Have His Carcase (64 page)

successful revolution that he is liable to be laid up at any moment by a painful

and incurable disease. Nor would it be exactly an inducement to “Feodora” to

marry him, if he was known to be a “bleeder”. No, poor devil, he must have

been terrified the whole time for fear they should find it out.’

‘Yes, I see. It’s natural, when you come to think of it.’

‘If you exhume the body,’ said Wimsey, ‘you wil very likely find the

characteristic thickening of the joints that accompanies haemophilia. And I

daresay you might get conclusive evidence by inquiring among the people who

knew Alexis in London and America. I’m pretty sure he had the disease.’

‘It’s funny,’ said Harriet, ‘the way al this worked out for Weldon & Co.

They had such good luck in one way and such bad luck in another. I mean: first

of al they laid a fairly good plot, which turned on an alibi and a disguise. Then I

came along unexpectedly and bust up the disguise. That was bad luck. But at

the same time I produced a lot of unnecessary cleverness and observation

which gave them a far better alibi for a totaly different time, which was good

luck. Then they lost the body, owing to the £300 in gold, which would have

been a beastly nuisance for them. But again I barged in with evidence and

photographs, and so drew attention to the death and got the body found again.

Then, when, to their horror, their original lovely alibi turned out to be useless

and dangerous, along comes poor little Perkins – who of course is as innocent

as any sucking-pig – to give them a cast-iron alibi for the wrong time. We found

the horseshoe, which would have pretty wel cooked their goose, but for the

astonishing bit of luck over the blood-clotting affair. And so on. It’s been an

incredible muddle. And it’s al my fault, realy. If I hadn’t been so bright and

brainy nobody would ever have known anything about the condition of the

blood at al, and we should have taken it for granted that Alexis had died long

before I came on the scene. It’s so complicated, I realy don’t know whether

my being there helped or hindered.’

‘It’s so complicated,’ said the Inspector with a groan, ‘that I don’t believe

we’l get any jury to believe it. Besides there’s the Chief Constable. I’l bet you

anything you like he’l pooh-pooh the whole thing. He’l stil say that after al we

haven’t
proved
it wasn’t suicide, and we’d better let it go at that. He’s as mad

as a dog with us for arresting those people anyhow, and if I come along with

this story about haemo-what-you-cal, he’l have fifty thousand fits. See here,

my lord, if we do prosecute, d’you realy think we’ve a hope in Hades?’

‘I’l tel you this,’ said Harriet. ‘Last night, Mrs Weldon consented to dance

with M. Antoine, and Henry didn’t like it at al. If you let Henry Weldon and

Morecambe loose again, what premium would you take on those two lives –

Antoine’s and Mrs Weldon’s?’

There was silence after the Inspector left them.

‘Wel!’ said Harriet at last.

‘Wel,’ said Wimsey, ‘isn’t that a damned awful, bitter, bloody farce? The

old fool who wanted a lover and the young fool who wanted an empire. One

throat cut and three people hanged, and £130,000 going begging for the next

man who likes to sel his body and soul for it. God! What a jape! King Death

has asses’ ears with a vengeance.’

He got up.

‘Let’s clear out of this,’ he said. ‘Get your things packed and leave your

address with the police and come on up to town. I’m fed to the back teeth.’

‘Yes, let’s go. I’m terrified of meeting Mrs Weldon. I don’t want to see

Antoine. It’s al frightening and disgusting. We’l go home.’

‘Right-ho! We’l go home. We’l dine in Piccadily. Damn it,’ said Wimsey,

savagely, ‘I always did hate watering-places!’

WIMSEY, Peter Death Bredon, d.s.o.;
born
1890,
2nd son of
Mortimer

Gerald Bredon Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, and of Honoria Lucasta,

daughter of
Francis Delagardie of Belingham Manor, Hants.

Educated:
Eton Colege and Baliol Colege, Oxford (1st class honours,

Sch. of Mod. Hist 1912); served with H.M. Forces 1914/18 (Major, Rifle

Brigade).
Author of:
‘Notes on the Colecting of Incunabula’, ‘The Murderer’s

Vade-Mecum’, etc.
Recreations:
Criminology; bibliophily; music; cricket.

Clubs:
Marlborough; Egotists’.
Residences:
110A Piccadily, W.; Bredon

Hal, Duke’s Denver, Norfolk.

Arms:
Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat couched as to

spring, proper; motto: As my Whimsy takes me.

A short biography of Lord Peter Wimsey, brought up to date (May 1935)

and communicated by his uncle
Paul Austin Delagardie.

I am asked by Miss Sayers to fil up certain lacunae and correct a few trifling

errors of fact in her account of my nephew Peter’s career. I shal do so with

pleasure. To appear publicly in print is every man’s ambition, and by acting as a

kind of running footman to my nephew’s triumph I shal only be showing a

modesty suitable to my advanced age.

The Wimsey family is an ancient one – too ancient, if you ask me. The only

sensible thing Peter’s father ever did was to aly his exhausted stock with the

vigorous French-English strain of the Delagardies. Even so, my nephew Gerald

(the present Duke of Denver) is nothing but a beef-witted English squire, and

my niece Mary was flighty and foolish enough til she married a policeman and

settled down. Peter, I am glad to say, takes after his mother and me. True, he is

al nerves and nose – but that is better than being al brawn and no brains like

his father and brother, or a mere bundle of emotions, like Gerald’s boy, Saint-

George. He has at least inherited the Delagardie brains, by way of safeguard to

the unfortunate Wimsey temperament.

