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

“Very simple indeed,” said the cook; “the meals he and her ladyship have when they’re by themselves with Miss Rachel—well, there now—if it wasn’t for the dinners, which is always good when there’s company, I’d be wastin’ my talents and education here, if you understand me, Mr. Bunter.”

Mr. Bunter added the handle of the umbrella to his collection, and began to pin a sheet across the window, aided by the housemaid.

“Admirable,” said he. “Now, if I might have this blanket on the table and another on a towel-horse or something of that kind by way of a background—you’re very kind, Mrs. Pemming.... Ah! I wish his lordship never wanted valeting at night. Many’s the time I’ve sat up till three and four, and up again to call him early to go off Sherlocking at the other end of the country. And the mud he gets on his clothes and his boots!”

“I’m sure it’s a shame, Mr. Bunter,” said Mrs. Pemming, warmly. “Low, I calls it. In my opinion, police-work ain’t no fit occupation for a gentleman, let alone a lordship.”

“Everything made so difficult, too,” said Mr. Bunter nobly sacrificing his employer’s character and his own feelings in a good cause; “boots chucked into a corner, clothes hung up on the floor, as they say—”

“That’s often the case with these men as are born with a silver spoon in their mouths,” said Mr. Graves. “Now, Sir Reuben, he’s never lost his good old-fashioned habits. Clothes folded up neat, boots put out in his dressing-room, so as a man could get them in the morning, everything made easy.”

“He forgot them the night before last, though.”

“The clothes, not the boots. Always thoughtful for others, is Sir Reuben. Ah! I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

“Indeed, no, poor gentleman,” chimed in the cook, “and as for what they’re sayin’, that he’d ’ave gone out surrepshous-like to do something he didn’t ought, well, I’d never believe it of him, Mr. Bunter, not if I was to take my dying oath upon it.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Bunter, adjusting his arc-lamps and connecting them with the nearest electric light, “and that’s more than most of us could say of them as pays us.”

“Five foot ten,” said Lord Peter, “and not an inch more.” He peered dubiously at the depression in the bed clothes, and measured it a second time with the gentleman-scout’s vade-mecum. Parker entered this particular in a neat pocketbook.

“I suppose,” he said, “a six-foot-two man might leave a five-foot-ten depression if he curled himself up.”

“Have you any Scotch blood in you, Parker?” inquired his colleague, bitterly.

“Not that I know of,” replied Parker. “Why?”

“Because of all the cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded devils I know,” said Lord Peter, “you are the most cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded. Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm.”

“Well, it’s no good jumping at conclusions.”

“Jump? You don’t even crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion. I believe if you caught the cat with her head in the cream-jug you’d say it was conceivable that the jug was empty when she got there.”

“Well, it would be conceivable, wouldn’t it?”

“Curse you,” said Lord Peter. He screwed his monocle into his eye, and bent over the pillow, breathing hard and tightly through his nose. “Here, give me the tweezers,” he said presently. “Good heavens, man, don’t blow like that, you might be a whale.” He nipped up an almost invisible object from the linen.

“What is it?” asked Parker.

“It’s a hair,” said Wimsey grimly, his hard eyes growing harder. “Let’s go and look at Levy’s hats, shall we? And you might just ring for that fellow with the churchyard name, do you mind?”

Mr. Graves, when summoned, found Lord Peter Wimsey squatting on the floor of the dressing-room before a row of hats arranged upside down before him.

“Here you are,” said that nobleman cheerfully. “Now, Graves, this is a guessin’ competition—a sort of three-hat trick, to mix metaphors. Here are nine hats, including three top-hats. Do you identify all these hats as belonging to Sir Reuben Levy? You do? Very good. Now I have three guesses as to which hat he wore the night he disappeared, and if I guess right, I win; if I don’t, you win. See? Ready? Go. I suppose you know the answer yourself, by the way?”

“Do I understand your lordship to be asking which hat Sir Reuben wore when he went out on Monday night, your lordship?”

“No, you don’t understand a bit,” said Lord Peter. “I’m asking if you know—don’t tell me, I’m going to guess.”

“I do know, your lordship,” said Mr. Graves, reprovingly.

“Well,” said Lord Peter, “as he was dinin’ at the Ritz he wore a topper. Here are three toppers. In three guesses I’d be bound to hit the right one, wouldn’t I? That don’t seem very sportin’. I’ll take one guess. It was this one.”

He indicated the hat next the window.

“Am I right, Graves—have I got the prize?”

“That is the hat in question, my lord,” said Mr. Graves, without excitement.

“Thanks,” said Lord Peter, “that’s all I wanted to know. Ask Bunter to step up, would you?”

