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

I’m sure I couldn’t remember—well, I might remember yesterday, p’r’aps, but I couldn’t be certain about what I was doin’ last week if I was to be shot for it.”

“No,” said Parker, “and evidence given in police statements sounds just as impossible. But they don’t really get it like that, you know. I mean, a man doesn’t just say, ‘Last Friday I went out at 10 a.m. to buy a mutton chop. As I was turning into Mortimer Street I noticed a girl of about twenty-two with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a green jumper, check skirt, Panama hat and black shoes, riding a Royal Sunbeam Cycle at about ten miles an hour turning the corner by the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude on the wrong side of the road riding towards the market place!’ It amounts to that, of course, but it’s really wormed out of him by a series of questions.”

“And in short stories,” said Lord Peter, “it has to be put in statement form, because the real conversation would be so long and twaddly and tedious, and nobody would have the patience to read it. Writers have to consider their readers, if any, y’see.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Piggott, “but I bet you most people would find it jolly difficult to remember, even if you asked ’em things. I should—of course, I know I’m a bit of a fool, but then, most people are, ain’t they? You know what I mean. Witnesses ain’t detectives, they’re just average idiots like you and me.”

“Quite so,” said Lord Peter, smiling as the force of the last phrase sank into its unhappy perpetrator; “you mean, if I were to ask you in a general way what you were doin’—say, a week ago today, you wouldn’t be able to tell me a thing about it offhand?”

“No—I’m sure I shouldn’t.” He considered. “No. I was in at the Hospital as usual, I suppose, and, being Tuesday, there’d be a lecture on something or the other—dashed if I know what—and in the evening I went out with Tommy Pringle—no, that must have been Monday—or was it Wednesday? I tell you, I couldn’t swear to anything.”

“You do yourself an injustice,” said Lord Peter gravely. “I’m sure, for instance, you recollect what work you were doing in the dissecting-room on that day, for example.”

“Lord, no! not for certain. I mean, I daresay it might come back to me if I thought for a long time, but I wouldn’t swear to it in a court of law.”

“I’ll bet you half-a-crown to sixpence,” said Lord Peter, “that you’ll remember within five minutes.”

“I’m sure I can’t.”

“We’ll see. Do you keep a notebook of the work you do when you dissect? Drawings or anything?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Think of that. What’s the last thing you did in it?”

“That’s easy, because I only did it this morning. It was leg muscles.”

“Yes. Who was the subject?”

“An old woman of sorts; died of pneumonia.”

“Yes. Turn back the pages of your drawing book in your mind. What came before that?”

“Oh, some animals—still legs; I’m doing motor muscles at present. Yes. That was old Cunningham’s demonstration on comparative anatomy. I did rather a good thing of a hare’s legs and a frog’s, and rudimentary legs on a snake.”

“Yes. Which day does Mr. Cunningham lecture?”

“Friday.”

“Friday; yes. Turn back again. What comes before that?”

Mr. Piggott shook his head.

“Do your drawings of legs begin on the right-hand page or the left-hand page? Can you see the first drawing?”

“Yes—yes—I can see the date written at the top. It’s a section of a frog’s hind leg, on the right-hand page.”

“Yes. Think of the open book in your mind’s eye. What is opposite to it?”

This demanded some mental concentration.

“Something round—coloured—oh, yes—it’s a hand.”

“Yes. You went on from the muscles of the hand and arm to leg- and foot-muscles?”

“Yes; that’s right. I’ve got a set of drawings of arms.”

“Yes. Did you make those on the Thursday?”

“No; I’m never in the dissecting-room on Thursday.”

“On Wednesday, perhaps?”

“Yes; I must have made them on Wednesday. Yes; I did. I went in there after we’d seen those tetanus patients in the morning. I did them on Wednesday afternoon. I know I went back because I wanted to finish ’em. I worked rather hard—for me. That’s why I remember.”

“Yes; you went back to finish them. When had you begun them, then?”

“Why, the day before.”

“The day before. That was Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve lost count—yes, the day before Wednesday—yes, Tuesday.”

“Yes. Were they a man’s arms or a woman’s arms?”

“Oh, a man’s arms.

“Yes; last Tuesday, a week ago today, you were dissecting a man’s arms in the dissecting-room. Sixpence, please.”

“By Jove!”

“Wait a moment. You know a lot more about it than that. You’ve no idea how much you know. You know what kind of man he was.”

“Oh, I never saw him complete, you know. I got there a bit late that day, I remember. I’d asked for an arm specially, because I was rather weak in arms, and Watts—that’s the attendant—had promised to save me one.”

“Yes. You have arrived late and found your arm waiting for you. You are dissecting it—taking your scissors and slitting up the skin and pinning it back. Was it very young, fair skin?”

“Oh, no—no. Ordinary skin, I think—with dark hairs on it—yes, that was it.”

“Yes. A lean, stringy arm, perhaps, with no extra fat anywhere?”

“Oh, no—I was rather annoyed about that. I wanted a good, muscular arm, but it was rather poorly developed and the fat got in my way.”

“Yes; a sedentary man who didn’t do much manual work.”

“That’s right.”

“Yes. You dissected the hand, for instance, and made a drawing of it. You would have noticed any hard calluses.”

“Oh, there was nothing of that sort.”

“No. But should you say it was a young man’s arm? Firm young flesh and limber joints?”

“No—no.”

“No. Old and stringy, perhaps.”

“No. Middle-aged—with rheumatism. I mean, there was a chalky deposit in the joints, and the fingers were a bit swollen.”

“Yes. A man about fifty.”

“About that.”