Peter was born in 1890. His mother was being very much worried at the

time by her husband’s behaviour (Denver was always tiresome, though the big

scandal did not break out til the Jubilee year), and her anxieties may have

affected the boy. He was a colourless shrimp of a child, very restless and

mischievous, and always much too sharp for his age. He had nothing of

Gerald’s robust physical beauty, but he developed what I can best cal a kind

of bodily cleverness, more skil than strength. He had a quick eye for a bal and

beautiful hands for a horse. He had the devil’s own pluck, too: the inteligent

sort of pluck that sees the risk before he takes it. He suffered badly from

nightmares as a child. To his father’s consternation he grew up with a passion

for books and music.

His early school-days were not happy. He was a fastidious child, and I

suppose it was natural that his school-felows should cal him ‘Flimsy’ and treat

him as a kind of comic turn. And he might, in sheer self-protection, have

accepted the position and degenerated into a mere licensed buffoon, if some

games-master at Eton had not discovered that he was a briliant natural

cricketer. After that, of course, al his eccentricities were accepted as wit, and

Gerald underwent the salutary shock of seeing his despised younger brother

become a bigger personality than himself. By the time he reached the Sixth

Form, Peter had contrived to become the fashion – athlete, scholar,
arbiter

elegantiarum – nec pluribus impar
. Cricket had a great deal to do with it –

plenty of Eton men wil remember the ‘Great Flim’ and his performance against

Harrow – but I take credit to myself for introducing him to a good tailor,

showing him the way about Town, and teaching him to distinguish good wine

from bad. Denver bothered little about him – he had too many entanglements of

his own and in addition was taken up with Gerald, who by this time was making

a prize fool of himself at Oxford. As a matter of fact Peter never got on with his

father, he was a ruthless young critic of the paternal misdemeanours, and his

sympathy for his mother had a destructive effect upon his sense of humour.

Denver, needless to say, was the last person to tolerate his own failings in his

offspring. It cost him a good deal of money to extricate Gerald from the Oxford

affair, and he was wiling enough to turn his other son over to me. Indeed, at the

age of seventeen, Peter came to me of his own accord. He was old for his age

and exceedingly reasonable, and I treated him as a man of the world. I

established him in trustworthy hands in Paris, instructing him to keep his affairs

upon a sound business footing and to see that they terminated with goodwil on

both sides and generosity on his. He fuly justified my confidence. I believe that

no woman has ever found cause to complain of Peter’s treatment; and two at

least of them have since married royalty (rather obscure royalties, I admit, but

royalty of a sort). Here again, I insist upon my due share of the credit; however

good the material one has to work upon it is ridiculous to leave any young

man’s social education to chance.

The Peter of this period was realy charming, very frank, modest and wel-

mannered, with a pretty, lively wit. In 1909 he went up with a scholarship to

read History at Baliol, and here, I must confess, he became rather intolerable.

The world was at his feet, and he began to give himself airs. He acquired

affectations, an exaggerated Oxford manner and a monocle, and aired his

opinions a good deal, both in and out of the Union, though I wil do him the

justice to say that he never attempted to patronise his mother or me. He was in

his second year when Denver broke his neck out hunting and Gerald succeeded

to the title. Gerald showed more sense of responsibility than I had expected in

dealing with the estate; his worst mistake was to marry his cousin Helen, a

scrawny, over-bred prude, al county from head to heel. She and Peter loathed

each other cordialy; but he could always take refuge with his mother at the

Dower House.

And then, in his last year at Oxford, Peter fel in love with a child of

seventeen and instantly forgot everything he had ever been taught. He treated

that girl as if she was made of gossamer, and me as a hardened old monster of

depravity who had made him unfit to touch her delicate purity. I won’t deny that

they made an exquisite pair – al white and gold – a prince and princess of

moonlight, people said. Moonshine would have been nearer the mark. What

Peter was to do in twenty years’ time with a wife who had neither brains nor

character nobody but his mother and myself ever troubled to ask, and he, of

course, was completely besotted. Happily, Barbara’s parents decided that she

was too young to marry; so Peter went in for his final Schools in the temper of a

Sir Eglamore achieving his first dragon; laid his First-Class Honours at his

lady’s feet like the dragon’s head, and settled down to a period of virtuous

probation.

Then came the War. Of course the young idiot was mad to get married

before he went. But his own honourable scruples made him mere wax in other

people’s hands. It was pointed out to him that if he came back mutilated it

would be very unfair to the girl. He hadn’t thought of that, and rushed off in a

frenzy of self-abnegation to release her from the engagement. I had no hand in

that; I was glad enough of the result, but I couldn’t stomach the means.

He did very wel in France; he made a good officer and the men liked him.

And then, if you please, he came back on leave with his captaincy in ’16, to

find the girl married – to a hardbitten rake of a Major Somebody, whom she

had nursed in the V.A.D. hospital, and whose motto with women was catch

’em quick and treat ’em rough. It was pretty brutal; for the girl hadn’t had the

nerve to tel Peter beforehand. They got married in a hurry when they heard he

was coming home, and al he got on landing was a letter, announcing the
fait

accompli
and reminding him that he had set her free himself.

I wil say for Peter that he came straight to me and admitted that he had been

a fool. ‘Al right,’ said I, ‘you’ve had your lesson. Don’t go and make a fool of

yourself in the other direction.’ So he went back to his job with (I am sure) the

fixed intention of getting kiled; but al he got was his majority and his D.S.O.

for some recklessly good inteligence work behind the German front. In 1918

he was blown up and buried in a shel-hole near Caudry, and that left him with a

bad nervous breakdown, lasting, on and off, for two years. After that, he set

himself up in a flat in Piccadily, with the man Bunter (who had been his sergeant

and was, and is, devoted to him), and started out to put himself together again.

I don’t mind saying that I was prepared for almost anything. He had lost al