Hangmans Holiday (8 page)

“To begin with, there was this extraordinary kind of decay or imbecility settin’ in on a girl in her twenties—so conveniently, too, just after you’d been hangin’ round in the Wetherall home and showin’ perhaps a trifle too much sensibility, don’t you see? And then there was this tale of the conditions clearin’ up regularly once a year or so—not like any ordinary brain-trouble. Looked as if it was being controlled by somebody.

“Then there was the fact that Mrs. Wetherall had been under her husband’s medical eye from the beginning, with no family or friends who knew anything about her to keep a check on the fellow. Then there was the determined isolation of her in a place where no doctor could see her and where, even if she had a lucid interval, there wasn’t a soul who could understand or be understood by her. Queer, too, that it should be a part of the world where you, with your interests, might reasonably be expected to turn up some day and be treated to a sight of what she had turned into. Then there were Wetherall’s well-known researches, and the fact that he kept in touch with a chemist in London.

“All that gave me a theory, but I had to test it before I could be sure I was right. Wetherall was going to America, and that gave me a chance; but of course he left strict orders that nobody should get into or out of his house during his absence. I had, somehow, to establish an authority greater than his over old Martha, who is a faithful soul, God bless her! Hence, exit Lord Peter Wimsey and enter the magician. The treatment was tried and proved successful—hence the elopement and the rescue.

“Well, now, listen—and don’t go off the deep end. It’s all over now. Alice Wetherall is one of those unfortunate people who suffer from congenital thyroid deficiency. You know the thyroid gland in your throat—the one that stokes the engine and keeps the old brain going. In some people the thing doesn’t work properly, and they turn out cretinous imbeciles. Their bodies don’t grow and their minds don’t work. But feed ’em the stuff, and they come absolutely all right—cheery and handsome and intelligent and lively as crickets. Only, don’t you see, you have to
keep
feeding it to ’em, otherwise they just go back to an imbecile condition.

“Wetherall found this girl when he was a bright young student just learning about the thyroid. Twenty years ago, very few experiments had been made in this kind of treatment, but he was a bit of a pioneer. He gets hold of the kid, works a miraculous cure, and, bein’ naturally bucked with himself, adopts her, gets her educated, likes the look of her, and finally marries her. You understand, don’t you, that there’s nothing fundamentally unsound about those thyroid deficients. Keep ’em going on the little daily dose, and they’re normal in every way, fit to live an ordinary life and have ordinary healthy children.

“Nobody, naturally, knew anything about this thyroid business except the girl herself and her husband. All goes well till
you
come along. Then Wetherall gets jealous—”

“He had no cause.”

Wimsey shrugged his shoulders.

“Possibly, my lad, the lady displayed a preference—we needn’t go into that. Anyhow, Wetherall did get jealous and saw a perfectly marvellous revenge in his power. He carried his wife off to the Pyrenees, isolated her from all help, and then simply sat back and starved her of her thyroid extract. No doubt he told her what he was going to do, and why. It would please him to hear her desperate appeals—to let her feel herself slipping back day by day, hour by hour, into something less than a beast—”

“Oh, God!”

“As you say. Of course, after a time, a few months, she would cease to know what was happening to her. He would still have the satisfaction of watching her—seeing her skin thicken, her body coarsen, her hair fall out, her eyes grow vacant, her speech die away into mere animal noises, her brain go to mush, her habits—”

“Stop it, Wimsey.”

“Well, you saw it all yourself. But that wouldn’t be enough for him. So, every so often, he would feed her the thyroid again and bring her back sufficiently to realise her own degradation—”

“If only I had the brute here!”

“Just as well you haven’t. Well then, one day—by a stroke of luck—Mr. Langley, the amorous Mr. Langley, actually turns up. What a triumph to let him see—”

Langley stopped him again.

“Right-ho! but it was ingenious, wasn’t it? So simple. The more I think of it, the more it fascinates me. But it was just that extra refinement of cruelty that defeated him. Because, when you told me the story, I couldn’t help recognising the symptoms of thyroid deficiency, and I thought, ‘Just supposing’—so I hunted up the chemist whose name you saw on the parcel, and, after unwinding a lot of red tape, got him to admit that he had several times sent Wetherall consignments of thyroid extract. So then I was almost sure, don’t you see.

