“And meanwhile,” said Parker, “I suppose we just sit round and wait for somebody else to be murdered.”
“It’s beastly, isn’t it? I still feel poor Bertha Gotobed’s blood on my head, so to speak. I say!”
“Yes?”
“We’ve practically got clear proof on the Trigg business. Couldn’t you put the lady in quod on a charge of burglary while we think out the rest of the dope? It’s often done. It was a burglary, you know. She broke into a house after dark – and appropriated a scuttleful of coal to her own use. Trigg could identify her- he seems to have paid the lady particular attention on more than one occasion and we could rake up his taxi-man for corroborative detail.”
Parker pulled at his pipe for a few minutes.
“There’s something in that,” he said finally. “I think perhaps it’s worth while putting it before the authorities. But we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry, you know. I wish we were further ahead with our other proofs. There’s such a thing as Habeas Corpus- you can’t hold on to people indefinitely just on a charge of stealing coal-”
“There’s the breaking and entering, don’t forget that. It’s burglary, after all. You can get penal servitude for burglary.”
“But it all depends on the view the law takes of the coal. It might decide that there was no original intention of stealing coal, and treat the thing as a mere misdemeanour or civil trespass. Anyhow, we don’t really want a conviction for stealing coal. But I’ll see what they think about it at our place, and meanwhile I’ll get hold of Trigg again and try and find the taxi-driver. And Trigg’s doctor. We might get it as an attempt to murder Trigg, or at least to inflict grievious bodily harm. But I should like some more evidence about-”
“Cuckoo! So should I. But I can’t manufacture evidence out of nothing. Dash it all, be reasonable. I’ve built you up a case out of nothing. Isn’t that handsome enough? Base ingratitude, that’s what’s the matter with you.”
Parker’s inquiries took some time, and June lingered into its longest days.
Chamberlin and Levine flew the Atlantic and Segrave bade farewell to Brooklands. The Daily Yell wrote anti-Red leaders and discovered a plot, somebody laid claim to a marquisate, and a Czech-Slovakian pretended to swim the Channel. Hammond out-graced Grace, there was an outburst of murder at Moscow, Foxlaw won the Gold Cup and the earth opened at Oxhey and swallowed up somebody’s front garden. Oxford decided that women were dangerous, and the electric hare consented to run at theWhite City. England ’s supremacy was challenged at Wimbledon, and the House of Lords made the gesture of stooping to conqer.
Meanwhile, Lord Peter’s projected magnum opus on a-hundred-and-one ways of causing sudden death had advanced by the accumulation of a mass of notes which flowed all over the library at the flat, and threatened to engulf Bunter, whose task it was to file and cross-reference and generally to produce order from chaos. Oriental scholars and explorers were button-holed in clubs and strenuously pumped on the subject of abstruse native poisons; horrid experiments performed in German laboratories were communicated in unreadable documents; and the life of Sir James Lubbock, who had the misfortune to be a particular friend of Lord Peter’s, was made a burden to him with daily inquiries as to the post-mortem detection of such varying substances as chloroform, curare, hydrocyanic acid gas and diethylsulphonmethylethylmethane.
“But surely there must be something which kills without leaving a trace,” pleaded Lord Peter, when at length informed that the persecution must cease. “A thing in such universal demand- surely it is not beyond the wit of scientists to invent it. It must exist. Why isn’t it properly advertised? There ought to be a company to exploit it. It’s simply ridiculous. Why, it’s a thing one might be wantin’ one’s self any day.”
“You don’t understand,” said Sir James Lubbock.
“Plenty of poisons leave no particular post-mortem appearances. And plenty of them- especially the vegetable ones-are difficult to find by analysis, unless you know what you are looking for. For instance, if you’re testing for arsenic, that test won’t tell you whether strychnine is present or not. And if you’re testing for strychnine, you won’t find morphia. You’ve got to try one test after another till you hit the right one. And of course there are certain poisons for which no recognized tests exist.”
“I know all that,” said Wimsey. “I’ve tested things myself. But these poisons with no recognised test- how do you set about proving that they’re there?”
“Well, of course, you’d take the symptoms into account, and so on. You would look at the history of the case.”
“ but I want a poison that doesn’t produce any symptoms. Except death, of course- if you call that a symptom. Isn’t there a poison with no symptoms and no test? Something that just makes you go off, Pouf! like that?”
“Certainly not,” said the analyst, rather annoyed- for your medical analyst lives by symptoms and tests, and nobody likes suggestions that undermine the very foundations of his profession- “not even old age or mental decay. There are always symptoms.”
Fortunately, before the symptoms of mental decay could become too pronounced in Lord Peter, Parker sounded the call to action.
“I’m going down to Leahampton with a warrant,” he said. “I may not use it, but the chief thinks it might be worth while to make an inquiry. What with the Battersea mystery and the Daniels business, and Bertha Gotobed, there seems to be a feeling that there have been too many unexplained tragedies this year, and the Press have begun yelping again, blast them! There’s an article in John Citizen this week, with a poster: ‘Ninety-six Murderers at Large,’ and the Evening Views is starting its reports with ‘Six weeks have now passed, and the police are no nearer the solution-’ you know the kind of thing. We’ll simply have to get some sort of move on. Do you want to come?”
“Certainly- a breath of country air would do me good, I fancy. Blow away the cobwebs, don’t you know. It might even inspire me to invent a good way of murderin’ people. ‘O Inspiration, solitary child, warbling thy native woodnotes wild-’ Did somebody write that, or did I invent it? It sounds reminiscent, somehow.”
Parker, who was out of temper, replied rather shortly, and intimated that the police car would be starting for Leahampton in an hour’s time.
“I will be there,” said Wimsey, “though mind you, I hate being driven by another fellow. It feels so unsafe. Never mind. I will be bloody, bold and resolute, as Queen Victoria said to the Archbishop oh Canterbury.
They reached Leahampton without any incident to justify Lord Peter’s fears. Parker had brought another officer with him, and on the way they picked up the Chief Constable of the County, who appeared very dubiously disposed towards their errand. Lord Peter, observing their array of five strong men, going seize upon one young woman, was reminded of the Marquise de Brinvilliers – (“What! all that water for a little person like me?”)- but this led him back to the subject of poison, and he remained steeped in thought and gloom till the car drew up before the house in Wellington Avenue.
Parker got out, and went up the path with the Chief Constable. The door was opened to them by a frightened-looking maid, who gave a little shriek at sight of them.
“Oh, sir! have you come to say something’s happened to Miss Whittaker?”
“Isn’t Miss Whittaker at home, then?”
“No, sir. She went out in the car with Miss Vera Findlater on Monday-that’s four days back, sir, and she hasn’t come home, nor Miss Findlater neither, and I’m frightened something’s happened to them. When I see you, sir, I thought you was the police come to say there had been an accident. I didn’t know what to do, sir.”