Dorothy Sayers - The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

and so forth. Well, I’m damned!”

“The man must be mistaken, Lord Peter.”

“I jolly well hope so,” said Wimsey, rather red in the face. “It’ll be a bit galling to have Oliver turning up, just when we’ve proved so conclusively that he doesn’t exist. Paris! I suppose he means that Fentiman spotted the right man at Waterloo and lost him on the train or in the rush for the boat. And got hold of Postlethwaite instead. Funny. Meanwhile, Fentiman’s off to France. Probably taken the 10.30 boat from Folkestone. I don’t know how we’re to get hold of him.”

“How very extraordinary,” said Mr. Murbles. “Where does that detective person write from?”

“Just ‘Paris,’” said Wimsey. “Bad paper and worse ink. And a small stain of vin ordinaire. Probably written in some little café yesterday afternoon. Not much hope there. But he’s certain to let me know where they get to.”

“We must send some one to Paris immediately in search of them,” declared Mr. Murbles.

“Why?”

“To fetch Major Fentiman back.”

“Yes, but look here, sir. If there really is an Oliver after all, it rather upsets our calculations, doesn’t it?”

Mr. Murbles considered this.

“I cannot see that it affects our conclusions as to the hour of the General’s death,” he said.

“Perhaps not, but it considerably alters our position with regard to Robert Fentiman.”

“Ye — es. Yes, that is so. Though,” said Mr. Murbles, severely, “I still consider that the story requires close investigation.”

“Agreed. Well, look here. I’ll run over to Paris myself and see what I can do. And you had better temporise with Pritchard. Tell him you think there will be no need to compromise and that we hope soon to be in possession of the precise facts. That’ll show him we don’t mean to have any truck with anythin’ fishy. I’ll learn him to cast nasturtiums at me!”

“And — oh, dear! there’s another thing. We must try and get hold of Major Fentiman to stop this exhumation.”

“Oh, lord! — Yes. That’s a bit awkward. Can’t you stop it by yourself?”

“I hardly think I can. Major Fentiman has applied for it as executor, and I cannot quite see what I can do in the matter without his signature. The Home Office would hardly—”

“Yes. I quite see that you can’t mess about with the Home Office. Well, though, that’s easy. Robert never was keen on the resurrection idea. Once we’ve got his address, he’ll be only too happy to send you a chit to call the whole thing off. You leave it to me. After all, even if we don’t find Robert for a few days and the old boy has to be dug up after all, it won’t make things any worse. Will it?”

Mr. Murbles agreed, dubiously.

“Then I’ll pull the old carcass together,” said Wimsey, brightly, flinging the bedclothes aside and leaping to his feet, “and toddle off to the City of Light. Will you excuse me for a few moments, sir? The bath awaits me. Bunter, put a few things into a suit-case and be ready to come with me to Paris.”

* * *

On second thoughts, Wimsey waited till the next day, hoping, as he explained, to hear from the detective. As nothing reached him, however, he started in pursuit, instructing the head office of Sleuths Incorporated to wire any information received to him at the Hotel Meurice. The next news that arrived from him was a card to Mr. Murbles written on a P.L.M. express, which said simply,

“Quarry gone on to Rome. Hard on trail. P.W.”

The next day came a foreign telegram:

“Making for Sicily. Faint but pursuing. P.W.”

In reply to this, Mr. Murbles wired:

“Exhumation fixed for day after to-morrow. Please make haste.”

To which Wimsey replied:

“Returning for exhumation. P.W.”

He returned alone.

“Where is Robert Fentiman?” demanded Mr. Murbles, agitatedly.

Wimsey, his hair matted damply and his face white from travelling day and night, grinned feebly.

“I rather fancy,” he said, in a wan voice, “that Oliver is at his old tricks again.”

“Again?” cried Mr. Murbles, aghast. “But the letter from your detective was genuine.”

“Oh, yes — that was genuine enough. But even detectives can be bribed. Anyhow, we haven’t seen hide or hair of our friends. They’ve been always a little ahead. Like the Holy Grail, you know. Fainter by day but always in the night blood-red, and sliding down the blackened marsh, blood-red — perfectly bloody, in fact. Well, here we are. When does the ceremony take place? Quietly, I take it? No flowers?”

* * *

The “ceremony” took place, as such ceremonies do, under the discreet cover of darkness. George Fentiman, who, in Robert’s absence, attended to represent the family, was nervous and depressed. It is trying enough to go to the funeral of one’s friends and relations, amid the grotesque pomps of glass hearses, and black horses, and wreaths, and appropriate hymns “beautifully” rendered by well-paid choristers, but, as George irritably remarked, the people who grumble over funerals don’t realise their luck. However depressing the thud of earth on the coffin-lid may be, it is music compared to the rattle of gravel and thump of spades which herald a premature and unreverend resurrection, enveloped in clouds of formalin and without benefit of clergy.

Dr. Penberthy also appeared abstracted, and anxious to get the business over. He made the journey to the cemetery ensconced in the farthest corner of the big limousine, and discussed thyroid abnormalities with Dr. Horner, Sir James Lubbock’s assistant, who had come to help with the autopsy. Mr. Murbles was, naturally, steeped in gloom. Wimsey devoted himself to his accumulated correspondence, out of which one letter only had any bearing on the Fentiman case. It was from Marjorie Phelps, and ran:

“If you want to meet Ann Dorland, would you care to come along to a ‘do’ at the Rushworths’ Wednesday week? It will be very deadly, because Naomi Rushworth’s new young man is going to read a paper on ductless glands which nobody knows anything about. However, it appears that ductless glands will be ‘news’ in next to no time — ever so much more up-to-date than vitamins — so the Rushworths are all over glands — in the social sense, I mean. Ann D. is certain to be there, because as I told you, she is taking to this healthy bodies for all stunt, or whatever it is, so you’d better come. It will be company for me! — and I’ve got to go, anyway, as I’m supposed to be a friend of Naomi’s. Besides, they say that if one paints or sculps or models, one ought to know all about glands, because of the way they enlarge your jaw and alter your face, or something. Do come, because if you don’t I shall be fastened on by some deadly bore or other — and I shall have to hear all Naomi’s raptures about the man, which will be too awful.”

Wimsey made a note to be present at this enlivening party, and looking round, saw that they were arriving at the Necropolis — so vast, so glittering with crystal-globed wreaths, so towering with sky-scraping monuments, that no lesser name would serve it. At the gate they were met by Mr. Pritchard in person (acidulated in his manner and elaborately polite to Mr. Murbles), and by the Home Office representative (suave and bland and disposed to see reporters lurking behind every tombstone.) A third person, coming up, proved to be an official from the Cemetery Company, who took charge of the party and guided them along the neat gravelled walks to where digging operations were already in process.

The coffin, being at length produced and identified by its brass plate, was then carefully borne to a small outbuilding close at hand, which appeared to be a potting-shed in ordinary life, converted by a board and a couple of trestles into a temporary mortuary. Here a slight halt and confusion was caused by the doctors, demanding in aggressively cheerful and matter-of-fact tones more light and space to work in. The coffin was placed on a bench; somebody produced a mackintosh sheet and spread it on the trestle table; lamps were brought and suitably grouped. After which, the workmen advanced, a little reluctantly, to unscrew the coffin lid, preceded by Dr. Penberthy, scattering formalin from a spray, rather like an infernal thurifer at some particularly unwholesome sacrifice.