Lord Peter Views the Body (33 page)

    The car was still at the door; the hired driver was enjoying the hospitality of the cottage. They pried him loose from Maggie’s scones and slipped down the road to Gatehouse.

    ‘Those gulls seem rather active about something,’ said Wimsey, as they crossed the second field. The white wings swooped backwards and forwards in narrowing circles over the yellow shoal. Raucous cries rose on the wind. Wimsey pointed silently with his hand. A long, unseemly object, like a drab purse, lay on the shore. The gulls, indignant, rose higher, squawking at the intruders. Wimsey ran forward, stooped, rose again with the long bag dangling from his fingers.

    ‘Great-Uncle Joseph, I presume,’ he said, and raised his hat with old-fashioned courtesy.

    ‘The gulls have had a wee peck at it here and there,’ said Jock. ‘It’ll be tough for them. Aye. They havena done so vera much with it.’

    ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ said Macpherson impatiently.

    ‘Not here,’ said Wimsey. ‘We might lose something.’ He dropped it into Jock’s creel. ‘We’ll take it home first and show it to Robert.’

    Robert greeted them with ill-disguised irritation.

    ‘We’ve been fishing,’ said Wimsey cheerfully. ‘Look at our bonny wee fush.’ He weighed the catch in his hand. ‘What’s inside this wee fush, Mr Ferguson?’

    ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Robert.

    ‘Then why did you go fishing for it?’ asked Wimsey pleasantly. ‘Have you got a surgical knife there, Mac?’

    ‘Yes – here. Hurry up.’

    ‘I’ll leave it to you. Be careful I should begin with the stomach.’

    Macpherson laid Great-Uncle Joseph on the table, and slit him with a practised hand.

    ‘Gude be gracious to us!’ cried Maggie, peering over his shoulder. ‘What’ll that be?’

    Wimsey inserted a delicate finger and thumb into the cavities of Uncle Joseph. ‘One – two – three –’ The stones glittered like fire as he laid them on the table. ‘Seven – eight – nine. That seems to be all. Try a little further down, Mac.’

    Speechless with astonishment, Mr Macpherson dissected his legacy.

    ‘Ten – eleven,’ said Wimsey. ‘I’m afraid the sea-gulls have got number twelve. I’m sorry, Mac.’

    ‘But how did they get there?’ demanded Robert foolishly.

    ‘Simple as shelling peas. Great-Uncle Joseph makes his will, swallows his diamonds—’

    ‘He must ha’ been a grand man for a pill,’ said Maggie, with respect.

    ‘– and jumps out of the window. It was as clear as crystal to anybody who read the will. He told you, Mac, that the stomach was given you to study.’

    Robert Ferguson gave a deep groan.

    ‘I knew there was something in it,’ he said. ‘That’s why I went to look up the will. And when I saw
you
there, I knew I was right. (Curse this leg of mine!) But I never imagined for a moment—’

    His eyes appraised the diamonds greedily.

    ‘And what will the value of these same stones be?’ enquired Jock.

    ‘About seven thousand pounds apiece, taken separately. More than that, taken together.’

    ‘The old man was mad,’ said Robert angrily. ‘I shall dispute the will.’

    ‘I think not,’ said Wimsey. ‘There’s such an offence as entering and stealing, you know.’

    ‘My God!’ said Macpherson, handling the diamonds like a man in a dream. ‘My God!’

    ‘Seven thousan’ pund,’ said Jock. ‘Did I unnerstan’ ye richtly to say that one o’ they gulls is gaun aboot noo wi’ seven thousan’ pund’s worth o’ diamonds in his wane? Ech! it’s just awfu’ to think of. Guid day to you, sirs. I’ll be gaun round to Jimmy McTaggart to ask will he lend me the loan o’ a gun.’

THE UNSOLVED PUZZLE OF THE MAN WITH NO FACE

‘And what would
you
say, sir,’ said the stout man, ‘to this here business of the bloke what’s been found down on the beach at East Felpham?’

