Whose Body (5 page)

“Well,” said the detective, “not very much—I was puzzled—frankly. I should say he had been a rich man, but self-made, and that his good fortune had come to him fairly recently.”

“Ah, you noticed the calluses on the hands—I thought you wouldn't miss that.”

“Both his feet were badly blistered—he had been wearing tight shoes.”

“Walking a long way in them, too,” said Lord Peter, “to get such blisters as that. Didn't that strike you as odd, in a person evidently well off?”

“Well, I don't know. The blisters were two or three days old. He might have got stuck in the suburbs one night, perhaps—last train gone and no taxi—and had to walk home.”

“Possibly.”

“There were some little red marks all over his back and one leg I couldn't quite account for.”

“I saw them.”

“What did you make of them?”

“I'll tell you afterwards. Go on.”

“He was very long-sighted—oddly long-sighted for a man in the prime of life; the glasses were like a very old man's. By the way, they had a very beautiful and remarkable chain of flat links chased with a pattern. It struck me he might be traced through it.”

“I've just put an advertisement in
The Times
about it,” said Lord Peter. “Go on.”

“He had had the glasses some time—they had been mended twice.”

“Beautiful, Parker, beautiful. Did you realise the importance of that?”

“Not specially, I'm afraid—why?”

“Never mind—go on.”

“He was probably a sullen, ill-tempered man—his nails were filed down to the quick as though he habitually bit them, and his fingers were bitten as well. He smoked quantities of cigarettes without a holder. He was particular about his personal appearance.”

“Did you examine the room at all? I didn't get a chance.”

“I couldn't find much in the way of footprints. Sugg & Co. had tramped all over the place, to say nothing of little Thipps and the maid, but I noticed a very indefinite patch just behind the head of the bath, as though something damp might have stood there. You could hardly call it a print.”

“It rained hard all last night, of course.”

“Yes; did you notice that the soot on the window-sill was vaguely marked?”

“I did,” said Wimsey, “and I examined it hard with this little fellow, but I could make nothing of it except that something or other had rested on the sill.” He drew out his monocle and handed it to Parker.

“My word, that's a powerful lens.”

“It is,” said Wimsey, “and jolly useful when you want to take a good squint at somethin' and look like a bally fool all the time. Only it don't do to wear it permanently—if people see you full-face they say: 'Dear me! how weak the sight of that eye must be!' Still, it's useful.”

“Sugg and I explored the ground at the back of the building,” went on Parker, “but there wasn't a trace.”

“That's interestin'. Did you try the roof?”

“No.”

“We'll go over it to-morrow. The gutter's only a couple of feet off the top of the window. I measured it with my stick—the gentleman-scout's vade-mecum, I call it—it's marked off in inches. Uncommonly handy companion at times. There's a sword inside and a compass in the head. Got it made specially. Anything more?”

“Afraid not. Let's hear your version, Wimsey.”

“Well, I think you've got most of the points. There are just one or two little contradictions. For instance, here's a man wears expensive gold-rimmed pince-nez and has had them long enough to be mended twice. Yet his teeth are not merely discoloured, but badly decayed and look as if he'd never cleaned them in his life. There are four molars missing on one side and three on the other and one front tooth broken right across. He's a man careful of his personal appearance, as witness his hair and his hands. What do you say to that?”

“Oh, these self-made men of low origin don't think much about teeth, and are terrified of dentists.”

“True; but one of the molars has a broken edge so rough that it had made a sore place on the tongue. Nothing's more painful. D'you mean to tell me a man would put up with that if he could afford to get the tooth filed?”

“Well, people are queer. I've known servants endure agonies rather than step over a dentist's door-mat. How did you see that, Wimsey?”

“Had a look inside; electric torch,” said Lord Peter. “Handy little gadget. Looks like a matchbox. Well—I daresay it's all right, but I just draw your attention to it. Second point: Gentleman with hair smellin' of Parma violet and manicured hands and all the rest of it, never washes inside his ears. Full of wax. Nasty.”

“You've got me there, Wimsey; I never noticed it. Still—old bad habits die hard.”

“Right oh! Put it down at that. Third point: Gentleman with the manicure and the brilliantine and all the rest of it suffers from fleas.”

“By Jove, you're right! Flea-bites. It never occurred to me.”

“No doubt about it, old son. The marks were faint and old, but unmistakable.”

