Dorothy Sayers - Have His Carcass

The dancers twirled to a standstill with the conclusion of the waltz. The instrumentalists tweaked a string and tightened a peg here and there and rearranged their music, under cover of perfunctory applause. Then the male dancer selected a partner from one of the nearer tables, while the petunia-clad girl obeyed a summons from a stout manufacturer in tweeds on the other side of the room. Another girl, a blonde.in pale blue, rose from her solitary table near the platform and led out an elderly man. Other visitors rose, accompanied; by their own partners, and took the floor to the strains of another waltz. Harriet beckoned to the waiter and asked for more coffee.

Men, she thought, like the illusion that woman is dependent on their approbation and favour for, her whole interest in life. But do they like the reality? Not, thought Harriet, bitterly, when one is past one’s first youth. The girl over there, exercising S.A. on a group of rather possessive-looking males, will turn into a predatory hag like the woman — at the next table, if she doesn’t find something to occupy her mind, always supposing that she has — a mind. Then the men will say she puts the wind up them.

The ‘predatory hag’ was a lean woman, pathetically made-up, dressed in an exaggeration of the fashion which it would have been difficult for a girl of nineteen to carry off successfully. She had caught Harriet’s attention earlier by her look of radiant, almost bridal exaltation. She was alone, but seemed to be expecting somebody, for her gaze roamed incessantly about the room, concentrating itself chiefly on the professionals’ table near the platform. Now she appeared to be getting anxious. Her ringed hands twitched nervously, and she lighted one cigarette after another, only to stub it out, half-smoked, snatch at the mirror in her handbag, read lust her make-up, fidget, and then begin the whole process again with another cigarette.

‘Waiting for her gigolo,’ diagnosed Harriet, with a kind of pitiful disgust. ‘The frog-mouthed gentleman, I suppose. He seems to have better fish to fry.’

‘The waiter brought the coffee, and the woman at the next table caught him on his way back.

‘Is Mr Alexis not here tonight?’

‘No, madam.’ The waiter looked a little nervous. No. He is unavoidably absent’

‘Is he ill?’

‘I’ do not think so, madam. The manager has just said he will not be coming.’

‘Did he send no message?’

‘I could not say, madam.’ The waiter was fidgeting with his feet, ‘Mr Antoine will no doubt be happy…’

‘No, never mind. I am accustomed to Mr Alexis. His step suits me. It does not matter.’

‘No, madam, thank you, madam’

The waiter escaped. Harriet saw him exchange a word and a shrug with the head waiter, Lips and eyebrows were eloquent. Harriet felt annoyed. Did one come to this, then, if one did not marry? Making a public scorn of one’s self before the waiters? She glanced again at the woman, who was rising to leave the lounge. She wore a wedding-ring. Marriage did not save one, apparently. Single, married, widowed, divorced, one came to the same end. She shivered a little, and suddenly felt fed-up with the lounge and the dance-floor. She finished her coffee and retired to the smaller lounge, where three stout women were engaged in an interminable conversation about illness, children and servants. ‘Poor Muriel — quite an invalid since the birth of her last baby…. I spoke quite firmly, I said, “Now you quite understand, if you leave before your month you, will be liable to me for the money.” Twelve guineas a week, and the surgeon’s fee was a hundred guineas…. Beautiful boys, both of them, but with Ronnie at Eton and Wilfred at Oxford…. They oughtn’t to let boys run up these bills…,’my dear, pounds thinner, I hardly knew her, but I wouldn’t care to… some kind of electric heat treatment, too marvellous… and what with rates and taxes and all this terrible unemployment.

… You can’t argue with nervous dyspepsia, but it makes things very difficult… left me high and dry with the house full of people, these girls have no gratitude.’

‘And these,’ thought Harriet, ‘are the happy ones, I suppose. Well, dash it! How about that town-clock?’

Chapter IV. The Evidence Of The Razor

‘Well, thou art

A useful tool sometimes, thy tooth works quickly,

And if thou gnawest a secret from the heart

Thou tellest it not again.’

— Death’s Jest-Book

Friday, 19 June

IN SPITE of the horrors she had witnessed, which ought to have driven all sleep away from the eyelids of any self-respecting female, Harriet slept profoundly in her first-floor bedroom (with bathroom, balcony and view over Esplanade) and came down to breakfast with a hearty appetite.

She secured a copy of the Morning Star, and was deep in the perusal of her own interview (with photograph) on the front page, when a familiar voice addressed her

‘Good morning, ‘ Sherlock. Where is the dressing-gown? How many pipes of shag have you consumed? The hypodermic is on the dressing-room table!’

‘How in the world,’ demanded Harriet, ‘did you get here?’

‘Car,’ said Lord Peter, briefly. ‘Have they produced the body?’

‘Who told you about the body?’

‘I nosed it from afar. Where the carcase is, there shall be eagles gathered together. May I join you over the bacon-and-eggs?’

‘By all means,’ said Harriet. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘From London — like a bird that hears the call of its mate.’ ‘I didn’t-’ began Harriet.

‘I didn’t mean you. I meant the corpse. But still, talking of mates, will you marry me?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘I thought not, but I felt I might as well ask the question.. Did you say they, had found the body?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘I don’t expect they will, then, for a bit. There’s a regular sou’wester blowing great guns. Tiresome for them. Can’t have an inquest without a body. ‘You must produce, the body, as it says in the Have-His-Carcase Act.’

‘No, but really,’ protested Harriet, ‘how did you hear about it?’

‘Salcombe Hardy rang me up from, the Morning Star. Said “my Miss Vane” had found a corpse, and did I know, anything about it. I said I knew nothing about it and that Miss Vane was unhappily not mine — yet. So I buzzed off, and here I am. I brought Sally Hardy down with me. I expect that’s what he really rang me. up for. Smart old bird, Sally always on the spot.’

‘He told you where to find me, I suppose.’

‘Yes — he seemed to know all about it. I was rather hurt. Fancy having to ask the Morning Star where the pole-star of one’s own heaven has, gone to. Hardy seemed to know all about it. How do these things get into the papers?’

‘l rang them up myself,’ replied Harriet. ‘First-class publicity, you know, and all that.’

‘So it is,’ agreed Wimsey, helping himself lavishly to butter. ‘Rang ’em up, did you, with all the gory details?’

‘Naturally; that was the first thing I thought of.’

‘You’re a woman of business. But does it not, pardon me, indicate a certain coarsening of the fibres?’

‘Obviously,’ said Harriet. ‘My fibres at this moment resemble coconut matting.’

‘Without even “Welcome” written across; them. But, look here, beloved, bearing in mind that I’m a corpse-fan, don’t you think you might, as man to man, have let me in on the ground-floor?’

‘If you put it that way,’ admitted Harriet, rather ashamed of herself, ‘I certainly might. But I thought-’

‘Women will let the personal element creep in,’ said Wimsey, acutely. ‘Well, all I can say is, you owe it to me to make up for it now. All the details, please.’