Classic Tales of Mystery

by Editors of Canterbury Classics

  “This way, gentlemen, mind the step.”

  The mortuary. Raw red brick and sizzling gas-jets. Two women in black, and Dr. Grimbold. The coffin laid on the table with a heavy thump.

  “’Ave you got that there screw-driver, Bill? Thank ’ee. Be keerful wi’ the chisel now. Not much substance to these ’ere boards, sir.”

  Several long creaks. A sob. The Duchess’s voice, kind but peremptory.

  “Hush, Christine. You mustn’t cry.”

  A mutter of voices. The lurching departure of the Dante demons—good, decent demons in corduroy.

  Dr. Grimbold’s voice—cool and detached as if in the consulting room.

  “Now—have you got that lamp, Mr. Wingate? Thank you. Yes, here on the table, please. Be careful not to catch your elbow in the flex, Mr. Levett. It would be better, I think, if you came on this side. Yes—yes—thank you. That’s excellent.”

  The sudden brilliant circle of an electric lamp over the table. Dr. Grimbold’s beard and spectacles. Mr. Levett blowing his nose. Parker bending close. The Master of the Workhouse peering over him. The rest of the room in the enhanced dimness of the gas-jets and the fog.

  A low murmur of voices. All heads bent over the work.

  Dr. Grimbold again—beyond the circle of the lamplight.

  “We don’t want to distress you unnecessarily, Lady Levy. If you will just tell us what to look for—the—? Yes, yes, certainly—and—yes—stopped with gold? Yes—the lower jaw, the last but one on the right? Yes—no teeth missing—no—yes? What kind of a mole? Yes—just over the left breast? Oh, I beg your pardon, just under—yes—appendicitis? Yes—a long one—yes—in the middle? Yes, I quite understand—a scar on the arm? Yes, I don’t know if we shall be able to find that—yes—any little constitutional weakness that might—? Oh, yes—arthritis—yes—thank you, Lady Levy—that’s very clear. Don’t come unless I ask you to. Now, Wingate.”

  A pause. A murmur. “Pulled out? After death, you think—well, so do I. Where is Dr. Colegrove? You attended this man in the workhouse? Yes. Do you recollect—? No? You’re quite certain about that? Yes—we mustn’t make a mistake, you know. Yes, but there are reasons why Sir Julian can’t be present; I’m asking you, Dr. Colegrove. Well, you’re certain—that’s all I want to know. Just bring the light closer, Mr. Wingate, if you please. These miserable shells let the damp in so quickly. Ah! what do you make of this? Yes—yes—well, that’s rather unmistakable, isn’t it? Who did the head? Oh, Freke—of course. I was going to say they did good work at St. Luke’s. Beautiful, isn’t it, Dr. Colegrove? A wonderful surgeon—I saw him when he was at Guy’s. Oh, no, gave it up years ago. Nothing like keeping your hand in. Ah—yes, undoubtedly that’s it. Have you a towel handy, sir? Thank you. Over the head, if you please—I think we might have another here. Now, Lady Levy—I am going to ask you to look at a scar, and see if you recognise it. I’m sure you are going to help us by being very firm. Take your time—you won’t see anything more than you absolutely must.”

  “Lucy, don’t leave me.”

  “No, dear.”

  A space cleared at the table. The lamplight on the Duchess’s white hair.

  “Oh, yes—oh, yes! No, no—I couldn’t be mistaken. There’s that funny little kink in it. I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Oh, Lucy—Reuben!”

  “Only a moment more, Lady Levy. The mole—”

  “I—I think so—oh, yes, that is the very place.”

  “Yes. And the scar—was it three-cornered, just above the elbow?”

  “Yes, oh, yes.”

  “Is this it?”

  “Yes—yes—”

  “I must ask you definitely, Lady Levy. Do you, from these three marks identify the body as that of your husband?”

  “Oh! I must, mustn’t I? Nobody else could have them just the same in just those places? It is my husband. It is Reuben. Oh—”

  “Thank you, Lady Levy. You have been very brave and very helpful.”

