Dorothy Sayers - Have His Carcass

‘Thank you, my lord, I don’t mind if I do.’

‘I freely admit,’ said Wimsey, ‘that it’s the queerest case I ever struck. We’ve got all the evidence — at least, not all, but overwhelming evidence of an elaborate conspiracy to do something or the other, And we’ve got a corpse which looks like the victim of a conspiracy to murder. But when we come to put the two together, they don’t fit. Everything in the garden is lovely except the melancholy, fact that none of the people engaged in the conspiracy could possibly have done the murder. Harriet! It’s your business to work out problems of this sort — how do you propose to tackle this one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet. ‘I can only suggest a few methods and precedents. There’s the Roger Sheringham method, for instance. You prove elaborately and in detail that A did the murder; then you give the story one final shake, twist it round a fresh corner, and find that the real murderer is B — the person you suspected first and then lost sight of.’

That’s no good; the cases aren’t parallel. We can’t even plausibly fix anything on A, let alone B.’

‘No; well, there’s the Philo Vance method. You shake your head and say: “There’s worse yet to come,” and then the murderer kills five more people, and that thins the suspects out a bit and you spot who it is.

‘Wasteful, wasteful,’ said Wimsey. ‘And too slow.’

True. There’s the Inspector French method — you break the unbreakable alibi.’

Wimsey groaned.

‘If anybody says “Alibi” to me again, I’ll — I’ll..’

‘All right. There are plenty of methods left. There’s the Thorndyke type of solution, which, as Thorndyke himself; says, can be put in a nut-shell. “You have got the wrong man, you have got the wrong box, and you have got the wrong body.” Suppose, for instance, that Paul Alexis is really —’

‘The Emperor of Japan! Thank you.’

Well, that might not be so far off. He thought he was an Emperor, or next door to it, anyhow. Though even if he had fifty kinds of Imperial blood in his veins instead of only two or three, it wouldn’t help us to explain how he managed to get killed with nobody near him. The real difficulty—’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Wimsey. ‘Say that again.’

Harriet said it again. ‘The real difficulty,’ she persisted, ’is that one can’t see how anybody — let alone Morecambe or Henry Weldon — could have done the murder. Even if Pollock—,

‘The real difficulty,’ interrupted Wimsey, in a suddenly high-pitched and excited voice, ’is the time of the death, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Of course it is. If it wasn’t for that, we could explain everything.’ He laughed. ‘You know, I always thought it was funny, if Henry Weldon did the murder, that he shouldn’t seem to know what time he did, it at. Look! Let’s pretend we’ve planned this murder ourselves and have timed it for twelve o’clock, shall we?’

‘What’s the good of that? We know it wasn’t actually done till two o’clock. You can’t get round that, my, lord.’

‘Ah! but I want to look at the original murder, as it was planned: It’s true that the murderers later on found themselves faced with an unexpected alteration in the time-scheme, but just for the moment’ we’ll work out the time-scheme as it originally stood. Do you mind? I want to.’

The Inspector grunted, and Wimsey sat for a few minutes, apparently thinking hard. Then he spoke, without any trace of his former excitement.

‘It’s February,’ he said. ‘You’re Henry Weldon. You have just heard that your, elderly and foolish mother is going to marry a dancing dago thirty-five years younger than herself, and disinherit you. You are badly in need of money and you want to stop this at all costs. You make yourself unpleasant, but you find it’s no good: you’ll only lose all the money instead of only part. You are not an inventive man yourself, but you consult — yes, why, do you consult Morecambe, Inspector?’

‘Well, my lord, it seems that when Weldon came down here to see his mother, he picked up with Mrs Morecambe somewhere, or other. He’s a great man with the ladies, and she probably thought there was money to be made out of him, seeing his mother was a rich woman. He pretty soon put her right about that, I fancy, and she got the idea of bringing her husband in on the job. That’s all speculative, as you might say, though, we’ve checked up that Mrs M. was staying at Heathbury about the time Weldon was in Wilvercombe. Anyhow, we have made sure of one thing, and that is that Morecambe’s “Commission Agency” is a pretty vague, sort of affair and uncommonly rocky on its pins. Our idea was that the lady brought the two men together, and that Morecambe promised to do what he could for Weldon on a fifty-fifty basis.’

‘Fifty-fifty of what?’ asked Harriet.

‘Of his mother’s money — when he raked it in.’

But that wouldn’t be till she died.’

‘No, miss, it wouldn’t.’

‘Oh — do you think—? ‘

‘I think those two might have been in it for what they could get out of it, miss,’ said the, Inspector, stolidly.

‘I agree,’ said Wimsey, ‘Anyway, the next thing that happens is that Mr Morecambe, goes to Leamhurst and stays a few days with Weldon. All through this business, Morecambe has been far too smart to put anything on paper, except, all that rubbish in cipher, so I imagine the plot was more or less worked out then. Weldon mentions to Morecambe the romantic tale of Alexis’ Imperial descent, and that gives them the idea for luring their victim to the Flat-Iron. Immediately after this, the mysterious letters begin to go out. I wonder, by the way, what was the excuse for not writing that first letter in Russian. Because, of course, that must have gone out in clear and not in code.’

‘I’ve got an idea about that,’ said Harriet. ‘Didn’t you say you knew of an English novel that had an explanation of the Playfair cipher?’’

‘Yes one of John Rhode’s. Why?’

‘I, suggest that the first letter merely gave the title of the book and the chapters concerned and added the code-word for the next message. Since the book was English it would be quite natural to make the whole message English.’

‘Ingenious beast,’ said Wimsey. ‘Meaning you. But it’s quite a possible explanation. We needn’t go into all that story again. Obviously, Mrs Morecambe. was the source of information about the topography and fauna of Wilvercombe and Darley. Weldon was chosen to do the throat-cutting and horse-riding part of it, which needed brawn only, while Morecambe buzzed about despatching letters and photographs and working Alexis up to he top-notch of excitement. Then, when everything is about ready, Morecambe goes off to take up his role of travelling hairdresser.’

‘But why all that incredible elaboration?’—demanded Harriet.’

‘Why didn’t they just buy an ordinary razor or knife in an ordinary way? Surely it would be less traceable.’

‘You’d think so. In fact, I daresay it might have been. But it’s surprising how things do get traced. Look at Patrick Mahon and the chopper, for instance. The plan was to make the thing really impregnable by double and triple lines of defence. First, it was to look like suicide; secondly, if that was questioned and the razor traced, there was to be a convincing origin for the razor, thirdly, if by any chance Morecambe’s disguise was seen through, there was to be an explanation for that.’

‘I see. Well, go on. Morecambe had the courage of his own convictions, anyhow he did the, thing very thoroughly.’

‘Wise man. I admit that he took me in, absolutely. Well, now Weldon. He had his character of Haviland Martin all ready to slip into. Acting under instructions, he hired a Morgan, crammed it uncomfortably with a small tent and his personal belongings, and went to camp at Darley, next door to Farmer Newcombe’s field. Morecambe arrived at Wilvercombe the same day. Whether and when those two met I don’t know. It’s my impression, that the whole thing was scheduled beforehand as far as possible, and that there was next to no communication after the plot had once got going.’