“Yes. There were other students at work on the same body.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Yes. And they made all the usual sort of jokes about it.”

“I expect so—oh, yes!”

“You can remember some of them. Who is your local funny man, so to speak?”

“Tommy Pringle.”

“What was Tommy Pringle’s doing?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Whereabouts was Tommy Pringle working?”

“Over by the instrument cupboard—by sink C.”

“Yes. Get a picture of Tommy Pringle in your mind’s eye.”

Piggott began to laugh.

“I remember now. Tommy Pringle said the old Sheeny—”

“Why did he call him a Sheeny?”

“I don’t know. But I know he did.”

“Perhaps he looked like it. Did you see his head?”

“No.”

“Who had the head?”

“I don’t know—oh, yes, I do, though. Old Freke bagged the head himself, and little Bouncible Binns was very cross about it, because he’d been promised a head to do with old Scrooger.”

“I see. What was Sir Julian doing with the head?”

“He called us up and gave us a jaw on spinal haemorrhage and nervous lesions.”

“Yes. Well, go back to Tommy Pringle.”

Tommy Pringle’s joke was repeated, not without some embarrassment.

“Quite so. Was that all?”

“No. The chap who was working with Tommy said that sort of thing came from over-feeding.”

“I deduce that Tommy Pringle’s partner was interested in the alimentary canal.”

“Yes; and Tommy said, if he’d thought they’d feed you like that he’d go to the workhouse himself.”

“Then the man was a pauper from the workhouse?”

“Well, he must have been, I suppose.”

“Are workhouse paupers usually fat and well-fed?”

“Well, no—come to think of it, not as a rule.”

“In fact, it struck Tommy Pringle and his friend that this was something a little out of the way in a workhouse subject?”

“Yes.”

“And if the alimentary canal was so entertaining to these gentlemen, I imagine the subject had come by his death shortly after a full meal.”

“Yes—oh, yes—he’d have had to, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Lord Peter. “That’s in your department, you know. That would be your inference, from what they said.”

“Oh, yes. Undoubtedly.”

“Yes; you wouldn’t, for example, expect them to make that observation if the patient had been ill for a long time and fed on slops.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, you see, you really know a lot about it. On Tuesday week you were dissecting the arm muscles of a rheumatic middle-aged Jew, of sedentary habits, who had died shortly after eating a heavy meal, of some injury producing spinal haemorrhage and nervous lesions, and so forth, and who was presumed to come from the workhouse?”

“Yes.”

“And you could swear to those facts, if need were?”

“Well, if you put it in that way, I suppose I could.”

“Of course you could.”

Mr. Piggott sat for some moments in contemplation.

“I say,” he said at last, “I did know all that, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes—you knew it all right—like Socrates’s slave.”

“Who’s he?”

“A person in a book I used to read as a boy.”

“Oh—does he come in ‘The Last Days of Pompeii’?”

“No—another book—I daresay you escaped it. It’s rather dull.”

“I never read much except Henty and Fenimore Cooper at school.... But—have I got rather an extra good memory, then?”

“You have a better memory than you credit yourself with.”

“Then why can’t I remember all the medical stuff? It all goes out of my head like a sieve.”

“Well, why can’t you?” said Lord Peter, standing on the hearthrug and smiling down at his guest.

“Well,” said the young man, “the chaps who examine one don’t ask the same sort of questions you do.”

“No?”

“No—they leave you to remember all by yourself. And it’s beastly hard. Nothing to catch hold of, don’t you know? But, I say—how did you know about Tommy Pringle being the funny man and—”

“I didn’t, till you told me.”

“No; I know. But how did you know he’d be there if you did ask? I mean to say—I say,” said Mr. Piggott, who was becoming mellowed by influences themselves not unconnected with the alimentary canal—“I say, are you rather clever, or am I rather stupid?”

“No, no,” said Lord Peter, “it’s me. I’m always askin’ such stupid questions, everybody thinks I must mean somethin’ by ’em.”

This was too involved for Mr. Piggott.

“Never mind,” said Parker, soothingly, “he’s always like that. You mustn’t take any notice. He can’t help it. It’s premature senile decay, often observed in the families of hereditary legislators. Go away, Wimsey, and play us the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or something.”

“That’s good enough, isn’t it?” said Lord Peter, when the happy Mr. Piggott had been despatched home after a really delightful evening.

“I’m afraid so,” said Parker. “But it seems almost incredible.”

“There’s nothing incredible in human nature,” said Lord Peter; “at least, in educated human nature. Have you got that exhumation order?”

“I shall have it tomorrow. I thought of fixing up with the workhouse people for tomorrow afternoon. I shall have to go and see them first.”

“Right you are; I’ll let my mother know.”

“I begin to feel like you, Wimsey, I don’t like this job.”

“I like it a deal better than I did.”

“You are really certain we’re not making a mistake?”

Lord Peter had strolled across to the window. The curtain was not perfectly drawn, and he stood gazing out through the gap into lighted Piccadilly. At this he turned round:

“If we are,” he said, “we shall know tomorrow, and no harm will have been done. But I rather think you will receive a certain amount of confirmation on your way home. Look here, Parker, d’you know, if I were you I’d spend the night here. There’s a spare bedroom; I can easily put you up.”

Parker stared at him.

“Do you mean—I’m likely to be attacked?”

“I think it very likely indeed.”

“Is there anybody in the street?”

“Not now; there was half-an-hour ago.”

“When Piggott left?”

“Yes.”

“I say—I hope the boy is in no danger.”

“That’s what I went down to see. I don’t think so. Fact is, I don’t suppose anybody would imagine we’d exactly made a confidant of Piggott. But I think you and I are