Have His Carcase (44 page)

Inspector Umpelty began to scrabble with his feet.

‘I always think,’ said Wimsey, ‘that Shakespeare meant Richard to be one

of those men who are always deliberately acting a part – dramatising things, so

to speak. I don’t believe his furies are any more real than his love-making. The

scene about the strawberries – that’s clearly al put on.’

‘Maybe. But the scene with Buckingham and the clock – eh? Maybe you’re

right. It ain’t supposed to be my business to know about Shakespeare, eh?

Chorus-ladies’ legs are my department. But I been mixed up with the stage al

my life one way and another, and it ain’t al legs and bedroom scenes. That

makes you laugh, um? To hear me go on like this. But I tel you what, it makes

me sick, sometimes, bein’ in this business. Half these managers don’t want

actors and actresses – they want types. When my old father was runnin’ a

repertory company it was actors he wanted – felows who could be Iago one

night and Brutus the next and do a bit of farce or genteel comedy in the

intervals. But now! If a felow starts out making his hit with a stammer and an

eyeglass he’s got to play stammers and eyeglasses til he’s ninety. Poor old

Rosencrantz! He sure was fed-up that you weren’t thinking of playing his

Worm for him. As for getting an experienced actor and giving him a show in the

part – nix! I’ve got the man that could do it – nice chap – clever as you make

’em. But he made a hit as the dear old silver-haired vicar in
Roses Round the

Door
, and nobody wil look at him now, except for silver-haired vicars. It’l be

the end of him as an actor, but who cares? Only old Uncle Sulivan, who’s got

to take his bread the side it’s buttered and look pleasant about it, eh?’

Inspector Umpelty rose to his feet.

‘I’m sure we’re much obliged to you, Mr Sulivan,’ he said. ‘We won’t

detain you any longer.’

‘Sorry I couldn’t do more for you. If ever I see that Vavasour felow again

I’l let you know. But he’s probably come to grief. Sure it ain’t any trouble for

little Kohn?’

‘We don’t think so, Mr Sulivan.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ insisted Mr Sulivan. ‘I’d hate to think of her going

wrong. I know you’re thinkin’ me an old fool.’

‘Far from it,’ said Wimsey.

They were let out through the private door, and picked their way down a

narrow staircase in silence.

‘Vavasour, indeed!’ grunted the Inspector. ‘I’d like to know who he is and

what he’s up to. Think that fat idiot was in the game?’

‘I’m sure he knows nothing about it,’ said Wimsey. ‘And if he says he

knows nothing about Vavasour you may be pretty sure he’s not realy a

producer or anything genuinely theatrical. These people al know one another.’

‘Humph! Fat lot of help that is.’

‘As you say. I wonder –’

‘Wel?’

‘I wonder what made Horrocks think of Richard III.’

‘Thought the man looked a bad egg, I suppose. Wasn’t that the felow who

made up his mind to be a vilain?’

‘He was. But I don’t somehow think Horrocks is quite the man to read

vilainy in someone’s face. I should say he was quite satisfied with the

regrettable practice of type-casting. I’ve got something at the back of my mind,

Inspector, and I can’t seem to get it out.’

The Inspector grunted and tripped over a packing-case as they emerged into

the purlieus of Wardour Street.

XXIV

THE EVIDENCE OF THE L.C.C TEACHER

‘Such lily-livered, meek humanity.’

