“They’re being married to-morrow,” he said, “special licence. I say, that’s not to go further, Sally.”
“That’s all right, old man.”
“Married?” said Parker. “Good lord! that forces our hand a bit. Perhaps I’d better pop off. So long — and thanks very much for the tip, old man.”
Wimsey followed him into the street.
“We’ll have to put the stopper on this marriage business, quick,” said Parker, madly waving to a taxi, which swooped past and ignored him. “I didn’t want to move just at present, because I wasn’t ready, but it’ll be the devil and all if the Rushworth girl gets hitched up to Penberthy and we can’t take her evidence. Devil of it is, if she’s determined to go on with it, we can’t stop it without arresting Penberthy. Very dangerous, when there’s no real proof. I think we’d better have him down to the Yard for interrogation and detain him.”
“Yes,” said Wimsey. “But — look here, Charles.”
A taxi drew up.
“What?” said Parker, sharply, with his foot on the step. “I can’t wait, old man. What is it?”
“I — look here, Charles — this is all wrong,” pleaded Wimsey. “You may have got the right solution, but the working of the sum’s all wrong. Same as mine used to be at school, when I’d looked up the answer in the crib and had to fudge in the middle part. I’ve been a fool. I ought to have known about Penberthy. But I don’t believe this story about bribing and corrupting him, and getting him to do the murder. It doesn’t fit.”
“Doesn’t fit what?”
“Doesn’t fit the portrait. Or the books. Or the way Nurse Armstrong described Ann Dorland. Or your description of her. It’s a mechanically perfect explanation, but I swear it’s all wrong.”
“If it’s mechanically perfect,” said Parker, “that’s good enough. It’s far more than most explanations are. You’ve got that portrait on the brain. It’s because you’re artistic, I suppose.”
For some reason, the word “artistic” produces the most alarming reactions in people who know anything about art.
“Artistic be damned!” said Wimsey, spluttering with fury, “it’s because I’m an ordinary person, and have met women, and talked to them like ordinary human beings.”
“You and your women,” said Parker, rudely.
“Well — I and my women, what about it? One learns something. You’re on the wrong tack about this girl.”
“I’ve met her and you haven’t,” objected Parker. “Unless you’re suppressing something. You keep on hinting things. Anyhow, I’ve met the girl, and she impressed me as being guilty.”
“And I haven’t met her, and I’ll swear she isn’t guilty.”
“You must know, of course.”
“I do happen to know about this.”
“I’m afraid your unsupported opinion will hardly be sufficient to refute the weight of evidence.”
“You haven’t any real evidence, if it comes to that. You don’t know that they were ever alone together; you don’t know that Ann Dorland knew about the will; you can’t prove that Penberthy administered the poison—”
“I don’t despair of getting all the evidence necessary,” said Parker, coldly, “provided you don’t keep me here all day.” He slammed the taxi-door.
“What a beast of a case this is,” thought Wimsey. “That makes two silly, sordid rows to-day. Well, what next?” He considered a moment.
“My spirit needs soothing,” he decided. “Feminine society is indicated. Virtuous feminine society. No emotions. I’ll go and have tea with Marjorie Phelps.”
Chapter XX
Ann Dorland Goes Misere
The studio door was opened by a girl he did not know. She was not tall, but compactly and generously built. He noticed the wide shoulders and the strong swing of the thighs before he had taken in her face. The uncurtained window behind her threw her features into shadow, he was only aware of thick black hair, cut in a square bob, with a bang across the forehead.
“Miss Phelps is out.”
“Oh! — will she be long?”
“Don’t know. She’ll be in to supper.”
“Do you think I might come in and wait?”
“I expect so, if you’re a friend of hers.”
The girl fell back from the doorway and let him pass. He laid his hat and stick on the table and turned to her. She took no notice of him, but walked over to the fireplace and stood with one hand on the mantelpiece. Unable to sit down, since she was still standing, Wimsey moved to the modelling-board, and raised the wet cloth that covered the little mound of clay.
He was gazing with an assumption of great interest at the half-modelled figure of an old flower-seller, when the girl said:
“I say!”
She had taken up Marjorie Phelps’ figurine of himself, and was twisting it over in her fingers.
“Is this you?”
“Yes — rather good of me, don’t you think?”
“What do you want?”
“Want?”
“You’ve come here to have a look at me, haven’t you?”
“I came to see Miss Phelps.”
“I suppose the policeman at the corner comes to see Miss Phelps too.”
Wimsey glanced out of the window.
There was a man at the corner — an elaborately indifferent lounger.
