Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers (ebook reader web TXT) 📖

“But that leaves me where I was,” thought the Duchess. “I believe,” she said aloud, “that I ought to be thanking you in the name of the vicar of Duke’s Denver for a very munificent cheque which reached him yesterday for the Church Restoration Fund. He was so delighted and astonished, poor dear man.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Mr. Milligan, “we haven’t any fine old crusted buildings like yours over on our side, so it’s a privilege to be allowed to drop a little kerosene into the worm-holes when we hear of one in the old country suffering from senile decay. So when your lad told me about Duke’s Denver I took the liberty to subscribe without waiting for the Bazaar.”

“I’m sure it was very kind of you,” said the Duchess. “You are coming to the Bazaar, then?” she continued, gazing into his face appealingly.

“Sure thing,” said Mr. Milligan, with great promptness. “Lord Peter said you’d let me know for sure about the date, but we can always make time for a little bit of good work anyway. Of course I’m hoping to be able to avail myself of your kind invitation to stop, but if I’m rushed, I’ll manage anyhow to pop over and speak my piece and pop back again.”

“I hope so very much,” said the Duchess. “I must see what can be done about the date—of course, I can’t promise—”

“No, no,” said Mr. Milligan heartily. “I know what these things are to fix up. And then there’s not only me—there’s all the real big men of European eminence your son mentioned, to be consulted.”

The Duchess turned pale at the thought that any one of these illustrious persons might some time turn up in somebody’s drawing-room, but by this time she had dug herself in comfortably, and was even beginning to find her range.

“I can’t say how grateful we are to you,” she said; “it will be such a treat. Do tell me what you think of saying.”

“Wal—” began Mr. Milligan.

Suddenly everybody was standing up and a penitent voice was heard to say:

“Really, most awfully sorry, y’know—hope you’ll forgive me, Lady Swaffham, what? Dear lady, could I possibly forget an invitation from you? Fact is, I had to go an’ see a man down in Salisbury—absolutely true, ’pon my word, and the fellow wouldn’t let me get away. I’m simply grovellin’ before you, Lady Swaffham. Shall I go an’ eat my lunch in the corner?”

Lady Swaffham gracefully forgave the culprit.

“Your dear mother is here,” she said.

“How do, Mother?” said Lord Peter, uneasily.

“How are you, dear?” replied the Duchess. “You really oughtn’t to have turned up just yet. Mr. Milligan was just going to tell me what a thrilling speech he’s preparing for the Bazaar, when you came and interrupted us.”

Conversation at lunch turned, not unnaturally, on the Battersea inquest, the Duchess giving a vivid impersonation of Mrs. Thipps being interrogated by the Coroner.

“‘Did you hear anything unusual in the night?’ says the little man, leaning forward and screaming at her, and so crimson in the face and his ears sticking out so—just like a cherubim in that poem of Tennyson’s—or is a cherub blue?—perhaps it’s a seraphim I mean—anyway, you know what I mean, all eyes, with little wings on its head. And dear old Mrs. Thipps saying, ‘Of course I have, any time these eighty years,’ and such a sensation in court till they found out she thought he’d said, ‘Do you sleep without a light?’ and everybody laughing, and then the Coroner said quite loudly, ‘Damn the woman,’ and she heard that, I can’t think why, and said: ‘Don’t you get swearing, young man, sitting there in the presence of Providence, as you may say. I don’t know what young people are coming to nowadays’—and he’s sixty if he’s a day, you know,” said the Duchess.

By a natural transition, Mrs. Tommy Frayle referred to the man who was hanged for murdering three brides in a bath.

“I always thought that was so ingenious,” she said, gazing soulfully at Lord Peter, “and do you know, as it happened, Tommy had just made me insure my life, and I got so frightened, I gave up my morning bath and took to having it in the afternoon when he was in the House—I mean, when he was not in the house—not at home, I mean.”

“Dear lady,” said Lord Peter, reproachfully, “I have a distinct recollection that all those brides were thoroughly unattractive. But it was an uncommonly ingenious plan—the first time of askin’—only he shouldn’t have repeated himself.”

“One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers,” said Lady Swaffham. “Like dramatists, you know—so much easier in Shakespeare’s time, wasn’t it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I’m sure if I’d been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I’d have said: ‘Odsbodikins! There’s that girl again!’”

“That’s just what happened, as a matter of fact,” said Lord Peter. “You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you’ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas. Most people don’t associate anythin’—their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise and goin’ nowhere, but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?”

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Tommy Frayle, with a little scream, “what a blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all!”

