Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey 03] (12 page)

“Yes. I thought that part of Mrs. Gulliver’s story was a bit odd. I say, how about the other nurse?”

“Nurse Forbes? That’s a good idea. I was forgetting her. Think you can trace her?”

“Of course, if you really think it important.”

“I do. I think it’s damned important. Look here, Charles, you don’t seem very enthusiastic about this case.”

“Well, you know, I’m not so certain it is a case at all. What makes you so fearfully keen about it? You seem dead set on making it a murder, with practically nothing to go upon. Why?”

Lord Peter got up and paced the room. The light from the solitary reading-lamp threw his lean shadow, diffused and monstrously elongated, up to the ceiling. He walked over to a book-shelf, and the shadow shrank, blackened, settled down. He stretched his hand, and the hand’s shadow flew with it, hovering over the gilded titles of the books and blotting them out one by one.

“Why?” repeated Wimsey. “Because I believe this is the case I have always been looking for. The case of cases. The murder without discernible means, or motive or clue. The norm. All these”—he swept his extended hand across the book-shelf, and the shadow outlined a vaster and more menacing gesture—“all these books on this side of the room are books about crimes. But they only deal with the abnormal crimes.”

“What do you mean by abnormal crimes?”

“The failures. The crimes that have been found out. What proportion do you suppose they bear to the successful crimes—the ones we hear nothing about?”

“In this country,” said Parker, rather stiffly, “we manage to trace and convict the majority of criminals—”

“My good man, I know that where a crime is known to have been committed, you people manage to catch the perpetrator in at least sixty per cent of the cases. But the moment a crime is even suspected, it falls,
ipso facto,
into the category of failures. After that, the thing is merely a question of greater or less efficiency on the part of the police. But how about the crimes which are never even suspected?”

Parker shrugged his shoulders.

“How can anybody answer that?”

“Well—one may guess. Read any newspaper today. Read the
News of the World.
Or, now that the Press has been muzzled, read the divorce court lists. Wouldn’t they give you the idea that marriage is a failure? Isn’t the sillier sort of journalism packed with articles to the same effect? And yet, looking round among the marriages you know of personally, aren’t the majority of them a success, in a humdrum, undemonstrative sort of way? Only you don’t hear of them. People don’t bother to come into court and explain that they dodder along very comfortably on the whole, thank you. Similarly, if you read all the books on this shelf, you’d come to the conclusion that murder was a failure. But bless you, it’s always the failures that make the noise. Successful murderers don’t write to the papers about it. They don’t even join in imbecile symposia to tell an inquisitive world ‘What Murder means to me,’ or ‘How I became a Successful Poisoner.’ Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues. And they probably bear just about the same proportion to the failures as the divorced couples do to the happily mated.”

“Aren’t you putting it rather high?”

“I don’t know. Nor does anybody. That’s the devil of it. But you ask any doctor, when you’ve got him in an unbuttoned, well-lubricated frame of mind, if he hasn’t often had grisly suspicions which he could not and dared not take steps to verify. You see by our friend Carr what happens when one doctor is a trifle more courageous than the rest.”

“Well, he couldn’t prove anything.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be proved. Look at the scores and scores of murders that have gone unproved and unsuspected till the fool of a murderer went too far and did something silly which blew up the whole show. Palmer, for instance. His wife and brother and mother-in-law and various illegitimate children, all peacefully put away—till he made the mistake of polishing Cook off in that spectacular manner. Look at George Joseph Smith. Nobody’d have thought of bothering any more about those first two wives he drowned. It was only when he did it the third time that he aroused suspicion. Armstrong, too, is supposed to have got away with many more crimes than he was tried for—it was being clumsy over Martin and the chocolates that stirred up the hornets’ nest in the end. Burke and Hare were convicted of murdering an old woman, and then brightly confessed that they’d put away sixteen people in two months and no one a penny the wiser.”

“But they
were
caught.”

“Because they were fools. If you murder someone in a brutal, messy way, or poison someone who has previously enjoyed rollicking health, or choose the very day after a will’s been made in your favour to extinguish the testator, or go on killing everyone you meet till people begin to think you’re first cousin to a upas tree, naturally you’re found out in the end. But choose somebody old and ill, in circumstances where the benefit to yourself isn’t too apparent, and use a sensible method that looks like natural death or accident, and don’t repeat your effects too often, and you’re safe. I swear all the heart-diseases and gastric enteritis and influenzas that get certified are not nature’s unaided work. Murder’s so easy, Charles, so damned easy—even without special training.”

