Wimsey thanked Mr Goodrich and accepted his hospitable invitation to tea. He left at six o’clock, full of buns and cream, with just nice time to pay a visit to the camping-ground and so round off the chapter of Mr Martin. He drove down the stony little lane, and soon found signs of Mr Martin’s recent presence. The land led out upon a flat expanse of rough turf, beyond which a belt of heavy stones and shingle sloped down to the edge of, the sea. The tide was about a quarter-full, and the beach became progressively less rough as it neared the water; presumably at low tide there would be a narrow strip of sand left uncovered.
The tracks of the Morgan’s wheels were still faintly visible upon the coarse grass, and there was a patch of oily drippings to show where it had been parked. Close by, there were the holes where the pole and pegs of a small bell-tent had been driven in. There were the ashes of a burnt-out wood fire, and, among them, a ball of greasy newspaper, which had obviously been used to scrub out a frying-pan. Rather reluctantly, Wimsey unfolded the distasteful sheets and glanced at the heading. Thursday’s Morning Star; nothing particularly exciting about that. Careful search among the ashes of the fire revealed no blood-stained fragments of clothing – not so much as a button of a garment – no half-burnt scraps of paper which might have contained a clue to Mr Martin’s real name and address. The only thing that was in any way remarkable was a piece of thinnish rope about three inches long, heavily blackened by the fire. Wimsey pocketed this, for lack of better occupation, and searched further.
Mr Martin had been a tidy camper on the whole, leaving no obviously offensive débris. On the right-hand side of the camping-ground there was, however, the remains of a stunted thorn hedge, surrounding the battered remnants of Hinks’s Cottage. Half buried at the foot of this hedge, Wimsey discovered a repulsive cache, containing a great number of old tins and bottles, some recent and some obviously abandoned by previous campers, the heels of some loaves, the bones from a neck of mutton, an old dixie with a hole in the bottom, half a neck-tie, a safety-razor blade (still sharp enough to cut one’s fingers on) and a very dead gull. An elaborate and back-aching crawl over the whole surface of the camping-ground rewarded the earnest sleuth further with an immoderate quantity of burnt matches, six empty match-boxes of foreign make, the dottles of several pipes, three oat-grains, a broken bootlace (brown), the stalks of about a pound of strawberries, six plum-stones, the stub of a pencil, a drawing-pin business end up, fifteen beer-corks, and an instrument for removing the patent caps of other beer-bottles. The rough grass showed no identifiable footprints.
Weary and hot, Lord Peter gathered his loot together and stretched his cramped limbs. The wind, still blowing heavily in from seaward, was grateful to his perspiring brow, however much it might hold up the Inspector’s salvage operations. The sky was cloudy, but so long as the wind held, there was, he felt, not much likelihood of rain, and he was glad, for he didn’t want rain. A vague possibility was forming itself in his mind, and he wanted to take a walk next day with Harriet Vane. At the moment, he could do no more. He would go back and change and eat and be normal.
He drove back to Wilvercombe.
After a hot bath and the putting-on of a boiled shirt and dinner-jacket, he felt better and telephoned to the Resplendent to ask Harriet to dine with him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t. I’m dining with Mrs Weldon and her son.’
‘Her son?’
‘Yes; he’s just arrived. Why not come round here after grub and be introduced?’
‘Dunno. What sort of bloke is he?’
‘Oh, yes – he’s here, and would like to meet you very much.’
‘Oh, I see. We are being overheard. I suppose I’d better come and look the blighter over. Is he handsome?’
‘Yes, rather! Come along about a quarter to nine.’
‘Well, you’d better tell him we’re engaged, and then I shan’t be obliged to assassinate him.’
‘You will? That’s splendid.’
‘Will you marry me?’
‘Of course not. We’ll expect you at 8.45.’
‘All right, and I hope your rabbit dies.’
Wimsey ate his solitary dinner thoughtfully. So this was the son, was it? The one who was out of sympathy with his mother. What was he doing here? Had he suddenly become sympathetic? Or had she sent for him and compelled him to come in, by financial or other pressure? Was he perhaps a new factor in the problem? He was the only son of his mother and she a rich widow. Here at last was a person to whom the removal of Paul Alexis might appear in the light of a god-send. Undoubtedly the man must be looked into.
He went round to the Resplendent after dinner and found the party waiting for him in the lounge. Mrs Weldon, who wore a plain black semi-evening dress and looked her full age in it, greeted Wimsey effusively.
‘My dear Lord Peter! I am so glad to see you. May I introduce my son Henry? I wrote asking him to come and help us through this terrible time, and he has most kindly put his own business aside and come to me. So very sweet of you, Henry dear. I have just been telling Henry how good Miss Vane has been to me, and how hard you and she are working to clear poor Paul’s memory.’