“I got a doctor’s advice and a supply of gland extract, hired a tame Spanish conjurer and some performing cats and things, and barged off complete with disguise and a trick cabinet devised by the ingenious Mr. Devant. I’m a bit of a conjurer myself, and between us we didn’t do so badly. The local superstitions helped, of course, and so did the gramophone records. Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ is first class for producing an atmosphere of gloom and mystery, so are luminous paint and the remnants of a classical education.”

“Look here, Wimsey, will she get all right again?”

“Right as ninepence, and I imagine that any American court would give her a divorce on the grounds of persistent cruelty. After that—it’s up to you!”

Lord Peter’s friends greeted his reappearance in London with mild surprise.

“And what have
you
been doing with yourself?” demanded the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot.

“Eloping with another man’s wife,” replied his lordship. “But only,” he hastened to add, “in a purely Pickwickian sense. Nothing in it for yours truly. Oh, well! Let’s toddle round to the Holborn Empire, and see what George Robey can do for us.”

“Y
OU JACK O’ DI’MONDS, YOU
Jack o’ Di’monds,” said Mark Sambourne, shaking a reproachful head, “I know you of old.” He rummaged beneath the white satin of his costume, panelled with gigantic oblongs and spotted to represent a set of dominoes. “Hang this fancy rig! Where the blazes has the fellow put my pockets? You rob my pocket, yes, you rob-a my pocket, you rob my pocket of silver and go-ho-hold. How much do you make it?” He extracted a fountain-pen and a cheque-book.

“Five-seventeen-six,” said Lord Peter Wimsey. “That’s right, isn’t it, partner?” His huge blue-and-scarlet sleeves rustled as he turned to Lady Hermione Creethorpe, who, in her Queen of Clubs costume, looked a very redoubtable virgin, as, indeed, she was.

“Quite right,” said the old lady, “and I consider that very cheap.”

“We haven’t been playing long,” said Wimsey apologetically.

“It would have been more, Auntie,” observed Mrs. Wrayburn, “if you hadn’t been greedy. You shouldn’t have doubled those four spades of mine.”

Lady Hermione snorted, and Wimsey hastily cut in:

A—Stair to Dressing-Room and Gallery; B—Stair to Gallery; C—Stair to Musicians’ Gallery only; D—Settee where Joan Carstairs sat; E—Settee where Jim Playfair sat; F—Where Waits stood; G—Where Ephraim Dodd sat; H—Guests’ “Sir Roger”; J—Servants’ “Sir Roger”; XX—Hanging Lanterns; O O O O—Arcading.

“It’s a pity we’ve got to stop, but Deverill will never forgive us if we’re not there to dance Sir Roger. He feels strongly about it. What’s the time? Twenty past one. Sir Roger is timed to start sharp at half-past. I suppose we’d better tootle back to the ballroom.”

“I suppose we had,” agreed Mrs. Wrayburn. She stood up, displaying her dress, boldly patterned with the red and black points of a backgammon board. “It’s very good of you,” she added, as Lady Hermione’s voluminous skirts swept through the hall ahead of them, “to chuck your dancing to give Auntie her bridge. She does so hate to miss it.”

“Not at all,” replied Wimsey. “It’s a pleasure. And in any case I was jolly glad of a rest. These costumes are dashed hot for dancing in.”

“You make a splendid Jack of Diamonds, though. Such a good idea of Lady Deverill’s, to make everybody come as a game. It cuts out all those wearisome pierrots and columbines.” They skirted the south-west angle of the ballroom and emerged into the south corridor, lit by a great hanging lantern in four lurid colours. Under the arcading they paused and stood watching the floor, where Sir Charles Deverill’s guests were fox-trotting to a lively tune discoursed by the band in the musicians’ gallery at the far end. “Hullo, Giles!” added Mrs. Wrayburn, “you look hot.”

“I am hot,” said Giles Pomfret. “I wish to goodness I hadn’t been so clever about this infernal costume. It’s a beautiful billiard-table, but I can’t sit down in it.” He mopped his heated brow, crowned with an elegant green lamp-shade. “The only rest I can get is to hitch my behind on a radiator, and as they’re all in full blast, it’s not very cooling. Thank goodness, I can always make these damned sandwich boards an excuse to get out of dancing.” He propped himself against the nearest column, looking martyred.