Parker looked troubled.

“There’s something in what you say. I’ve heard some funny tales myself. We all do, I suppose. But Miss Dawson—”

“Miss Dawson fascinates me, Charles. Such a beautiful subject. So old and ill. So likely to die soon. Bound to die before long. No near relations to make inquiries. No connections or old friends in the neighbourhood. And so rich. Upon my soul, Charles, I lie in bed licking my lips over ways and means of murdering Miss Dawson.”

“Well, anyhow, till you can think of one that defies analysis and doesn’t seem to need a motive, you haven’t found the right one,” said Parker, practically, rather revolted by this ghoulish conversation.

“I admit that,” replied Lord Peter, “but that only shows that as yet I’m merely a third-rate murderer. Wait till I’ve perfected my method and then I’ll show you—perhaps. Some wise old buffer has said that each of us holds the life of one other person between his hands—but only one, Charles, only one.”

“Our wills are ours to make them thine.”

TENNYSON:
IN MEMORIAM

“H
ULLO! HULLO—ULLO! OH,
operator, shall I call thee bird or but a wandering voice? … Not at all, I had no intention of being rude, my child, that was a quotation from the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth … well, ring him again … thank you, is that Dr. Carr? … Lord Peter Wimsey speaking … oh, yes … yes … aha! … not a bit of it. … We are about to vindicate you and lead you home, decorated with triumphal wreaths of cinnamon and senna-pods. … No, really … we’ve come to the conclusion that the thing is serious. … Yes. … I want Nurse Forbes’ address. … Right, I’ll hold on. … Luton? … oh, Tooting, yes, I’ve got that. … Certainly, I’ve no doubt she’s a tartar, but I’m the Grand Panjandrum with the little round button a-top. … Thanks awfully … cheer-frightfully-ho!—oh! I say!—hullo!—I say, she doesn’t do Maternity work, does she? Maternity work?—M for Mother-in-law-Maternity?—No—You’re sure? … It would be simply awful if she did and came along. … I couldn’t possibly produce a baby for her. … As long as you’re quite sure. … Right—right—yes—not for the world—nothing to do with you at all. Good-bye, old thing, good-bye.”

Lord Peter hung up, whistling cheerfully, and called for Bunter.

“My lord?”

“What is the proper suit to put on, Bunter, when one is an expectant father?”

“I regret, my lord, to have seen no recent fashions in paternity wear. I should say, my lord, whichever suit your lordship fancies will induce a calm and cheerful frame of mind in the lady.”

“Unfortunately I don’t know the lady. She is, in fact, only the figment of an over-teeming brain. But I think the garments should express bright hope, self-congratulation, and a tinge of tender anxiety.”

“A newly married situation, my lord, I take it. Then I would suggest the lounge suit in pale grey—the willow-pussy cloth, my lord—with a dull amethyst tie and socks and a soft hat. I would not recommend a bowler, my lord. The anxiety expressed in a bowler hat would be rather of the financial kind.”

“No doubt you are right, Bunter. And I will wear those gloves that got so unfortunately soiled yesterday at Charing Cross. I am too agitated to worry about a clean pair.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“No stick, perhaps.”

“Subject to your lordship’s better judgment, I should suggest that a stick may be suitably handled to express emotion.”

“You are always right, Bunter. Call me a taxi, and tell the man to drive to Tooting.”

Nurse Forbes regretted very much. She would have liked to oblige Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe, but she never undertook maternity work. She wondered who could have misled Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe by giving him her name.

“Well, y’know, I can’t say I was misled,” said Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe, dropping his walking-stick and retrieving it with an ingenuous laugh. “Miss Murgatroyd—you know Miss Murgatroyd of Leahampton, I think—yes—she—that is, I heard about you through her” (this was a fact), “and she said what a charming person—excuse my repeatin’ these personal remarks, won’t you?—what a charmin’ person you were and all that, and how nice it would be if we could persuade you to come, don’t you see. But she said she was afraid perhaps you
didn’t
do maternity work. Still, y’know, I thought it was worth tryin’, what? Bein’ so anxious, what?—about my wife, that is, you see. So necessary to have someone young and cheery at these—er—critical times, don’t you know. Maternity nurses often such ancient and ponderous sort of people—if you don’t mind my sayin’so. My wife’s highly nervous—naturally—first effort and all that—doesn’t like middle-aged people tramplin’ round—you see the idea?”