Death’s Jest-Book

Monday, 29 June

Tuesday, 30 June

Paul Alexis was buried on the Monday, with many flowers and a large crowd

of onlookers. Lord Peter was stil in London with the Inspector, but he was

suitably represented by Bunter, who had returned from Huntingdonshire that

morning and, ever efficient, had brought with him a handsome wreath, suitably

inscribed. Mrs Weldon was chief mourner, supported by Henry in solemn

black, and the staff of the Resplendent sent a representative contingent and a

floral emblem in the shape of a saxophone. The leader of the orchestra, an

uncompromising realist, had suggested that the effigy of a pair of dancing-

pumps would have been more truly symbolic, but general opinion was against

him, and there was, indeed, a feeling that he had been actuated by professional

jealousy. Miss Leila Garland made her appearance in restrained and modified

weeds, and affronted Mrs Weldon by casting an enormous bunch of Parma

violets into the grave at the most affecting moment and being theatricaly

overcome and carried away in hysterics. The ceremony was fuly reported, with

photographs, in the National Press, and the dinner-tables of the Resplendent

were so crowded that evening that it became necessary to serve a

supplementary dinner in the Louis Quinze Saloon.

‘I suppose you wil be leaving Wilvercombe now,’ said Harriet to Mrs

Weldon. ‘It wil always have sad memories for you.’

‘Indeed, my dear, I shal not. I intend to stay here until the cloud is lifted from

Paul’s memory. I know positively that he was murdered by a Soviet gang and

it’s simply a disgrace that the police should let this kind of thing go on.’

‘I wish you would persuade my mother to leave,’ said Henry. ‘Bad for her

health to hang on here. You’l be leaving yourself, I expect, before long.’

‘Probably.’

There seemed, in fact, to be little for anyone to stay on for. Wiliam Bright

applied to the police for leave to depart and was accorded it, subject to an

undertaking that he would keep them informed of his whereabouts. He

promptly retired to his lodgings at Seahampton, packed up, and started a trek

northwards. ‘And it’s to be hoped,’ said Superintendent Glaisher, ‘that they’l

keep an eye on him. We can’t folow him through al the counties in England.

We’ve nothing against him.’

Wimsey and the Inspector, returning to Wilvercombe on the Tuesday

morning, were greeted with a piece of fresh information.

‘We’ve puled in Perkins,’ said Superintendent Glaisher.

It appeared that Mr Julian Perkins, after leaving Darley and being driven to

Wilvercombe in his hired car, had taken the train to Seahampton and resumed

his walking-tour at that point. About twenty miles out he had been knocked

down by a motor-lorry. As the result, he had lain speechless and senseless for

nearly a week in the local hospital. There was nothing in his traveling-pack to

indicate his identity, and it was only when he began to sit up and take notice

that anything was known about him. As soon as he was wel enough for

desultory chat, he discovered that his felow-patients were discussing the

Wilvercombe inquest, and he mentioned, with a feeble sense of self-

importance, that he had actualy been in contact with the young lady who found

the body. One of the nurses then caled to mind that there had been a broadcast

inquiry for somebody caled Perkins in connection with that very case. The

Wilvercombe police were communicated with, and P.C. Ormond had been

sent over to interview Mr Perkins.

It was now clear enough, of course, why no reply to the S.O.S. message had

been received from either Mr Perkins himself or from his associates at the time

of broadcasting. It was now also made clear why nobody had made any inquiry

about Mr Perkins’s disappearance. Mr Perkins was a teacher in an L.C.C.

School, and had been granted leave of absence for one term on account of his

health. He was unmarried, and an orphan with no near relations, and he lived in

a hostel in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road. He had left the hostel

in May, announcing that he was going on a tramping holiday and would have no

settled address. He would write from time to time, teling the staff of the hostel

where to forward letters. As it happened, no letters had arrived for him since

the last time he had written (on the 29th May, from Taunton). Consequently,

nobody had thought to make any inquiry about him, and the S.O.S. which

mentioned only his surname had left it doubtful whether the Mr Perkins wanted

by the police was the Mr Julian Perkins of the hostel. In any case, since nobody

knew where he was supposed to be, there was no information that anybody

could have supplied. The police got into touch with the hostel and had Mr

Perkins’s mail sent down. It consisted of an advertisement from a cheap tailor,

an invitation to secure a last-minute chance in the Irish Sweep, and a letter from

a pupil, al about Boy Scout activities.