“Nina Hartford comes off best,” said Mrs. Wrayburn. “Water-polo—so sensible—just a bathing-dress and a ball; though I must say it would look better on a less
Restoration
figure. You playing-cards are much the prettiest, and I think the chess-pieces run you close. There goes Gerda Bellingham, dancing with her husband—isn’t she
too
marvellous in that red wig? And the bustle and everything—my dear, so attractive. I’m glad they didn’t make themselves too Lewis Carroll; Charmian Grayle is the sweetest White Queen—where is she, by the way?”

“I don’t like that young woman,” said Lady Hermione; “she’s fast.”

“Dear lady!”

“I’ve no doubt you think me old-fashioned. Well, I’m glad I am. I say she’s fast, and, what’s more, heartless. I was watching her before supper, and I’m sorry for Tony Lee. She’s been flirting as hard as she can go with Harry Vibart—not to give it a worse name—and she’s got Jim Playfair on a string, too. She can’t even leave Frank Bellingham alone, though she’s staying in his house.”

“Oh, I say, Lady H!” protested Sambourne, “you’re a bit hard on Miss Grayle. I mean, she’s an awfully sporting kid and all that.”

“I detest that word ‘sporting’,” snapped Lady Hermione. “Nowadays it merely means drunk and disorderly. And she’s not such a kid, either, young man. In three years’ time she’ll be a hag, if she goes on at this rate.”

“Dear Lady Hermione,” said Wimsey, “we can’t all be untouched by time, like you.”

“You could,” retorted the old lady, “if you looked after your stomachs and your morals. Here comes Frank Bellingham—looking for a drink, no doubt. Young people to-day seem to be positively pickled in gin.”

The fox-trot had come to an end, and the Red King was threading his way towards them through a group of applauding couples.

“Hullo, Bellingham!” said Wimsey. “Your crown’s crooked. Allow me.” He set wig and head-dress to rights with skilful fingers. “Not that I blame you. What crown is safe in these Bolshevik days?”

“Thanks,” said Bellingham. “I say, I want a drink.”

“What did I tell you?” said Lady Hermione.

“Buzz along, then, old man,” said Wimsey. “You’ve got four minutes. Mind you turn up in time for Sir Roger.”

“Right you are. Oh, I’m dancing it with Gerda, by the way. If you see her, you might tell her where I’ve gone to.”

“We will. Lady Hermione, you’re honouring me, of course?”

“Nonsense! You’re not expecting me to dance at my age? The Old Maid ought to be a wallflower.”

“Nothing of the sort. If only I’d had the luck to be born earlier, you and I should have appeared side by side, as Matrimony. Of course you’re going to dance it with me—unless you mean to throw me over for one of these youngsters.”

“I’ve no use for youngsters,” said Lady Hermione. “No guts. Spindle-shanks.” She darted a swift glance at Wimsey’s scarlet hose. “You at least have some suggestion of calves. I can stand up with you without blushing for you.”

Wimsey bowed his scarlet cap and curled wig in deep reverence over the gnarled knuckles extended to him.

“You make me the happiest of men. We’ll show them all how to do it. Right hand, left hand, both hands across, back to back, round you go and up the middle. There’s Deverill going down to tell the band to begin. Punctual old bird, isn’t he? Just two minutes to go. … What’s the matter, Miss Carstairs? Lost your partner?”

“Yes—have you seen Tony Lee anywhere?”

“The White King? Not a sign. Nor the White Queen either. I expect they’re together somewhere.”

“Probably. Poor old Jimmie Playfair is sitting patiently in the north corridor, looking like Casabianca.”

“You’d better go along and console him,” said Wimsey, laughing.

Joan Carstairs made a face and disappeared in the direction of the buffet, just as Sir Charles Deverill, giver of the party, bustled up to Wimsey and his companions, resplendent in a Chinese costume patterned with red and green dragons, bamboos, circles and characters, and carrying on his shoulder a stuffed bird with an enormous tail.