Nurse Forbes, who was a bony woman of about forty, saw the point perfectly, and was very sorry she really could not see her way to undertaking the work.

“It was very kind of Miss Murgatroyd,” she said. “Do you know her well? Such a delightful woman, is she not?”

The expectant father agreed.

“Miss Murgatroyd was so very much impressed by your sympathetic way—don’t you know—of nursin’ that poor old lady, Miss Dawson, y’know. Distant connection of my own, as a matter of fact—er, yes—somewhere about fifteenth cousin twelve times removed. So nervous, wasn’t she? A little bit eccentric, like the rest of the family, but a charming old lady, don’t you think?”

“I became very much attached to her,” said Nurse Forbes. “When she was in full possession of her faculties, she was a most pleasant and thoughtful patient. Of course, she was in great pain, and we had to keep her under morphia a great part of the time.”

“Ah, yes! poor old soul! I sometimes think, Nurse, it’s a great pity we aren’t allowed just to help people off, y’know, when they’re so far gone. After all, they’re practically dead already, as you might say. What’s the point of keepin’ them sufferin’ on like that?”

Nurse Forbes looked rather sharply at him.

I m afraid that wouldn’t do, she said, though one understands the lay person’s point of view, of course. Dr. Carr was not of your opinion,” she added, a little acidly.

“I think all that fuss was simply shockin’,” said the gentleman warmly. “Poor old soul! I said to my wife at the time, why couldn’t they let the poor old thing rest. Fancy cuttin’ her about, when obviously she’d just mercifully gone off in a natural way! My wife quite agreed with me. She was quite upset about it, don’t you know.”

“It was very distressing to everybody concerned,” said Nurse Forbes, “and of course, it put me in a very awkward position. I ought not to talk about it, but as you are one of the family, you will quite understand.”

“Just so. Did it ever occur to you, Nurse”—Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe leaned forward, crushing his soft hat between his hands in a nervous manner—“that there might be something behind all that?”

Nurse Forbes primmed up her lips.

“You know,” said Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe, “there
have
been cases of doctors tryin’ to get rich old ladies to make wills in their favour. You don’t think—eh?”

Nurse Forbes intimated that it was not her business to think things.

“No, of course not, certainly not. But as man to man—I mean, between you and me, what?—wasn’t there a little—er—friction, perhaps, about sending for the solicitor-johnnie, don’t you know? Of course, my Cousin Mary—I call her cousin, so to speak, but it’s no relation at all, really—of course, I mean, she’s an awfully nice girl and all that sort of thing, but I’d got a sort of idea perhaps she wasn’t altogether keen on having the will-making wallah sent for, what?”

“Oh, Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe, I’m sure you’re quite wrong there. Miss Whittaker was most anxious that her aunt should have every facility in that way. In fact—I don’t think I’m betraying any confidence in telling you this—she said to me, ‘If at any time Miss Dawson should express a wish to see a lawyer, be sure you send for him at once.’ And so, of course, I did.”

“You did? And didn’t he come, then?”

“Certainly he came. There was no difficulty about it at all.”

“There! That just shows, doesn’t it? how wrong some of these gossipy females can be! Excuse me, but y’know, I’d got absolutely the wrong impression about the thing. I’m quite
sure
Mrs. Peasgood said that no lawyer had been sent for.”

“I don’t know what Mrs. Peasgood could have known about it,” said Nurse Forbes with a sniff, “her permission was not asked in the matter.”

“Certainly not—but you know how these ideas get about. But, I say—if there was a will, why wasn’t it produced?”

“I didn’t say that, Mr. Simms-Gaythorpe. There was no will. The lawyer came to draw up a power of attorney, so that Miss Whittaker could sign cheques and so on for her aunt. That was very necessary, you know, on account of the old lady’s failing powers.”

“Yes—I suppose she was pretty wooly towards the end.”