Unnatural Death

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  “Probably gone already,” said Wimsey. “She could easily have left England on the Monday or Tuesday and nobody a penny the wiser. If the coast had seemed clear, she’d have come back and taken possession of her goods again. Now she’ll stay abroad. That’s all.”

  “I’m very much afraid you’re right,” agreed Parker, gloomily.

  “Meanwhile, what is Mrs. Forrest doing?”

  “Behaving quite normally. She’s been carefully shadowed, of course, but not interfered with in any way. We’ve got three men out there now—one as a coster—one as a dear friend of the hall-porter’s who drops in every so often with racing tips, and an odd-job man doing a spot of work in the back-yard. They report that she has been in and out, shopping and so on, but mostly having her meals at home. No one has called. The men deputed to shadow her away from the flat have watched carefully to see if she speaks to anyone or slips money to anyone. We’re pretty sure the two haven’t met yet.”

  “Excuse me, sir.” An officer put his head in at the door. “Here’s Lord Peter Wimsey’s man, sir, with an urgent message.”

  Bunter entered, trimly correct in bearing, but with a glitter in his eye. He laid down two photographs on the table.

  “Excuse me, my lord and gentlemen, but would you be so good as to cast your eyes on these two photographs?”

  “Finger-prints?” said the Chief, interrogatively.

  “One of them is our own official photograph of the prints on the £10,000 cheque,” said Parker. “The other—where did you get this, Bunter? It looks like the same set of prints, but it’s not one of ours.”

  “They appeared similar, sir, to my uninstructed eye. I thought it better to place the matter before you.”

  “Send Dewsby here,” said the Chief Commissioner.

  Dewsby was the head of the finger-print department, and he had no hesitation at all.

  “They are undoubtedly the same prints,” he said.

  A light was slowly breaking in on Wimsey.

  “Bunter—did these come off that wine-glass?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “But they are Mrs. Forrest’s!”

  “So I understood you to say, my lord, and I have filed them under that name.”

  “Then, if the signature on the cheque is genuine—”

  “We haven’t far to look for our bird,” said Parker, brutally. “A double identity; damn the woman, she’s made us waste a lot of time. Well, I think we shall get her now, on the Findlater murder at least, and possibly on the Gotobed business.”

  “But I understood there was an alibi for that,” said the Chief.

  “There was,” said Parker, grimly, “but the witness was the girl that’s just been murdered. Looks as though she had made up her mind to split and was got rid of.”

  “Looks as though several people had had a near squeak of it,” said Wimsey.

  “Including you. That yellow hair was a wig, then.”

  “Probably. It never looked natural, you know. When I was there that night she had on one of those close turban affairs—she might have been bald for all one could see.”

  “Did you notice the scar on the fingers of the right hand?”

  “I did not—for the very good reason that her fingers were stiff with rings to the knuckles. There was pretty good sense behind her ugly bad taste. I suppose I was to be drugged—or, failing that, caressed into slumber and then—shall we say, put out of circulation! Highly distressin’ incident. Amorous clubman dies in a flat. Relations very anxious to hush matter up. I was selected, I suppose, because I was seen with Evelyn Cropper at Liverpool. Bertha Gotobed got the same sort of dose, too, I take it. Met by old employer, accidentally, on leaving work—£5 note and nice little dinner—lashings of champagne—poor kid as drunk as a blind fiddler—bundled into the car—finished off there and trundled out to Epping in company with a ham sandwich and a bottle of Bass. Easy, ain’t it—when you know how?”

  “That being so,” said the Chief Commissioner, “the sooner we get hold of her the better. You’d better go at once, Inspector; take a warrant for Whittaker or Forrest—and any help you may require.”

  “May I come?” asked Wimsey, when they were outside the building.

  “Why not? You may be useful. With the men we’ve got there already we shan’t need any extra help.”

  The car whizzed swiftly through Pall Mall, up St. James’s Street and along Piccadilly. Half-way up South Audley Street they passed the fruit-seller, with whom Parker exchanged an almost imperceptible signal. A few doors below the entrance to the flats they got out and were almost immediately joined by the hall-porter’s sporting friend.

