Dorothy Sayers - Have His Carcass

‘Bought for the purpose.’

‘Yes; after all, why not? My dear Harriet, I think you are right. The man cut his throat, and that’s all there is to it. I am disappointed.’

‘It is disappointing, but it can’t be helped. Hallo! here’s my friend the Inspector.’

It was indeed Inspector Umpelty who was threading his way between the tables. He was in mufti — a large, comfortable-looking tweed-clad figure. He greeted Harriet pleasantly.

‘I thought you might like to see how your snaps have turned out, Miss Vane. And we’ve identified the man.’

‘No? Have you? Good work. This is Inspector Umpelty — Lord Peter Wimsey.’

The Inspector appeared gratified by the introduction.

‘You’re early on the job, my lord. But I don’t know that you’ll find anything very mysterious about this case. Just a plain suicide, I fancy.’

‘We had regretfully come to that conclusion,’ admitted Wimsey

‘Though — why he should have done it, I don’t know. But you never can tell with these foreigners, can you?’

‘I thought he looked rather foreign,’ said Harriet.

‘Yes. He’s a Russian, or something of that. Paul Alexis Goldschmidt, his name is; known as Paul Alexis. Comes from this very hotel, as a matter of fact. One of the professsional dancing-partners in the lounge here — you know the sort. They don’t seem to know much about him. Turned up here just over a year ago and asked for a job: Seemed to be a good dancer and all that and they had a vacancy, so they took him on. Age twenty-two or thereabouts. Unmarried.

Lived in rooms. Nothing known against him.’

‘Papers in order?’

‘Naturalised British subject. Said to have escaped from Russia at the Revolution. He must have been a kid of about nine, but we haven’t found out yet who had charge of him. He was alone when he turned up here, and his landlady doesn’t ever seem to have heard of anybody belonging to him. But we’ll soon find out when we go through his stuff’.’

‘He didn’t leave any letter for the coroner, or anything?’

‘We’ve found nothing so far. And as regards the coroner, that’s a bit of a bother, that is. I don’t know how long it’ll be, miss, before you’re wanted. You see, we can’t find the body.’

‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ said Wimsey, ‘that the evil eyed doctor and the mysterious Chinaman have already conveyed it to the lone house on the moor?’

‘You will have your fun, my lord, I see. No — it’s a bit simpler than that. You see, the current sets northwards round the bay there, and with this sou’wester blowing, the body will have been washed off the Flat-Iron. It’ll either come ashore, somewhere off Sandy Point, or it’ll have got carried out and caught up in the Grinders. If that’s where it is, we’ll have to wait till the wind goes down. You can’t take a boat in there with this sea running, and you can’t dive off the rocks — even supposing you knew whereabouts to dive. It’s a nuisance, but it can’t be helped.’

‘H’m,’ said Wimsey. ‘Just as well you took those photographs, Sherlock, or we’d have no proof that there ever had been a body.’

‘Coroner can’t sit on a photograph, though,’ said the Inspector, gloomily. ‘Howsomever, it looks, like a plain suicide, so it doesn’t matter such a lot. Still, it’s annoying. We like to get these things tidied up as we go along.’

‘Naturally,’ said Wimsey. ‘Well, I’m sure if anybody can tidy up, you can, Inspector. You impress me as being a man with an essentially tidy mind. I will engage to prophesy, Sherlock, that before lunch-time Inspector Umpelty will have sorted out the dead man’s papers, got the entire story from the hotel-manager; identified the place where the razor was bought and explained the mysterious presence of the gloves.’

The Inspector laughed.

‘I don’t think there’s much to be got out of the manager, my lord, and as for the razor, that’s neither here nor there.’

‘But the gloves?’

‘Well, my lord, I expect the only person that could tell us about that is the poor-blighter himself, and he’s dead. But as regards the papers, you’re — dead right. I’m looking along there now.’ He paused, doubtfully, and looked from Harriet to Wimsey and back again.

‘No,’ said Wimsey. ‘Set your mind at rest. We are not going to ask to come with you. I know that the amateur detective has a habit of embarrassing the police in the execution of their duty. We are going out to view the town like a perfect little lady and gentleman. There’s only one thing I should like to have a look at, if it isn’t troubling you too much — and that’s the razor.’

The Inspector was very willing that Lord Peter should see the razor. ‘And if you like to comerlongerme,’ he added kindly, ‘you’ll dodge all these reporters.’

‘Not me!’ said Harriet. ‘I’ve got to see them and tell them all about my new book. A razor is only a razor, but good advance publicity means sales. You two run along; I’ll follow you down.’

She strolled away in search of the reporters. The Inspector grinned uneasily.

‘No flies on that young lady,’ he observed. ‘But can she be trusted to hold her tongue?’

‘Oh, she won’t chuck away a good plot,’ said Wimsey, lightly. ‘Come and have a drink.’

‘

‘Too soon after breakfast,’ objected the Inspector.

‘Or a smoke,’ suggested Wimsey. The Inspector declined.

‘Or a nice sit-down in the; lounge,’ said Wimsey, sitting down:

‘Excuse me,’ said Inspector Umpelty, ‘I must be getting along. — I’ll tell them at the Station about you wanting to look at the razor… Fair tied to that young woman’s apron-strings,’ he reflected, as he shouldered his bulky way through the revolving doors. ‘The poor mutt!’ Harriet, escaping half an hour later from Salcombe Hardy and his colleagues, found Wimsey faithfully in attendance.

‘I’ve got rid of the Inspector,’ observed that gentleman, cheerfully. ‘Get your hat on and we’ll go.’

Their simultaneous exit from the Resplendent was observed and recorded by the photographic; contingent, who had just returned from the shore. Between an avenue of clicking shutters, they descended the marble steps, and climbed into Wimsey’s Daimler.

‘I feel,’’ said Harriet, maliciously, ’as if we had just been married at St. George’s, Hanover Square.’

‘No, you don’t,’ retorted Wimsey. ‘If we had, you would be trembling like a fluttered partridge. Being married to me is a tremendous experience you’ve no idea. We’ll be all right at the police-station, provided the Super doesn’t turn sticky on us.

Superintendent Glaisher was conveniently engaged, and Sergeant Saunders was deputed to show them the razor.

‘Has it been examined for finger-prints?’ asked Wimsey.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Any result?’

‘I couldn’t exactly say, my, lord, but I believe not.’

‘Well, anyway one is allowed to handle it.’ Wimsey turned it over in his fingers, inspecting it carefully, first with the naked eye and secondly with a watchmaker’s lens. Beyond a very slight crack on the ivory handle, it showed no very striking, peculiarities.

“If there’s any blood left on it, it will be hanging about the joint,’ he observed. ‘But the sea seems to have done its work pretty thoroughly.’

You aren’t suggesting,’, said Harriet, ‘that the weapon isn’t really the weapon after all?’’

‘I should like to,’ said Wimsey. ‘The weapon never is the weapon, is it?’

‘Of course not; and the corpse is never the corpse. The body is, obviously, not that of Peter Alexis—’

‘But of the Prime Minister of Ruritania-’