“I am sorry,” said Wimsey, with sudden enlightenment. “I’m really awfully sorry to seem so stupid, and so intrusive. But honestly, I had no idea who you were till this moment.”
“Hadn’t you? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Shall I go?”
“You can please yourself.”
“If you really mean that, Miss Dorland, I should like to stay. I’ve been wanting to meet you, you know.”
“That was nice of you,” she mocked. “First you wanted to defraud me, and now you’re trying to—”
“To what?”
She shrugged her wide shoulders.
“Yours is not a pleasant hobby. Lord Peter Wimsey.”
“Will you believe me,” said Wimsey, “when I assure you that I was never a party to the fraud. In fact, I showed it up. I did, really.”
“Oh, well. It doesn’t matter now.”
“But do please believe that.”
“Very well. If you say so, I must believe it.”
She threw herself on the couch near the fire.
“That’s better,” said Wimsey. “Napoleon or somebody said that you could always turn a tragedy into a comedy, by sittin’ down. Perfectly true, isn’t it? Let’s talk about something ordinary till Miss Phelps comes in. Shall we?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, well — that’s rather embarrassin’. Books.” He waved a vague hand. “What have you been readin’ lately?”
“Nothing much.”
“Don’t know what I should do without books. Fact, I always wonder what people did in the old days. Just think of it. All sorts of bothers goin’ on — matrimonial rows and love-affairs — prodigal sons and servants and worries — and no books to turn to.”
“People worked with their hands instead.”
“Yes — that’s frightfully jolly for the people who can do it. I envy them myself. You paint, don’t you?”
“I try to.”
“Portraits?”
“Oh, no — figure and landscape chiefly.”
“Oh!.. A friend of mine — well, it’s no use disguising it — he’s a detective — you’ve met him, I think…”
“That man? Oh, yes. Quite a polite sort of detective.”
“He told me he’d seen some stuff of yours. It rather surprised him, I think. He’s not exactly a modernist. He seemed to think your portraits were your best work.”
“There weren’t many portraits. A few figure-studies…”
“They worried him a bit.” Wimsey laughed. “The only thing he understood, he said, was a man’s head in oils…”
“Oh, that! — just
an experiment — a fancy thing. My best stuff is some sketches I did of the Wiltshire Downs a year or two ago. Direct painting, without any preliminary sketch.”
She described a number of these works.
“They sound ever so jolly,” said Wimsey. “Great stuff. I wish I could do something of that kind. As I say, I have to fall back on books for my escape. Reading is an escape to me. Is it to you?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well — it is to most people, I think. Servants and factory hands read about beautiful girls loved by dark, handsome men, all covered over with jewels and moving in scenes of gilded splendour. And passionate spinsters read Ethel M. Dell. And dull men in offices read detective stories. They wouldn’t, if murder and police entered into their lives.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “When Crippen and Le Neve were taken on the steamer, they were reading Edgar Wallace.” Her voice was losing its dull harshness; she sounded almost interested.
“Le Neve was reading it,” said Wimsey, “but I’ve never believed she knew about the murder. I think she was fighting desperately to know nothing about it — reading horrors, and persuading herself that nothing of that kind had happened, or could happen, to her. I think one might do that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Ann Dorland. “Of course, a detective story keeps your brain occupied. Rather like chess. Do you play chess?”
“No good at it. I like it — but I keep on thinking about the history of the various pieces, and the picturesqueness of the moves. So I get beaten. I’m not a player.”
“Nor am I. I wish I were.”
“Yes — that would keep one’s mind off things with a vengeance. Draughts or dominoes or patience would be even better. No connection with anything. I remember,” added Wimsey, “one time when something perfectly grinding and hateful had happened to me. I played patience all day. I was in a nursing home — with shell shock — and other things. I only played one game, the very simplest… the demon… a silly game with no ideas in it at all. I just went on laying it out and gathering it up… hundred times in an evening… so as to stop thinking.”
“Then you too…”
Wimsey waited; but she did not finish the sentence.
“It’s a kind of drug, of course. That’s an awfully trite thing to say, but it’s quite true.”
“Yes, quite.”
“I read detective stories too. They were about the only thing I could read. All the others had the war in them — or love…or some damn thing I didn’t want to think about.”
She moved restlessly.
“You’ve been through it, haven’t you?” said Wimsey, gently.
“Me?… well… all this… it isn’t pleasant, you know… the police… and… and everything.”
“You’re not really worried about the police, are you?”
She had cause to be, if she only knew it, but he buried this knowledge at the bottom of his mind, defying it to show itself.
