Have His Carcase

‘Yes; there’s something in that. But all this depends on the time that Perkins passed through Darley. We’ll have to get that looked into. Mind, Ormond, I’m not saying you haven’t done a good bit of thinking over this, and I like to see you having initiative and striking out a line for yourself; but we can’t go behind facts when all’s said and done.’

‘No, sir; certainly not, sir. But of course, sir, even if it wasn’t Perkins, that’s not to say it wasn’t somebody else.’

‘Who wasn’t somebody else?’

‘The accomplice, sir.’

‘That’s beginning all over again, Ormond.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, cut along and see what you can make of it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Glaisher rubbed his chin thoughtfully when Ormond was gone. This business was worrying him. The Chief Constable had been chivvying him that morning and making things unpleasant. The Chief Constable, a military gentleman of the old school, thought that Glaisher was making too much fuss. To him it was obvious that the rather contemptible foreign dancing-fellow had cut his own throat, and he thought that sleeping dogs. should be left alone. Glaisher only wished he could leave the thing alone, but he felt a sincere conviction that there was more to it than that. He was not comfortable in his mind — never had been. There were too many odd circumstances. The razor, the gloves, Weldon’s incomprehensible movements, the taciturnity of Mr Pollock, the horseshoe, the ring-bolt, Bright’s mistake about the tides and, above all, the cipher letters and the photograph of the mysterious Feodora each one of these might, separately, have some ordinary, and trivial explanation, but not all of them surely, not all of them. He had put these points to the Chief Constable, and had received a grudging kind of permission to go on with his inquiries. But he was not happy.

He wondered what Umpelty was doing. He had heard the story of his excursion to town with Wimsey, and felt that this had only plunged matters into a still deeper obscurity. Then there was the tiresomeness about Bright. Bright was reported to be working his way towards London. It was going to be a job keeping an eye on him — especially as Glaisher was rather hard put to it to find a good reason for the surveillance. After all, what had Bright done? He was, an unsatisfactory character and he had said it was high tide when it was, in fact, low tide — in every other respect he appeared to have been telling the exact truth. Glaisher realised that he was making himself unpopular with the — police of half-a-dozen counties, on very insufficient grounds.

He dismissed the case from his mind and applied himself to a quantity of routine business connected with, petty theft and motoring offences, and so got through the evening. But after his, supper he found the problem of Paul Alexis gnawing at his brain again. Umpelty had reported the result of a few routine inquiries about Perkins, of which the only interesting fact was that Perkins was a member of the Soviet Club and was reported to have Communist sympathies.

Just the sort of sympathies he would have, thought Glaisher: it was always these week, mild, timid-looking people who yearned for revolution and bloodshed. But, taken in connection, with the cipher letters, the matter assumed a certain importance, He wondered how soon the photographs of the letters found on Alexis would come to hand. He fretted, was short with his wife, trod on the cat, and decided to go, round to the Bellevue and look up Lord Peter Wimsey.

Wimsey was out, and a little further inquiry led Glaisher to Mrs Lefranc’s, where he found; not only Wimsey, but also Inspector Umpelty, seated with Harriet in the bedsitting-room that had once housed Paul Alexis, all three, apparently engaged in a Missing Word Competition. Books were strewn about the place, and Harriet, with Chambers’s Dictionary in her hand, was reading out words to her companions.

‘Hullo, Super!’ exclaimed Wimsey. ‘Come along! I’m sure our hostess will be delighted to see you. We are making discoveries.

‘Are you, indeed, my lord? Well, so have we — at least, that lad, Ormond, has been rummaging about, as you might say.’

He plunged into his story. He was glad to try it, on somebody else. Umpelty grunted. Wimsey took a map and a sheet of paper and began figuring out distances and times. They discussed it, They argued about the speed of the mare. Wimsey was inclined to think that he might have underestimated it. He would borrow the animal — make a test.

Harriet said nothing.

‘And what do you think?’ Wimsey asked her, suddenly.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Harriet.

Glaisher laughed.

‘Miss Vane’s intuition, as they call it, is against it,’ said he.’

‘It’s not intuition,’ retorted Harriet. ‘here’s no such thing. It’s common sense. It’s artistic sense, if you like. All those theories — they’re all wrong. They’re artificial — they smell of the lamp.’

Glaisher laughed again.

‘That’s beyond me, that is.’