Dorothy Sayers - The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

“Robert Fentiman ought to be given a medal,” said Hardy. “If he hadn’t gone butting in—”

“Robert Fentiman?” inquired Parker, distantly.

Hardy grinned.

“If he didn’t fix up the old boy’s body, who did? Give us credit for a little intelligence.”

“One admits nothing,” said Parker, “but—”

“But everybody says he did it. Leave it at that. Somebody did it. If Somebody hadn’t butted in, it would have been jam for the Dorland.”

“Well, yes. Old Fentiman would just have gone home and pegged out quietly — and Penberthy would have given the certificate.”

“I’d like to know how many inconvenient people are polished off that way. Damn it — it’s so easy.”

“I wonder how Penberthy’s share of the boodle was to be transferred to him.”

“I don’t,” said Hardy. “Look here here’s this girl. Calls herself an artist. Paints bad pictures. Right. Then she meets this doctor fellow. He’s mad on glands. Shrewd man — knows there’s money in glands. She starts taking up glands. Why?”

“That was a year ago.”

“Precisely. Penberthy isn’t a rich man. Retired Army surgeon, with a brass plate and a consulting-room in Harley Street — shares the house with two other hard-up brass-platers. Lives on a few old dodderers down at the Bellona. Has an idea, if only he could start one of these clinics for rejuvenating people, he could be a millionaire. All these giddy old goats who want their gay time over again — why, they’re a perfect fortune to the man with a bit of capital and a hell of a lot of cheek. Then this girl comes along — rich old woman’s heiress — and he goes after her. It’s all fixed up. He’s to accommodate her by removing the obstacle to the fortune, and she obligingly responds by putting the money into his clinic. In order not to make it too obvious, she has to pretend to get a dickens of an interest in glands. So she drops painting and takes to medicine. What could be clearer?”

“But that means,” put in Wimsey, “that she must have known all about the will at least a year ago.”

“Why not?”

“Well that brings us back to the old question: Why the delay?”

“And it gives us the answer,” said Parker. “They waited till the interest in the glands and things was so firmly established and recognised by everybody that nobody would connect it with the General’s death.”

“Of course,” said Wimsey. He felt that matters were rushing past him at a bewildering rate. But George was safe, anyhow.

“How soon do you think you’ll be able to take action?” asked Hardy. “I suppose you’ll want a bit more solid proof before you actually arrest them.”

“I’d have to be certain that they don’t wriggle out of it,” said Parker, slowly. “It’s not enough to prove that they were acquainted. There may be letters, of course, when we go over the girl’s things. Or Penberthy’s — though he’s hardly the man to leave compromising documents lying about.”

“You haven’t detained Miss Dorland?”

“No; we’ve let her loose — on a string. I don’t mind telling you one thing. There’s been no communication of any kind with Penberthy.”

“Of course there hasn’t,” said Wimsey. “They’ve quarrelled.”

The others stared at him.

“How do you know that?” demanded Parker, annoyed.

“Oh, well — it doesn’t matter — I think so, that’s all. And any way, they would take jolly good care not to communicate, once the alarm was given.”

“Hallo!” broke in Hardy, “here’s Waffles. Late again. Waffles! — what have you been doing, old boy?”

“Interviewing the Rushworths,” said Waffles, edging his way into a chair by Hardy. He was a thin, sandy person, with a tired manner. Hardy introduced him to Wimsey and Parker.

“Got your story in?”

“Oh, yes. Awful lot of cats these women are. Ma Rushworth — she’s the sloppy sort of woman with her head in the clouds all the time, who never sees anything till it’s stuck right under her nose — she pretends, of course, that she always thought Ann Dorland was an unwholesome kind of girl. I nearly asked why, in that case, she had her about the house; but I didn’t. Anyway, Mrs. Rushworth said, they didn’t know her very intimately. They wouldn’t, of course. Wonderful how these soulful people sheer off at the least suggestion of unpleasantness.”

“Did you get anything about Penberthy?”

“Oh, yes — I got something.”

“Good?”

“Oh, yes.”

Hardy, with Fleet Street’s delicate reticence towards the man with an exclusive story, did not press the question. The talk turned back and went over the old ground. Waffles Newton agreed with Salcombe Hardy’s theory.

“The Rushworths must surely know something. Not the mother, perhaps — but the girl. If she’s engaged to Penberthy, she’ll have noticed any other woman who seemed to have an understanding with him. Women see these things.”

“You don’t suppose that they’re going to confess that dear Dr. Penberthy ever had an understanding with anybody but dear Naomi,” retorted Newton. “Besides, they aren’t such fools as not to know that Penberthy’s connection with the Dorland girl must be smothered up at all costs. They know she did it, all right, but they aren’t going to compromise him.”

“Of course not,” said Parker, rather shortly. “The mother probably knows nothing, anyway. It’s a different matter if we get the girl in the witness-box—”

“You won’t,” said Waffles Newton “At least, you’ll have to be jolly quick.”

“Why?”

Newton waved an apologetic hand.

“They’re being married to-morrow,” he said, “special licence. I say, that’s not to go further, Sally.”

“That’s all right, old man.”

“Married?” said Parker. “Good lord! that forces our hand a bit. Perhaps I’d better pop off. So long — and thanks very much for the tip, old man.”

Wimsey followed him into the street.

“We’ll have to put the stopper on this marriage business, quick,” said Parker, madly waving to a taxi, which swooped past and ignored him. “I didn’t want to move just at present, because I wasn’t ready, but it’ll be the devil and all if the Rushworth girl gets hitched up to Penberthy and we can’t take her evidence. Devil of it is, if she’s determined to go on with it, we can’t stop it without arresting Penberthy. Very dangerous, when there’s no real proof. I think we’d better have him down to the Yard for interrogation and detain him.”

“Yes,” said Wimsey. “But — look here, Charles.”

A taxi drew up.

“What?” said Parker, sharply, with his foot on the step. “I can’t wait, old man. What is it?”

“I — look here, Charles — this is all wrong,” pleaded Wimsey. “You may have got the right solution, but the working of the sum’s all wrong. Same as mine used to be at school, when I’d looked up the answer in the crib and had to fudge in the middle part. I’ve been a fool. I ought to have known about Penberthy. But I don’t believe this story about bribing and corrupting him, and getting him to do the murder. It doesn’t fit.”

“Doesn’t fit what?”

“Doesn’t fit the portrait. Or the books. Or the way Nurse Armstrong described Ann Dorland. Or your description of her. It’s a mechanically perfect explanation, but I swear it’s all wrong.”

“If it’s mechanically perfect,” said Parker, “that’s good enough. It’s far more than most explanations are. You’ve got that portrait on the brain. It’s because you’re artistic, I suppose.”

For some reason, the word “artistic” produces the most alarming reactions in people who know anything about art.