  “I was just going out to call you up,” said the latter. “She’s arrived.”

  “What, the Whittaker woman?”

  “Yes. Went up about two minutes ago.”

  “Is Forrest there too?”

  “Yes. She came in just before the other woman.”

  “Queer,” said Parker. “Another good theory gone west. Are you sure it’s Whittaker?”

  “Well, she’s made up with old-fashioned clothes and greyish hair and so on. But she’s the right height and general appearance. And she’s running the old blue-spectacle stunt again. I think it’s the right one—though of course I didn’t get close to her, remembering your instructions.”

  “Well, we’ll have a look, anyhow. Come along.”

  The coster had joined them now, and they all entered together.

  “Did the old girl go up to Forrest’s flat all right?” asked the third detective of the porter.

  “That’s right. Went straight to the door and started something about a subscription. Then Mrs. Forrest pulled her in quick and slammed the door. Nobody’s come down since.”

  “Right. We’ll take ourselves up—and mind you don’t let anybody give us the slip by the staircase. Now then, Wimsey, she knows you as Templeton, but she may still not know for certain that you’re working with us. Ring the bell, and when the door’s opened, stick your foot inside. We’ll stand just round the corner here and be ready to rush.”

  This manœuvre was executed. They heard the bell trill loudly.

  Nobody came to answer it, however. Wimsey rang again, and then bent his ear to the door.

  “Charles,” he cried suddenly, “there’s something going on here.” His face was white. “Be quick! I couldn’t stand another—!”

  Parker hastened up and listened. Then he caught Peter’s stick and hammered on the door, so that the hollow lift-shaft echoed with the clamour.

  “Come on there—open the door—this is the police.”

  And all the time, a horrid, stealthy thumping and gurgling sounded inside—dragging of something heavy and a scuffling noise. Then a loud crash, as though a piece of furniture had been flung to the floor—and then a loud hoarse scream, cut brutally off in the middle.

  “Break in the door,” said Wimsey, the sweat pouring down his face.

  Parker signalled to the heavier of the two policemen. He came along, shoulder first, lunging. The door shook and cracked. Parker added his weight, thrusting Wimsey’s slight body into the corner. They stamped and panted in the narrow space.

  The door gave way, and they tumbled into the hall. Everything was ominously quiet.

  “Oh, quick!” sobbed Peter.

  A door on the right stood open. A glance assured them that there was nothing there. They sprang to the sitting-room door and pushed it. It opened about a foot. Something bulky impeded its progress. They shoved violently and the obstacle gave. Wimsey leapt over it—it was a tall cabinet, fallen, with broken china strewing the floor. The room bore signs of a violent struggle—tables flung down, a broken chair, a smashed lamp. He dashed for the bedroom, with Parker hard at his heels.

  The body of a woman lay limply on the bed. Her long, grizzled hair hung in a dank rope over the pillow and blood was on her head and throat. But the blood was running freely, and Wimsey could have shouted for joy at the sight. Dead men do not bleed
.

  Parker gave only one glance at the injured woman. He made promptly for the dressing-room beyond. A shot sang past his head—there was a snarl and a shriek—and the episode was over. The constable stood shaking his bitten hand, while Parker put the come-along-o’-me grip on the quarry. He recognised her readily, though the peroxide wig had fallen awry and the blue eyes were bleared with terror and fury.

  “That’ll do,” said Parker, quietly, “the game’s up. It’s not a bit of use. Come, be reasonable. You don’t want us to put the bracelets on, do you? Mary Whittaker, alias Forrest, I arrest you on the charge—” he hesitated for a moment and she saw it.

  “On what charge? What have you got against me?”

  “Of attempting to murder this lady, for a start,” said Parker.

  “The old fool!” she said, contemptuously, “she forced her way in here and attacked me. Is that all?”

  “Very probably not,” said Parker, “I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence at your trial.”

  Indeed, the third officer had already produced a notebook and was imperturbably writing down: “When told the charge, the prisoner said ‘Is that all?’ ” The remark evidently struck him as an injudicious one, for he licked his pencil with an air of satisfaction.

  “Is the lady all right—who is it?” asked Parker, coming back to a survey of the situation.

  “It’s Miss Climpson—God knows how she got here. I think she’s all right, but she’s had a rough time.”

  He was anxiously sponging her head as he spoke, and at that moment her eyes opened.

  “Help!” said Miss Climpson, confusedly. “The syringe—you shan’t—oh!” She struggled feebly, and then recognised Wimsey’s anxious face. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, “Lord Peter. Such an upset. Did you get my letter? Is it all right? … Oh, dear! What a state I’m in. I—that woman—”

  “Now, don’t worry, Miss Climpson,” said Wimsey, much relieved, “everything’s quite all right and you mustn’t talk. You must tell us about it later.”

  “What was that about a syringe?” said Parker, intent on his case.

  “She’d got a syringe in her hand,” panted Miss Climpson, trying to sit up, and fumbling with her hands over the bed. “I fainted, I think—such a struggle—and something hit me on the head. And I saw her coming at me with the thing. And I knocked it out of her hand and I can’t remember what happened afterwards. But I have remarkable vitality,” said Miss Climpson, cheerfully. “My dear father always used to say ‘Climpsons take a lot of killing’!”

  Parker was groping on the floor.

  “Here you are,” said he. In his hand was a hypodermic syringe.

  “She’s mental, that’s what she is,” said the prisoner. “That’s only the hypodermic I use for my injections when I get neuralgia. There’s nothing in that.”

  “That is quite correct,” said Parker, with a significant nod at Wimsey. “There is—nothing in it.”

  On the Tuesday night, when the prisoner had been committed for trial on the charges of murdering Bertha Gotobed and Vera Findlater, and attempting to murder Alexandra Climpson, Wimsey dined with Parker. The former was depressed and nervous.

  “The whole thing’s been beastly,” he grumbled. They had sat up discussing the case into the small hours.

  “Interesting,” said Parker, “interesting. I owe you seven and six, by the way. We ought to have seen through that Forrest business earlier, but there seemed no real reason to suspect the Findlater girl’s word as to the alibi. These mistaken loyalties make a lot of trouble.

  “I think the thing that put us off was that it all started so early. There seemed no reason for it, but looking back on Trigg’s story it’s as plain as a pike-staff. She took a big risk with that empty house, and she couldn’t always expect to find empty houses handy to do away with people in. The idea was, I suppose, to build up a double identity, so that, if Mary Whittaker was ever suspected of anything, she could quietly disappear and become the frail but otherwise innocent Mrs. Forrest. The real slip-up was forgetting to take back that £5 note from Bertha Gotobed. If it hadn’t been for that, we might never have known anything about Mrs. Forrest. It must have rattled her horribly when we turned up there. After that, she was known to the police in both her characters. The Findlater business was a desperate attempt to cover up her tracks—and it was bound to fail, because it was so complicated.”

  “Yes. But the Dawson murder was beautiful in its ease and simplicity.”

  “If she had stuck to that and left well alone, we could never have proved anything. We can’t prove it now, which is why I left it off the charge-sheet. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more greedy and heartless murderer. She probably really thought that anyone who inconvenienced her had no right to exist.”

  “Greedy and malicious. Fancy tryin’ to shove the blame on poor old Hallelujah. I suppose he’d committed the unforgivable sin of askin’ her for money.”

  “Well, he’ll get it, that’s one good thing. The pit digged for Cousin Hallelujah has turned into a gold-mine. That £10,000 cheque has been honoured. I saw to that first thing, before Whittaker could remember to try and stop it. Probably she couldn’t have stopped it anyway, as it was duly presented last Saturday.”

  “Is the money legally hers?”

  “Of course it is. We know it was gained by a crime, but we haven’t charged her with the crime, so that legally no such crime was committed. I’ve not said anything to Cousin Hallelujah, of course, or he mightn’t like to take it. He thinks it was sent him in a burst of contrition, poor old dear.”

  “So Cousin Hallelujah and all the little Hallelujahs will be rich. That’s splendid. How about the rest of the money? Will the Crown get it after all?”

  “No. Unless she wills it to someone, it will go to the Whittaker next-of-kin—a first cousin, I believe, called Allcock. A very decent fellow, living in Birmingham. That is,” he added, assailed by sudden doubt, “if first cousins do inherit under this confounded Act.”

  “Oh, I think first cousins are safe,” said Wimsey, “though nothing seems safe nowadays. Still, dash it all, some relations must still be allowed a look-in, or what becomes of the sanctity of family life? If so, that’s the most cheering thing about the beastly business. Do you know, when I rang up that man Carr and told him all about it, he wasn’t a bit interested or grateful. Said he’d always suspected something like that, and he hoped we weren’t going to rake it all up again, because he’d come into that money he told us about and was setting up for himself in Harley Street, so he didn’t want any more scandals.”

  “I never did like that man. I’m sorry for Nurse Philliter.”

  “You needn’t be. I put my foot in it again over that. Carr’s too grand to marry a nurse now—at least, I fancy that’s what it is. Anyway, the engagement’s off. And I was so pleased at the idea of playing Providence to two deserving young people,” added Wimsey, pathetically.

  “Dear, dear! Well, the girl’s well out of it. Hullo! there’s the phone. Who on earth—? Some damned thing at the Yard, I suppose. At three ack emma! Who’d be a policeman?—Yes?—Oh!—right, I’ll come round. The case has gone west, Peter.”

  “How?”

  “Suicide. Strangled herself with a sheet. I’d better go round, I suppose.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “An evil woman, if ever there was one,” said Parker, softly, as they looked at the rigid body, with its swollen face and the deep, red ring about the throat.

  Wimsey said nothing. He felt cold and sick. While Parker and the Governor of the prison made the necessary arrangements and discussed the case, he sat hunched unhappily upon his chair. Their voices went on and on interminably. Six o’clock had struck some time before they rose to go. It reminded him of the eight strokes of the clock which announce the running-up of the black and hideous flag.

  As the gate clanged open to let them out, they stepped into a wan and awful darkness. The June day had risen long
ago, but only a pale and yellowish gleam lit the half-deserted streets. And it was bitterly cold and raining.

  “What is the matter with the day?” said Wimsey. “Is the world coming to an end?”

  “No,” said Parker, “it is the eclipse.”

  GENEALOGICAL TABLE FOLLOWS

  A Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers

  Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was a playwright, scholar, and acclaimed author of mysteries, best known for her books starring the gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. The Los Angeles Times hailed Sayers as “one of the greatest mystery story writers of [the twentieth] century.”

  Born in Oxford, England, she was the only child of Reverend Henry Sayers, headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School and then rector of Bluntisham village. Sayers grew up in the Bluntisham rectory, then won a scholarship to Oxford University, where she studied modern languages and worked at the publishing house Blackwell’s, which in 1916 published Op. 1, Sayers’ first book of poetry.

  In 1922 Sayers took a job as a copywriter for London advertising firm S. H. Benson, forerunner to the famous Ogilvy & Mather. There she created several popular slogans and campaigns, including the iconic, animal-theme Guinness advertisements that are still used today.

  While working as a copywriter, Sayers began work on Whose Body? (1923), a mystery novel featuring dapper detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Over the next two decades, Sayers published ten more Wimsey novels and several short stories, crafting a character whose complexity was unusual for the mystery novels of the time. Handsome, brave, and charming, Wimsey has a few defining flaws, including his tendency to prattle, fear of responsibility, and perpetual nervousness caused by shell shock inflicted during World War I. Sayers once described him as a cross between Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. Her writing was praised by fellow mystery writers Ruth Rendell and P. D. James; James said that Sayers “brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.”

  Set between the two World Wars, the Wimsey novels are more than typical manor-house mysteries. Sayers used her knowledge of various topics—including advertising, women’s education, and veterans’ health—to give her books realistic details. In 1936, she brought Wimsey to the stage in Busman’s Honeymoon, a story which Sayers would publish as a novel the following year. The play was so successful that she gave up mystery writing to focus on the stage, producing a series of religious works culminating in The Man Born to Be King (1941), a radio drama about the life of Jesus.