“Everything’s pretty hateful, isn’t it?”
“Something’s hurt you… all right… don’t talk about it if you don’t want to… a man?”
“It usually is a man, isn’t it?”
Her eyes were turned away from him and she answered with a kind of shamefaced defiance.
“Practically always,” said Wimsey. “Fortunately, one gets over it.”
“Depends on what it is.”
“One gets over everything,” repeated Wimsey, firmly. “Particularly if one tells somebody about it.”
“One can’t always tell things.”
“I can’t imagine anything really untellable.”
“Some things are so beastly.”
“Oh, yes — quite a lot of things. Birth is beastly — and death — and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what’s happening inside me to a beautiful suprème de sole, with the caviare in boats, and the croûtons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets — I could cry. But there it is, don’t you know.”
Ann Dorland suddenly laughed.
“That’s better,” said Wimsey. “Look here, you’ve been brooding over this and you’re seeing it all out of proportion. Let’s be practical and frightfully ordinary. Is it a baby?”
“Oh, no!”
“Well — that’s rather a good thing, because babies, though no doubt excellent in their way, take a long time and come expensive. Is it blackmail?”
“Good heavens, no!”
“Good. Because blackmail is even longer and more expensive than babies. Is it Freudian, or sadistic, or any of those popular modern amusements?”
“I don’t believe you’d turn a hair if it was.”
“Why should I? — I can’t think of anything worse to suggest, except what Rose Macaulay refers to as ‘nameless orgies.’ Or diseases, of course. It’s not leprosy or anything?”
“What a mind you’ve got,” she said, beginning to laugh. “No, it isn’t leprosy.”
“Well, what did the blighter do?”
Ann Dorland smiled faintly: “It’s nothing, really.”
“If only Heaven prevents Marjorie Phelps from coming in,” thought Wimsey, “I’m going to get it now… It must have been something, to upset you like this,” he pursued aloud, “you’re not the kind of woman to be upset about nothing.”
“You don’t think I am?” She got up and faced him squarely. “He said… he said… I imagined things… he said… he said I had a mania about sex. I suppose you would call it Freudian, really,” she added hastily, flushing an ugly crimson.
“Is that all?” said Wimsey. “I know plenty of people who would take that as a compliment… But obviously you don’t. What exact form of mania did he suggest…?”
“Oh, the gibbering sort that hangs round church doors for curates,” she broke out, fiercely. “It’s a lie. He did — he did—pretend to — want me and all that. The beast!.. I can’t tell you the things he said… and I’d made such a fool of myself…”
She was back on the couch, crying, with large, ugly, streaming tears, and snorting into the cushions. Wimsey sat down beside her.
“Poor kid,” he said. This, then, was at the back of Marjorie’s mysterious hints, and those scratch-cat sneers of Naomi Rushworth’s. The girl had wanted love-affairs, that was certain; imagined them perhaps. There had been Ambrose Ledbury. Between the normal and the abnormal, the gulf is deep, but so narrow that misrepresentation is made easy.”
“Look here.” He put a comforting arm round Ann’s heaving shoulders. “This fellow — was it Penberthy, by the way?”
“How did you know?”
“Oh! — the portrait, and lots of things. The things you liked once, and then wanted to hide away and forget. He’s a rotter, anyway, for saying that kind of thing — even if it was true, which it isn’t. You got to know him at the Rushworth’s, I take it — when?”
“Nearly two years ago.”
“Were you keen on him then?”
“No. I — well, I was keen on somebody else. Only that was a mistake too. He — he was one of those people, you know.”
“They can’t help themselves,” said Wimsey, soothingly. “When did the change-over happen?”
“The other man went away. And later on, Dr. Penberthy — oh! I don’t know! He walked home with me once or twice and then he asked me to dine with him — in Soho.”
“Had you at that time told any one about this comic will of Lady Dormer’s?”
“Of course not. How could I? I never knew anything about it till after she died.”
Her surprise sounded genuine enough.
“What did you think? Did you think the money would come to you?”
“I knew that some of it would; Auntie told me she would see me provided for.”
“There were the grandsons, of course.”
“Yes; I thought she would leave most of it to them. It’s a pity she didn’t, poor dear. Then there wouldn’t have been all this dreadful bother.”
“Pe
ople so often seem to lose their heads when they make wills. So you were a sort of dark horse at that time. H’m. Did this precious Penberthy ask you to marry him?”
“I thought he did. But he says he didn’t. We talked about founding his clinic; I was to help him.”
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