Harriet had merely been mischievous. Henry was certainly not handsome, though he was a good, sturdy specimen of his type. He stood about five foot eleven – a strongly built, heavyish man with a brick-red all-weather face. Evening dress did not suit him, for the breadth of his shoulders and the shortness of his legs gave him a rather top-heavy appearance; one would expect him to look his best in country tweeds and leggings. His hair, rather rough and dull in texture, was mouse-coloured, and offered a pregnant suggestion of what his mother’s might once have looked like before it knew the touch of peroxide; indeed, he was, in a curious way, very like his mother, having the same low, narrow forehead and the same long and obstinate chin; though, in the mother the expression was that of a weak, fanciful obstinacy, and, in the son, of stubborn and un-imaginative obstinacy. Looking at him, Wimsey felt that he was hardly the sort of man to take kindly to a Paul Alexis for a step-father; he would not sympathise with the sterile romance of any woman who was past the age of child-bearing. Wimsey, summing him up with the man of the world’s experienced eye, placed him at once as a gentleman-farmer, who was not quite a gentleman and not much of a farmer.
At the moment, the understanding between Henry Weldon and his mother seemed, nevertheless, to be excellent.
‘Henry is so delighted,’ said Mrs Weldon, ‘that you are here to help us, Lord Peter. That policeman is so stupid. He doesn’t seem to believe a word I tell him. Of course, he’s a very well-meaning, honest man, and most polite, but how can a person like that possibly understand a nature like Paul’s. I knew Paul. So did Henry, didn’t you, dear?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Henry, ‘certainly. Very pleasant fellow.’
‘Henry knows how utterly devoted Paul was to me. You know, don’t you, dear, that he never would have taken his own life and left me like that without a word. It hurts me so when people say such things – I feel I could –’
‘There, there, Mother,’ muttered Henry, embarrassed by the prospect of emotion and possible break-down in a public place. ‘You must try to bear up. Of course we know Alexis was all right. Damned fond of you – of course, of course. Police are always silly fools. Don’t let ’em worry you.’
‘No dear, I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Weldon, dabbing her eyes apologetically with a small handkerchief. ‘It’s all been such a shock to me. But I mustn’t be weak and silly. We must all be courageous and work hard to do something about it.’
Wimsey suggested that a spot of something or other might do them all good, and, further, that he and Henry might make a concerted masculine raid on the bar, instructing the waiter to attend upon the ladies. He felt that he could dissect Henry more conveniently in a private interview.
As the two men’s backs disappeared in the direction of the bar, Mrs Weldon turned her anxious eyes on Harriet.
‘How nice Lord Peter is,??
? she said, ‘and what a comforting thing it is for us both to have a man to rely on.’
This sentiment was not very well received; Harriet averted her gaze from Lord Peter’s back, on which it had been absentmindedly and unaccountably fixed, and frowned; but Mrs Weldon bleated on, unheeding.
‘It’s beautiful how kind everybody is when one is in trouble. Henry and I haven’t always been as close to one another as a mother and son should be. He takes after his father in a great many ways, though people say he is like me to look at, and when he was a little boy he had the dearest golden curls – just like mine. But he loves sport and out-door life – you can tell that by his looks, can’t you? He’s always out and about, seeing after his farm, and that’s what makes him look a little older than his years. He’s really quite a young man – I was a mere child when I married, as I told you before. But though, as I say, we haven’t always been as much in harmony as one would have liked, he has been perfectly sweet to me about this sad affair. When I wrote to him and told him how much I felt the dreadful things they were saying about Paul, he came at once to help me, though I know he must be terribly busy just now. I really feel that poor Paul’s death has brought us closer together.’
Harriet said that that must be a great comfort to Mrs Weldon. It was the only possible answer.
Henry, meanwhile, had his own view of the matter to put before Lord Peter.
‘Bit of a staggerer for the old lady, this,’ he observed over a glass of Scotch. ‘Takes it hard. Between you and me, it’s all for the best. How’s a woman of her age going to be happy with a feller like that? Eh? Don’t like these Popoffsky blighters, anyway, and she’s fifty-seven if she’s a day. I’m thirty-six myself. Consider I’m well out of it. Makes a chap look a bit of a fool when his mother proposes to give him a twenty-year-old lounge lizard for a step-papa. Suppose it’s all over the place now. Bet everybody’s grinning at me behind my back. Let ’em grin. All over now, anyway. Suppose the chappie did do himself in, didn’t he?’
‘It looks like it,’ admitted Wimsey.
‘Couldn’t face the prospect, eh? All his own fault. Hard-up, I suppose, poor devil! The old girl’s not a bad sort, really. She’d have given the feller a damn good time if he’d stuck to his bargain. But you can’t trust these foreigners. Like collies – lick your boots one minute and bite you the next. Don’t like collies, myself. Give me a good bull-terrier any day.’
‘Oh, yes – so frightfully British and all that, what?’
‘Thought I’d better push along and cheer Mother up. Stop all this nonsense about Bolsheviks. Won’t do to have her wasting her time with these tom-fool notions. Enough to send the old dear clean off her rocker, you know. Once they get those notions in their heads it’s a job to get rid of ’em. Form of mania, don’t you think, like women’s rights and crystal-gazing?’