    The rush of travellers after the Bank Holiday had caused an overflow of third-class passengers into the firsts, and the stout man was anxious to seem at ease in his surroundings. The youngish gentleman whom he addressed had obviously paid full fare for a seclusion which he was fated to forgo. He took the matter amiably enough, however, and replied in a courteous tone:

    ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read more than the headlines. Murdered, I suppose, wasn’t he?’

    ‘It’s murder, right enough,’ said the stout man, with relish. ‘Cut about he was, something shocking.’

    ‘More like as if a wild beast had done it,’ chimed in the thin, elderly man opposite. ‘No face at all he hadn’t got, by what my paper says. It’ll be one of these maniacs, I shouldn’t be surprised, what goes about killing children.’

    ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about such things,’ said his wife, with a shudder. ‘I lays awake at nights thinking what might ’appen to Lizzie’s girls, till my head feels regular in a fever, and I has such a sinking in my inside I has to get up and eat biscuits. They didn’t ought to put such dreadful things in the papers.’

    ‘It’s better they should, ma’am,’ said the stout man, ‘then we’re warned, so to speak, and can take our measures accordingly. Now, from what I can make out, this unfortunate gentleman had gone bathing all by himself in a lonely spot. Now, quite apart from cramps, as is a thing that might ’appen to the best of us, that’s a very foolish thing to do.’

    ‘Just what I’m always telling my husband,’ said the young wife. The young husband frowned and fidgeted. ‘Well, dear, it really isn’t safe, and you with your heart not strong—’ Her hand sought his under the newspaper. He drew away, self-consciously, saying, ‘That’ll do, Kitty.’

    ‘The way I look at it is this,’ pursued the stout man. ‘Here we’ve been and had a war, what has left ’undreds o’ men in what you might call a state of unstable ekilibrium. They’ve seen all their friends blown up or shot to pieces. They’ve been through five years of ’orrors and bloodshed, and it’s given ’em what you might call a twist in the mind towards ’orrors. They may seem to forget it and go along as peaceable as anybody to all outward appearance, but it’s all artificial, if you get my meaning. Then, one day something ’appens to upset them – they ’as words with the wife, or the weather’s extra hot, as it is today – and something goes pop inside their brains and makes raving monsters of them. It’s all in the books. I do a good bit of reading myself of an evening, being a bachelor without encumbrances.’

    ‘That’s all very true,’ said a prim little man, looking up from his magazine, ‘very true indeed – too true. But do you think it applies in the present case? I’ve studied the literature of crime a good deal – I may say I make it my hobby – and it’s my opinion there’s more in this than meets the eye. If you will compare this murder with some of the most mysterious crimes of late years – crimes which, mind you, have never been solved, and, in my opinion, never will be – what do you find?’ He paused and looked round. ‘You will find many features in common with this case. But especially you will find that the face – and the face only, mark you – has been disfigured, as though to prevent recognition. As though to blot out the victim’s personality from the world. And you will find that, in spite of the most thorough investigation, the criminal is never discovered. Now what does all that point to? To organisation. Organisation. To an immensely powerful influence at work behind the scenes. In this very magazine that I’m reading now’ – he tapped the page impressively – ‘there’s an account – not a faked-up story, but an account extracted from the annals of the police – of the organisation of one of these secret societies, which mark down men against whom they bear a grudge, and destroy them. And, when they do this, they disfigure their faces with the mark of the Secret Society, and they cover up the track of the assassin so completely – having money and resources at their disposal – that nobody is ever able to get at them.’

    ‘I’ve read of such things, of course,’ admitted the stout man, ‘but I thought as they mostly belonged to the medeevial days. They had a thing like that in Italy once. What did they call it now? A Gomorrah, was it? Are there any Gomorrahs nowadays?’

    ‘You spoke a true word, sir, when you said Italy,’ replied the prim man. ‘The Italian mind is made for intrigue. There’s the Fascisti. That’s come to the surface now, of course, but it started by being a secret society. And, if you were to look below the surface, you would be amazed at the way in which that country is honeycombed with hidden organisations of all sorts. Don’t you agree with me, sir?’ he added, addressing the first-class passenger.

    ‘Ah!’ said the stout man, ‘no doubt this gentleman has been in Italy and knows all about it. Should you say this murder was the work of a Gomorrah, sir?’