Mr Julian Perkins seemed to be an unlikely sort of criminal, but one never

knew. He was interviewed, propped up in bed in his little red hospital jacket,

with his anxious and unshaven face surrounded with bandages, from which his

large horn-rimmed glasses looked out with serio-comic effect.

‘So you abandoned your trip and walked back to Darley with this young

lady,’ said Constable Ormond. ‘Now, why did you do that, sir?’

‘I wanted to do my best to help the young lady.’

‘Quite so, sir, very natural. But as a matter of fact, of course, you couldn’t

help her much.’

‘No.’ Mr Perkins fumbled with the sheet. ‘She said something about going

along to look for the body, but of course – I didn’t see that I was caled upon

to do that. I’m not a strong man; besides, the tide was coming in. I thought—’

P.C. Ormond waited patiently.

Mr Perkins suddenly relieved his mind with an outburst of confession.

‘I didn’t like to go on along that road, and that’s the truth. I was afraid the

murderer might be lurking about somewhere.’

‘Murderer, eh? What made you think it was a case of murder?’

Mr Perkins shrank among his pilows.

‘The young lady said it might be. I’m not a very courageous person, I’m

afraid. You see, since my ilness, I’ve been nervous – nervous, you know. And

I’m not physicaly strong. I didn’t like the idea at al.’

‘I’m sure you can’t be blamed for that, sir.’ The policeman’s bluff heartiness

seemed to alarm Mr Perkins, as though he detected something false in the ring

of it.

‘So when you came to Darley you felt that the young lady was in good hands

and needed no further protection. So you went away without saying goodbye.’

‘Yes. Yes. I – I didn’t want to be mixed up in anything, you know. In my

position it isn’t nice. A teacher has to be careful. And besides—’

‘Yes, sir?’

Mr Perkins had another confessional outburst.

‘I’d been thinking it over. I thought it was al rather queer. I wondered if the

young lady – one hears of such things – suicide pacts and so on – You see? I

felt that I didn’t want to be associated with that kind of thing. I am rather timid

by nature, I admit, and realy
not
strong since my ilness, and what with one

thing and another—’

P.C. Ormond, who had a touch of imagination and a strong, though

elementary, sense of humour, smothered a grin behind his hand. He suddenly

saw Mr Perkins, terrified, hobbling on his blistered feet between the devil and

the deep sea; fleeing desperately from the vision of a homicidal maniac at the

Flat-Iron only to be pursued by the nightmare that he was traveling in company

with a ruthless and probably immoral murderess.

He licked his pencil and started again.

‘Quite so, sir. I see your point. Very disagreeable situation. Wel, now – just

as a matter of routine, you know, sir, we’ve got to check up on the movements

of everybody who passed along the coast-road that day. Nothing to be

alarmed at.’ The pencil happened to be an indelible one and left an unpleasant

taste in the mouth. He passed a pink tongue along his purple-stained lips,

looking, to Mr Perkins’s goblin-haunted imagination, like a very large dog

savouring a juicy bone. ‘Whereabouts might you have been round about two

o’clock, sir?’

Mr Perkins’s mouth dropped open.

‘I – I – I –’ he began, quavering.

A nurse, hovering near, intervened.

‘I hope you won’t have to be long, constable,’ she said, acidly. ‘I can’t have

my patient upset. Take a sip of this, No. 22, and you must try not to get

excited.’

‘It’s al right,’ Mr Perkins sipped and regained his colour. ‘As a matter of

fact I can tel you exactly where I was at two o’clock. It’s very fortunate that

that should be the time. Very fortunate. I was at Darley.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Mr Ormond, ‘that’s very satisfactory.’

‘Yes, and I can prove it. You see, I’d come along from Wilvercombe. I

bought some calamine lotion there, and I daresay the chemist would remember

me. My skin is very sensitive, you know, and we had a little chat about it. I

don’t know just where the shop was, but you could find out. No; I don’t know

quite what time that would be. Then I walked on to Darley. It’s four miles. It