“Y’see,” said Lord Peter, balancing a piece of duck on his fork and frowning, “it’s only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that, that people think things out logically. Or’nar’ly, if somebody tells you somethin’ out of the way, you just say, ‘By Jove!’ or ‘How sad!’ an’ leave it at that, an’ half the time you forget about it, ’nless somethin’ turns up afterwards to drive it home. F’r instance, Lady Swaffham, I told you when I came in that I’d been down to Salisbury, ’n’ that’s true, only I don’t suppose it impressed you much; ’n’ I don’t suppose it’d impress you much if you read in the paper tomorrow of a tragic discovery of a dead lawyer down in Salisbury, but if I went to Salisbury again next week ’n’ there was a Salisbury doctor found dead the day after, you might begin to think I was a bird of ill omen for Salisbury residents; and if I went there again the week after, ’n’ you heard next day that the see of Salisbury had fallen vacant suddenly, you might begin to wonder what took me to Salisbury, an’ why I’d never mentioned before that I had friends down there, don’t you see, an’ you might think of goin’ down to Salisbury yourself, an’ askin’ all kinds of people if they’d happened to see a young man in plum-coloured socks hangin’ round the Bishop’s Palace.”

“I daresay I should,” said Lady Swaffham.

“Quite. An’ if you found that the lawyer and the doctor had once upon a time been in business at Poggleton-on-the-Marsh when the Bishop had been vicar there, you’d begin to remember you’d once heard of me payin’ a visit to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh a long time ago, an’ you’d begin to look up the parish registers there an’ discover I’d been married under an assumed name by the vicar to the widow of a wealthy farmer, who’d died suddenly of peritonitis, as certified by the doctor, after the lawyer’d made a will leavin’ me all her money, and then you’d begin to think I might have very good reasons for gettin’ rid of such promisin’ blackmailers as the lawyer, the doctor an’ the bishop. Only, if I hadn’t started an association in your mind by gettin’ rid of ’em all in the same place, you’d never have thought of goin’ to Poggleton-on-the-Marsh, ’n’ you wouldn’t even have remembered I’d ever been there.”

“Were you ever there, Lord Peter?” inquired Mrs. Tommy, anxiously.

“I don’t think so,” said Lord Peter; “the name threads no beads in my mind. But it might, any day, you know.”

“But if you were investigating a crime,” said Lady Swaffham, “you’d have to begin by the usual things, I suppose—finding out what the person had been doing, and who’d been to call, and looking for a motive, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lord Peter, “but most of us have such dozens of motives for murderin’ all sorts of inoffensive people. There’s lots of people I’d like to murder, wouldn’t you?”

“Heaps,” said Lady Swaffham. “There’s that dreadful—perhaps I’d better not say it, though, for fear you should remember it later on.”

“Well, I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Peter, amiably. “You never know. It’d be beastly awkward if the person died suddenly tomorrow.”

“The difficulty with this Battersea case, I guess,” said Mr. Milligan, “is that nobody seems to have any associations with the gentleman in the bath.”

“So hard on poor Inspector Sugg,” said the Duchess. “I quite felt for the man, having to stand up there and answer a lot of questions when he had nothing at all to say.”

Lord Peter applied himself to the duck, having got a little behindhand. Presently he heard somebody ask the Duchess if she had seen Lady Levy.

“She is in great distress,” said the woman who had spoken, a Mrs. Freemantle, “though she clings to the hope that he will turn up. I suppose you knew him, Mr. Milligan—know him, I should say, for I hope he’s still alive somewhere.”

Mrs. Freemantle was the wife of an eminent railway director, and celebrated for her ignorance of the world of finance. Her faux pas in this connection enlivened the tea parties of City men’s wives.

“Wal, I’ve dined with him,” said Mr. Milligan, good-naturedly. “I think he and I’ve done our best to ruin each other, Mrs. Freemantle. If this were the States,” he added, “I’d be much inclined to suspect myself of having put Sir Reuben in a safe place. But we can’t do business that way in your old country; no, ma’am.”

“It must be exciting work doing business in America,” said Lord Peter.

“It is,” said Mr. Milligan. “I guess my brothers are having a good time there now. I’ll be joining them again before long, as soon as I’ve fixed up a little bit of work for them on this side.”

“Well, you mustn’t go till after my bazaar,” said the Duchess.

Lord Peter spent the afternoon in a vain hunt for Mr. Parker. He ran him down eventually after dinner in Great Ormond Street.

Parker was sitting in an elderly but affectionate armchair, with his feet on the mantelpiece, relaxing his mind with a modern commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. He received Lord Peter with quiet pleasure, though without rapturous enthusiasm, and mixed him a whisky-and-soda. Peter took up the book his friend had laid down and glanced over the pages.

“All these men work with a bias in their minds, one way or other,” he said; “they find what they are looking for.”

“Oh, they do,” agreed the detective; “but one learns to discount that almost automatically, you know. When I was at college, I was all on the other side—Conybeare and Robertson and Drews and those people, you know, till I found they were all so busy looking for a burglar whom nobody had ever seen, that they couldn’t recognise the footprints of the household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning to be cautious.”

“Hum,” said Lord Peter, “theology must be good exercise for the brain then, for you’re easily the most cautious devil I know. But I say, do go on reading—it’s a shame for me to come and root