    ‘I hope not, I’m sure,’ said the first-class passenger. ‘I mean, it rather destroys the interest, don’t you think? I like a nice, quiet, domestic, murder myself, with the millionaire found dead in the library. The minute I open a detective story and find a Camorra in it, my interest seems to dry up and turn to dust and ashes – a sort of Sodom and Camorra, as you might say.’

    ‘I agree with you there,’ said the young husband, ‘from what you might call the artistic standpoint. But in this particular case I think there may be something to be said for this gentleman’s point of view.’

    ‘Well,’ admitted the first-class passenger, ‘not having read the details—’

    ‘The details are clear enough,’ said the prim man. ‘This poor creature was found lying dead on the beach at East Felpham early this morning, with his face cut about in the most dreadful manner. He had nothing on him but his bathing-dress—’

    ‘Stop a minute. Who was he, to begin with?’

    ‘They haven’t identified him yet. His clothes had been taken—’

    ‘That looks more like robbery, doesn’t it?’ suggested Kitty.

    ‘If it was just robbery,’ retorted the prim man, ‘why should his face have been cut up in that way? No – the clothes were taken away, as I said, to prevent identification. That’s what these societies always try to do.’

    ‘Was he stabbed?’ demanded the first-class passenger.

    ‘No,’ said the stout man. ‘He wasn’t. He was strangled.’

    ‘Not a characteristically Italian method of killing,’ observed the first-class passenger.

    ‘No more it is,’ said the stout man. The prim man seemed a little disconcerted.

    ‘And if he went down there to bathe,’ said the thin, elderly man, ‘how did he get there? Surely somebody must have missed him before now, if he was staying at Felpham. It’s a busy spot for visitors in the holiday season.’

    ‘No,’ said the stout man, ‘not East Felpham. You’re thinking of West Felpham, where the yacht-club is. East Felpham is one of the loneliest spots on the coast. There’s no house near except a little pub all by itself at the end of a long road, and after that you have to go through three fields to get to the sea. There’s no real road, only a cart-track, but you can take a car through. I’ve been there.’

    ‘He came in a car,’ said the prim man. ‘They found the track of the wheels. But it had been driven away again.’

    ‘It looks as though the two men had come there together,’ suggested Kitty.

    ‘I think they did,’ said the prim man. ‘The victim was probably gagged and bound and taken along in the car to the place, and then he was taken out and strangled and—’

    ‘But why should they have troubled to put on his bathing-dress?’ said the first-class passenger.

    ‘Because,’ said the prim man, ‘as I said, they didn’t want to leave any clothes to reveal his identity.’

    ‘Quite; but why not leave him naked? A bathing-dress seems to indicate an almost excessive regard for decorum, under the circumstances.’

    ‘Yes, yes,’ said the stout man impatiently, ‘but you ’aven’t read the paper carefully. The two men couldn’t have come there in company, and for why? There was only one set of footprints found, and they belonged to the murdered man.’

    ‘Only one set of footprints, eh?’ said the first-class passenger quickly. ‘This looks interesting. Are you sure?’

    ‘It says so in the paper. A single set of footprints, it says, made by bare feet, which by a careful comparison ’ave been shown to be those of the murdered man, lead from the position occupied by the car to the place where the body was found. What do you make of that?’

    ‘Why,’ said the first-class passenger, ‘that tells one quite a lot, don’t you know. It gives one a sort of a bird’s eye view of the place, and it tells one the time of the murder, besides castin’ quite a good bit of light on the character and circumstances of the murderer – or murderers.’

    ‘How do you make that out, sir?’ demanded the elderly man.

    ‘Well, to begin with – though I’ve never been near the place, there is obviously a sandy beach from which one can bathe.’

    ‘That’s right,’ said the stout man.

    ‘There is also, I fancy, in the neighbourhood, a spur of rock running out into the sea, quite possibly with a handy diving-pool. It must run out pretty far; at any rate, one can bathe there before it is high water on the beach.’

    ‘I don’t know how you know that, sir, but it’s a fact. There’s rocks and a bathing-pool, exactly as you describe, about a hundred yards farther along. Many’s the time I’ve had a dip off the end of them.’