Lord Peter Views the Body (37 page)

    ‘I know that,’ said Inspector Winterbottom. ‘I was a gunner myself.’

    ‘A painter gets just the same feeling of deadly familiarity with every line of a face he’s once painted,’ pursued Wimsey. ‘And, if it’s a face he hates, he hates it with a new and more irritable hatred. It’s like a defective barrel-organ, everlastingly grinding out the same old maddening tune, and making the same damned awful wrong note every time the barrel goes round.’

    ‘Lord! how you can talk!’ ejaculated the inspector.

    ‘That was the way the painter felt about this man’s hateful face. All day and every day he had to see it. He couldn’t get away because he was tied to his job, you see.’

    ‘He ought to have cut loose,’ said the inspector. ‘It’s no good going on like that, trying to work with uncongenial people.’

    ‘Well, anyway, he said to himself, he could escape for a bit during his holidays. There was a beautiful little quiet spot he knew on the West Coast, where nobody ever came. He’d been there before and painted it. Oh! by the way, that reminds me – I’ve got another picture to show you.’

    He went to a bureau and extracted a small panel in oils from a drawer.

    ‘I saw that two years ago at a show in Manchester, and I happened to remember the name of the dealer who bought it.’

    Inspector Winterbottom gaped at the panel.

    ‘But that’s East Felpham!’ he exclaimed.

    ‘Yes. It’s only signed T.C., but the technique is rather unmistakable, don’t you think?’

    The inspector knew little about technique, but initials he understood. He looked from the portrait to the panel and back at Lord Peter.

    ‘The painter—’

    ‘Crowder?’

    ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go on calling him the painter. He packed up his traps on his push-bike carrier, and took his tormented nerves down to this beloved and secret spot for a quiet weekend. He stayed at a quiet little hotel in the neighbourhood, and each morning he cycled off to this lovely little beach to bathe. He never told anybody at the hotel where he went, because it was
his
place, and he didn’t want other people to find it out.’

    Inspector Winterbottom set the panel down on the table, and helped himself to whisky.

    ‘One morning – it happened to be the Monday morning’ – Wimsey’s voice became slower and more reluctant – ‘he went down as usual. The tide was not yet fully in, but he ran out over the rocks to where he knew there was a deep bathing-pool. He plunged in and swam about, and let the small noise of his jangling troubles be swallowed up in the innumerable laughter of the sea.’

    ‘Eh?’

    ‘
– quotation from the classics. So people say it means the dimpled surface of the waves in the sunlight – but how could Prometheus, bound upon his rock, have seen it? Surely it was the chuckle of the incoming tide among the stones that came up to his ears on the lonely peak where the vulture fretted at his heart. I remember arguing about it with old Philpotts in class, and getting rapped over the knuckles for contradicting him. I didn’t know at the time that he was engaged in producing a translation on his own account, or doubtless I should have contradicted him more rudely and been told to take my trousers down. Dear old Philpotts!’

    ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said the inspector.

    ‘I beg your pardon. Shocking way I have of wandering. The painter – well! he swam round the end of the rocks, for the tide was nearly in by that time; and, as he came up from the sea, he saw a man standing on the beach – that beloved beach, remember, which he thought was his own sacred haven of peace. He came wading towards it, cursing the Bank Holiday rabble who must needs swarm about everywhere with their cigarette-packets and their kodaks and their gramophones – and then he saw that it was a face he knew. He knew every hated line in it, on that clear sunny morning. And, early as it was, the heat was coming up over the sea like a haze?’

    ‘It was a hot weekend,’ said the Inspector.

    ‘And then the man hailed him, in his smug, mincing voice. “Hullo!” he said, “you here? How did you find my little bathing-place?” And that was too much for the painter. He felt as if his last sanctuary had been invaded. He leapt at the lean throat – it’s rather a stringy one, you may notice, with a prominent Adam’s apple – an irritating throat. The water chuckled round their feet as they swayed to and fro. He felt his thumbs sink into the flesh he had painted. He saw, and laughed to see, the hateful familiarity of the features change and swell into an unrecognisable purple. He watched the sunken eyes bulge out and the thin mouth distort itself as the blackened tongue thrust through it – I am not unnerving you, I hope?’

    The inspector laughed.

    ‘Not a bit. It’s wonderful, the way you describe things. You ought to write a book.’

‘I sing but as the throstle sings,

Amid the branches dwelling,’

replied his lordship negligently, and went on without further comment.

    ‘The painter throttled him. He flung him back on the sand. He looked at him, and his heart crowed within him. He stretched out his hand, and found a broken bottle, with a good jagged edge. He went to work with a will, stamping and tearing away every trace of the face he knew and loathed. He blotted it out and destroyed it utterly.

    ‘He sat beside the thing he had made. He began to be frightened. They had staggered back beyond the edge of the water, and there were the marks of his feet on the sand. He had blood on his face and on his bathing-suit, and he had cut his hand with the bottle. But the blessed sea was still coming in. He watched it pass over the bloodstains and the footprints and wipe the story of his madness away. He remembered that this man had gone from his place, leaving no address behind him. He went back, step by step, into the water, and as it came up to his breast, he saw the red stains smoke away like a faint mist in the brown-blueness of the tide. He went – wading and swimming and plunging his face and arms deep in the water, looking back from time to time to see what he had left behind him. I think that when he got back to the point and drew himself out, clean and cool, upon the rocks, he remembered that he ought to have taken the body back with him and let the tide carry it away, but it was too late. He was clean, and could not bear to go back for the thing. Besides, he was late, and they would wonder at the hotel if he was not back in time for breakfast. He ran lightly over the bare rocks and the grass that showed no footprint. He dressed himself, taking care to leave no trace of his presence. He took the car, which would have told a story. He put his bicycle in the back seat, under the rugs, and he went – but you know as well as I do where he went.’

