill—”
“Which it would have to be, in a taxi,” interjected Parker.
“As you say — in a pill, which would take a bit longer to get working than the same stuff taken in solution — why then the General might quite well have been able to get to the Bellona and see Robert before collapsing.”
“Very nice. But how did George get the drug?”—
“I know, that’s the first difficulty.”
“And how did he happen to have it on him just at that time? He couldn’t possibly have known that General Fentiman would run across him just at that moment. Even if he’d known of his being at Lady Dormer’s, he couldn’t be expecting him to go from there to Harley Street.”
“He might have been carrying the stuff about with him, waiting for a good opportunity to use it. And when the old man called him up and started jawing him about his conduct and all that, he thought he’d better do the job quick, before he was cut out of the will.”
“Um! — but why should George be such a fool, then, as to admit he’d never heard about Lady Dormer’s will? If he had heard of it, we couldn’t possibly suspect him. He’d only to say the General told him about it in the taxi.”
“I suppose it hadn’t struck him in that light.”
“Then George is a bigger ass than I took him for.”
“Possibly he is,” said Parker, dryly. “At any rate, I have put a man on to make inquiries at his home.”
“Oh! have you? I say, do you know, I wish I’d left this case alone. What the deuce did it matter if old Fentiman was pushed painlessly off a bit before his time? He was simply indecently ancient.”
“We’ll see if you say that in sixty years’ time,” said Parker.
“By that time we shall, I hope be moving in different circles. I shall be in the one devoted to murderers and you in the much lower and hotter one devoted for those who tempt others to murder them. I wash my hands of this case, Charles. There’s nothing for me to do now you have come into it. It bores and annoys me. Let’s talk about something else.”
Wimsey might wash his hands, but, like Pontius Pilate, he found society irrationally determined to connect him with an irritating and unsatisfactory case.
At midnight, the telephone bell rang.
He had just gone to bed, and cursed it.
“Tell them I’m out,” he shouted to Bunter, and cursed again on hearing the man assure the unknown caller that he would see whether his lordship had returned. Disobedience in Bunter spelt urgent necessity.
“Well?”
“It is Mrs. George Fentiman, my lord; she appears to be in great distress. If your lordship wasn’t in I was to beg you to communicate with her as soon as you arrived.”
“Punk! they’re not on the ’phone.”
“No, my lord.”
“Did she say what the matter was?”
“She began by asking if Mr. George Fentiman was here, my lord.”
“Oh, Hades!”
Bunter advanced gently with his master’s dressing-gown and slippers. Wimsey thrust himself into them savagely and padded away to the telephone.
“Hallo!”
“Is that Lord Peter? — Oh, good!” The line sighed with relief — a harsh sound, like a death-rattle. “Do you know where George is?”
“No idea. Hasn’t he come home?”
“No — and I’m frightened. Some people were here this morning…”
“The police.”
“Yes… George… they found something… I can’t say it all over the ’phone… but George went off to Walmisley-Hubbard’s with the car… and they say he never came back there…and… you remember that time he was so funny before… and got lost…”
“Your six minutes are up,” boomed the voice of the Exchange, “will you have another call?”
“Yes, please… oh, don’t cut us off… wait… oh! I haven’t any more pennies… Lord Peter…”
“I’ll come round at once,” said Wimsey, with a groan.
“Oh, thank you — thank you so much!”
“I say — where’s Robert?”
“Your six minutes are up,” said the voice, finally, and the line went dead with a metallic crash.
“Get me my clothes,” said Wimsey, bitterly—“give me those loathsome and despicable rags which I hoped to have put off forever. Get me a taxi. Get me a drink. Macbeth has murdered sleep. Oh! and get me Robert Fentiman, first.”
Major Fentiman was not in town, said Woodward. He had gone back to Richmond again. Wimsey tried to get through to Richmond. After a long time, a female voice, choked with sleep and fury, replied. Major Fentiman had not come home. Major Fentiman kept very late hours. Would she give Major Fentiman a message when he did come in? Indeed she would not. She had other things to do than to stay up all night answering telephone calls and giving messages to Major Fentiman. This was the second time that night, and she had told the other party that she could not be responsible for telling Major Fentiman this, that and the other. Would she leave a note for Major Fentiman, asking him to go round to his brother’s house at once?
Well now, was it reasonable to expect her to sit up on a bitter cold night writing letters? Of course not, but this was a case of urgent illness. It would be a very great kindness. Just that — to go round to his brother’s house and say the call came from Lord Peter Wimsey.
“Who?”
“Lord Peter Wimsey.”
“Very well, sir. I beg your pardon if I was a bit short, but really—”
“You weren’t, you snobby old cat, you were infernally long,” breathed his lordship inaudibly. He thanked her and rang off.
Sheila Fentiman was anxiously waiting for him on the doorstep, so that he was saved the embarrassment of trying to remember which was the right number of rings to give. She clasped his hand eagerly as she drew him in.
“Oh! it is good of you. I’m so worried. I say, don’t make a noise, will you? They complain, you know.” She spoke in a harassed whisper.
“Blast them, let them complain,” said Wimsey, cheerfully. “Why shouldn’t you make a row when George is upset? Besides, if we whisper, they’ll think we’re no better than we ought to be. Now, my child, what’s all thi
s? You’re as cold as a pêche Melba. That won’t do. Fire half out — where’s the whisky?”
“Hush! I’m all right, really. George—”
“You’re not all right. Nor am I. As George Robey says, this getting up from my warm bed and going into the cold night air doesn’t suit me.” He flung a generous shovelful of coals on the fire and thrust the poker between the bars.
“And you’ve had no grub. No wonder you’re feeling awful.”
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