“Of course, now you mention it. Still, that might happen to anybody. I loosed a whopper in the best hotel in Lincoln the week before last. I hope it bit the next occupier!”

“Oh, all these things
might
happen to anybody—separately. Fourth point: Gentleman who uses Parma violet for his hair, etc., etc., washes his body in strong carbolic soap—so strong that the smell hangs about twenty-four hours later.”

“Carbolic to get rid of the fleas.”

“I will say for you, Parker, you've an answer for everything. Fifth point: Carefully got-up gentleman, with manicured, though masticated, finger-nails, has filthy black toenails which look as if they hadn't been cut for years.”

“All of a piece with habits as indicated.”

“Yes, I know, but such habits! Now, sixth, and last point: This gentleman with the intermittently gentlemanly habits arrives in the middle of a pouring wet night, and apparently through the window, when he has already been twenty-four hours dead, and lies down quietly in Mr. Thipps's bath, unseasonably dressed in a pair of pince-nez. Not a hair on his head is ruffled—the hair has been cut to recently that there are quite a number of little short hairs stuck on his neck and the sides of the bath—and he has shaved so recently that there is a line of dried soap on his cheek—”

“Wimsey!”

“Wait a minute—and
dried soap in his mouth
.”

Bunter got up and appeared suddenly at the detective's elbow, the respectful man-servant all over.

“A little more brandy, sir?” he murmured.

“Wimsey,” said Parker, “you are making me feel cold all over.” He emptied his glass—stared at it as though he were surprised to find it empty, set it down, got up, walked across to the bookcase, turned round, stood with his back against it and said:

“Look here, Wimsey—you've been reading detective stories, you're talking nonsense.”

“No, I ain't,” said Lord Peter, sleepily, “uncommon good incident for a detective story, though, what? Bunter, we'll write one, and you shall illustrate it with photographs.”

“Soap in his—Rubbish!” said Parker. “It was something else—some discoloration—”

“No,” said Lord Peter, “there were hairs as well. Bristly ones. He had a beard.”

He took his watch from his pocket, and drew out a couple of longish, stiff hairs, which he had imprisoned between the inner and the outer case.

Parker turned them over once or twice in his fingers, looked at them close to the light, examined them with a lens, handed them to the impassible Bunter, and said:

“Do you mean to tell me, Wimsey, that any man alive would”—he laughed harshly—“shave off his beard with his mouth open, and then go and get killed with his mouth full of hairs? You're mad.”

“I don't tell you so,” said Wimsey. “You policemen are all alike—only one idea in your skulls. Blest if I can make out why you're ever appointed. He was shaved after he was dead. Pretty, ain't it? Uncommonly jolly little job for the barber, what? Here, sit down, man, and don't be an ass, stumpin' about the room like that. Worse things happen in war. This is only a blinkin' old shillin' shocker. But I'll tell you what, Parker, we're up against a criminal—
the
criminal—the real artist and blighter with imagination—real, artistic, finished stuff. I'm enjoying this, Parker.”

L
ORD
P
ETER
finished a Scarlatti sonata, and sat looking thoughtfully at his own hands. The fingers were long and muscular, with wide, flat joints and square tips. When he was playing his rather hard grey eyes softened, and his long, indeterminate mouth hardened in compensation. At no other time had he any pretensions to good looks, and at all times he was spoilt by a long, narrow chin, and a long, receding forehead, accentuated by the brushed-back sleekness of his tow-coloured hair. Labour papers, softening down the chin, caricatured him as a typical aristocrat.

“That's a wonderful instrument,” said Parker.

“It ain't so bad,” said Lord Peter, “but Scarlatti wants a harpsichord. Piano's too modern—all thrills and overtones. No good for our job, Parker. Have you come to any conclusion?”

“The man in the bath,” said Parker, methodically, “was
not
a well-off man careful of his personal appearance. He was a labouring man, unemployed, but who had only recently lost his employment. He had been tramping about looking for a job when he met with his end. Somebody killed him and washed him and scented him and shaved him in order to disguise him, and put him into Thipps's bath without leaving a trace. Conclusion: the murderer was a powerful man, since he killed him with a single blow on the neck, a man of cool head and masterly intellect, since he did all that ghastly business without leaving a mark, a man of wealth and refinement, since he had all the apparatus of an elegant toilet handy, and a man of bizarre, and almost perverted imagination, as is shown in the two horrible touches of putting the body in the bath and of adorning it with a pair of pince-nez.”