  “But—I don’t understand yet. How did he come here? Who did this dreadful thing?”

  “Hush, dear,” said the Duchess; “the man is going to be punished.”

  “Oh, but—how cruel! Poor Reuben! Who could have wanted to hurt him? Can I see his face?”

  “No, dear,” said the Duchess. “That isn’t possible. Come away—you mustn’t distress the doctors and people.”

  “No—no—they’ve all been so kind. Oh, Lucy!”

  “We’ll go home, dear. You don’t want us any more, Dr. Grimbold?”

  “No, Duchess, thank you. We are very grateful to you and to Lady Levy for coming.”

  There was a pause, while the two women went out, Parker, collected and helpful, escorting them to their waiting car. Then Dr. Grimbold again:

  “I think Lord Peter Wimsey ought to see—the correctness of his deductions—Lord Peter—very painful—you may wish to see—yes, I was uneasy at the inquest—yes—Lady Levy—remarkably clear evidence—yes—most shocking case—ah, here’s Mr. Parker—you and Lord Peter Wimsey entirely justified—do I really understand—? Really? I can hardly believe it—so distinguished a man—as you say, when a great brain turns to crime—yes—look here! Marvellous work—marvellous—somewhat obscured by this time, of course—but the most beautiful sections—here, you see, the left hemisphere—and here—through the corpus striatum—here again—the very track of the damage done by the blow—wonderful—guessed it—saw the effect of the blow as he struck it, you know—ah, I should like to see his brain, Mr. Parker—and to think that—heavens, Lord Peter, you don’t know what a blow you have struck at the whole profession—the whole civilized world! Oh, my dear sir! Can you ask me? My lips are sealed of course—all our lips are sealed.”

  The way back through the burial ground. Fog again, and the squeal of wet gravel.

  “Are your men ready, Charles?”

  “They have gone. I sent them off when I saw Lady Levy to the car.”

  “Who is with them?”

  “Sugg.”

  “Sugg?”

  “Yes—poor devil. They’ve had him up on the mat at headquarters for bungling the case. All that evidence of Thipps’s about the night club was corroborated, you know. That girl he gave the gin-and-bitters to was caught, and came and identified him, and they decided their case wasn’t good enough, and let Thipps and the Horrocks girl go. Then they told Sugg he had overstepped his duty and ought to have been more careful. So he ought, but he can’t help being a fool. I was sorry for him. It may do him some good to be in at the death. After all, Peter, you and I had special advantages.”

  “Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. Whoever goes won’t get there in time. Sugg’s as good as another.”

  But Sugg—an experience rare in his career—was in time.

  Parker and Lord Peter were at 110 Piccadilly. Lord Peter was playing Bach and Parker was reading Origen when Sugg was announced.

  “We’ve got our man, sir,” said he.

  “Good God!” said Peter. “Alive?”

  “We were just in time, my lord. We rang the bell and marched straight up past his man to the library. He was sitting there doing some writing. When we came in, he made a grab for his hypodermic, but we were too quick for him, my lord. We didn’t mean to let him slip through our hands, having got so far. We searched him thoroughly and marched him off.”

  “He is actually in gaol, then?”

  “Oh, yes—safe enough—with two warders to see he doesn’t make away with himself.”

  “You surprise me, Inspector. Have a drink.”

  “Thank you, my lord. I may say that I’m very grateful to you—this case was turning out a pretty bad egg for me. If I was rude to your lordship—”

  “Oh, it’s all right, Inspector,” said Lord Peter, hastily. “I don’t see how you could possibly have worked it out. I had the good luck to know something about it from other sources.”

  “That’s what Freke says.” Already the great surgeon was a common criminal in the inspector’s
eyes—a mere surname. “He was writing a full confession when we got hold of him, addressed to your lordship. The police will have to have it, of course, but seeing it’s written for you, I brought it along for you to see first. Here it is.”

  He handed Lord Peter a bulky document.

  “Thanks,” said Peter. “Like to hear it, Charles?”

  “Rather.”

  Accordingly Lord Peter read it aloud.

