“Lord Peter got up and paced the room. The light from the solitary reading-lamp threw his lean shadow, diffused and monstrously elongated, up to the ceiling. He walked over to a book-shelf, and the shadow shrank, blackened, settled down. He stretched his hand, and the hand’s shadow flew with it, hovering over the gilded titles of the books and blotting them out one by one.

“Why?” repeated Wimsey. “Because I believe this is the case I have always been looking for. The case of cases. The murder without discernible means, or motive clue. The norm. All these”- he swept his extended hand across the book-shelf and the shadow outlined a vaster and more menacing gesture- “all these books on this side of the room are about crimes. But they only deal with the abnormal crimes.”

“What do you mean by abnormal crimes?”

“The failures. The crimes that have been found out. What proportion do you suppose they bear to the successful crimes- the ones we hear nothing about?”

“In this country,” said Parker, rather stiffly, “we manage to trace and convict the majority of criminals- ”

“My good man, I know that where a crime is known to have been committed, you people manage to catch the perpetrator in at least sixty per cent of the cases. But the moment a crime is even suspected, it falls, ipso facto, into the category of failures. After that, the thing is merely a question of greater or lesser efficiency on the part of the police. But how about the crimes which are never even suspected?”

Parker shrugged his shoulders.

“How can anybody answer that?”

“Well- one may guess. Read any newspaper to-day. Read the News of the World, now that the Press has been muzzled, read the divorce court lists. Wouldn’t they give you the idea that marriage is a failure? Isn’t the sillier sort of journalism packed with articles to the same effect? And yet, looking round among the marriages you know of personally, aren’t the majority of them a success, in a hum-drum, undemonstrative sort of way? Only you don’t hear of them. People don’t bother to come into court and explain that they dodder along very comfortably on the whole, thank you. Similarly, if you read all the books on this shelf, you’d come to the conclusion that murder was a failure. But bless you, it’s always the failures that make the noise. Successfull murderers don’t write to the papers about it. They don’t even join in imbecile symposia to tell an inquisitive world ‘What Murder means to me,’ or ‘How I became a Successful Poisoner.’ Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues. And they probably bear just about the same proportion to the failures as the divorced couples do to the happily mated.”

“Aren’t you putting it rather high?”

“I don’t know. Nor does anybody. That’s the devil of it. But you ask any doctor, when you’ve got him in an unbuttoned, well-lubricated frame of mind, if he hasn’t often had grisly suspicions which he could not and dared not take steps to verify. You see by our friend Carr what happens when one doctor is a trifle more courageous than the rest.”

“Well, he couldn’t prove anything.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be proved. Look at the scores and scores of murders that have unproved and unsuspected till the fool murderer went too far and did something silly which blew up the whole show. Palmer, for instance. His wife brother and mother-in-law and various illegitimate children, all peacefully put away- till he made the mistake of polishing Cook off in that spectacular manner. Look at George Joseph Smith. Nobody’d have thought of bothering any more about those first two wives he drowned. It was only when he did it the third time that he aroused suspicion. Armstrong, too, is supposed to have got away with many more crimes than he was tried for- it was being clumsy over Martin and the chocolates that stirred up the hornets’ nest in the end. Burke and Hare were convicted of murdering an old woman, and then brightly confessed that they’d put away sixteen people in two months and no one a penny the wiser.”

“But they were caught.”

“Because they were fools. If you murder someone in a brutal, messy way, or poison someone who has previously enjoyed rollicking health, or choose the very day after a will’s been made in your favour to extinguish the testator, or go on killing everyone you meet till people begin to think you’re first cousin to a upas tree, naturally you’re found out in the end. But choose somebody old and ill, in circumstances where the benefit to yourself isn’t too apparent, and use a sensible method that looks like natural death or accident, and don’t repeat your effects too often, and you’re safe. I swear all the heart-diseases and gastric enteritis and influenzas that get certified are not nature’s unaided work. Murder’s so easy, Charles, so damned easy- even without special training.”

Parker looked troubled.

“There’s something in what you say. I’ve heard some funny tales myself. We all do, I suppose. But Miss Dawson- ”

“Miss Dawson fascinates me, Charles. Such a beautiful subject. So old and ill. So likely to die soon. Bound to die before long. No near relations to make inquiries. No connections or old friends in the neighbourhood. And so rich. Upon my soul, Charles, I lie in bed licking my lips over ways and means of murdering Miss Dawson.”

“Well, anyhow, till you can think of one that defies analysis and doesn’t seem to need a motive, you haven’t found the right one,” said Parker, practically, rather revolted by this ghoulish conversation.

“I admit that,” replied Lord Peter, “but that only shows that as yet I’m merely a third-rate murderer. Wait till I’ve perfected my method and then I’ll show you- perhaps. Some wise old buffer has said that each of us holds the life of one other person between his hands- but only one, Charles, only one.”

Chapter 9 The Will

Hullo! hullo- ullo! oh, operator, shall I call thee bird or but a wandering voice… Not at all, I had no intention of being rude, my child, that was a quotation from the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth… well, ring him again… thank you, is that Dr. Carr?… Lord Peter Wimsey speaking… oh, yes… yes… aha!… not a bit of it… We are about to vindicate you and lead you home, decorated with triumphal wreaths of cinnamon and senna-pods… No, really… we’ve come to the conclusion that the thing is serious… Yes… I want Nurse Forbes’ address… Right, I’ll hold on… Luton?… oh, Tooting, yes, I’ve got that… Certainly, I’ve no doubt she’s a tartar but I’m the Grand Panjandrum with the little round button a-top… Thanks awfully… cheer-frightfully-ho! oh! I say!- hullo!- I say, she doesn’t do Maternity work, does she? Maternity work? – M for Mother-in-law -Maternity?- No- You’re sure?… It would be simply awful if she did and came along… I couldn’t possibly produce a baby for her… As long as you’re quite sure… Right- right- yes- not for the world- nothing to do with you at all. Goodbye, old thing, goodbye.”

Peter hung up, whistling cheerfully, and called for Bunter.

“My lord?”

“What is the proper suit to put on,, when one is an expectant father?”

“I regret, my lord, to have seen no recent fashions in paternity wear. I should say, my lord, whichever suit your lordship fancies will induce a calm and cheerful frame of mind in the lady.”

“Unfortunately I don’t know the lady. She is, in fact, only the figment of an over-teeming-brain. But I think the garments should express bright hope, sel congratulation, and a tinge of tender anxiety.”

“A newly married situation, my lord, I take it. Then I would suggest the lounge suit in pale grey- the willow-pussy cloth, my lord- with a dull amethyst tie and socks and a soft hat. I would not recommend a bowler, my lord. The anxiety expressed in a bowler hat would be rather of the financial kind.”