Unnatural Death

Chapter 19 Gone Away

You will not, I imagine, deny,” observed Lord Peter, “that very odd things seem to happen to people who are in a position to give information about the last days of Agatha Dawson. Bertha Gotobed dies suddenly, under suspicious circumstances; her sister thinks she sees Miss Whittaker lying in wait for her at Liverpool docks; Mr. Trigg is inveigled into a house of mystery and is semi-poisoned. I wonder what would have happened to Mr. Probyn, if he had been careless enough to remain in England.”

“I deny nothing,” replied Parker. “I will only point out to you that during the month in which these disasters occurred to the Gotobed family, the object of suspicions was in Kent with Miss Findlater, who never left her side.”

“As against that undoubted snag,” rejoined Wimsey, “I bring forward a letter from Miss Climpson, in which- amid a lot of rigmarole with which I need not trouble you- she informs me that upon Miss Whittaker’s right hand there is a scar, precisely similar to the one which Mr. Trigg describes.”

“Is there? That does seem to connect Miss Whittaker pretty definitely with the Trigg business. But is it your theory that she is trying to polish off all the people who know anything about Miss Dawson? Rather a big job, don’t you think, for a single-handed female? And if so, why is Dr. Carr spared? and Nurse Philliter? and Nurse Forbes? And the other doctor chappie? And the rest of the population of Leahampton, if it comes to that?”

“That’s an interesting point which had already occurred to me. I think I know why. Up to the present, the Dawson case has presented two different problems, one legal and one medical- the motive and the means, if you like that better. As far as opportunity goes, only two people figure as possibles- Miss Whittaker and Nurse Forbes. The Forbes woman had nothing to gain by killin’ a good patient, so for the moment we can wash her out.

“Well, now, as to the medical problem- the means. I must say that up to now that appears completely insoluble. I am baffled, Watson (said he, his hawk-like eyes gleaming angrily from under the half-closed lids). Even I am baffled. But not for long! (he cried, with a magnificent burst of self-confidence). My Honour (capital H) is concerned to track this Human Fiend (capitals) to its hidden source, and nail the whited sepulchre to the mast even though it crush me in the attempt! Loud applause. His chin sank broodingly upon his dressing-gown, and he breathed a few guttural notes into the bass saxophone which was the cherished sompanion of his solitary hours in the bathroom.”

Parker ostentatiously took up the book which he had laid aside on Wimsey’s entrance.

“Tell me when you’ve finished,” he said, caustically.

“I’ve hardly begun. The means, I repeat, seems insoluble – and so the criminal evidently thinks. There has been no exaggerated mortality among the doctors and nurses. On that side of the business the lady feels herself safe. No. The motive is the weak point – hence the hurry to stop the mouths of the people who knew about the legal part of problem.”

“Yes, I see. Mrs. Cropper has started back to Canada, by the way. She doesn’t seem to have been molested at all.”

“No-and that’s why I still think there was somebody on the watch in Liverpool. Mrs. Cropper was only worth silencing as long as she had told nobody her story. That is why I was careful to meet her and accompany her ostentatiously to Town.”

“Oh, rot, Peter! Even if Miss Wittaker had been there – which we know she couldn’t have been – how was she to know you were going to ask about the Dawson business? She doesn’t know you from Adam.”

“She might have found out who Murbles was. The advertisement which started the whole business was in his name, you know.”

“In that case, why hasn’t she attacked Murbles or you?”

“Murbles is a wise old bird. In vain are nets spread in his sight. He is seeing no female clients, answering no invitations, and never goes out without an escort.”

“I didn’t know he took it so seriously.”

“Oh, yes. Murbles is old enough to have learnt the value of his own skin. As for me- have you noticed the remarkable similarity in some ways between Mr. Trigg’s adventure and my own little adventurelet, as you might say, in South Audley Street?”

“What, with Mrs. Forrest?”

“Yes. The secret appointment. The drink. The endeavour to get one to stay the night at all costs. I’m positive there was something in that sugar, Charles, that no sugar should contain- see Public Health (Adulteration of Food) Acts, various.”

“You think Mrs. Forrest is an accomplice?”

“I do. I don’t know what she has to gain by it- probably money. But I feel sure there is some connection. Partly because of Bertha Gotobed’s £5 note; partly because Mrs. Forrest’s story was a palpable fake- I’m certain the woman’s never had a lover, let alone a husband- you can’t mistake real inexperience; and chiefly because of the similarity of method. Criminals always tend to repeat their effects. Look at George Smith and his brides. Look Neill Cream. Look at Armstrong and and his tea-parties.”

“Well, if there’s an accomplice, all the better. Accomplices generally end by giving the show away.”

“True. And we are in a good position because up till now I don’t think they know that we suspect any connection between them.”

“But I still think, you know, we ought to get some evidence that actual crimes have been committed. Call me finicking, if you like. If you could suggest a means of doing away with these people so as to leave no trace, I should feel happier about it.”

“The means, eh?- Well, we do know something about it.”

“As what?”

“Well-take the two victims-”

“Alleged.”

“All right, old particular. The two alleged victims and the two (alleged) intended victims. Miss Dawson was ill and helpless; Bertha Gotobed possibly stupified by a heavy meal and an unaccustomed quantity of wine; Trigg was given a sufficient dose of veronal to send him to sleep, and I was offered something of probably the same kind- I wish I could have kept the remains of that coffee. So we deduce from that, what?”

“I suppose that it was a means of death only be used on somebody more or less helpless or unconscious.”

“Exactly. As for instance, a hypodermic injection- only nothing appears to have been injected. Or a delicate operation of some kind-if we could only think of one to fit the case. Or the inhalation of something- such as chloroform- only we could find no traces of suffocation.”

“Yes. That doesn’t get us very far, though.”

“It’s something. Then, again, it may very well be something that a trained nurse would have learnt or heard about. Miss Whittaker was trained, you know-which, by the way, was what made it so easy for her to bandage up her own head and provide a pitiful and unrecognisable spectacle for the stupid Mr. Trigg.”

“It wouldn’t have to be anything very out of the way- nothing, I mean, that only a trained surgeon could do, or that required very specialised knowledge.”

“Oh, no. Probably something picked up in conversation with a doctor or the other nurses. I say, how about getting hold of Dr. Carr again? Or, no- if he’d ideas on the subject he’d have trotted ’em out before now. I know! I’ll ask Lubbock, the analyst. He’ll do. I’ll get in touch with him tomorrow.”

“And meanwhile,” said Parker, “I suppose we just sit round and wait for somebody else to be murdered.”

“It’s beastly, isn’t it? I still feel poor Bertha Gotobed’s blood on my head, so to speak. I say!”

“Yes?”

“We’ve practically got clear proof on the Trigg business. Couldn’t you put the lady in quod on a charge of burglary while we think out the rest of the dope? It’s often done. It was a burglary, you know. She broke into a house after dark – and appropriated a scuttleful of coal to her own use. Trigg could identify her- he seems to have paid the lady particular attention on more than one occasion and we could rake up his taxi-man for corroborative detail.”

Parker pulled at his pipe for a few minutes.

“There’s something in that,” he said finally. “I think perhaps it’s worth while putting it before the authorities. But we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry, you know. I wish we were further ahead with our other proofs. There’s such a thing as Habeas Corpus- you can’t hold on to people indefinitely just on a charge of stealing coal-”

“There’s the breaking and entering, don’t forget that. It’s burglary, after all. You can get penal servitude for burglary.”

“But it all depends on the view the law takes of the coal. It might decide that there was no original intention of stealing coal, and treat the thing as a mere misdemeanour or civil trespass. Anyhow, we don’t really want a conviction for stealing coal. But I’ll see what they think about it at our place, and meanwhile I’ll get hold of Trigg again and try and find the taxi-driver. And Trigg’s doctor. We might get it as an attempt to murder Trigg, or at least to inflict grievious bodily harm. But I should like some more evidence about-”

“Cuckoo! So should I. But I can’t manufacture evidence out of nothing. Dash it all, be reasonable. I’ve built you up a case out of nothing. Isn’t that handsome enough? Base ingratitude, that’s what’s the matter with you.”

Parker’s inquiries took some time, and June lingered into its longest days.

Chamberlin and Levine flew the Atlantic and Segrave bade farewell to Brooklands. The Daily Yell wrote anti-Red leaders and discovered a plot, somebody laid claim to a marquisate, and a Czech-Slovakian pretended to swim the Channel. Hammond out-graced Grace, there was an outburst of murder at Moscow, Foxlaw won the Gold Cup and the earth opened at Oxhey and swallowed up somebody’s front garden. Oxford decided that women were dangerous, and the electric hare consented to run at theWhite City. England ’s supremacy was challenged at Wimbledon, and the House of Lords made the gesture of stooping to conqer.

Meanwhile, Lord Peter’s projected magnum opus on a-hundred-and-one ways of causing sudden death had advanced by the accumulation of a mass of notes which flowed all over the library at the flat, and threatened to engulf Bunter, whose task it was to file and cross-reference and generally to produce order from chaos. Oriental scholars and explorers were button-holed in clubs and strenuously pumped on the subject of abstruse native poisons; horrid experiments performed in German laboratories were communicated in unreadable documents; and the life of Sir James Lubbock, who had the misfortune to be a particular friend of Lord Peter’s, was made a burden to him with daily inquiries as to the post-mortem detection of such varying substances as chloroform, curare, hydrocyanic acid gas and diethylsulphonmethylethylmethane.

“But surely there must be something which kills without leaving a trace,” pleaded Lord Peter, when at length informed that the persecution must cease. “A thing in such universal demand- surely it is not beyond the wit of scientists to invent it. It must exist. Why isn’t it properly advertised? There ought to be a company to exploit it. It’s simply ridiculous. Why, it’s a thing one might be wantin’ one’s self any day.”

“You don’t understand,” said Sir James Lubbock.

“Plenty of poisons leave no particular post-mortem appearances. And plenty of them- especially the vegetable ones-are difficult to find by analysis, unless you know what you are looking for. For instance, if you’re testing for arsenic, that test won’t tell you whether strychnine is present or not. And if you’re testing for strychnine, you won’t find morphia. You’ve got to try one test after another till you hit the right one. And of course there are certain poisons for which no recognized tests exist.”

“I know all that,” said Wimsey. “I’ve tested things myself. But these poisons with no recognised test- how do you set about proving that they’re there?”

“Well, of course, you’d take the symptoms into account, and so on. You would look at the history of the case.”

“ but I want a poison that doesn’t produce any symptoms. Except death, of course- if you call that a symptom. Isn’t there a poison with no symptoms and no test? Something that just makes you go off, Pouf! like that?”

“Certainly not,” said the analyst, rather annoyed- for your medical analyst lives by symptoms and tests, and nobody likes suggestions that undermine the very foundations of his profession- “not even old age or mental decay. There are always symptoms.”

Fortunately, before the symptoms of mental decay could become too pronounced in Lord Peter, Parker sounded the call to action.

“I’m going down to Leahampton with a warrant,” he said. “I may not use it, but the chief thinks it might be worth while to make an inquiry. What with the Battersea mystery and the Daniels business, and Bertha Gotobed, there seems to be a feeling that there have been too many unexplained tragedies this year, and the Press have begun yelping again, blast them! There’s an article in John Citizen this week, with a poster: ‘Ninety-six Murderers at Large,’ and the Evening Views is starting its reports with ‘Six weeks have now passed, and the police are no nearer the solution-’ you know the kind of thing. We’ll simply have to get some sort of move on. Do you want to come?”

“Certainly- a breath of country air would do me good, I fancy. Blow away the cobwebs, don’t you know. It might even inspire me to invent a good way of murderin’ people. ‘O Inspiration, solitary child, warbling thy native woodnotes wild-’ Did somebody write that, or did I invent it? It sounds reminiscent, somehow.”

Parker, who was out of temper, replied rather shortly, and intimated that the police car would be starting for Leahampton in an hour’s time.

“I will be there,” said Wimsey, “though mind you, I hate being driven by another fellow. It feels so unsafe. Never mind. I will be bloody, bold and resolute, as Queen Victoria said to the Archbishop oh Canterbury.

They reached Leahampton without any incident to justify Lord Peter’s fears. Parker had brought another officer with him, and on the way they picked up the Chief Constable of the County, who appeared very dubiously disposed towards their errand. Lord Peter, observing their array of five strong men, going seize upon one young woman, was reminded of the Marquise de Brinvilliers – (“What! all that water for a little person like me?”)- but this led him back to the subject of poison, and he remained steeped in thought and gloom till the car drew up before the house in Wellington Avenue.

Parker got out, and went up the path with the Chief Constable. The door was opened to them by a frightened-looking maid, who gave a little shriek at sight of them.

“Oh, sir! have you come to say something’s happened to Miss Whittaker?”

“Isn’t Miss Whittaker at home, then?”

“No, sir. She went out in the car with Miss Vera Findlater on Monday-that’s four days back, sir, and she hasn’t come home, nor Miss Findlater neither, and I’m frightened something’s happened to them. When I see you, sir, I thought you was the police come to say there had been an accident. I didn’t know what to do, sir.”

“Skipped, by God!” was Parker’s instant thought, but he controlled his annoyance, and asked:

“Do you know where they were going?”