Wimsey agreed cautiously that an unreasonable conviction might, in process of time, amount to an obsession.
‘That’s just what I mean. You’ve got the word – obsession, that’s it. Well, I don’t want the old lady to go wasting her time and money on an obsession. Look here, Wimsey, you’re a sound sort of fellow – brainy and all that – can’t you put her off this Bolshevik idea? She’s taken a notion that you and that Vane girl are encouraging her. Now, take it from me, old man, that kind of thing won’t do at all.’
Lord Peter delicately raised his eyebrows.
‘Of course,’ pursued Mr Weldon, ‘I see your game all right. You’re nuts on this kind of thing and it’s all a darn good advertisement, and it gives you a jolly good excuse for barging round with the girl. That’s quite all right. But it’s not quite the game to go playing my mother up, if you see what I mean. So I thought I’d just give you a hint. You won’t take offence?’
‘I am quite ready,’ said Lord Peter, ‘to take anything I am offered.’
Mr Weldon looked puzzled for a moment and then burst into a hearty laugh.
‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘dashed good. What was yours? Martell Three-Star? Here, Johnnie, same again for this gentleman.’
‘Thank you, no,’ said Wimsey. ‘You misunderstood me.’
‘Oh, come – another little spot won’t do you any harm. No? Oh, well, if you won’t, you won’t. Mine’s a Scotch-and-soda. Well, now, we understand one another, eh?’
‘Oh, yes. I think I understand you perfectly.’
‘Good. Glad to have this chance of putting you wise. Whole thing’s a nuisance, of course. Suppose we shall be stuck here now till they’ve found the body and held an inquest. Don’t like these beastly watering-places. Suits you all right, I daresay. I like a bit more open air and none of this jazz and dinner-jackets.’
‘Quite right,’ said Wimsey.
‘You think so, eh? I was putting you down for something more in the West End line. But I suppose you’re a bit of a sportsman, too? Huntin’, fishin’, that sort of thing, eh?’
‘I hunted pretty regularly with the Quorn and the Pytchley at one time, and I shoot and fish a bit,’ said Wimsey. ‘After all, I was brought up in the country, you know. My people have a place in the shires, and our headquarters is down in Norfolk – Duke’s Denver, on the borders of the Fen country.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. You’re Denver’s brother. Never seen the place, but I live in that part of the world myself – Huntingdonshire, not far from Ely.’
‘Oh, yes; I know that part pretty well. Fruit-farming country and all that. Flattish, of course, but uncommonly good sort of soil.’
‘Nothing in farming these days,’ grumbled Mr Weldon. ‘Look at all this Russian wheat they’re dumpin’ in. As if things weren’t bad enough already, with wages what they are, and taxes, and rates and tithe and insurance. I’ve got fifty acres of wheat. By the time it’s harvested I daresay it’ll have cost me £9 an acre. And what shall I get for it? Lucky if I get five. How this damned Government expects the farmer to carry on, I don’t know. Damned if I don’t feel like chucking it altogether sometimes and clearing out of this bloody country. Nothing much to stick round here for. I’m not married, thank God! Too much sense. If you take my advice you’ll do likewise. You must be pretty smart to have escaped so long. Look as if you did yourself pretty well, too. Lucky your brother’s still a youngish man. Death-duties and all that. Cripple a place, don’t they? But I always thought he was a pretty warm man, for a duke. How’s he manage it?’
Wimsey explained that the Denver income was not derived from the Denver estate, which was a liability rather than an asset.
‘Oh, I see. Well, you’re lucky. Takes a man all he can do to get his living off the land these days.’
‘Yes; I suppose you have to stick to it uncommonly closely. Up early and late. Nothing escapes the master’s eye. That sort of thing, what?’
‘Oh, yes – yes.’
‘It must be trying to be obliged to leave things and come down to Wilvercombe. How long do you think you’ll be here?’
‘Eh? Oh, I don’t know. Depends on this inquest, doesn’t it? I’ve left a man in charge, of course.’
‘Just so. Hadn’t we better get back and join the ladies?’
‘Ah!’ Mr Weldon dug his elbow into Lord Peter’s ribs. ‘Ladies, eh? You be careful, my boy. Getting to the dangerous age, aren’t you? If you ain’t careful, you’ll find yourself booked one of these days.’
‘Oh, I daresay I shall manage to keep my head out of the noose.’
‘Out of the – oh, yes – the matrimonial noose. Yes. Ha, ha! All right. I suppose we’d better go.’
Mr Weldon turned away from the bar rather abruptly. Wimsey, reflecting that the ability to swallow insult is a necessary part of the detective’s make-up, restrained the temptation to connect his toe with Mr Weldon’s rather massive hinder-end, and followed, ruminating.
A message from the waiter informed him that the ladies had adjourned into the dance-lounge. Henry growled, but was relieved to find that his mother was, after all, not dancing. She was watching Harriet who, clad
in claret-colour, was revolving smoothly in the practised arms of Antoine. Wimsey politely begged Mrs Weldon to favour him, but she shook her head.