    Lord Peter got up with an impatient movement, and went over to the picture, rubbing his thumb meditatively over the texture of the painting.

    ‘You may say, if he hated the face so much, why didn’t he destroy the picture? He couldn’t. It was the best thing he’d ever done. He took a hundred guineas for it. It was cheap at a hundred guineas. But then – I think he was afraid to refuse me. My name is rather well known. It was a sort of blackmail, I suppose. But I wanted that picture.’

    Inspector Winterbottom laughed again.

    ‘Did you take any steps, my lord, to find out if Crowder has really been staying at East Felpham?’

    ‘No.’ Wimsey swung round abruptly. ‘I have taken no steps at all. That’s your business. I have told you the story, and, on my soul, I’d rather have stood by and said nothing.’

    ‘You needn’t worry.’ The inspector laughed for the third time. ‘It’s a good story, my lord, and you told it well. But you’re right when you say it’s a fairy-story. We’ve found this Italian fellow – Francesco, he called himself, and he’s the man all right.’

    ‘How do you know? Has he confessed?’

    ‘Practically. He’s dead. Killed himself. He left a letter to the woman, begging for forgiveness, and saying that when he saw her with Plant he felt murder come into his heart. “I have revenged myself,” he says, “on him who dared to love you.” I suppose he got the wind up when he saw we were after him – I wish these newspapers wouldn’t be always putting these criminals on their guard – so he did away with himself to cheat the gallows. I may say it’s been a disappointment to me.’

    ‘It must have been,’ said Wimsey. ‘Very unsatisfactory, of course. But I’m glad my story turned out to be only a fairy-tale after all. You’re not going?’

    ‘Got to get back to my duty,’ said the inspector, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Very pleased to have met you, my lord. And I mean what I say – you ought to take to literature.’

    Wimsey remained after he had gone, still looking at the portrait.

    ‘“What is Truth?” said jesting Pilate. No wonder, since it is so completely unbelievable. . . . I could prove it . . . if I liked . . . but the man had a villainous face, and there are few good painters in the world.’

THE ADVENTUROUS EXPLOIT OF THE CAVE OF ALI BABA

In the front room of a grim and narrow house in Lambeth a man sat eating kippers and glancing through the
Morning Post
. He was smallish and spare, with brown hair rather too regularly waved and a strong, brown beard, cut to a point. His double-breasted suit of navy-blue and his socks, tie, and handkerchief, all scrupulously matched, were a trifle more point-device than the best taste approves, and his boots were slightly too bright a brown. He did not look a gentleman, not even a gentleman’s gentleman, yet there was something about his appearance which suggested that he was accustomed to the manner of life in good families. The breakfast-table, which he had set with his own hands, was arrayed with the attention to detail which is exacted of good-class servants. His action, as he walked over to a little side-table and carved himself a plate of ham, was the action of a superior butler; yet he was not old enough to be a retired butler; a footman, perhaps, who had come into a legacy.

    He finished the ham with good appetite, and, as he sipped his coffee, read through attentively a paragraph which he had already noticed and put aside for consideration.

‘Lord Peter Wimsey’s Will

Bequest to valet

£10,000 to charities

‘The will of Lord Peter Wimsey, who was killed last December while shooting big game in Tanganyika, was proved yesterday at £500,000. A sum of £10,000 was left to various charities, including [here followed a list of bequests]. To his valet, Mervyn Bunter, was left an annuity of £500 and the lease of the testator’s flat in Piccadilly. [Then followed a number of personal bequests.] The remainder of the estate, including the valuable collection of books and pictures at 110a Piccadilly, was left to the testator’s mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver.

—–

‘Lord Peter Wimsey was thirty-seven at the time of his death. He was the younger brother of the present Duke of Denver, who is the wealthiest peer in the United Kingdom. Lord Peter was distinguished as a criminologist and took an active part in the solution of several famous mysteries. He was a well-known book collector and man-about-town.’

    The man gave a sigh of relief.

    ‘No doubt about that,’ he said aloud. ‘People don’t give their money away if they’re going to come back again. The blighter’s dead and buried right enough. I’m free.’

    He finished his coffee, cleared the table, and washed up the crockery, took his bowler hat from the hall-stand, and went out.

    A bus took him to Bermondsey. He alighted, and plunged into a network of gloomy streets, arriving after a quarter of an hour’s walk at a seedy-looking public-house in a low quarter. He entered and called for a double whisky.

    The house had only just opened, but a number of customers, who had apparently been waiting on the doorstep for this desirable event, were already clustered about the bar. The man who might have been a footman reached for his glass, and in doing so jostled the elbow of a flash person in a check suit and regrettable tie.

    ‘Here!’ expostulated the flash person, ‘what d’yer mean by it? We don’t want your sort here. Get out!’

    He emphasised his remarks with a few highly coloured words, and a violent push in the chest.

    ‘Bar’s free to everybody, isn’t it?’ said the other, returning the shove with interest.