Dorothy Sayers - The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

He had a parcel under his arm, and his next proceeding was to hail a cab and drive to the residence of Sir James Lubbock, the well-known analyst. Sir James was fortunately at home and delighted to see Lord Peter. He was a square-built man, with a reddish face and strongly-curling grey hair, and received his visitor in his laboratory, where he was occupied in superintending a Marsh’s test for arsenic.

“D’ye mind just taking a pew for a moment, while I finish this off?”

Wimsey took the pew and watched, interested, the flame from the Bunsen burner playing steadily upon the glass tube, and the dark brown deposit slowly forming and deepening at the narrow end. From time to time, the analyst poured down the thistle-funnel a small quantity of a highly disagreeable-looking liquid from a stoppered phial; once his assistant came forward to add a few more drops of what Wimsey knew must be hydrochloric acid. Presently, the disagreeable liquid having all been transferred to the flask, and the deposit having deepened almost to black at its densest part, the tube was detached and taken away, and the burner extinguished, and Sir James Lubbock, after writing and signing a brief note, turned round and greeted Wimsey cordially.

“Sure I am not interrupting you, Lubbock?”

“Not a scrap. We’ve just finished. That was the last mirror. We shall be ready in good time for our appearance in Court. Not that there’s much doubt about it. Enough of the stuff to kill an elephant. Considering the obliging care we take in criminal prosecutions to inform the public at large that two or three grains of arsenic will successfully account for an unpopular individual, however tough, it’s surprising how wasteful people are with their drugs. You can’t teach ’em. An office-boy who was as incompetent as the average murderer would be sacked with a kick in the bottom. Well, now! and what’s your little trouble?”

“A small matter,” said Wimsey, unrolling his parcel and producing General Fentiman’s left boot, “it’s cheek to come to you about it. But I want very much to know what this is, and as it’s strictly a private matter, I took the liberty of bargin’ round to you in a friendly way. Just along the inside of the sole, there — on the edge.”

“Blood?” suggested the analyst, grinning.

“Well, no — sorry to disappoint you. More like paint, I fancy.”

Sir James looked closely at the deposit with a powerful lens.

“Yes; some sort of brown varnish. Might be off a floor or a piece of furniture. Do you want an analysis?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all. I think we’ll get Saunders to do it; he has made rather a specialty of this kind of thing. Saunders, would you scrape this off carefully and see what it is? Get a slide of it, and make an analysis of the rest, if you can. How soon is it wanted?”

“Well, I’d like it as soon as possible. I don’t mean within the next five minutes.”

“Well, stay and have a spot of tea with us, and I dare say we can get something ready for you by then. It doesn’t look anything out of the way. Knowing your tastes, I’m still surprised it isn’t blood. Have you no blood in prospect?”

“Not that I know of. I’ll stay to tea with pleasure, if you’re certain I’m not being a bore.”

“Never that. Besides, while you’re here you might give me your opinion on those old medical books of mine. I don’t suppose they’re particularly valuable, but they’re quaint. Come along.”

Wimsey passed a couple of hours agreeably with Lady Lubbock and crumpets and a dozen or so antiquated anatomical treatises. Presently Saunders returned with his report. The deposit was nothing more nor less than an ordinary brown paint and varnish of a kind well known to joiners and furniture-makers. It was a modern preparation, with nothing unusual about it; one might find it anywhere. It was not a floor-varnish — one would expect to meet it on a door or partition or something of that sort. The chemical formula followed.

“Not very helpful, I’m afraid,” said Sir James.

“You never know your luck,” replied Wimsey. “Would you be good enough to label the slide and sign your name to it, and to the analysis, and keep them both by you for reference in case they’re wanted?”

“Sure thing. How do you want ’em labelled?”

“Well — put down ‘Varnish from General Fentiman’s left boot,’ and ‘Analysis of varnish from General Fentiman’s left boot,’ and the date, and I’ll sign it, and you and Saunders can sign it, and then I think we shall be all right.”

“Fentiman? Was that the old boy who died suddenly the other day?”

“It was. But it’s no use looking at me with that child-like air of intelligent taking-notice, because I haven’t got any gory yarn to spin. It’s only a question of where the old man spent the night, if you must know.”

“Curiouser and curiouser. Never mind, it’s nothing to do with me. Perhaps when it’s all over, you’ll tell me what it’s about. Meanwhile the labels shall go on. You, I take it, are ready to witness to the identity of the boot, and I can witness to having seen the varnish on the boot, and Saunders can witness that he removed the varnish from the boot and analyzed it and that this is the varnish he analyzed. All according to Cocker. Here you are. Sign here and here, and that will be eight-and-sixpence, please.”

“It might be cheap at eight-and-sixpence,” said Wimsey. “It might even turn out to be cheap at eight hundred and sixty quid — or eight thousand and sixty.”

Sir James Lubbock looked properly thrilled.

“You’re only doing it to annoy, because you know it teases. Well, if you must be sphinx-like, you must. I’ll keep these things under lock and key for you. Do you want the boot back?

“I don’t suppose the executor will worry. And a fellow looks such a fool carrying a boot about. Put it away with the other things till called for, there’s a good man.”

So the boot was put away in a cupboard, and Lord Peter was free to carry on with his afternoon’s entertainment.

His first idea was to go on up to Finsbury Park, to see the George Fentimans. He remembered in time, however, that Sheila would not yet be home from her work — she was employed as a cashier in a fashionable tea-shop — and further (with a forethought rare in the well-to-do) that if he arrived too early he would have to be asked to supper and that there would be very little supper and that Sheila would be worried about it and George annoyed. So he turned in to one of his numerous Clubs, and had a Sole Colbert very well cooked, with a bottle of Liebfraumilch; an Apple Charlotte and light savoury to follow, and black coffee and a rare old brandy to top up with — a simple and satisfactory meal which left him in the best of tempers.

The George Fentimans lived in two ground-floor rooms with use of kitchen and bathroom in a semi-detached house with a blue and yellow fanlight over the door and Madras muslin over the windows. They were really furnished apartments, but the landlady always referred to them as a flat, because that meant that tenants had to do their own work and provide their own service. The house felt stuffy as Lord Peter entered it, because somebody was frying fish in oil at no great distance, and a slight unpleasantness was caused at the start by the fact that he had rung only once, thus bringing up the person in the basement, whereas a better-instructed caller would have rung twice, to indicate that he wanted the ground floor.

Hearing explanations in the hall, George put his head out of the dining-room and said, “Oh! hallo!”

“Hallo,” said Wimsey, trying to find room for his belongings on an overladen hat-stand, and eventually disposing of them on the handle of a perambulator. “Thought I’d just come and look you up. Hope I’m not in the way.”