“Crow’s Beach, Miss Whittaker said, sir.”

“That’s a good fifty miles,” said the Chief Constable. “Probably they’ve just decided to stay there a day or two.”

More likely gone in the opposite direction, thought Parker.

“They didn’t take no things for the night, sir. They went off about ten in the morning. They said they was going to have lunch there and come home in the evening. And Miss Whittaker hasn’t written nor nothing. And her always so particular. Cook and me, we didn’t know what-”

“Oh, well, I expect it’s all right,” said the Chief Constable. “It’s a pity, as we particularly wanted to see Miss Whittaker. When you hear from her, you might say Sir Charles Pillington called with a friend.”

“Yes sir. But please, sir, what ought we to do, sir?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry. I’ll have inquiries made. I’m the Chief Constable, you know, and I can soon find out if there’s been an accident or anything. But if there had been, depend upon it we should have heard about it. Come, my girl, pull yourself together, there’s nothing to cry about. We’ll let you know soon as we hear anything.”

But Sir Charles looked disturbed. Coming on top of Parker’s arrival in the district, the thing had an unpleasant look about it.

Lord Peter received the news cheerfully.

“Good,” said he, “joggle ’ em up. Keep ’ em moving. That ’s the spirit. Always like it when somethin’ happens. My worst suspicions are goin’ to be justified. That always makes one feel so important and virtuous, don’t you think? Wonder why she took the girl with her, though. By the way, we’d better look up the Findlaters. They may have heard something.”

This obvious suggestion was acted upon at once. But at the Findlaters’ house they drew a blank. The family were at the seaside, with the exception of Miss Vera, who was staying in Wellington Avenue with Miss Whittaker. No anxiety was expressed by the parlour-maid and none, apparently, felt. The investigators took care not to arouse any alarm, and, leaving a trivial and polite message from Sir Charles, withdrew for a consultation.

“There’s nothing for it, so far as I can see,” said Parker, “but an all-stations call to look out for the car and the ladies. And we must put inquiries through to all the ports, of course. With four days’ start, they may be anywhere by now. I wish to heaven I’d risked a bit and started earlier, approval or no approval. What’s this Findlater girl like? I’d better go back to the house and get photographs of her and the Whittattaker woman. And, Wimsey, I wish you’d look in on Miss Climpson and see if she has any information.”

“And you might tell ’em at the Yard to keep an eye on Mrs. Forrest’s place,” said Wimsey. “When anything sensational happens to a criminal it’s a good tip to watch the accomplice.”

“I feel sure you are both quite mistaken in this,” urged Sir Charles Pillington. “Criminal-accomplice-bless me! I have had considerable experience in the course of a long life- longer than either of yours- and I really feel convinced that Miss Whittaker, whom I know quite well, is as good and nice a girl as you could wish to find. But there has undoubtedly been an accident of some kind, and it is our duty to make the fullest investigation. I will get on to Crow’s Beach police immediately, as soon as I know the description of the car.

“It’s an Austin Seven and the number is XX9917,” said Wimsey, much to the Chief Constable’s surprise. “But I doubt very much whether you’ll find it at Crow’s Beach, or anywhere near it.”

“Well, we’d better get a move on,” snapped Parker. “We’d better separate. How about a spot of lunch in an hour’s time at the George?”

Wimsey was unlucky. Miss Climpson was not to be found. She had had her lunch early and gone out, saying she felt a long country walk would do her good. Mrs. Budge was rather afraid she had had some bad news- she had seemed so upset and worried since yesterday evening.

“But indeed, sir,” she added, “if you was quick, you might find her up at the church. She often drops in there to say her prayers like. Not a respectful way to approach a place of worship to my mind, do you think so yourself, sir? Popping in and out on a week-day, the same as if it was a friend’s house. And coming home from Communion as cheerful as anything and ready to laugh and make jokes. I don’t see as how we was meant to make an ordinary thing of religion that way- so disrespectful and nothing uplifting to the ’art about it. But there! we all ’as our failings, and Miss Climpson is a nice lady and that I must say, even if she is a Roaming Catholic or next door to one.”

Lord Peter thought that Roaming Catholic was rather an appropriate name for the more ultramontane section of the High Church party. At the moment, however, he felt he could not afford time for religious discussion, and set off for the church in quest of Miss Climpson.

The doors of S. Onesimus were hospitably open, and the red Sanctuary lamp made a little spot of welcoming brightness in the rather dark building. Coming in from the June sunshine, Wimsey blinked a little before he could distinguish anything else. Presently he was able to make out a dark, bowed figure kneeling before the lamp. For a mmoment he hoped it was Miss Climpson, but presently saw to his disappointment that it was merely a Sister in a black habit presumably taking her turn to watch before the Host. The only other occupant of the church was a priest in a cassock, who was busy with the ornaments on the High Altar. It was the Feast of S John, Wimsey remembered suddenly. He walked up the aisle, hoping to find his quarry hidden in some obscure corner. His shoes squeaked. This annoyed him. It was a thing which Bunter never permitted. He was seized with a fancy that the squeak was produced by diabolic possession- a protest against a religious atmosphere on the part of his own particular besetting devil. Pleased with this thought, he moved forward more confidently.

The priest’s attention was attracted by the squeak. He turned and came down towards the intruder. No doubt, thought Wimsey, to offer his professional services to exorcise the evil spirit.

“Were you looking for anybody?” inquired the priest, courteously.

“Well, I was looking for a lady,” began Wimsey. Then it struck him that this sounded a little odd under the circumstances, and he hastened to explain more fully, in the stifled tones considered appropriate to consecrated surroundings.

“Oh, yes,” said the priest, quite unperturbed, “Miss Climpson was here a little time ago, but I fancy she has gone. Not that I usually keep tabs on my flock,” he added with a laugh, “but she spoke to me before she went. Was it urgent? What a pity you should have missed her. Can I give any kind of message or help you in any way?”

“No, thanks,” said Wimsey. “Sorry to bother you. Unseemly to come and try to haul people out of church, but- yes, it was rather important. I’ll leave a message at the house. Thanks, frightfully.”

He turned away; then stopped and came back.

“I say,” he said, “you give advice on moral problems and all that sort of thing, don’t you?”

“Well, we’re supposed to try,” said the priest. “Is anything bothering you in particular?”

“Ye-es,” said Wimsey, “nothing religious, I don’t mean- nothing about infallibility or the Virgin Mary or anything of that sort. Just something I am not comfortable about.”

The priest- who was, in fact, the vicar, Mr. Tredgold- indicated that he was quite at Lord Peter’s service.

“It’s very good of you. Could we come somewhere where I didn’t have to whisper so much. I never can explain things in a whisper. Sort of paralyses one, don’t you know.”

“Let’s go outside,” said Mr. Tredgold.

So they went out and sat on a flat tombstone.

“It’s like this,” said Wimsey. “Hypothetical case, you see, and so on. S’posin’ one knows somebody who’s very, very ill and can’t last long anyhow. And they’re in awful pain and all that, and kept under morphia- practically dead to the world, you know. And suppose that by dyin’ straight away they could make something happen which they really wanted to happen and which couldn’t happen if they lived on a little longer (I can’t explain exactly how, because I don’t want to give personal details and so on) -you get the idea? Well, supposin’ somebody who knew all that was just to give ’em a little push off so to speak -hurry matters on- why should that be a very dreadful crime?”

“The law-” began Mr. Tredgold.

“Oh, the law says it’s a crime, fast enough,” said Wimsey. “But do you honestly think it’s very bad? I know you’d call it a sin, of course, but why is it so very dreadful? It doesn’t do the person any harm, does it?”

“We can’t answer that,” said Mr. Tredgold, “without knowing the ways of God with the soul. In those last weeks or hours of pain and unconsciousness, the soul may be undergoing some necessary part of its pilgrimage on earth. It isn’t our business to cut it short. Who are we to take life and death into our hands?”

“Well, we do it all day, one way and another. Juries- soldiers- doctors- all that. And yet I do feel, somehow, that it isn’t a right thing in this case. And yet, by interfering- finding things out, and so on- one may do far worse harm. Start all kinds of things.”

“I think,” said Mr. Tredgold, “that the sin- I won’t use that word- the damage to Society, the wrongness of the thing lies much more in the harm it does the killer than in anything it can do to the person who is killed. Especially, of course, if the killing is to the killer’s own advantage. The consequence you mention- this thing which the sick person wants done- does the other person stand to benefit by it, may I ask?”

“Yes. That’s just it. He- she- they do.”

“That puts it at once on a different plane from just hastening a person’s death out of pity. Sin is in the intention, not the deed. That is the difference between divine law and human law. It is bad for a human being to get to feel that he has any right whatever to dispose of another person’s life to his own advantage. It leads him on to think himself above all laws- Society is never safe from the man who has deliberately committed murder with impunity. That is why- or one reason why- God forbids private vengeance.”

“You mean that one murder leads to another.”

“Very often. In any case it leads to a readiness to commit others.”

“It has. That’s the trouble. But it wouldn’t have if I hadn’t started trying to find things out. Ought I to have left it alone?”

“I see. That is very difficult. Terrible, too, for you. You feel responsible.”

“Yes.”

“You yourself are not serving a private vengeance?”

“Oh, no. Nothing really to do with me. Started in like a fool to help somebody who’d got into trouble about the thing through having suspicions himself. And my beastly interference started the crimes all over again.”

“I shouldn’t be too troubled. Probably the murderer’s own guilty fears would have led him to fresh crimes even without your interference.”

“That’s true,” said Wimsey, remembering Mr. Trigg.

“My advice to you is to do what you think is right, according to the laws which we have been brought up to respect. Leave the consequences to God. And try to think charitably, even of wicked people. You know what I mean. Bring the offender to justice, but remember that if we all got justice, you and I wouldn’t escape either.”

“I know. Knock the man down but don’t dance on the body. Quite. Forgive my troublin’ you- and excuse my bargin’ off, because I’ve got a date with a friend. Thanks so much. I don’t feel quite so rotten about it now. But I was gettin’ worried.”

Mr. Tredgold watched him as he trotted away between the graves. “Dear, dear,” he said, “how nice they are. So kindly and scrupulous and so vague outside their public-school code. And much more nervous and sensitive than people think. A difficult class to reach. I must make a special intention for him at Mass tomorrow.”

Being a practical man, Mr. Tredgold made a knot in his handkerchief to remind himself of this pious resolve.

“The problem- to interfere or not to interfere- God’s law and Caesar’s. Policemen, now- it’s no problem to them. But for the ordinary man- how hard to disentangle his own motives. I wonder what brought him here. Could it possibly be- No!” said the vicar, checking himself, “I have no right to speculate.” He drew out his handkerchief again and made another mnemonic knot as a reminder against his next confession that he had fallen into the sin of inquisitiveness.

Chapter 20 Murder

Parker, too, had spent a disappointing half-hour. It appeared that Miss Whittaker not only disliked having her photo taken, but had actually destroyed all the existing portraits she could lay hands on, shortly after Miss Dawson’s death. Of course, many of Miss Whittaker’s friends might be in possession of one- notably, of course, Miss Findlater. But Parker not sure that he wanted to start a local hue-and-cry at the moment. Miss Climpson might be able to get one, of course. He went round to Nelson Avenue. Miss Climpson was out; there had been another gentleman asking for her. Mrs. Budge’s eyes were beginning to bulge with curiosity- evidently she was becoming dubious about Miss Climpson’s “nephew” and his friends. Parker then went to the local photographers. There were five. From two of them he extracted a number of local groups, containing unrecognisable portraits of Miss Whittaker at church bazaars and private theatricals. She had never had a studio portrait made in Leahampton.

Of Miss Findlater, on the other hand, he got several excellent likenesses- a slight, fair girl, with a rather sentimental look- plump and prettyish. All these he dispatched to Town, with directions that they should be broadcast to the police, together with a description of the girl’s dress when last seen.

The only really cheerful members of the party at the “George” were the second policeman, who had been having a pleasant gossip with various garage-proprietors and publicans, with a view to picking up information, and the Chief Constable, who was vindicated and triumphant. He had been telephoning to various country police-stations, and had discovered that XX9917 had actually been observed on the previous Monday by an A.A. scout on the road to Crow’s Beach. Having maintained all along that the Crow’s Beach excursion was a genuine one, he was inclined to exult over the Scotland Yard man. Wimsey and Parker dispiritedly agreed that they had better go down and make inquiries at Crow’s Beach.

Meanwhile, one of the photogrophers whose cousin was on the staff of the Leahampton Mercury, had put a call through to the office of that up-to-date paper, which was just going to press. A stop-press announcement was followed by a special edition; somebody rang up the London Evening Views which burst out into a front-page scoop; the fat was in the fire, and the Daily Yell, Daily Views, Daily Wire and Daily Tidings, who were all suffering from lack of excitement, came brightly out next morning with bold headlines about disappearing young women..

Crow’s Beach, indeed, that pleasant and respectable watering-place, knew nothing of Miss Whittaker, Miss Findlater, or car XX9917. No hotel had received them; no garage had refuelled or repaired them; no policeman had observed them. The Chief Constable held to his theory of an accident, and scouting parties were sent out. Wires arrived at Scotland Yard from all over the place. They had been seen at dover, at Newcastle, at Sheffield, at Winchester, at Rugby. Two young women had had tea in a suspicious manner at Folkestone; a car had passed noisily through Dorchester at a late hour on Monday night; a dark-haired girl in an “agitated condition” had entered a public-house in New Alresford just before closing time and asked the way to Hazelmere. Among all these reports, Parker selected that of a boy-scout, who reported on the Saturday morning that he had noticed two ladies with a car having a picnic on the downs on the previous Monday, not far from Shelly Head. The car was an Austin Seven- he knew that, because he was keen on motors (an unanswerable reason for accuracy in a boy of his age), and he had noticed that it was a London number, though he couldn’t say positively what the number was.

Shelly Head lies about ten miles along the coast from Crow’s Beach, and is curiously lonely, considering how near it lies to the watering-place. Under the cliffs is a long stretch of clear sandy beach, never visited, and overlooked by no houses. The cliffs themselves are chalk, and covered with short turf, running back into a wide expanse of downs, with gorse and heather. Then comes a belt of pine-trees, beyond which is a steep, narrow and rutty road, leading at length into the tarmac high-road between Ramborough and Ryders Heath. The downs are by no means frequented, though there are plenty of rough tracks which a car can follow, if you are not particular about comfort or fussy over your springs.

Under the leadership of the boy scout, the police-car bumped uncomfortably over these disagreeable roads. It was hopeless to look for any previous car-tracks, for the chalk was dry and hard, and the grass and heath retained no marks. Everywhere, little dells and hollows presented themselves- all exactly alike, and many of them capable of hiding a small car, not to speak of the mere signs and remains of a recent picnic. Having arrived at what their guide thought to be approximately the right place, they pulled up and got out. Parker quartered the ground between the five of them and they set off.

Wimsey took a dislike to gorse-bushes that day. There were so many of them and so thick. Any of them might hold a cigarette package or a sandwich paper or a scrap of cloth or a clue of some kind. He trudged along unhappily, back bent and eyes on the ground, over one ridge and down into the hollow- then circling to right and to left, taking his bearings by the police-car; over the next ridge and down into the next hollow; over the next ridge-

Yes. There was something in the hollow.

He saw it first sticking out round the edge of a gorse-bush. It was light in colour, and pointed, rather like a foot.

He felt a little sick.

“Somebody has gone to sleep here,” he said aloud.

Then he thought:

“Funny- it’s always the feet they leave showing.”

He scrambled down among the bushes, slipping on the short turf and nearly rolling to the bottom. He swore irritably.

The person was sleeping oddly. The flies must be a nuisance all over her head like that.

It occurred to him that it was rather early in the year for flies. There had been an advertising rhyme in the papers. Something about “Each fly you swat now means, remember, Three hundred fewer next September.” Or was it a thousand fewer? He couldn’t get the metre quite right.

Then he pulled himself together and went forward. The flies rose up in a little cloud.

It must have been a pretty heavy blow, he thought, to smash the back of the skull in like that. The shingled hair was blonde. The face lay between the bare arms.

He turned the body on its back.

Of course, without the photograph, he could not- he need not- be certain that this was Vera Findlater.

All this had taken him perhaps thirty seconds.

He scrambled up to the rim of the hollow and shouted.

A small black figure at some distance stopped and turned. He saw its face as a white spot with no expression on it. He shouted again, and waved his arms in wide gestures of explanation. The figure came running; it lurched slowly and awkwardly over the heathy ground. It was the policeman- a heavy man, not built for running in the heat. Wimsey shouted again, and the policeman shouted too. Wimsey saw the others closing in upon him. The grotesque figure of the boy-scout topped a ridge, waving its staff- then disappeared again. The policeman was quite near now. His bowler hat was thrust back on his head, and there was something on his watch-chain that glinted in the sun as he ran. Wimsey found himself running to meet him and calling – explaining at great length. It was too far off to make himself heard, but he explained, wordily, with emphasis, pointing, indicating. He was quite breathless when the policeman and he came together. They were both breathless. They wagged their heads and gasped. It was ludicrous. He started running again, with the man at his heels. Presently they were all there, pointing, measuring, taking notes, grubbing under the gorse-bushes. Wimsey sat down. He was dreadfully tired.

“Peter,” said Parker’s voice, “come and look at this.”

He got up wearily.

There were the remains of a picnic lunch a little farther down the hollow. The policeman had a little bag in his hand-he had taken it from under the body, and was now turning over the trifles it contained. On the ground, close to the dead girl’s head, was a thick, heavy spanner- unpleasantly discolored with a few fair hairs sticking to its jaws. But what Parker was calling his attention to was none of these, but a man’s mauve grey cap.

“Where did you find that?” asked Wimsey.

“Alf here picked it up at the top of the hollow,” said Parker.

“Tumbled off into the gorse it was,” corroborated the scout, “just up here, lying upside down just as if it had fallen off somebody’s head.”

“Any footmarks?”

“Not likely. But there’s a place where the bushes are all trodden and broken. Looks as if there’d been some sort of struggle. What’s become of the Austin? Hi! Don’t touch that spanner, my lad. There may be finger-prints on it. This looks like an attack by some gang or other. Any money in that purse? Tenshilling note, sixpence and a few coppers- Oh!, the other woman may have had more on her. She’s very well off, you know. Held up for ransom, I shouldn’t wonder.” Parker bent down and very gingerly enfolded the spanner in a silk handkerchief, carrying it slung by the four corners. “Well, we’d better spread about and have a look for the car. Better try that belt of trees over there. Looks a likely spot. And, Hopkins- I think you’d better run back with our car to Crow’s Beach and let ’em know at the station, and come back with a photographer. And take this wire and send it to the Chief Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and find a doctor and bring him along with you. And you’d better hire another car while you’re about it, in case we don’t find the Austin – we shall be too many to get away in this one. Take Alf back with you if you’re not sure of finding the place again. Oh! and Hopkins, fetch us along something to eat and drink, will you? We may be at it a long time. Here’s some money- that enough?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

The constable went off, taking Alf, who was torn between a desire to stay and do some more detecting, and the pride and glory of being first back with the news. Parker gave a few words of praise for his valuable assistance which filled him with delight, and then turned to the Chief Constable.

“They obviously went off in this direction. Would you bear away to the left, sir, and enter the trees from that end, and Peter, will you bear to the right and work through from the other end, while I go straight up the middle?”

The Chief Constable, who seemed a good deal shaken by the discovery of the body, obeyed without a word. Wimsey caught Parker by the arm.

“I say, he said, “have you looked at the wound? Something funny, isn’t there? There ought to be more mess, somehow. What do you think?”

“I’m not thinking anything for the moment,” said Parker, a little grimly. “We’ll wait for the doctor’s report. Come on, Steve! We want to dig out that car.”

“Let’s have a look at the cap. H’m. Sold by a gentleman, resident in Stepney. Almost new. Smells strongly of California Poppy- rather a swell sort of gangsman, apparently. Quite one of the lads of the village.”

“Yes- we ought to be able to trace that. Thank Heaven, they always overlook something. Well, we’d better get along.”

The search for the car presented no difficulties. Parker stumbled upon it almost as soon as he got in under the trees. There was a clearing, with a little rivulet of water running through it; beside which stood the missing Austin. There were other trees here, mingled with the pines, and the water made an ell spread into a shallow pool, with a muddy beach.

The hood of the car was up, and Parker approached with an uncomfortable feeling that there might be something disagreeable inside, but it was empty. He tried the gears. They were in neutral and the handbrake was on. On the seat was a handkerchief- a large linen handkerchief, very grubby and with no initials or laundry-mark. Parker grunted a little over the criminal’s careless habit of strewing his belongings about. He came round in front of the car and received immediate further proof of carelessness. For on the mud there were footmrks- two men’s and a woman’s, it seemed.

The woman had got out of the car first- he could see where the left heel had sunk heavily in as she extricated herself from the low seat. Then the right foot-less heavily- then she had staggered a little and started to run. But one of the men had been there to catch her. He had stepped out of the bracken in shoes with new rubbers on them, and there were scuffling marks as though he had held and she had tried to break away. Finally, the second man, who seemed to possess rather narrow feet and to wear the long-toed boots affected by town boys of the louder sort- had come after her from the car- the marks of his feet were clear, crossing and half-obliterating hers. All three had stood together for a little. Then tracks moved away, with those of the woman in the middle, and led up to where the mark of a Michelin balloon tyre showed clearly. The tyres on the Austin were ordinary Dunlops- besides, this was obviously a bigger car. It had apparently stood there for some little time, for a little pool of engine-oil had dripped from the crank-case. Then the bigger car had moved off, down a sort of ride that led away through the trees. Parker followed it for a little distance but the tracks soon became lost in a thick carpet of pine-needles. Still, there no other road for a car to take. He turned to the Austin to investigate further. Presently shouts told him that the other two were converging upon the centre of the wood. He called back and before long Wimsey and Sir Charles Pillington came crashing towards him through the bracken which fringed the pines.

“Well,” said Wimsey, “I imagine we may put down this elegant bit of headgear to the gentleman in the slim boots. Bright yellow, I fancy, with buttons. He must be lamenting his beautiful cap. The woman’s footprints belong to Mary Whittaker, I take it.”

“I suppose so. I don’t see how they can be the Findlater girl’s. This woman went or was taken off in the car.”

“They are certainly not Vera Findlater’s- there was no mud on her shoes when we found her.”

“Oh! you were taking notice, then. I thought you were feeling a bit dead to the world.”

“So I was, old dear, but I can’t help noticin’things, though moribund. Hullo! What’s this?”

He put his hand down behind the cushions of the car and pulled out an American magazine- that monthly collection of mystery and sensational fiction published under the name of The Black Mask.

“Light reading for the masses,” said Parker.

“Brought by the gentleman in the yellow boots, perhaps,” suggested the Chief Constable.

“More likely by Miss Findlater,” said Wimsey.

“Hardly a lady’s choice,” said Sir Charles, in a pained tone.

“Oh, I dunno. From all I hear, Miss Whittaker was dead against sentimentality and roses round the porch, and the other poor girl copied her in everything. They might have a boyish taste in fiction.”

“Well, it’s not very important,” said Parker.

“Wait a bit. Look at this. Somebody’s been making marks on it.”

Wimsey held out the cover for inspection. A thick pencil-mark had been drawn under the first two words of the title.

“Do you think it’s some sort of message? Perhaps the book was on the seat, and she contrived to make the marks unnoticed and shove it away here before they transferred her to the other car.”

“Ingenious,” said Sir Charles, “but what does it mean? The Black. It makes no sense.”

“Perhaps the long-toed gentleman was black,” suggested Parker. “Or possibly a Hindu or Parsee of sorts.”

“God bless my soul,” said Sir Charles, horrified, “an English girl in the hands of a black man. How abominable!”

“Well, we’ll hope it isn’t so. Shall we follow the road out or wait for the doctor to arrive?”

“Better go back to the body, I think,” said Parker. “They’ve got a long start of us, and half an hour more or less in following them up won’t make much odds.”

They turned from the translucent cool greenness of the little wood back on to the downs. The streamlet clacked merrily away over the pebbles, running out to the southwest on its way to the river and the sea.

“It’s all very well your chattering,” said Wimsey to the water. “Why can’t you say what you’ve seen?”

Chapter 21 By What Means?

The doctor turned out to be a plumpish fussy man- and what Wimsey impatiently called a “Tutster.” He tutted over the mangled head of poor Vera Findlater as though it was an attack of measles after a party or a self-provoked fit of the gout.

“Tst, tst, tst. A terrible blow. How we come by that, I wonder? Tst, tst. Life extinct? Oh, for several days, you know. Tst, tst- which makes it so much more painful, of course. Dear me, how shocking for her poor parents. And her sisters. They are very agreeable girls; you know them, of course, Sir Charles. Yes. Tst, tst.”

“There is no doubt, I suppose,” said Parker, “that it is Miss Findlater.”

“None whatever,” said Sir Charles.

“Well, as you can identify her, it may be possible to spare the relatives the shock of seeing her like this. Just a moment, doctor – the photographer wants to record the position of the body before you move anything. Now, Mr.- Andrews? -yes- have you ever done any photographs of this kind before? No?- well, you mustn’t be upset by it! I know it’s rather unpleasant. One from here, please, to show the position of the body- now from the top of the bank- that’s right-now one of the wound itself- a close-up view, please. Yes. Thank you. Now, Doctor, you can turn her over, please- I’m sorry, Mr. Andrews- I know exactly how you are feeling, but these things have to be done. Hullo! look how her arms are all scratched about. Looks as if she’d put up a bit of a fight. The right wrist and left elbow- as though someone had been trying to hold her down. We must have a photograph of the marks, Mr. Andrews- they may be important. I say, doctor, what do you make of this on the face?”

The doctor looked as though he would have preferred not to make so much as an examination of the face. However, with many tuts he worked himself up to giving an opinion.

“As far as one can tell, with all these post-mortem changes,” he ventured, “it looks as though the face had been roughened or burnt about the nose and lips. Yet there is no appearance of the kind on the bridge of the nose, neck or forehead. Tst, tst- otherwise I have put it down to severe sunburn.”

“How about chloroform burns?” suggested Parker.

“Tst, tst,” said the doctor, annoyed at not having thought of this himself-“I wish you gentlemen of the police force would not be quite so abrupt. You want everything decided in too great a hurry-I was about to remark- if you had not anticipated me- that since I could not put the appearance down to sunburn, there remains some such possibility as you suggest. I can’t possibly say that it is the result of chloroform- medical prononcements of that kind cannot be hastily made without cautious investigation- but I was about to remark that it might be.”

“In that case,” put in Wimsey, ”could she have died from the effects of the chloroform? Supposing she was given too much or that her heart was weak?”

“My good sir,” said the doctor, deeply offended this time, “look at that blow upon the head, and ask yourself whether it is necessary to suggest any other cause of death. Moreover, if she had died of the chloroform, where would be the necessity for the blow?”

“That is exactly what I was wondering,” said Wimsey.

“I suppose,” went on the doctor, “you will hardly dispute my medical knowledge?”

“Certainly not,” said Wimsey, “but as you say, it is unwise to make any medical pronouncement without cautious investigation.”

“And this is not the place for it,” put in Parker, hastily. “I think we have done all there is to do here. Will you go with the body to the mortuary, doctor. Mr. Andrews, I shall be obliged if you will come and take a few photographs of some footmarks and so on up in the wood. The light is bad, I’m afraid, but we must do our best.”

He took Wimsey by the arm.

“The man is a fool, of course,” he said, “but we can get a second opinion. In the meantime, we had better let it be supposed that we accept the surface explanation of all this.”

“What is the difficulty?” asked Sir Charles, curiously.

“Oh, nothing much,” replied Parker. “All the appearances are in favour of the girls having been attacked by a couple of ruffians, who have carried Miss Whittaker off with a view to ransom, after brutally knocking Miss Findlater on the heead when she offered resistance. Probably that is the true explanation. Any minor discrepancies will doubtless clear themselves up in time. We shall know better when we have had a proper medical examination.”

They returned to the wood, where photographs were taken and careful measurements made of the footprints. The Chief Constable followed these activities with intense interest, looking over Parker’s shoulder as he entered the particulars in his notebook.

“I say,” he said, suddenly, “isn’t it rather odd-”

“Here’s somebody coming,” broke in Parker.

The sound of a motor-cycle being urged in second gear over the rough ground proved to be the herald of a young man armed with a camera.

“Oh, God!” groaned Parker. “The damned Press already.”

He received the journalist courteously enough, showing him the wheel-tracks and the footprints, and outlining the kidnapping theory as they walked back to where the body was found.

“Can you give us any idea, Inspector, of the appearance of the two wanted men?”

“Well,” said Parker, “one of them appears to be something of a dandy; he wears a loathsome mauve cap and narrow pointed shoes, and, if those marks on the magazine cover mean anything, one or other of the men may possibly be a coloured man of some kind. Of the second man, all we can definitely say is that he wears number 10 shoes, with heels.”

“I was going to say,” said Pillington, ”that, à propos de bottes, it is remarkable- ”

“And this is where we found the body of Miss Findlater,” went on Parker, ruthlessly. He described the injuries and the position of the body, and the journalist gratefully occupied himself with taking photographs, including a group of Wimsey, Parker and the Chief Constable standing among the gorse-bushes, while the latter majestically indicated the fatal spot with his walking-stick.

“And now you’ve got what you want, old son,” said Parker, benevolently, “buzz off, won’t you, and tell the rest of the boys. You’ve got all we can tell you, we’ve got other things to do beyond granting special interviews.”

The reporter asked no better. This was tantamount to making his information exclusive, and no Victorian matron could have a more delicate appreciation of the virtues of exclusiveness than a modern newspaper man.

“Well now, Sir Charles,” said Parker, when the man had happily chugged and popped himself away, “what were you about to say in the matter of the footprints?”

But Sir Charles was offended. The Scotland Yard man had snubbed him and thrown doubt on his discretion.

“Nothing,” he replied. “I feel sure that my conclusions would appear very elementary to you.”

And he preserved a dignified silence throughout the return journey.

The Whittaker case had begun almost imperceptibly, in the overhearing of a casual remark dropped in a Soho restaurant; it ended amid a roar of publicity that shook England from end to end and crowded even Wimbledon into the second place. The bare facts of the murder and kidnapping appeared exclusively that night in a Late Extra edition of the Evening Views. Next morning it sprawled over the Sunday papers with photographs and full details, actual and imaginary. The idea of two English girls- the one brutally killed, the other carried off for some end unthinkably sinister, by a black man- aroused all the passion of horror and indignation of which the English temperament is capable. Reporters swarmed down upon Crow’s Beach like locusts- the downs near Shelly Head were like a fair with motors, bicycles and parties on foot, rushing out to spend a happy weekend amid surroundings of mystery and bloodshed. Parker, who with Wimsey had taken rooms at the Green Lion, sat answering the telephone and receiving the letters and wires which descended upon him from all sides, with a stalwart policeman posted at the end of the passage to keep out all intruders.

Wimsey fidgeted about the room, smoking cigarette after cigarette in his excitement.

“This time we’ve got them,” he said. “They’ve overreached themselves, thank God!”

“Yes. But have a little patience, old man. We can’t lose them- but we must have all the facts first.”

“-You’re sure those fellows have got Mrs. Forrest safe?”

“Oh, yes. She came back to the flat on Monday night- or so the garage man says. Our men are shadowing her continually and will let us know the moment anybody comes to the flat.”

“Monday night!”

“Yes. But that’s no proof in itself. Monday night is quite a usual time for weekenders to return to Town. Besides, I don’t want to frighten her till we know whether she’s the principal or merely the accomplice. Look here, Peter, I’ve had a message from another of our men. He’s been looking into the finances of Miss Whittaker and Mrs. Forrest. Miss Whittaker has been drawing out big sums, ever since last December year in cheques to Self, and these correspond almost exactly, amount for amount, with sums which Mrs. Forrest has been paying into her own account. That woman has had a big hold over Miss Whittaker, ever since old Miss Dawson died. She’s in it up to the neck, Peter.”

“I knew it. She’s been doing the jobs while the Whittaker woman held down her alibi in Kent. For God’s sake, Charles, make no mistake. Nobody’s life is safe for a second while either of them is at large.”

“When a woman is wicked and unscrupulous,” said Parker sententiously, “she is the most ruthless criminal in the world- fifty times worse than a man, because she is always much more single-minded about it.”

“They’re not troubled with sentimentality, that’s why,” said Wimsey, “and we poor mutts of men stuff ourselves up with the idea that they’re romantic and emotional. All punk, my son. Damn that ’phone!”

Parker snatched up the receiver.

“Yes- yes- speaking. Good God, you don’t say so. All right. Yes. Yes, of course you must detain him. I think myself it’s a plant, but he must be held and questioned. And see that all the papers have it. Tell ’em you’re sure he’s the man. See? Soak it ell into ’em that that’s the official view. And- wait a moment- I want photographs of the cheque and of any fingerprints on it. Send ’em down immediately by a special messenger. It’s genuine, I suppose? The Bank people say it is? Good! What’s his story… Oh!… any envelope?- Destroyed?- Silly devil. Right. Right. Goodbye.”

He turned to Wimsey with some excitement.

“Hallelujah Dawson walked into Lloyds Bank in Stepney yesterday morning and presented Mary Whittaker’s cheque for £10,000, drawn on their Leahampton branch to Bearer, and dated Friday 24th. As the sum was such a large one and the story of the disappearance was in Friday night’s paper, they asked him to call again. Meanwhile, they communicated with Leahampton. When the news of the murder came out yesterday evening, the Leahampton manager remembered about it and ’phoned the Yard, with the result that they sent round this morning and had Hallelujah up for a few inquiries. His story is that the cheque arrived on Saturday morning, all by itself in an envelope, without a word of explanation. Of course the old juggins chucked the envelope away, so that we can’t verify his tale or get a line on the post-mark. Our people thought the whole thing looked a bit fishy, so Hallelujah is detained pending investigation- in other words, arrested for murder and conspiracy!”

“Poor old Hallelujah! Charles, this is simply devilish! That innocent, decent old creature, who couldn’t harm a fly.”

“I know. Well, he’s in for it and will have to go through with it. It’s all the better for us. Hell’s bells, there’s somebody at the door. Come in.”

“It’s Dr. Faulkner to see you, sir,” said the constable, putting his head in.

“Oh, good. Come in, doctor. Have you made your examination?”

“I have, Inspector. Very interesting. You were quite right. I’ll tell you that much straight away.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Sit down and tell us all about it.”

“I’ll be as brief as possible,” said the doctor. He was a London man, sent down by Scotland Yard, and accustomed to police work- a lean, grey badger of a man, business-like and keen-eyed, the direct opposite of the “tutster” who had annoyed Parker the evening before.

“Well, first of all, the blow on the head had, of course, nothing whatever to do with the death. You saw yourself that there had been next to no bleeding. The wound was inflicted some time after death-no doubt to create the impression of an attack by a gang. Similarly with the cuts and scratches on the arms. They are the merest camouflage.”

“Exactly. Your colleague-”

“My colleague, as you call him, is a fool,” snorted the doctor. “If that’s a specimen of his diagnosis, I should think there would be a high death-rate in Crow’s Beach. That’s by the way. You want the cause of death?”

“Chloroform?”

“Possibly. I opened the body but found no special symptoms suggestive of poisoning or anything. I have removed the necessary organs and sent them to Sir James Lubbock for analysis at your suggestion, but candidly I expect nothing from that. There was no odour of chloroform on opening the thorax. Either the time elapsed since the death was too long, as is very possible, seeing how volatile the stuff is, or the dose was too small. I found no indications of any heart weakness, so that, to produce death in a healthy young girl, chloroform would have had to be administered over a considerable time.”

“Do you think it was administered at all?”

“Yes, I think it was. The burns on the face certainly suggest it.”

“That would also account for the handkerchief found in the car,” said Wimsey.

“I suppose,” pursued Parker, would it would require considerable strength and determination to administer chloroform to a strong young woman. She would probably resist strenuously.”

“She would,” said the doctor, grimly, “but the odd thing is, she didn’t. As I said all before, all the marks of violence were inflicted postmortem.”

“Suppose she had been asleep at the time,” suggested Wimsey, “couldn’t it have been done quietly then?”

“Oh, yes- easily. After a few long breaths of the stuff she would become semiconscious and then could be more firmly dealt with. It is quite possible, I suppose, that she fell asleep in the sunshine, while her companion wandered and was kidnapped, and that the kidnappers then came along and got rid of Miss Findlater.”

“That seems a little unnecessary,” said Parker. “Why come back to her at all?”

“Do you suggest that they both fell asleep and were both set on and chloroformed at the same time? It sounds rather unlikely.”

“I don’t. Listen, doctor- only keep this to yourself.”

He outlined the history of their suspicions about Mary Whittaker, to which the doctor listened in horrified amazement.

“What happened,” said Parker, “as we think, is this. We think that for some reason Miss Whittaker had determined to get rid of this poor girl who was so devoted to her. She arranged that they should go off for a picnic and that it should be known where they were going to. Then, when Vera Findlater was dozing in the sunshine, our theory is that she murdered her- either with chloroform or-more likely, I fancy- by the same method she used upon her other victims, whatever that was. Then she struck her on the head and produced the other appearances suggestive of a struggle, and left on the bushes a cap which she had previously purchased and stained with brilliatine. I am, of course, having the cap traced. Miss Whittaker is a tall, powerful woman-I don’t think it would be beyond her strength to inflict that blow on an unresisting body.”

“But how about these footmarks in the wood?”

“I’m coming to that. There are one or two very odd things about them. To begin with, if this was the work of a secret gang, why should they go out of their way to pick out the one damp, muddy spot in twenty miles of country to leave their footprints in, when almost anywhere else they could have come and gone without any recognisable traces at all?”

“Good point,” said the doctor. ̶o;And I that, that they must have noticed they’d left a cap behind. Why not come back and remove it?”

“Exactly. Then again. Both pairs of shoes left prints entirely free from the marks left by wear and tear. I mean that there were no signs of the heels or soles being worn at all, while the rubbers on the larger pair were obviously just out of the shop. We shall have the photographs here in a moment, and you will see. Of course, it’s not impossible that both men should be wearing brand new shoes, but on the whole, it’s unlikely.”

“It is,” agreed the doctor.

“And now we come to the most suggestive thing of all. One of the supposed men had very much bigger feet than the other, from which you would expect a taller and possibly heavier man with a longer stride. But on measuring footprints, what do we find? In all cases- the big man, the little man, the woman- we have exactly the same length of stride. Not only that, but footprints have sunk into the ground to precisely the same depth, indicating that all three people were of the same weight. Now, the other discrepancies might pass, but that is absolutely beyond the reach of coincidence.”

Dr. Faulkner considered this moment.

“You’ve proved your point,” he said at length. “I consider that absoloutely convincing.”

“It struck even Sir Charles Pillington, who is none too bright,” said Parker. “I had the greatest difficulty in preventing him from blurting out the extraordinary agreement of the measurements to that Evening Views man.”

“You think, then, that Miss Whittaker had come provided with these shoes and produced the tracks herself.”

“Yes, returning each time through the bracken. Cleverly done. She had made no mistake about superimposing the footprints. It was all worked out to a nicety- each set over and under the two others to produce the impression that three people had been there at the same time. Intensive study of the works of Mr. Austin Freeman, I should say.”

“And what next?”

“Well, I think we shall find that this Mrs. Forrest, who we think has been her accomplice all along, had brought her car down-the big car, that is- and was waiting there for her. Possibly she did the making of the footprints while Mary Whittaker was staging the assault. Anyhow, she probably arrived there after Mary Whittaker and Vera Findlater had left the Austin and departed to the hollow on the downs. When Mary Whittaker had finished her part of the job, they put the handkerchief and the magazine called The Black Mask into the Austin and drove off in Mrs. Forrest’s car. I’m having the movements of the car investigated, naturally. It’s a dark blue Renault four-seater, with Michelin ballon-tyres, and the number is XO4247. We know that it returned to Forrest’s garage on the Monday night with Mrs. Forrest in it.”

“But where is Miss Whittaker?”

“In hiding somewhere. We shall get her all right. She can’t get money from her own bank- they’re warned. If Mrs. Forrest tries to get money for her, she will be followed. So if the worst comes to the worst, we can starve her out in time with any luck. But we’ve got another clue. There has been a most determined attempt to throw suspicion on an unfortunate relative of Miss Whittaker’s- a black Nonconformist parson, with the remarkable name of Hallelujah Dawson. He has certain pecuniary claims one Miss Whittaker- not legal claims, but claims which any decent and humane person should have respected. She didn’t respect them, and the poor old man might well have been expected to nurse a grudge against her. Yesterday morning he tried to cash a Bearer cheque of hers for £10,000, with a lame-sounding story to the effect that it had arrived by the first post, without explanation, in an envelope. So of course, he’s had to be detained as one of the kidnappers.”

“But that is very clumsy, surely. He’s almost certain to have an alibi.”

“I fancy the story will be that he hired some gangsters to do the job for him. He belongs to a Mission in Stepney- where that mauve cap came from- and no doubt there are plenty of tough lads in his meighborhood. Of course we shall make close inquiries and publish details in all the papers.”

“And then?”

“Well then, I fancy, the idea is that Miss Whittaker will turn up somewhere in an agitated condition with a story of assault and holding to ransom made to fit the case. If Cousin Hallelujah has not produced a satisfactory alibi, we shall learn that he was on the spot directing the murderers. If he has definitely shown that he asn’t there, his name will have been mentioned, or he will have turned up at some time which the poor dear girl couldn’t exactly ascertain, in some dreadful den to which she was taken in a place which she won’t be able to identify.”

“What a devilish plot.”

“Yes. Miss Whittaker is a charming young woman. If there’s anything she’d stop at, I don’t know what it is. And the amiable Mrs. Forrest appears to be another of the same kidney. Of course, doctor, we’re taking you into our confidence. You understand that our catching Mary Whittaker depends on her believing that we’ve swallowed all those false clues of hers.”

“I’m not a talker,” said the doctor. “Gang you call it, and gang it is, as far as I’m concerned. And Miss Findlater was hit on the head and died of it. I only hope my colleague and the Chief Constable will be equally discreet. I warned them, naturally, after what you said last night.”

“It’s all very well,” said Wimsey, “but what positive evidence have we, after all, against this woman? A clever defending counsel would tear the whole thing to rags. The only thing we can absolutely prove her to have done is the burgling that house on Hampstead Heath and stealing the coal. The other deaths were returned natural deaths at the inquest. And as for Miss Findlater- even if we show it to be chloroform- well, chloroform isn’t difficult stuff to get hold of-it’s not arsenic or cyanide. And even if there were finger-prints on the spanner-”

“There were not,” said Parker, gloomily. “This girl knows what she’s about.”

“What did she want to kill Vera Findlater for, anyway?” asked the doctor, suddenly. “According to you, the girl was the most valuable bit of evidence she had. She was the one witness who could prove that Miss Whittaker had an alibi for the other crimes- if they were crimes.”

“She may have found out too much about the connection between Miss Whittaker and Mrs. Forrest. My impression is that she had served her turn and become dangerous. What we’re hoping to surprise now is some communication between Forrest and Whittaker. Once we’ve got that- ”

“Humph!” said Dr. Faulkner. He had strolled to the window. “I don’t want worry you unduly, but I perceive Sir Charles Pillington in conference with the Special Correspondent of the Wire. The Yell came out with the gang story all over the front page this morning, and a patriotic leader about the danger of encouraging coloured aliens. I needn’t remind you that the Wire would be ready to corrupt the Archangel Gabriel in order to kill the Yell’s story.”

“Oh, hell!” said Parker, rushing to the window.

“Too late,” said the doctor. “The Wire man has vanished into the post office. Of course, you can ’phone up and try to stop it.”

Parker did so, and was courteously assured by the editor of the Wire that the story had not reached him, and that if it did, he would bear Inspector Parker’s instructions in mind.

The editor of the Wire was speaking the exact truth. The story had been received by the editor of the Evening Banner, sister paper to the Wire. In times of crisis, it is sometimes convenient that the left hand should not know what the right hand does. After all, it was an exclusive story.

Chapter 22 A Case of Conscience

Thursday, June 23rd, was the Eve of S. John. The sober green workaday dress in which the church settles down to her daily duties after the bridal raptures of Pentecost, had been put away, and the altar was white and shining once again. Vespers were over in the Lady Chapel at S. Onesimus – a faint reek of incense hung cloudily under the dim beams of the roof. A very short acolyte with a very long brass extinguisher snuffed out the candles, adding the faintly unpleasant yet sanctified odour of hot wax. The small congregation of elderly ladies rose up lingeringly from their devotions and slipped away in a series of deep genuflections. Miss Climpson gathered up a quantitity of little manuals, and groped for her gloves. In doing so, she dropped her office-book. It fell, annoyingly, behind the long kneeler, scattering as it went a small Pentecostal shower of Easter cards, book-markers, sacred pictures, dried palms and Ave Marias into the dark corner behind the confessional.

Miss Climpson gave a little exclamation of wrath as she dived after them- and immediately repented of this improper outburst of anger in a sacred place. “Discipline,” she murmured, retrieving the last lost sheep from under a hassock, “discipline. I must learn self-control.” She crammed the papers back into the office-book, grasped her gloves and handbag, bowed to the Sanctuary, dropped her bag, picked it up this time in a kind of glow of martyrdom, bustled down the aisle and across the church to the south door, where the sacristan stood, key in hand, waiting to let her out. As she went, she glanced up at the High Altar, unlit and lonely, with the tall candles like faint ghosts in the twilight of the apse. It had a grim and awful look she thought, suddenly.

“Good night, Mr. Stanniforth,” she said quickly.

“Good night, Miss Climpson, good night.”

She was glad to come out of the shadowy porch into the green glow of the June evening. She had felt a menace. Was it the thought of the stern Baptist, with his call to repentance? the prayer for grace to speak the truth and boldly rebuke vice? Miss Climpson decided that she would hurry home and read the Epistle and Gospel- curiously tender and comfortable for the festival of that harsh and uncompromising Saint. “And I can tidy up these cards at the same time,” she thought.

Mrs. Budge’s first-floor front seemed stuffy after the scented loveliness of the walk home. Miss Climpson flung the window open and sat down by it to rearrange her sanctified oddments. The card of the Last Supper went in at the prayer of Consecration; the Fra Angelico Annunciation had strayed out of the office for March 25th and was wandering among the Sundays after Trinity; the Sacred Heart with its French text belonged to Corpus Christi; the… “Dear me!” said Climpson, “I must have picked this up in church.”

Certainly the little sheet of paper was not in her writing. Somebody must have dropped it. It was natural to look and see whether it was anything of importance.

Miss Climpson was one of those people who say: “I am not the kind of person who reads other people’s postcards.” This is clear notice to all and sundry that they are, pecisely, that kind of person. They are not untruthful; the delusion is real to them. It is merely that Providence has provided them with a warning rattle, like that of the rattle-snake. After that, if you are so foolish as to leave your correspondence in their way, it is your own affair.

Miss Climpson perused the paper.

In the manuals for self-examination issued to the Catholic-minded, there is often included an unwise little paragraph which speaks volumes for the innocent unworldliness of the compilers. You are advised, when preparing for confession, to make a little list of your misdeeds, lest one or two peccadilloes should slip your mind. It is true that you are cautioned against writing down the names of other people or showing your list to your friends, or leaving it about. But accidents may happen- and it may be that this recording of sins is contrary to the mind of the Church, who bids you whisper them with fleeting breath into the ear of a priest and bids him, in the same moment that he absolves, forget them as though they had never been spoken.

At any rate, somebody had been recently shriven of the sins set forth upon the paper- probably the previous Saturday- and the document had fluttered down unnoticed between the confession-box and the hassock, escaping the eye of the cleaner. And here it was-the tale that should have been told to none but God- lying open upon Mrs. Budge’s round mahogany table under the eye of a fellow-mortal.

To do Miss Climpson justice, she would probably have destroyed it instantly unread, if one sentence had not caught her eye:

“the lies I told for M. W.’s sake.”

At the same moment she realised that this was Vera Findlater’s handwriting, and it “came over her like a flash”- as she explained afterwards, exactly what the implication of the words was.

For a full half-hour Miss Climpson sat struggling with her conscience. Her natural inquisitiveness said “Read”; her religious training said, “You must not read”; her sense of duty to Wimsey, who employed her, said, “Find out”; her own sense of decency said, “Do no such thing”; a dreadful, harsh voice muttered gratingly, “Murder is the question. Are you going to be the accomplice of Murder?” She felt like Lancelot Gobbo between conscience and the fiend -but which was the fiend and which was conscience?

“To speak the truth and boldly rebuke vice.”

Murder.

There was a real possibility now.

But was it a possibility? Perhaps she had read into the sentence more than it would bear.

In that case, was it not- almost-a duty to read further and free her mind from this horrible suspicion?

She would have liked to go to Mr. Tredgold and ask his advice. Probably he would tell her to burn the paper promptly and drive suspicion out of her mind with prayer and fasting.

She got up and began searching for the match-box. It would be better to get rid of the thing quickly.

What, exactly, was she about to do?-To destroy the clue to the discovery of a Murder?

Whenever she thought of the word, it wrote itself upon her brain in large capitals, heavily underlined. MURDER- like a police-bill.

Then she had an idea. Parker was a policeman- and probably also he had no particular feelings about the sacred secrecy of the Confessional. He had a Protestant appearance- or possibly he thought nothing of religion one way or the other. In any case, he would put his professional duty before everything. Why not send him the paper, without reading it, briefly explaining how she had come upon it? Then the responsibility would be his.

On consideration, however, Miss Climpson’s innate honesty scouted this scheme as Jesuitical. Secrecy was violated by this open publication as much as if she had read the thing- or more so. The old Adam, too, raised his head at this point, suggesting that if anybody was going to see the confession, she might just as well satisfy her own reasonable curiosity. Besides- suppose she was quite mistaken. After all, the “lies” might have nothing whatever to do with Mary Whittaker’s alibi. In that case, she would have betrayed another person’s secret wantonly, and to no purpose. If she did decide to show it, she was bound to read it first- in justice to all parties concerned.

Perhaps- if she just glanced at another word or two, she would see that it had nothing to do with- MURDER -then she could destroy it and forget it. She knew that if she destroyed it unread she never would forget it, to the end of her life. She would always carry with her that grim suspicion. She would think of Mary Whittaker as- perhaps- a Murderess. When she looked into those hard blue eyes she would be wondering what sort of expression they had when the soul behind them was plotting- MURDER. Of course, the suspicions had been there before, planted by Wimsey, but now they were her own suspicions. They crystallised- became real to her.

“What shall I do?”

She gave a quick, shamefaced glance at the paper again. This time she saw the word “ London.”

Miss Climpson gave a kind of little gasp, like a person stepping under a cold shower-bath.

“Well,” said Miss Climpson, “if this is a sin I am going to do it, and may I be forgiven.”

With a red flush creeping over her cheeks as though she were stripping something naked, she turned her attention to the paper.

The jottings were brief and ambiguous. Parker might not have made much of them, but to Miss Climpson, trained in this kind of devotional shorthand, the story was clear as print.

“Jealousy”- the word was written large and underlined. Then there was a reference to a quarrel, to wicked accusations and angry words and to a pre-occupation coming between the penitent’s soul and God. “Idol”- and a long dash.

From these few fossil bones, Miss Climpson had little difficulty in reconstructing one of those hateful and passionate “scenes” of slighted jealousy with which a woman-ridden life had made her only too familiar. “I do everything for you-you don’t care a bit for me- you treat me cruelly- you’re simply sick of me, that’s what it is!” And “Don’t be so ridiculous. Really, I can’t stand this. Oh, stop it, Vera! I hate being slobbered over.” Humiliating, degrading, exhausting, beastly scenes. Girls’ school, boarding-house, Bloomsbury-flat scenes: Damnable selfishness wearying of its victim. Silly schwärmerei swamping all decent self-respect. Barren quarrels ending in shame and hatred.

“Beastly, blood-sucking woman,” said Miss Climpson, viciously. “It’s too bad. She’s only making use of the girl.”

But the self-examiner was now troubled with a more difficult problem. Piecing the hints together, Miss Climpson sorted it out with practised ease. Lies had been told- that was wrong, even though done to help a friend. Bad confessions had been made, suppressing those lies. This ought to be confessed and put right. But (the girl asked herself) had she come to this conclusion out of hatred of the lies or out of spite against the friend? Difficult, this searching of the heart. And ought she, not content with confessing the lies to the priest, also to tell the truth to the world?

Miss Climpson had here no doubt what the priest’s ruling would be. “You need not go out of your way to betray your friend’s confidence. Keep silent if you can, but if you speak you must speak the truth. You must tell your friend that she is not to expect any more lying from you. She is entitled to ask for secrecy- no more.”

So far, so good. But there was a further problem.

“Ought I to connive at her doing what is wrong?”- and then a sort of explanatory aside- “the man in South Audley Street.”

This was a little mysterious…No!- on the contrary, it explained the whole mystery, jealousy, quarrel and all.

In those weeks of April and May, when Mary Whittaker had been supposed to be all the time in Kent with Vera Findlater, she had been going up to London. And Vera had promised to say that Mary was with her the whole time. And the visits to had to do with a man in South Audley Street, and there was something sinful about it. That probably meant a love-affair. Miss Climpson pursed her lips virtuously, but she was more surprised than shocked. Mary Whittaker! she would never have suspected it of her, somehow. But it so explained the jealousy and quarrel- the sense of desertion. But how had Vera found out? Had Mary Whittaker confided in her?- No; that sentence again, under the heading “Jealousy” what was it- “following M. W. to London.” She had followed then, and seen. And then, at some moment, she had burst out with her knowledge- reproached her friend. Yet this expedition to London must have happened before her own conversation with Vera Findlater, and the girl had then seemed so sure of Mary’s affection. Or had it been that she was trying to persuade herself, with determined self-deception, that there “nothing in” this business about the man? Probably. And probably some brutality of Mary’s had brought all the miserable suspicions boiling to the surface, vocal, reproachful and furious. And so they had gone on to the row and the break.

“Queer,” thought Miss Climpson, “that Vera has never come and told me about her trouble. But perhaps she is ashamed, poor child. I haven’t seen her for nearly a week. I think I’ll call and see her and perhaps she’ll tell me all about it. In which case”- cried Miss Climpson’s conscience, suddenly emerging with a bright and beaming smile from under the buffets of the enemy- “in which case I shall know the whole history of it legitimately and can quite honourably tell Lord Peter about it.”

The next day- which was the Friday-she woke, however, with an unpleasant ache in the conscience. The paper- still tucked into the office-book- worried her. She went round early to Vera Findlater’s only to hear that she was staying with Miss Whittaker. “Then I suppose they’ve made it up,” she said. She did not want to see Mary Whittaker, whether her secret was murder or mere immorality; but she was tormented by the desire to clear up the matter of the alibi for Lord Peter.

In Wellington Avenue she was told that the two girls had gone away on the Monday and had not yet returned. She tried to reassure the maid, but her own heart misgave her. Without any real reason, she was uneasy. She went round to the church and said her prayers, but her mind was not on what she was saying. On an impulse, she caught Mr. Tredgold as he pottered in and out of the Sacristy, and asked if she might come the next evening to lay a case of conscience before him. So far, so good, and she felt that a “good walk” might help to clear the cob-webs from her brain.

So she started off, missing Lord Peter by a quarter of an hour, and took the train to Guildford and then walked and had lunch in a wayside tea-shop and walked back into Guildford and so came home, where she learnt that “Mr. Parker and ever so many gentlemen had been asking for her all day, and what a dreadful thing, miss, here was Miss Whittaker and Miss Findlater disappeared and the police out looking for them, and them motor-cars was such dangerous things, miss, wasn’t they? It was to be hoped there wasn’t an accident.”

And into Miss Climpson’s mind there came, like an inspiration, the words, “ South Audley Street.”

Miss Climpson did not, of course, know that Wimsey was at Crow’s Beach. She hoped to find him in Town. For she was seized with a desire, which she could hardly have explained even to herself, to go and look at South Audley Street. What she was to do when she got there she did not know, but go there she must. It was the old reluctance to make open use of that confession paper. Vera Findlater’s story at first hand- that was the idea to which she obscurely clung. So she took the first train to Waterloo, leaving behind her, in case Wimsey or Parker should call again, a letter so obscure and mysterious, so lavishly underlined and interlined that it was perhaps fortunate for their reason that they were never faced with it.

In Piccadilly she saw Bunter, and learned that his lordship was at Crow’s Beach with Mr. Parker, where he, Bunter, was just off to join him. Miss Climpson promptly charged him with a message to his employer slightly more involved and mysterious than her letter, and departed for South Audley Street. It was only when she was walking up it that she realised how vague her quest was and how little investigation one can do by merely walking along a street. Also, it suddenly occurred to her that if Miss Whittaker was carrying on anything of a secret nature in South Audley Street, the sight of an acquaintance patrolling the pavement would put her on her guard. Much struck by this reflection, Miss Climpson plunged abruptly into a chemist’s shop and bought a toothbrush, by way of concealing her movements and gaining time. One can while away many minutes comparing shapes, sizes and bristles of toothbrushes, and sometimes chemists will be nice and gossipy.

Looking round the shop for inspiration, Miss Climpson observed a tin of nasal snuff labelled with the chemist’s name.

“I will take a tin of that, too, please,” she said. “What excellent stuff it is-quite wonderful. I have used it for years and am really delighted with it. I recommend it to all my friends, particularly for hay fever. In fact, there’s a friend of mine who often passes your shop, who told me only yesterday what a martyr she was to that complaint. ‘My dear,’ I said to her, ‘you have only to get a tin of this splendid stuff and you will be quite all right all summer.’ She was so grateful to me for telling her about it. Has she been in for it yet?” And described Mary Whittaker closely.

It will be noticed, by the way, that in the struggle between Miss Climpson’s conscience and what Wilkie Collins calls “detective fever,” conscience was getting the worst of it and was winking at an amount of deliberate untruth which a little time earlier would have staggered it.

The chemist, however, had seen nothing of Miss Climpson’s friend. Nothing, therefore, was to be done but to retire from the field and think what was next to be done. Miss Climpson left, but before leaving she neatly dropped her latchkey into a large basket full of sponges standing at her elbow. She felt she might like to have an excuse to visit South Audley Street again.

Conscience sighed deeply, and her guardian angel dropped a tear among the sponges.

Retiring into the nearest teashop she came to, Miss Climpson ordered a cup of coffee and started to think out a plan for honey-combing South Audley Street, needed an excuse- and a disguise. An adventurous spirit was welling up in her elderly bosom, and her first dozen or ideas were more lurid than practical.

At length a really brilliant notion occurred to her. She was (she did not attempt to hide it from herself) precisely the type and build of person one associated with the collection of subscriptions. Moreover, she had a perfectly good and genuine cause ready to hand. The church which she attended in London ran a slum mission, which was badly in need of fuds and she possessed a number of collecting cards, bearing full authority to receive subscriptions on its behalf. What more natural than that she should try a little house-to-house visiting in a wealthy quarter?

The question of disguise, also, was less formidable than it might appear. Miss Whittaker had only known her well dressed and affluent in appearance. Ugly, clumping shoes, a hat of virtuous ugliness, a shapeless coat and a pair of tinted glasses would disguise her sufficiently at a distance. At close quarters, it would not matter if she was recognised, for if once she got to close quarters with Mary Whittaker, her job was done and she had found the house she wanted.

Miss Climpson rose from the table, paid her bill and hurried out to buy the glasses, remembering that it was Saturday. Having secured a pair which hid her eyes effectively without looking exaggeratedly mysterious, she made for her rooms in St. George’s Square, to choose suitable clothing for her adventure. She realised, of course, that she could hardly start work till Monday- Saturday afternoon and Sunday are hopeless from the collector’s point of view.

The choice of clothes and accessories occupied her for the better part of the afternoon. When she was at last satisfied she went downstairs to ask her landlady for some tea.

“Certainly, miss,” said the good woman. “Ain’t it awful, miss, about this murder?”

“What murder?” asked Miss Climpson vaguely.

She took the Evening Views from her landlady’s hand, and read the story of Vera Findlater’s death.

Sunday was the most awful day Miss Climpson had ever spent. An active woman, she was condemned to inactivity, and she had time to brood over the tragedy. Not having Wimsey’s or Parker’s inside knowledge, she took the kidnapping story at its face value. In a sense, she found it comforting, for she was able to acquit Mary Whittaker of any share in this or the previous murders. She put them down- except, of course, in the case of Miss Dawson, and that might never have been a murder after all-to the mysterious man in South Audley Street. She formed a nightmare image of him in her mind- blood-boltered, sinister, and- most horrible of all-an associate and employer of debauched and brutal black assassins. To Miss Climpson’s credit be it said that she never for one moment faltered in her determination to track the monster to his lurking-place.

She wrote a long letter to Lord Peter, detailing her plans. Bunter, she knew, had left 110A Piccadilly, so, after considerable thought, she addressed it to Lord Peter Wimsey, c/o Inspector Parker, The Police-Station, Crow’s Beach. There was, of course, no Sunday post from Town. However, it would go with the midnight collection.

On the Monday morning she set out early, in her old clothes and her spectacles, for South Audley Street. Never had her natural inquisitiveness and her hard training in third-rate boarding-houses stood her in better stead. She had learned to ask questions without heeding rebuffs- to be persistent, insensitive and observant. In every flat she visited she acted her natural self, with so much sincerity and such limpet-like obstinacy that she seldom came away without a subscription and almost never without some information about the flat and it’s inmates.

By tea-time, she had done one side of the street and nearly half the other, without result. She was just thinking of going to get some food, when she caught sight of a woman, about a hundred yards ahead, walking briskly in the same direction as herself.

Now it is easy to be mistaken in faces, but almost impossible not to recognise a back. Miss Climpson’s heart gave a bound. “Mary Whittaker!” she said to herself, and started to follow.

The woman stopped to look into a shop window. Miss Climpson hesitated to come closer. If Mary Whittaker was at large, then- why then the kidnapping had been done with her own consent. Puzzled, Miss Climpson determined to play a waiting game. The woman went into the shop. The friendly chemist’s was almost opposite. Miss Climpson decided that this was the moment to reclaim her latchkey. She went in and asked for it. It had been set aside for her and the assistant produced it at once. The woman was still in the shop over the way. Miss Climpson embarked upon a long string of apologies and circumstantial details about her carelessness. The woman came out. Miss Climpson gave her a longish start, brought the conversation to a close, and fussed out again, replacing the glasses which she had removed for the chemist’s benefit.

The woman walked on without stopping, but she looked into the shop windows from to time. A man with a fruiterer’s barrow removed his cap as she passed and scratched his head. Almost at once, the woman turned quickly and came back. The fruiterer picked up the handles of his barrow and trundled it away into a side street. The woman came straight on, and Miss Climpson was obliged to dive into a doorway and pretend to be tying a bootlace, to avoid a face to face encounter.

Apparently the woman had only forgotten to buy cigarettes. She went into a tobacconist’s and emerged again in a minute or two, passing Miss Climpson again. That lady had dropped her bag and was agitatedly sorting its contents. The woman passed her without a glance and went on. Miss Climpson, flushed from stooping, followed again. The woman turned in at the entrance to a block of flats next door to a florist’s. Miss Climpson was hard on her heels now, for she was afraid of losing her.

Mary Whittaker- if it was Mary Whittaker- went straight through the hall to the lift, which was one of the kind worked by the passenger. She stepped and shot up. Miss Climpson- gazing at the orchids and roses in the florist’s window- watched the lift out of sight. Then, with her subscription card prominently in her hand, she too entered the flats.

There was a porter on duty in a little glass case. He at once spotted Miss Climpson as a stranger and asked politely if he could do anything for her. Miss Climpson, selecting a name at random from the list of occupants in the entrance, asked which was Mrs. Forrest’s flat. The man replied that it was on the fourth floor, and stepped forward to bring the lift down for her. A man, to whom he had been chatting, moved quietly from the glass case and took up a position in the doorway. As the lift ascended, Miss Climpson noticed that the fruiterer had returned. His barrow now stood just outside.

The porter had come up with her, and pointed out the door of Mrs. Forrest’s flat. His presence was reassuring. She wished he would stay within call till she had concluded her search of the building. However, having asked for Mrs. Forrest, she must begin there. She pressed the bell.

At first she thought the flat was empty, but after ringing a second time she heard steps. The door opened, and a heavily over-dressed and peroxided lady made her appearance, whom Lord Peter would at once- and embarrassingly- have recognised.

“I have come,” said Miss Climpson, wedging herself briskly in at the doorway with the skill of the practised canvasser, “to try if I can enlist your help for our Mission Settlement. May I come in? I am sure you-”

“No thanks,” said Mrs. Forrest shortly, and in a hurried, breathless tone, as if there was somebody behind her who she was anxious should not overhear her, “I’m not interested in Missions.”

She tried to shut the door. But Miss Climpson had seen and heard enough.

“Good gracious!” she cried, staring. “why, it’s- ”

“Come in.” Mrs. Forrest caught her by the arm almost roughly and pulled her over the threshold, slamming the door behind them.

“How extraordinary!” said Miss Climpson, “I hardly recognised you, Miss Whittaker, with your hair like that.”

“You!” said Mary Whittaker. “You- of all people!” They sat facing one another in the sitting-room with its tawdry pink silk cushions. “I knew you were a meddler. How did you get here? Is there anyone with you?”

“No- yes- I just happened,” began Miss Climpson vaguely. One thought was uppermost in her mind. “How did you get free? What happened? Who killed Vera?” She knew she was asking her questions crudely and stupidly. “Why are you disguised like that?”

“Who sent you?” reiterated Mary Whittaker.

“Who is the man with you?” pursued Miss Climpson. “Is he here? Did he do the murder?”

“What man?”

“The man Vera saw leaving your flat. Did he-?”

“So that’s it. Vera told you. The liar. I thought I had been quick enough.”

Suddenly, something which had been troubling Miss Climpson for weeks crystallised and became plain to her. The expression in Mary Whittaker’s eyes. A long time ago, Miss Climpson had assisted a relative to run a boarding-house, and there had been a young man who paid his bill by cheque. She had had to make a certain amount of unpleasantness about the bill, and he had written the cheque unwillingly, sitting, with her eye upon him, at the little plush-covered table in the drawing-room. Then he had gone away- slinking out with his bag when no one was about. And the cheque had come back, like the bad penny that it was. A forgery. Miss Climpson had had to give evidence. She remembered now the odd, defiant look with which the young man had taken up his pen for his first plunge into crime. And to-day she was seeing it again- an unattractive mingling of recklessness and calculation. It was with the look which had once warned Wimsey and should have warned her. She breathed more quickly.

“Who was the man?”

“The man?” Mary Whittaker laughed suddenly. “A man called Templeton- no friend of mine. It’s really funny that you should think he was a friend of mine. I would have killed him if I could.”

“But where is he? What are you doing? Don’t you know that everybody is looking for you? Why don’t you- ”

“That’s why!”

Mary Whittaker flung her ten o’clock edition of the Evening Banner, which was lying on the sofa. Miss Climpson read the glaring headlines:

AMAZING NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN CROW’S BEACH CRIME.

“WOUNDS ON BODY INFLICTED AFTER DEATH.

“FAKED FOOTPRINTS.”

Miss Climpson gasped with amazement, and bent over the smaller type. “How extraordinary!” she said, looking up quickly.

Not quite quickly enough. The heavy brass lamp missed her head indeed, but fell numbingly on her shoulder. She sprang to her feet with a loud shriek, just Mary Whittaker’s strong white hands closed upon her throat.

Chapter 23 And Smote Him, Thus

Lord Peter missed both Miss Climpson’s communications. Absorbed in the police inquiry, he never thought to go back to Leahampton. Bunter had duly arrived with “Mrs. Merdle” on the Saturday evening. Immense police activity was displayed in the neighbourhood of the downs, and at Southampton and Portsmouth, in order to foster the idea that the authorities supposed the “gang” to be lurking in those districts. Nothing as a matter of fact, was farther from Parker’s thoughts. “Let her think she is safe,” he said, “and she’ll come back. It’s the cat-and-mouse act for us, old man.” Wimsey fretted. He wanted the analysis of the body to be complete and loathed the thought of the long days he had to wait. And he had small hope of the result.

“It’s all very well sitting round with your large disguised policemen outside Mrs. Forrest’s flat,” he said irritably, over the bacon and eggs on Monday morning, “but you do realise, don’t you, that we’ve still got no proof of murder. Not in one single case.”

“That’s so,” replied Parker, placidly.

“Well, doesn’t it make your blood boil?” said Wimsey.

“Hardly,” said Parker. “This kind of thing happens too often. If my blood boiled every time there was a delay in getting evidence, I should be in a perpetual fever. Wy worry? It may be that perfect crime you’re so fond of talking about- the one that leaves no trace. You ought to be charmed with it.”

“Oh, I daresay. 0 Turpitude, where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face? Time’s called at the Criminals’ Arms, and there isn’t a drink in the place. Wimsey’s Standard Poets, with emendations by Thingummy. As a matter of fact, I’m not at all sure that Miss Dawson’s death wasn’t the perfect crime- if only the Whittaker girl had stopped at that and not tried to cover it up. If you notice, the deaths are becoming more and more violent, elaborate and unlikely in appearance. Telephone again. If the Post Office accounts don’t show a handsome profit on telephones this year it won’t be your fault.”

“It’s the cap and shoes,” said Parker, mildly. “They’ve traced them. They were ordered from an outfitter’s in Stepney, to; be sent to the Rev. H. Dawson, Peveril Hotel, Bloomsbury, to await arrival.”

“The Peveril again!”

“Yes. I recognise the hand of Mr. Trigg’s mysterious charmer. The Rev. Hallelujah Dawson’s card, with message ‘Please give parcel to bearer,’ was presented by a District Messenger next day, with a verbal explanation that the gentleman found he could not get up to Town after all. The messenger, obeying instructions received by telephone, took the parcel to a lady in a nurse’s dress on the platform at Charing Cross. Asked to describe the lady, he said she was tall and wore blue glasses and the usual cloak and bonnet. So that’s that.”

“How were the goods paid for?”

“Postal order, purchased at the West Central office at the busiest moment of the day.”

“And when did all this happen?”

“That’s the most interesting part of the business. Last month, shortly before Miss Whittaker and Miss Findlater returned from Kent. This plot was well thought out beforehand.”

“Yes. Well, that’s something more for you to pin on to Mrs. Forrest. It looks like proof of conspiracy, but whether it’s proof of murder- ”

“It’s meant to look like a conspiracy of Cousin Hallelujah’s, I suppose. Oh, well, we shall have to trace the letters and the typewriter that wrote them and interrogate all these people, I suppose. God! what a grind! Hullo! Come in! Oh, it’s you, doctor?”

“Excuse my interrupting your breakfast,” said Dr. Faulkner, “but early this morning, while lying awake, I was visited with a bright idea. So I had to come and work it off on you while it was fresh. About the blow on the head and the marks on the arms, you know. Do you suppose they served a double purpose? Besides making it look like the work of a gang, could they be hiding some other, smaller mark? Poison, for instance, could be injected, and the mark covered up by scratches and cuts inflicted after death.”

“Frankly,” said Parker, “I wish I could think it. It’s a very sound idea and may be the right one. Our trouble is, that in the two previous deaths which we have been investigating, and which we are inclined to think form a part of the same series as this one, there have been no signs or traces of poison discoverable in the bodies at all by any examination or analysis that skill can devise. In fact, not only no proof of poison, but no proof of anything but natural death.”

And he related the cases in fuller detail.

“Odd,” said the doctor. “And you think this may turn out the same way. Still, in this case the death can’t very well have been natural- or why these elaborate efforts to cover it up?”

“It wasn’t,” said Parker; “the proof being that- as we now know- the plot was laid nearly two months ago.”

“But the method!” cried Wimsey, “the method! Hang it all- here are all we people with our brilliant brains and our professional reputations- and this half-trained girl out of a hospital can beat the lot of us. How was it done?”

“It’s probably something so simple and obvious that it’s never occurred to us,” said Parker. “The sort of principle you learn when you’re in the fourth form and never apply to anything. Rudimentary. Like that motor-cycling imbecile we met at Crofton, who sat in the rain and prayed for help because he’d never heard of an air-lock in his feed. Now I daresay that boy had learnt- What’s the matter with you?”

“My God!” cried Wimsey. He smashed his hand down among the breakfast things, upsetting his cup. “My God! But that’s it! You’ve got it- you’ve done it- Obvious? God Almighty- it doesn’t need a doctor. A garage hand could have told you. People die of it every day. Of course, it was an air-lock in the feed.”

“Bear up, doctor,” said Parker, “he’s always like this when he gets an idea. It wears off in time. D’you mind explaining yourself, old thing? ”

Wimsey’s pallid face was flushed. He turned on the doctor.

“Look here,” he said, “the body’s a pumping engine, isn’t it? The jolly old heart pumps the blood round the arteries and back through the veins and so on, doesn’t it? That’s what keeps things working, what? Round and home again in two minutes- that sort of thing?”

“Certainly.”

“Little valve to let the blood out; ’nother little valve to let it in- just like an internal combustion engine, which it is?”

“Of course.”

“And’s’posin’ that stops?”

“You die.”

“Yes. Now, look here. S’posin’ you take a good big hypodermic, empty, and dig it into one of the big arteries and push the handle- what would happen? What would happen, doctor? You’d be pumpin’ a big air-bubble into your engine feed, wouldn’t you? What would become of your circulation, then?”

“It would stop it,” said the doctor, without hesitation. “That is why nurses have to be particular to fill the syringe properly, especially doing an intravenous injection.”

“I knew it was the kind of thing you learnt in the fourth form. Well, go on. Your circulation would stop- it would be an embolism in its effect, wouldn’t it?”

“Only if it was in a main artery, of course. In a small vein the blood would find a way round. That is why” (this seemed to be the doctor’s favourite opening) “that is why it is so important that embolisms- blood-clots- should be dispersed as soon as possible and not left to wander about the system.”

“Yes- yes- but the air-bubble, doctor-in a main artery- say the femoral or the big vein in the bend of the elbow- that would stop the circulation, wouldn’t it? How soon?”

“Why, at once. The heart would stop beating.”

“And then?”

“You would die.”

“With what symptoms?”

“None to speak of. Just a gasp or two. The lungs would make a desperate effort to keep things going. Then you’d just stop. Like heart failure. It would be heart failure.”

“How well I know it… That sneeze in the carburettor- a gasping, as you say. And what would be the post-mortem symptoms?”

“None. Just the appearances of heart failure. And, of course, the little mark of the needle, if you happened to be looking for it.”

“You’re sure of all this, doctor?” said Parker.

“Well, it’s simple, isn’t it? A plain problem in mechanics. Of course that would happen. It must happen.”

“Could it be proved?” insisted Parker

“That’s more difficult.”

“We must try,” said Parker. “It’s ingenious, and it explains a lot of things. Doctor, will you go down to the mortuary again and see if you can find any puncture mark on the body. I really think you’ve got the explanation of the whole thing, Peter. Oh, dear! Who’s on the ’phone now?… what?- what? -oh, hell!- Well, that’s torn it. She’ll never come back now. Warn all the ports- send out an all stations call- watch the railways and go through Bloomsbury with a toothcomb-that’s the part she knows best. I’m coming straight up to Town now- yes, imediately. Right you are.” He hung up the receiver with a few brief, choice sessions.

“That adjectival imbecile, Pillington, has let out all he knows. The whole story is in the early editions of the Banner. We’re doing no good here. Mary Whittaker will know the game’s up, and she’ll be out of the country in two twos, if she isn’t already. Coming back to Town, Wimsey?”

“Naturally. Take you up in the car. Lose no time. Ring the bell for Bunter, would you? Oh, Bunter, we’re going up to Town. How soon can we start?”

“At once, my lord. I have been holding your lordship’s and Mr. Parker’s things ready packed from hour to hour, in case a hurried adjournment should be necessary.”

“Good man.”

“And there is a letter for you, Mr, Parker, sir.”

“Oh, thanks. Ah, yes. The fingerprints off the cheque. H’m. Two sets only- besides those of the cashier, of course- Cousin Hallelujah’s and a female set, presumably those of Mary Whittaker. Yes, obviously- here are the four fingers of the left hand, just as one would place them to hold the cheque flat while signing.”

“Pardon me, sir- but might I look at that photograph?”

“Certainly. Take a copy for yourself. I know it interests you as a photographer. Well, cheerio, doctor. See you in Town some time. Come on, Peter.”

Lord Peter came on. And that, as Dr. Faulkner would say, was why Miss Climpson’s second letter was brought up from the police-station too late to catch him.

They reached Town at twelve- owing to Wimsey’s brisk work at the wheel- and went straight to Scotland Yard, dropping Bunter, at his own request, as he was anxious to return to the flat. They found the Chief Commissioner in rather a brusque mood- angry with the Banner and annoyed with Parker for having failed to muzzle Pillington.

“God knows where she will be found next. She’s probably got a disguise and a get-away all ready.”

“Probably gone already,” said Wimsey. “She could easily have left England on the Monday or Tuesday and nobody a penny the wiser. If the coast had seemed clear, she’d have come back and taken possession of her goods again. Now she’ll stay abroad. That’s all.”

“I’m very much afraid you’re right,” agreed Parker, gloomily.

“Meanwhile, what is Mrs. Forrest doing?”

“Behaving quite normally. She’s been carefully shadowed, of course, but not interfered with in any way. We’ve got three men out there now- one as a coster- one as a dear friend of the hall-porter’s who drops in every so often with racing tips, and an odd-job man doing a spot of work in the back-yard. They report that she has been in and out, shopping and so on, but mostly having her meals at home. No one has called. The men deputed to shadow her away from the flat have watched carefully to see if she speaks to anyone or slips money to anyone. We’re pretty sure the two haven’t met yet.”

“Excuse me, sir.” An officer put his head in at the door. “Here’s Lord Peter Wimsey’s man, sir, with an urgent message.”

Bunter entered, trimly correct in bearing, but with a glitter in his eye. He laid down two photographs on the table.

“Excuse me, my lord and gentlemen, but would you be so good as to cast your eyes on these two photographs?”

“Finger-prints?” said the Chief interrogatively.

“One of them is our own official photograph of the prints on the £10,000 cheque,” said Parker. “The other- where did you get this, Bunter? It looks like the same set of prints, but it’s not one of ours.”

“They appeared similar, sir, to my uninstructed eye. I thought it better to place the matter before you.”

“Send Dewsby here,” said the Chief Commissioner.

Dewsby was the head of the finger-print department, and he had no hesitation at all.

“They are undoubtedly the same prints,” he said.

A light was slowly breaking in on Wimsey.

“Bunter- did these come off that wine glass?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“But they are Mrs. Forrest’s!”

“So I understood you to say, my lord, and I have filed them under that name.”

“Then, if the signature on the cheque is genuine- ”

“We haven’t far to look for our bird,” said Parker, brutally. “A double identity; damn the woman, she’s made us waste a lot of time. Well, I think we shall get her now, on the Findlater murder at least, and possibly on the Gotobed business.”

“But I understood there was an alibi for that,” said the Chief.

“There was,” said Parker, grimly, “but the witness was the girl that’s just been murdered. Looks as though she had made up her mind to split and was got rid of.”

“Looks as though several people had had a near squeak of it,” said Wimsey.

“Including you. That yellow hair was a wig,then.”

“Probably. It never looked natural, you know. When I was there that night she had on one of those close turban affairs- she might have been bald for all one could see.”

“Did you notice the scar on the fingers of the right hand?”

“I did not- for the very good reason that her fingers were stiff with rings to the knuckles. There was pretty good sense behind her ugly bad taste. I suppose I was to be drugged- or, failing that, caressed into slumber and then- shall we say, put out of circulation! Highly distressin’ incident. Amorous clubman dies in a flat. Relations very anxious to hush matter up. I was selected, I suppose, because I was seen with Evelyn Cropper at Liverpool. Bertha Gotobed got the same sort of dose, too, I take it. Met by old employer, accidentally, on leaving work- £5 note and nice little dinner- lashings of champagne- poor kid as drunk as a blind fiddler- bundled into the car- finished off there and trundled out to Epping in company with a ham sandwich and a bottle of Bass. Easy, ain’t it- when you know how?”

“That being so,” said the Chief Commissioner, “the sooner we get hold of her the better. You’d better go at once, Inspector; take a warrant for Whittaker or Forrest- and any help you may require.”

“May I come?” asked Wimsey, when they were outside the building.

!Why not? You may be useful. With the men we’ve got there already we shan’t need any extra help.”

The car whizzed swiftly through Pall Mall, up St. James’s Street and along Piccadilly. Half-way up South Audley Street they passed the fruit-seller, with whom Parker exchanged an almost imperceptible signal. A few doors below the entrance to the flats they got out and were almost immediately joined by the hall-porter’s sporting friend.

“I was just going out to call you up,” said the latter. “She’s arrived.”

“What, the Whittaker woman?”

“Yes. Went up about two minutes ago.”

“Is Forrest there too?”

“Yes. She came in just before the other woman.”

“Queer,” said Parker. “Another good theory gone west. Are you sure it’s Whittaker?”

“Well, she’s made up with old-fashioned clothes and greyish hair and so on. But she’s the right height and general appearance. And she’s running the old blue-spectacle stunt again. I think it’s the right one- though of course I didn’t get close to her, remembering your instructions.”

“Well, we’ll have a look, anyhow. Come along.”

The coster had joined them now, and they all entered together.

“Did the old girl go up to Forrest’s flat all right?” asked the third detective of the porter.

“That’s right. Went straight to the door and started something about a subscription. Then Mrs. Forrest pulled her in quick and slammed the door. Nobody’s come down since.”

“Right. We’ll take ourselves up- and mind you don’t let anybody give us the slip by the staircase. Now then, Wimsey, she knows you as Templeton, but she may still not know for certain that you’re working with us. Ring the bell, and when the door’s opened, stick your foot inside. We’ll stand just round the corner here and be ready to rush.”

This manoeuvre was executed. They heard the bell trill loudly.

Nobody came to answer it, however.

Wimsey rang again, and then bent his ear to the door.

“Charles,” he cried suddenly, “there’s something going on here.” His face was white. “Be quick! I couldn’t stand another-!”

Parker hastened up and listened. Then he caught Peter’s stick and hammered on the door, so that the hollow lift-shaft echoed with the clamour.

“Come on there- open the door- this is the police.”

And all the time, a horrid, stealthy thumping and gurgling sounded inside- dragging of something heavy and a scuffling noise. Then a loud crash, as though a piece of furniture had been flung to the floor- and then a loud hoarse scream, cut brutally off in the middle.

“Break in the door,” said Wimsey, the sweat pouring down his face.

Parker signalled to the heavier of the two policemen. He came along, shoulder first, lunging. The door shook and cracked. Parker added his weight; thrusting Wimsey’s slight body into the corner. They stamped and panted in the narrow space.

The door gave way, and they tumbled into the hall. Everything was ominously quiet.

“Oh, quick!” sobbed Peter.

A door on the right stood open. A glance assured them that there was nothing there. They sprang to the sitting-room door and pushed it. It opened about a foot. Something bulky impeded its progress. They shoved violently and the obstacle gave. Wimsey leapt over it- it was a tall cabinet, fallen, with broken china strewing the floor. The room bore signs of violent struggle- tables flung down, a broken chair, a smashed lamp. He dashed for the bedroom, with Parker hard at his heels.

The body of a woman lay limply on the bed. Her long, grizzled hair hung in a dank rope over the pillow and blood was on her head and throat. But the blood was running freely, and Wimsey could have shouted for joy at the sight. Dead men do not bleed.

Parker gave only one glance at the injured woman. He made promptly for the dressing-room beyond. A shot sang past his head- there was a snarl and a shriek- and the episode was over. The constable stood shaking his bitten hand, while Parker put the come-along-o’-me grip on the quarry. He recognised her readily, though the peroxide wig had fallen awry and the blue eyes were bleared with terror and fury.

“That’ll do,” said Parker, quietly, “the game’s up. It’s not a bit of use. Come, be reasonable. You don’t want us to put the bracelets on, do you? Mary Whittaker, alias Forrest, I arrest you on the charge-” he hesitated for a moment and she saw it.

“On what charge? What have you got against me?”

“Of attempting to murder this lady, for a start,” said Parker.

“The old fool!” she said, contemptuously, “she forced her way in here and attacked me. Is that all?”

“Very probably not,” said Parker, “I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence at your trial.”

Indeed, the third officer had already produced a notebook and was imperturbably writing down: “When told the charge, the prisoner said ‘Is that all?’ ” The remark evidently struck him as an injudicious one, for he licked his pencil with an air of satisfaction.

“Is the lady all right- who is it?” asked Parker, coming back to a survey of the situation.

“It’s Miss Climpson- God knows how she got here. I think she’s all right, but she’s had a rough time.”

He was anxiously sponging her head as he spoke, and at that moment her eyes opened.

“Help!” said Miss Climpson, confusedly. “The syringe- you shan’t- Oh!” She struggled feebly, and then recognised Wimsey’s anxious face. “Oh, dear!” she exclaimed, “Lord Peter. Such an upset. Did you get my letter? Is it all right?… Oh, dear! What a state I’m in- that woman- ”

“Now, don’t worry, Miss Climpson,”said Wimsey, much relieved, “everything’s quite all right and you mustn’t talk. You must tell us about it later.”

“What was that about a syringe?” said Parker, intent on his case.

“She’d got a syringe in her hand,” panted Miss Climpson, trying to sit up, and fumbling with her hands over the bed. “I fainted, I think- such a struggle- and something hit me on the head. And I saw her coming at me with the thing. And I knocked it out of her hand and I can’t remember what happened afterwards. But I have remarkable vitality,” said Miss Climpson, cheerfully. “My dear father always used to say ‘Climpsons take a lot of killing’!”

Parker was groping on the floor.

“Here you are,” said he. In his hand was a hypodermic syringe.

“She’s mental, that’s what she is,” said the prisoner. “That’s only the hypodermic I use for my injections when I get neuralgia. There’s nothing in that.”

“That is quite correct,” said Parker, with a significant nod at Wimsey. “There is-nothing in it.”

On the Tuesday night, when the prisoner had been committed for trial on the charges of murdering Bertha Gotobed and Vera Findlater, and attempting to murder Alexandra Climpson, Wimsey dined with Parker. The former was depressed and nervous.

“The whole thing’s been beastly,” he grumbled. They had sat up discussing the case into the small hours.

“Interesting,” said Parker, “interesting. I owe you seven and six, by the way. We ought to have seen through that Forrest business earlier, but there seemed no real reason to suspect the Findlater girl’s word as to the alibi. These mistaken loyalties make a lot of trouble.

“I think the thing that put us off was that it all started so early. There seemed no reason for it, but looking back on Trigg’s story it’s as plain as a pikestaff. She took a big risk with that empty house, and she couldn’t always expect to find empty houses handy to do away with people in. The idea was, I suppose, to build up a double identity, so that if Mary Whittaker was ever suspected of anything, she could quietly disappear and become the frail but otherwise innocent Mrs. Forrest. The real slip-up was forgetting to take back that £5 note from Bertha Gotobed. If it hadn’t been for that, we might never have known anything about Mrs. Forrest. It must have rattled her horribly when we turned up there. After that, she was known to the police in both her characters. The Findlater business was a desperate attempt to cover up her tracks – and it was bound to fail, because it was so complicated.”

“Yes. But the Dawson murder was beautiful in its ease and simplicity.”

“If she had stuck to that and left well alone, we could never have proved anything. We can’t prove it now, which is why I left it off the charge-sheet. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more greedy and heartless murderer. She probably really thought that anyone who inconvenienced her had no right to exist.”

“Greedy and malicious. Fancy tryin’ to shove the blame on poor old Hallelujah. I suppose he’d committed the unforgivable sin of askin’ her for money.”

“Well, he’ll get it, that’s one good thing. The pit digged for Cousin Hallelujah has turned into a gold-mine. That £10,000 cheque has been honoured. I saw to that first thing, before Whittaker could remember to try and stop it. Probably she couldn’t have stopped it anyway, as it was duly presented last Saturday.”

“Is the money legally hers?”

“Of course it is. We know it was gained by a crime, but we haven’t charged her with the crime, so that legally no such crime was committed. I’ve not said anything to Cousin Hallelujah, of course, or he mightn’t like to take it. He thinks it was sent him in a burst of contrition, poor old dear.”

“So Cousin Hallelujah and all the little Hallelujahs will be rich. That’s splendid. How about the rest of the money? Will the Crown get it after all?”

“No. Unless she wills it to someone, it will go to the Whittaker next-of-kin- a first cousin, I believe, called Allcock. A very decent fellow, living in Birmingham. That is,” he added, assailed by sudden doubt, “if first cousins do inherit under this confounded Act.”

“Oh, I think first cousins are safe,” said Wimsey, “though nothing seems safe nowadays. Still, dash it all, some relations must still be allowed a look-in, or what becomes of the sanctity of family life? If so, that’s the most cheering thing about the beastly business. Do you know, when I rang up that man Carr and told him all about it, he wasn’t a bit interested or grateful. Said he’d always suspected something like that, and he hoped we weren’t going to rake it all up again, because he’d come into that money he told us about and was setting up for himself in Harley Street, so he didn’t want any more scandals.”

“I never did like that man. I’m sorry for Nurse Philliter.”

“You needn’t be. I put my foot in it again over that. Carr’s too grand to marry a nurse now- at least, I fancy that’s what it is. Anyway, the engagement’s off. And I was so pleased at the idea of playing Providence to two deserving young people,” added Wimsey, pathetically.

“Dear, dear! Well, the girl’s well out of it. Hullo! there’s the ’phone. Who on earth-? Some damned thing at the Yard, I suppose. At three ack emma! Who’d be a policeman?- Yes?- Oh!-right, I’ll come round. The case has gone west, Peter.”

“How?”

“Suicide. Strangled herself with a sheet. I’d better go round, I suppose.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“An evil woman, if ever there was one,” said Parker, softly, as they looked at the rigid body, with its swollen face and the deep, red ring about the throat.

Wimsey said nothing. He felt cold and sick. While Parker and the Governor of the prison made the necessary arrangements and discussed the case, he sat hunched unhappily upon his chair. Their voices went on and on interminably. Six o’clock had struck some time before they rose to go. It reminded him of the eight strokes of the clock which announce the running-up of the black and hideous flag.

As the gate clanged open to let them out, they stepped into a wan and awful darkness. The June day had risen long ago, but only a pale and yellowish gleam lit the half-deserted streets. And it was bitterly cold and raining.

“What is the matter with the day?” said Wimsey. “Is the world coming to an end?”

“No,” said Parker, “it is the eclipse.”