Lord Peter Views the Body (29 page)

    ‘Since then the family has died out, and I am the sole representative of the Conyers, and heir to the treasure, whatever and wherever it is, for it was never discovered. I do not suppose it was very honestly come by, but, since it would be useless now to try and find the original owners, I imagine I have a better right to it than anybody living.

    ‘You may think it very unseemly, Lord Peter, that an old, lonely man like myself should be greedy for a hoard of pirate’s gold. But my whole life has been devoted to studying the disease of cancer, and I believe myself to be very close to a solution of one part at least of the terrible problem. Research costs money, and my limited means are very nearly exhausted. The property is mortgaged up to the hilt, and I do most urgently desire to complete my experiments before I die, and to leave a sufficient sum to found a clinic where the work can be carried on.

    ‘During the last year I have made very great efforts to solve the mystery of “Old Cut-throat’s” treasure. I have been able to leave much of my experimental work in the most capable hands of my assistant, Dr Forbes, while I pursued my researches with the very slender clue I had to go upon. It was the more expensive and difficult that Cuthbert had left no indication in his will whether Münster in Germany or Munster in Ireland was the hiding-place of the treasure. My journeys and my search in both places cost money and brought me no further on my quest. I returned, disheartened, in August, and found myself obliged to sell my library, in order to defray my expenses and obtain a little money with which to struggle on with my sadly delayed experiments.’

    ‘Ah!’ said Lord Peter. ‘I begin to see light.’

    The old physician looked at him enquiringly. They had finished tea, and were seated around the great fireplace in the study. Lord Peter’s interested questions about the beautiful, dilapidated old house and estate had led the conversation naturally to Dr Conyers’s family, shelving for the time the problem of the
Cosmographia
, which lay on a table beside them.

    ‘Everything you say fits into the puzzle,’ went on Wimsey, ‘and I think there’s not the smallest doubt what Mr Wilberforce Pope was after, though how he knew that you had the
Cosmographia
here I couldn’t say.’

    ‘When I disposed of the library, I sent him a catalogue,’ said Dr Conyers. ‘As a relative, I thought he ought to have the right to buy anything he fancied. I can’t think why he didn’t secure the book then, instead of behaving in this most shocking fashion.’

    Lord Peter hooted with laughter.

    ‘Why, because he never tumbled to it till afterwards,’ he said. ‘And oh, dear, how wild he must have been! I forgive him everything. Although,’ he added, ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes too high, sir, for, even when we’ve solved old Cuthbert’s riddle, I don’t know that we’re very much nearer to the treasure.’

    ‘To the
treasure
?’

    ‘Well, now, sir. I want you first to look at this page, where there’s a name scrawled in the margin. Our ancestors had an untidy way of signing their possessions higgledy-piggledy in margins instead of in a decent, Christian way in the fly-leaf. This is a handwriting of somewhere about Charles I’s reign: “Jac: Coniers.” I take it that goes to prove that the book was in the possession of your family at any rate as early as the first half of the seventeenth century, and has remained there ever since. Right. Now we turn to page 1099, where we find a description of the discoveries of Christopher Columbus. It’s headed, you see, by a kind of map, with some of Mr Pope’s monsters swimming about in it, and apparently representing the Canaries, or, as they used to be called, the Fortunate Isles. It doesn’t look much more accurate than old maps usually are, but I take it the big island on the right is meant for Lanzarote, and the two nearest to it may be Teneriffe and Gran Canaria.’

    ‘But what’s that writing in the middle?’

    ‘That’s just the point. The writing is later than “Jac: Coniers’s” signature; I should put it about 1700 – but, of course, it may have been written a good deal later still. I mean, a man who was elderly in 1730 would still use the style of writing he adopted as a young man, especially if, like your ancestor the pirate, he had spent the early part of his life in outdoor pursuits and hadn’t done much writing.’

    ‘Do you mean to say, Uncle Peter,’ broke in the viscount excitedly, ‘that that’s “Old Cut-throat’s” writing?’

    ‘I’d be ready to lay a sporting bet it is. Look here, sir, you’ve been scouring round Münster in Germany and Munster in Ireland – but how about good old Sebastian Munster here in the library at home?’

    ‘God bless my soul! Is it possible?’

    ‘It’s pretty nearly certain, sir. Here’s what he says, written, you see, round the head of that sort of sea-dragon:

Hic in capite draconis ardet perpetuo Sol.

Here the sun shines perpetually upon the Dragon’s Head.

Rather doggy Latin – sea-dog Latin, you might say, in fact.’

    ‘I’m afraid,’ said Dr Conyers, ‘I must be very stupid, but I can’t see where that leads us.’

    ‘No; “Old Cut-throat” was rather clever. No doubt he thought that, if anybody read it, they’d think it was just an allusion to where it says, further down, that “the islands were called
Fortunatæ
because of the wonderful temperature of the air and the clemency of the skies.” But the cunning old astrologer up in his pagoda had a meaning of his own. Here’s a little book published in 1678 – Middleton’s
Practical Astrology
– just the sort of popular handbook an amateur like “Old Cut-throat” would use. Here you are: “If in your figure you find Jupiter or Venus or
Dragon’s head
, you may be confident there is Treasure in the place supposed. . . . If you find
Sol
to be the Significator of the hidden Treasure, you may conclude there is Gold, or some jewels.” You know, sir, I think we may conclude it.’

    ‘Dear me!’ said Dr Conyers. ‘I believe, indeed, you must be right. And I am ashamed to think that if anybody had suggested to me that it could ever be profitable to me to learn the terms of astrology, I should have replied in my vanity that my time was too valuable to waste on such foolishness. I am deeply indebted to you.’

    ‘Yes,’ said Gherkins, ‘but where
is
the treasure, uncle?’