“He is a poet of crime,” said Wimsey. “By the way, your difficulty about the pince-nez is cleared up. Obviously, the pince-nez never belonged to the body.”

“That only makes a fresh puzzle. One can't suppose the murderer left them in that obliging manner as a clue to his own identity.”

“We can hardly suppose that: I'm afraid this man possessed what most criminals lack—a sense of humour.”

“Rather macabre humour.”

“True. But a man who can afford to be humorous at all in such circumstances is a terrible fellow. I wonder what he did with the body between the murder and depositing it
chez
Thipps. Then there are more questions. How did he get it there? And why? Was it brought in at the door, as Sugg of our heart suggests? or through the window, as we think, on the not very adequate testimony of a smudge on the window-sill? Had the murderer accomplices? Is little Thipps really in it, or the girl? It don't do to put the notion out of court merely because Sugg inclines to it. Even idiots occasionally speak the truth accidentally. If not, why was Thipps selected for such an abominable practical joke? Has anybody got a grudge against Thipps? Who are the people in the other flats? We must find out that. Does Thipps play the piano at midnight over their heads or damage the reputation of the staircase by bringing home dubiously respectable ladies? Are there unsuccessful architects thirsting for his blood? Damn it all, Parker, there must be a motive somewhere. Can't have a crime without a motive, you know.”

“A madman—” suggested Parker, doubtfully.

“With a deuced lot of method in his madness. He hasn't made a mistake—not one, unless leaving hairs in the corpse's mouth can be called a mistake. Well, anyhow, it's not Levy—you're right there. I say, old thing, neither your man nor mine has left much clue to go upon, has he? And there don't seem to be any motives knockin' about, either. And we seem to be two suits of clothes short in last night's work. Sir Reuben makes tracks without so much as a fig-leaf, and a mysterious individual turns up with a pince-nez, which is quite useless for purposes of decency. Dash it all! If only I had some good excuse for takin' up this body case officially—”

The telephone bell rang. The silent Bunter, whom the other two had almost forgotten, padded across to it.

“It's an elderly lady, my lord,” he said, “I think she's deaf—I can't make her hear anything, but she's asking for your lordship.”

Lord Peter seized the receiver, and yelled into it a “Hullo!” that might have cracked the vulcanite. He listened for some minutes with an incredulous smile, which gradually broadened into a grin of delight. At length he screamed: “All right! all right!” several times, and rang off.

“By Jove!” he announced, beaming, “sportin' old bird! It's old Mrs. Thipps. Deaf as a post. Never used the 'phone before. But determined. Perfect Napoleon. The incomparable Sugg has made a discovery and arrested little Thipps. Old lady abandoned in the flat. Thipps's last shriek to her: 'Tell Lord Peter Wimsey.' Old girl undaunted. Wrestles with telephone book. Wakes up the people at the exchange. Won't take no for an answer (not bein' able to hear it), gets through, says: 'Will I do what I can?' Says she would feel safe in the hands of a real gentleman. Oh, Parker, Parker! I could kiss her, I reely could, as Thipps says. I'll write to her instead—no, hang it, Parker, we'll go round. Bunter, get your infernal machine and the magnesium. I say, we'll go into partner-ship—pool the two cases and work 'em out together. You shall see my body to-night, Parker, and I'll look for your wandering Jew to-morrow. I feel so happy, I shall explode. O Sugg, Sugg, how art thou suggfied! Bunter, my shoes. I say, Parker, I suppose yours are rubber-soled. Not? Tut, tut, you mustn't go out like that. We'll lend you a pair. Gloves? Here. My stick, my torch, the lampblack, the forceps, knife, pill-boxes—all complete?”

“Certainly, my lord.”

“Oh, Bunter, don't look so offended. I mean no harm. I believe in you, I trust you—what money have I got? That'll do. I knew a man once, Parker, who let a world-famous poisoner slip through his fingers, because the machine on the Underground took nothing but pennies. There was a queue at the booking office and the man at the barrier stopped him, and while they were arguing about accepting a five-pound-note (which was all he had) for a twopenny ride to Baker Street, the criminal had sprung into a Circle train, and was next heard of in Constantinople, disguised as an elderly Church of England clergyman touring with his niece. Are we all ready? Go!”