  Chapter 13

  DEAR LORD PETER—When I was a young man I used to play chess with an old friend of my father’s. He was a very bad, and a very slow, player, and he could never see when a checkmate was inevitable, but insisted on playing every move out. I never had any patience with that kind of attitude, and I will freely admit now that the game is yours. I must either stay at home and be hanged or escape abroad and live in an idle and insecure obscurity. I prefer to acknowledge defeat.

  If you have read my book on “Criminal Lunacy,” you will remember that I wrote: “In the majority of cases, the criminal betrays himself by some abnormality attendant upon this pathological condition of the nervous tissues. His mental instability shows itself in various forms: an overweening vanity, leading him to brag of his achievement; a disproportionate sense of the importance of the offence, resulting from the hallucination of religion, and driving him to confession; egomania, producing the sense of horror or conviction of sin, and driving him to headlong flight without covering his tracks; a reckless confidence, resulting in the neglect of the most ordinary precautions, as in the case of Henry Wainwright, who left a boy in charge of the murdered woman’s remains while he went to call a cab, or on the other hand, a nervous distrust of apperceptions in the past, causing him to revisit the scene of the crime to assure himself that all traces have been as safely removed as his own judgment knows them to be. I will not hesitate to assert that a perfectly sane man, not intimidated by religious or other delusions, could always render himself perfectly secure from detection, provided, that is, that the crime were sufficiently premeditated and that he were not pressed for time or thrown out in his calculations by purely fortuitous coincidence.

  You know as well as I do, how far I have made this assertion good in practice. The two accidents which betrayed me, I could not by any possibility have foreseen. The first was the chance recognition of Levy by the girl in the Battersea Park Road, which suggested a connection between the two problems. The second was that Thipps should have arranged to go down to Denver on the Tuesday morning, thus enabling your mother to get word of the matter through to you before the body was removed by the police and to suggest a motive for the murder out of what she knew of my previous personal history. If I had been able to destroy these two accidentally forged links of circumstance, I will venture to say that you would never have so much as suspected me, still less obtained sufficient evidence to convict.

  Of all human emotions, except perhaps those of hunger and fear, the sexual appetite produces the most violent, and, under some circumstances, the most persistent reactions; I think, however, I am right in saying that at the time when I wrote my book, my original sensual impulse to kill Sir Reuben Levy had already become profoundly modified by my habits of thought. To the animal lust to slay and the primitive human desire for revenge, there was added the rational intention of substantiating my own theories for the satisfaction of myself and the world. If all had turned out as I had planned, I should have deposited a sealed account of my experiment with the Bank of England, instructing my executors to publish it after my death. Now that accident has spoiled the completeness of my demonstration, I entrust the account to you, whom it cannot fail to interest, with the request that you will make it known among scientific men, in justice to my professional reputation.

  The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second. During my early career, though I was fairly well-off, I had not absolute command of circumstance. Accordingly I devoted myself to my profession, and contented myself with keeping up a friendly connection with Reuben Levy and his family. This enabled me to remain in touch with his fortunes and interests, so that, when the moment for action should arrive, I might know what weapons to use.

  Meanwhile, I carefully studied criminology in fiction and fact—my work on “Criminal Lunacy” was a side-product of this activity—and saw how, in every murder, the real crux of the problem was the disposal of the body. As a doctor, the means of death were always ready to my hand, and I was not likely to make any error in that connection. Nor was I likely to betray myself on account of any illusory sense of wrong-doing. The sole difficulty would be that of destroying all connection between my personality and that of the corpse. You will remember that Michael Finsbury, in Stevenson’s entertaining romance, observes: “What hangs people is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt.” It became clear to me that the mere leaving about of a superfluous corpse could convict nobody, provided that nobody was guilty in connection with that particular corpse. Thus the idea of substituting the one body for the other was early arrived at, though it was not till I obtained the practical direction of St. Luke’s Hospital that I found myself perfectly unfettered in the choice and handling of dead bodies. From this period on, I kept a careful watch on all the material brought in for dissection.

  My opportunity did not present itself until the week before Sir Reuben’s disappearance, when the medical officer at the Chelsea workhouse sent word to me that an unknown vagrant had been injured that morning by the fall of a piece of scaffolding, and was exhibiting some very interesting nervous and cerebral reactions. I went round and saw the case, and was immediately struck by the man’s strong superficial resemblance to Sir Reuben. He had been heavily struck on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae and heavily bruising the spinal cord. It seemed highly unlikely that he could ever recover, either mentally or physically, and in any case there appeared to me to be no object in indefinitely prolonging so unprofitable an existence. He had obviously been able to support life until recently, as he was fairly well nourished, but the state of his feet and clothing showed that he was unemployed, and under present conditions he was likely to remain so. I decided that he would suit my purpose very well, and immediately put in train certain transactions in the City which I had already sketched out in my own mind. In the meantime, the reactions mentioned by the workhouse doctor were interesting, and I made careful studies of them, and arranged for the delivery of the body to the hospital when I should have completed my preparations.

  On the Thursday and Friday of that week I made private arrangements with various brokers to buy the stock of certain Peruvian Oil-fields, which had gone down almost to waste- paper. This part of my experiment did not cost me very much, but I contrived to arouse considerable curiosity, and even a mild excitement. At this point I was of course careful not to let my name appear. The incidence of Saturday and Sunday gave me some anxiety lest my man should after all die before I was ready for him, but by the use of saline injections I contrived to keep him alive and, late on Sunday night, he even manifested disquieting symptoms of at any rate a partial recovery.

  On Monday morning the market in Peruvians opened briskly. Rumours had evidently got about that somebody knew something, and this day I was not the only buyer in the market. I bought a couple of hundred more shares in my own name, and left the matter to take care of itself. At lunch time I made my arrangements to run into Levy accidentally at the corner of the Mansion House. He expressed (as I expected) his surprise at seeing me in that part of London. I simulated some embarrassment and suggested that we should lunch together. I dragged him to a place a bit off the usual beat, and there ordered a good wine and drank of it as much as he might suppose sufficient to induce a confidential mood. I asked him how things were going on ’Change. He said, “Oh, all right,” but appeared a little doubtful, and asked me whether I did anything in that way. I said I had a little flutter occasionally, and
that, as a matter of fact, I’d been put on to rather a good thing. I glanced round apprehensively at this point, and shifted my chair nearer to his.

  “I suppose you don’t know anything about Peruvian Oil, do you?” he said.

  I started and looked round again, and leaning across to him, said, dropping my voice:

  “Well, I do, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want it to get about. I stand to make a good bit on it.”

  “But I thought the thing was hollow,” he said; “it hasn’t paid a dividend for umpteen years.”

  “No,” I said, “it hasn’t, but it’s going to. I’ve got inside information.” He looked a bit unconvinced, and I emptied off my glass, and edged right up to his ear.

  “Look here,” I said, “I’m not giving this away to everyone, but I don’t mind doing you and Christine a good turn. You know, I’ve always kept a soft place in my heart for her, ever since the old days. You got in ahead of me that time, and now it’s up to me to heap coals of fire on you both.”

  I was a little excited by this time, and he thought I was drunk.

  “It’s very kind of you, old man,” he said, “but I’m a cautious bird, you know, always was. I’d like a bit of proof.”

  And he shrugged up his shoulders and looked like a pawnbroker.

  “I’ll give it to you,” I said, “but it isn’t safe here. Come round to my place tonight after dinner, and I’ll show you the report.”

  “How d’you get hold of it?” said he.

  “I’ll tell you tonight,” said I. “Come round after dinner—any time after nine, say.”

  “To Harley Street?” he asked, and I saw that he meant coming.

  “No,” I said, “to Battersea—Prince of Wales Road; I’ve got some work to do at the hospital. And look here,” I said, “don’t you let on to a soul that you’re coming. I bought a couple of hundred shares today, in my own name, and people are sure to get wind of it. If we’re known to be about together, someone’ll twig something. In fact, it’s anything but safe talking about it in this place.”