    ‘That’s just it,’ said Lord Peter. ‘The map is very vague; there is no latitude or longitude given; and the directions, such as they are, seem not even to refer to any spot on the islands, but to some place in the middle of the sea. Besides, it is nearly two hundred years since the treasure was hidden, and it may already have been found by somebody or other.’

    Dr Conyers stood up.

    ‘I am an old man,’ he said, ‘but I still have some strength. If I can by any means get together the money for an expedition, I will not rest till I have made every possible effort to find the treasure and to endow my clinic.’

    ‘Then, sir, I hope you’ll let me give a hand to the good work,’ said Lord Peter.

Dr Conyers had invited his guests to stay the night, and, after the excited viscount had been packed off to bed, Wimsey and the old man sat late, consulting maps and diligently reading Munster’s chapter ‘
De Novis Insulis
’, in the hope of discovering some further clue. At length, however, they separated, and Lord Peter went up upstairs, the book under his arm. He was restless, however, and, instead of going to bed, sat for a long time at his window, which looked out upon the lake. The moon, a few days past the full, was riding high among small, windy clouds, and picked out the sharp eaves of the Chinese tea-houses and the straggling tops of the unpruned shrubs. ‘Old Cut-throat’ and his landscape-gardening! Wimsey could have fancied that the old pirate was sitting now beside his telescope in the preposterous pagoda, chuckling over his riddling testament and counting the craters of the moon. ‘If
Luna
, there is silver.’ The water of the lake was silver enough; there was a great smooth path across it, broken by the sinister wedge of the boat-house, the black shadows of the islands, and, almost in the middle of the lake, a decayed fountain, a writhing Celestial dragon-shape, spiny-backed and ridiculous.

    Wimsey rubbed his eyes. There was something strangely familiar about the lake; from moment to moment it assumed the queer unreality of a place which one recognises without having ever known it. It was like one’s first sight of the Leaning Tower of Pisa – too like its picture to be quite believable. Surely, thought Wimsey, he knew that elongated island on the right, shaped rather like a winged monster, with its two little clumps of buildings. And the island to the left of it, like the British Isles, but warped out of shape. And the third island, between the others, and nearer. The three formed a triangle, with the Chinese fountain in the centre, the moon shining steadily upon its dragon head. ‘
Hic in capite draconis ardet perpetuo
—’

    Lord Peter sprang up with a loud exclamation, and flung open the door into the dressing-room. A small figure wrapped in an eiderdown hurriedly uncoiled itself from the window-seat.

    ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Peter,’ said Gherkins. ‘I was so
dreadfully
wide awake, it wasn’t any good staying in bed.’

    ‘Come here,’ said Lord Peter, ‘and tell me if I’m mad or dreaming. Look out of the window and compare it with the map – Old Cut-throat’s “New Islands”. He made ’em, Gherkins; he put ’em here. Aren’t they laid out just like the Canaries? Those three islands in a triangle, and the fourth down here in the corner? And the boat-house where the big ship is in the picture? And the dragon fountain where the dragon’s head is? Well, my son, that’s where your hidden treasure’s gone to. Get your things on, Gherkins, and damn the time when all good little boys should be in bed! We’re going for a row on the lake, if there’s a tub in that boat-house that’ll float.’

    ‘Oh, Uncle Peter! This is a
read
adventure!
’

    ‘All right,’ said Wimsey. ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, and all that! Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of Johnny Walker! Pirate expedition fitted out in dead of night to seek hidden treasure and explore the Fortunate Isles! Come on, crew!’

Lord Peter hitched the leaky dinghy to the dragon’s knobbly tail and climbed out carefully, for the base of the fountain was green and weedy.

    ‘I’m afraid it’s your job to sit there and bail, Gherkins,’ he said. ‘All the best captains bag the really interesting jobs for themselves. We’d better start with the head. If the old blighter said head, he probably meant it.’ He passed an arm affectionately round the creature’s neck for support, while he methodically pressed and pulled the various knobs and bumps of its anatomy. ‘It seems beastly solid, but I’m sure there’s a spring somewhere. You won’t forget to bail, will you? I’d simply hate to turn round and find the boat gone. Pirate chief marooned on island and all that. Well, it isn’t its back hair, anyhow. We’ll try its eyes. I say, Gherkins, I’m sure I felt something move, only it’s frightfully stiff. We might have thought to bring some oil. Never mind; it’s dogged as does. It’s coming. It’s coming. Booh! Pah!’

    A fierce effort thrust the rusted knob inwards, releasing a huge spout of water into his face from the dragon’s gaping throat. The fountain, dry for many years, soared rejoicingly heavenwards, drenching the treasure-hunters, and making rainbows in the moonlight.

    ‘I suppose this is “Old Cut-throat’s” idea of humour,’ grumbled Wimsey, retreating cautiously round the dragon’s neck. ‘And now I can’t turn it off again. Well, dash it all, let’s try the other eye.’

    He pressed for a few moments in vain. Then, with a grinding clang, the bronze wings of the monster clapped down to its sides, revealing a deep square hole, and the fountain ceased to play.

    ‘Gherkins!’ said Lord Peter, ‘we’ve done it. (But don’t neglect bailing on that account!) There’s a box here. And it’s beastly heavy. No; all right, I can manage. Gimme the boathook. Now I do hope the old sinner really did have a treasure. What a bore if it’s only one of his little jokes. Never mind – hold the boat steady. There. Always remember, Gherkins, that you can make quite an effective crane with a boat-hook and a stout pair of braces. Got it? That’s right. Now for home and beauty . . . Hullo! what’s all that?’

    As he paddled the boat round, it was evident that something was happening down by the boat-house. Lights were moving about, and a sound of voices came across the lake.