Mr. Bunter stepped up with an aggrieved air, and his usually smooth hair ruffled by the focussing cloth.

“Oh, there you are, Bunter,” said Lord Peter; “look here—”

“Here I am, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, with respectful reproach, “but if you’ll excuse me saying so, downstairs is where I ought to be, with all those young women about—they’ll be fingering the evidence, my lord.”

“I cry your mercy,” said Lord Peter, “but I’ve quarrelled hopelessly with Mr. Parker and distracted the estimable Graves, and I want you to tell me what finger-prints you have found. I shan’t be happy till I get it, so don’t be harsh with me, Bunter.”

“Well, my lord, your lordship understands I haven’t photographed them yet, but I won’t deny that their appearance is interesting, my lord. The little book off the night table, my lord, has only the marks of one set of fingers—there’s a little scar on the right thumb which makes them easy recognised. The hair-brush, too, my lord, has only the same set of marks. The umbrella, the toothglass and the boots all have two sets: the hand with the scarred thumb, which I take to be Sir Reuben’s, my lord, and a set of smudges superimposed upon them, if I may put it that way, my lord, which may or may not be the same hand in rubber gloves. I could tell you better when I’ve got the photographs made, to measure them, my lord. The linoleum in front of the washstand is very gratifying indeed, my lord, if you will excuse my mentioning it. Besides the marks of Sir Reuben’s boots which your lordship pointed out, there’s the print of a man’s naked foot—a much smaller one, my lord, not much more than a ten-inch sock, I should say if you asked me.”

Lord Peter’s face became irradiated with almost a dim, religious light.

“A mistake,” he breathed, “a mistake, a little one, but he can’t afford it. When was the linoleum washed last, Bunter?”

“Monday morning, my lord. The housemaid did it and remembered to mention it. Only remark she’s made yet, and it’s to the point. The other domestics—”

His features expressed disdain.

“What did I say, Parker? Five-foot-ten and not an inch longer. And he didn’t dare to use the hair-brush. Beautiful. But he had to risk the top-hat. Gentleman can’t walk home in the rain late at night without a hat, you know, Parker. Look! what do you make of it? Two sets of finger-prints on everything but the book and the brush, two sets of feet on the linoleum, and two kinds of hair in the hat!”

He lifted the top-hat to the light, and extracted the evidence with tweezers.

“Think of it, Parker—to remember the hair-brush and forget the hat—to remember his fingers all the time, and to make that one careless step on the tell-tale linoleum. Here they are, you see, black hair and tan hair—black hair in the bowler and the panama, and black and tan in last night’s topper. And then, just to make certain that we’re on the right track, just one little auburn hair on the pillow, on this pillow, Parker, which isn’t quite in the right place. It almost brings tears to my eyes.”

“Do you mean to say—” said the detective, slowly.

“I mean to say,” said Lord Peter, “that it was not Sir Reuben Levy whom the cook saw last night on the doorstep. I say that it was another man, perhaps a couple of inches shorter, who came here in Levy’s clothes and let himself in with Levy’s latchkey. Oh, he was a bold, cunning devil, Parker. He had on Levy’s boots, and every stitch of Levy’s clothing down to the skin. He had rubber gloves on his hands which he never took off, and he did everything he could to make us think that Levy slept here last night. He took his chances, and won. He walked upstairs, he undressed, he even washed and cleaned his teeth, though he didn’t use the hair-brush for fear of leaving red hairs in it. He had to guess what Levy did with boots and clothes; one guess was wrong and the other right, as it happened. The bed must look as if it had been slept in, so he gets in, and lies there in his victim’s very pyjamas. Then, in the morning sometime, probably in the deadest hour between two and three, he gets up, dresses himself in his own clothes that he has brought with him in a bag, and creeps downstairs. If anybody wakes, he is lost, but he is a bold man, and he takes his chance. He knows that people do not wake as a rule—and they don’t wake. He opens the street door which he left on the latch when he came in—he listens for the stray passer-by or the policeman on his beat. He slips out. He pulls the door quietly to with the latchkey. He walks briskly away in rubber-soled shoes—he’s the kind of criminal who isn’t complete without rubber-soled shoes. In a few minutes he is at Hyde Park Corner. After that—”

He paused, and added:

“He did all that, and unless he had nothing at stake, he had everything at stake. Either Sir Reuben Levy has been spirited away for some silly practical joke, or the man with the auburn hair has the guilt of murder upon his soul.”

“Dear me!” ejaculated the detective, “you’re very dramatic about it.”

Lord Peter passed his hand rather wearily over his hair.

“My true friend,” he murmured in a voice surcharged with emotion, “you recall me to the nursery rhymes of my youth—the sacred duty of flippancy: