Whose Body? - Dorothy L. Sayers (motivational books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Dorothy L. Sayers
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“No doubt,” said Sir Julian, who did not, “and they cover up their tracks wonderfully. But when you can really investigate, Mr. Parker, and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the scalpel, you always find the footmarks—the little trail of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing the surface symptoms—the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness, conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical irritation which has produced it.”
“You regard all these things as physical?”
“Undoubtedly. I am not ignorant of the rise of another school of thought, Mr. Parker, but its exponents are mostly charlatans or self-deceivers. ‘Sie haben sich so weit darin eingeheimnisst’ that, like Sludge the Medium, they are beginning to believe their own nonsense. I should like to have the exploring of some of their brains, Mr. Parker; I would show you the little faults and landslips in the cells—the misfiring and short-circuiting of the nerves, which produce these notions and these books. At least,” he added, gazing sombrely at his guest, “at least, if I could not quite show you today, I shall be able to do so tomorrow—or in a year’s time—or before I die.”
He sat for some minutes gazing into the fire, while the red light played upon his tawny beard and struck out answering gleams from his compelling eyes.
Parker drank tea in silence, watching him. On the whole, however, he remained but little interested in the causes of nervous phenomena and his mind strayed to Lord Peter, coping with the redoubtable Crimplesham down in Salisbury. Lord Peter had wanted him to come: that meant, either that Crimplesham was proving recalcitrant or that a clue wanted following. But Bunter had said that tomorrow would do, and it was just as well. After all, the Battersea affair was not Parker’s case; he had already wasted valuable time attending an inconclusive inquest, and he really ought to get on with his legitimate work. There was still Levy’s secretary to see and the little matter of the Peruvian Oil to be looked into. He looked at his watch.
“I am very much afraid—if you will excuse me—” he murmured.
Sir Julian came back with a start to the consideration of actuality.
“Your work calls you?” he said, smiling. “Well, I can understand that. I won’t keep you. But I wanted to say something to you in connection with your present inquiry—only I hardly know—I hardly like—”
Parker sat down again, and banished every indication of hurry from his face and attitude.
“I shall be very grateful for any help you can give me,” he said.
“I’m afraid it’s more in the nature of hindrance,” said Sir Julian, with a short laugh. “It’s a case of destroying a clue for you, and a breach of professional confidence on my side. But since—accidentally—a certain amount has come out, perhaps the whole had better do so.”
Mr. Parker made the encouraging noise which, among laymen, supplies the place of the priest’s insinuating, “Yes, my son?”
“Sir Reuben Levy’s visit on Monday night was to me,” said Sir Julian.
“Yes?” said Mr. Parker, without expression.
“He found cause for certain grave suspicions concerning his health,” said Sir Julian, slowly, as though weighing how much he could in honour disclose to a stranger. “He came to me, in preference to his own medical man, as he was particularly anxious that the matter should be kept from his wife. As I told you, he knew me fairly well, and Lady Levy had consulted me about a nervous disorder in the summer.”
“Did he make an appointment with you?” asked Parker.
“I beg your pardon,” said the other, absently.
“Did he make an appointment?”
“An appointment? Oh, no! He turned up suddenly in the evening after dinner when I wasn’t expecting him. I took him up here and examined him, and he left me somewhere about ten o’clock, I should think.”
“May I ask what was the result of your examination?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It might illuminate—well, conjecture as to his subsequent conduct,” said Parker, cautiously. This story seemed to have little coherence with the rest of the business, and he wondered whether coincidence was alone responsible for Sir Reuben’s disappearance on the same night that he visited the doctor.
“I see,” said Sir Julian. “Yes. Well, I will tell you in confidence that I saw grave grounds of suspicion, but as yet, no absolute certainty of mischief.”
“Thank you. Sir Reuben left you at ten o’clock?”
“Then or thereabouts. I did not at first mention the matter as it was so very much Sir Reuben’s wish to keep his visit to me secret, and there was no question of accident in the street or anything of that kind, since he reached home safely at midnight.”
“Quite so,” said Parker.
“It would have been, and is, a breach of confidence,” said Sir Julian, “and I only tell you now because Sir Reuben was accidentally seen, and because I would rather tell you in private than have you ferretting round here and questioning my servants, Mr. Parker. You will excuse my frankness.”
“Certainly,” said Parker. “I hold no brief for the pleasantness of my profession, Sir Julian. I am very much obliged to you for telling me this. I might otherwise have wasted valuable time following up a false trail.”
“I am sure I need not ask you, in your turn, to respect this confidence,” said the doctor. “To publish the matter abroad could only harm Sir Reuben and pain his wife, besides placing me in no favourable light with my patients.”
“I promise to keep the thing to myself,” said Parker, “except of course,” he added hastily, “that I must inform my colleague.”
“You have a colleague in the case?”
“I have.”
“What sort of person is he?”
“He will be perfectly discreet, Sir Julian.”
“Is he a police officer?”
“You need not be afraid of your confidence getting into the records at Scotland Yard.”
“I see that you know how to be discreet, Mr. Parker.”
“We also have our professional etiquette, Sir Julian.”
On returning to Great Ormond Street, Mr. Parker found a wire awaiting him, which said: “Do not trouble to come. All well. Returning tomorrow. Wimsey.”
On returning to the flat just before lunch-time on the following morning, after a few confirmatory researches in Balham and the neighbourhood of Victoria Station, Lord Peter was greeted at the door by Mr. Bunter (who had gone straight home from Waterloo) with a telephone message and a severe and nursemaid-like eye.
“Lady Swaffham rang up, my lord, and said she hoped your lordship had not forgotten you were lunching with her.”
“I have forgotten, Bunter, and I mean to forget. I trust you told her I had succumbed to lethargic encephalitis suddenly, no flowers by request.”
“Lady Swaffham said, my lord, she was counting on you. She met the Duchess of Denver yesterday—”
“If my sister-in-law’s there I won’t go, that’s flat,” said Lord Peter.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, the Dowager Duchess.”
“What’s she doing in town?”
“I imagine she came up for the inquest, my lord.”
“Oh, yes—we missed that, Bunter.”
“Yes, my lord. Her Grace is lunching with Lady Swaffham.”
“Bunter, I can’t. I can’t, really. Say I’m in bed with whooping cough, and ask my mother to come round after lunch.”
“Very well, my lord. Mrs. Tommy Frayle will be at Lady Swaffham’s, my lord, and Mr. Milligan—”
“Mr. who?”
“Mr. John P. Milligan, my lord, and—”
“Good God, Bunter, why didn’t you say so before? Have I time to get there before he does? All right. I’m off. With a taxi I can just—”
“Not in those trousers, my lord,” said Mr. Bunter, blocking the way to the door with deferential firmness.
“Oh, Bunter,” pleaded his lordship, “do let me—just this once. You don’t know how important it is.”
“Not on any account, my lord. It would be as much as my place is worth.”
“The trousers are all right, Bunter.”
“Not for Lady Swaffham’s, my lord. Besides, your lordship forgets the man that ran against you with a milk-can at Salisbury.”
And Mr. Bunter laid an accusing finger on a slight stain of grease showing across the light cloth.
“I wish to God I’d never let you grow into a privileged family retainer, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, bitterly, dashing his walking-stick into the umbrella-stand. “You’ve no conception of the mistakes my mother may be making.”
Mr. Bunter smiled grimly and led his victim away.
When an immaculate Lord Peter was ushered, rather late for lunch, into Lady Swaffham’s drawing-room, the Dowager Duchess of Denver was seated on a sofa, plunged in intimate conversation with Mr. John P. Milligan of Chicago.
“I’m vurry pleased to meet you, Duchess,” had been that financier’s opening remark, “to thank you for your exceedingly kind invitation. I assure you it’s a compliment I deeply appreciate.”
The Duchess beamed at him, while conducting a rapid rally of all her intellectual forces.
“Do come and sit down and talk to me, Mr. Milligan,” she said. “I do so love talking to you great business men—let me see, is it a railway king you are or something about puss-in-the-corner—at least, I don’t mean that exactly, but that game one used to play with cards, all about wheat and oats, and there was a bull and a bear, too—or was it a horse?—no, a bear, because I remember one always had to try and get rid of it and it used to get so dreadfully crumpled and torn, poor thing, always being handed about, one got to recognise it, and then one had to buy a new pack—so foolish it must seem to you, knowing the real thing, and dreadfully noisy, but really excellent for breaking the ice with rather stiff people who didn’t know each other—I’m quite sorry it’s gone out.”
Mr. Milligan sat down.
“Wal, now,” he said, “I guess it’s as interesting for us business men to meet British aristocrats as it is for Britishers to meet American railway kings, Duchess. And I guess I’ll make as many mistakes talking your kind of talk as you would make if you were tryin’ to run a corner in wheat in Chicago. Fancy now, I called that fine lad of yours Lord Wimsey the other day, and he thought I’d mistaken him for his brother. That made me feel rather green.”
This was an unhoped-for lead. The Duchess walked warily.
“Dear boy,” she said, “I am so glad you met him, Mr. Milligan. Both my sons are a great comfort to me, you know, though, of course, Gerald is more conventional—just the right kind of person for the House of Lords, you know, and a splendid farmer. I can’t see Peter down at Denver half so well, though he is always going to all the right things in town, and very amusing sometimes, poor boy.”
“I was vurry much gratified by Lord Peter’s suggestion,” pursued Mr. Milligan, “for which I understand you are responsible, and I’ll surely be very pleased to come any day you like, though I think you’re flattering me too much.”
“Ah, well,” said the Duchess, “I don’t know if you’re the best judge of that, Mr. Milligan. Not that I know anything about business myself,” she added. “I’m rather old-fashioned for these days, you know, and I can’t pretend to do more than know a nice man when I see him; for the other things I rely on my son.”
The accent of this speech was so flattering that Mr. Milligan purred almost audibly, and said:
“Wal, Duchess, I guess that’s where a lady with a real, beautiful, old-fashioned soul has the advantage of these modern young blatherskites—there aren’t many men who wouldn’t be nice—to her,
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