‘It all seems to depend on when the corpse got there. We must find that out.’
‘You’re determined it should be murder.’
‘Well, suicide seems so dull. And why go all that way to commit suicide?’
‘Why not? Much tidier than doing it in your bedroom or anywhere like that. Aren’t we beginning at the wrong end? If we knew who the man was, we might find he had left an explanatory note behind him to say why he was going to do it. I daresay the police know all about it by now.’
‘Possibly,’ said Wimsey in a dissatisfied tone.
‘What’s worrying you?’
‘Two things. The gloves. Why should anybody cut his throat in gloves?’
‘I know. That bothered me too. Perhaps he had some sort of skin disease and was accustomed to wearing gloves for everything. I ought to have looked. I did start to take the gloves off, but they were – messy.’
‘Um! I see you still retain a few female frailties. The second point that troubles me is the weapon. Why should a gentleman with a beard sport a cut-throat razor?’
‘Bought for the purpose.’
‘Yes; after all, why not? My dear Harriet, I think you are right. The man cut his throat, and that’s all there is to it. I am disappointed.’
‘It is disappointing, but it can’t be helped. Hallo! here’s my friend the Inspector.’
It was indeed Inspector Umpelty who was threading his way between the tables. He was in mufti – a large, comfortable-looking tweed-clad figure. He greeted Harriet pleasantly.
‘I thought you might like to see how your snaps have turned out, Miss Vane. And we’ve identified the man.’
‘No? Have you? Good work. This is Inspector Umpelty – Lord Peter Wimsey.’
The Inspector appeared gratified by the introduction.
‘You’re early on the job, my lord. But I don’t know that you’ll find anything very mysterious about this case. Just a plain suicide, I fancy.’
‘We had regretfully come to that conclusion,’ admitted Wimsey.
‘Though why he should have done it, I don’t know. But you never can tell with these foreigners, can you?’
‘I thought he looked rather foreign,’ said Harriet.
‘Yes. He’s a Russian, or something of that sort. Paul Alexis Goldschmidt, his name is; known as Paul Alexis. Comes from this very hotel, as a matter of fact. One of the professional dancing-partners in the lounge here – you know the sort. They don’t seem to know much about him. Turned up here just over a year ago and asked for a job. Seemed to be a good dancer and all that and they had a vacancy, so they took him on. Age twenty-two or thereabouts. Unmarried. Lived in rooms. Nothing known against him.’
‘Papers in order?’
‘Naturalised British subject. Said to have escaped from Russia at the Revolution. He must have been a kid of about nine, but we haven’t found out yet who had charge of him. He was alone when he turned up here, and his landlady doesn’t ever seem to have heard of anybody belonging to him. But we’ll soon find out when we go through his stuff.’
‘He didn’t leave any letter for the coroner, or anything?’
‘We’ve found nothing so far. And as regards the coroner, that’s a bit of a bother, that is. I don’t know how long it’ll be, miss, before you’re wanted. You see, we can’t find the body.’
‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ said Wimsey, ‘that the evil-eyed doctor and the mysterious Chinaman have already conveyed it to the lone house on the moor?’
‘You will have your fun, my lord, I see. No – it’s a bit simpler than that. You see, the current sets northwards round the bay there, and with this sou’wester blowing, the body will have been washed off the Flat-Iron. It’ll either come ashore somewhere off Sandy Point, or it’ll have got carried out and caught up in the Grinders. If that’s where it is, we’ll have to wait till the wind goes down. You can’t take a boat in there with this sea running, and you can’t dive off the rocks – even supposing you knew whereabouts to dive. It’s a nuisance, but it can’t be helped.’
‘H’m,’ said Wimsey. ‘Just as well you took those photographs, Sherlock, or we’d have no proof that there ever had been a body.’
‘Coroner can’t sit on a photograph, though,’ said the Inspector, gloomily. ‘Howsomever, it looks like a plain suicide, so it doesn’t matter such a lot. Still, it’s annoying. We like to get these things tidied up as we go along.’
‘Naturally,’ said Wimsey. ‘Well, I’m sure if anybody can tidy up, you can, Inspector. You impress me as being a man with an essentially tidy mind. I will engage to prophesy, Sherlock, that before lunch-time. Inspector Umpelty will have sorted out the dead man’s papers, got the entire story from the hotel-manager, identified the place where the razor was bought and explained the mysterious presence of the gloves.’
The Inspector laughed.
‘I don’t think there’s much to be got out of the manager, my lord, and as for the razor, that’s neither here nor there.’
‘But the gloves?’
‘Well, my lord, I expect the only person that could tell us about that is the poor blighter himself, and he’s dead. But as regards the papers, you’re dead right. I’m looking along there now.’ He paused, doubtfully, and looked from Harriet to Wimsey and back again.
‘No,’ said Wimsey. ‘Set your mind at rest. We are not going to ask to come with you. I know that the amateur detective has a habit of embarrassing the police in the execution of their duty. We are going out to view the town like a perfect little lady and gentleman. There’s only one thing I should like to have a look at, if it isn’t troubling you too much – and that’s the razor.’
The Inspector was very willing that Lord Peter should see the razor. ‘And if you like to comerlongerme,’ he added kindly, ‘you’ll dodge all these reporters.’
‘Not me!’ said Harriet. ‘I’ve got to see them and tell them all about my new book. A razor is only a razor, but good advance publicity means sales. You two run along; I’ll follow you down.’
She strolled away in search of the reporters. The Inspector grinned uneasily.
‘No flies on that young lady,’ he observed. ‘But can she be trusted to hold her tongue?’
‘Oh, she won’t chuck away a good plot,’ said Wimsey, lightly. ‘Come and have a drink.’
‘Too soon after breakfast,’ objected the Inspector.
‘Or a smoke,’ suggested Wimsey.
The Inspector declined.
‘Or a nice sit-down in the lounge,’ said Wimsey, sitting down.
‘Excuse me,’ said Inspector Umpelty, ‘I must be getting along. I’ll tell them at the Station about you wanting to look at the razor. . . . Fair tied to that young woman’s apronstrings,’ he reflected, as he shouldered his bulky way through the revolving doors. ‘The poor mutt!’
Harriet, escaping half an hour later from Salcombe Hardy and his colleagues, found Wimsey faithfully in attendance.
‘I’ve got rid of the Inspector,’ observed that gentleman, cheerfully. ‘Get your hat on and we’ll go.’
Their simultaneous exit from the Resplendent was observed and recorded by the photographic contingent, who had just returned from the shore. Between an avenue of clicking shutters, they descended the marble steps, and climbed into Wimsey’s Daimler.
‘I feel,’ said Harriet, maliciously, ‘as if we had just been married at St George’s, Hanover Square.’
‘No, you don’t,’ retorted Wimsey. ‘If we had, you would be trembling like a fluttered partridge. Being married to me is a tremendous experience – you’ve no idea. We’ll be all right at the police-station, provided the Super doesn’t turn sticky on us.
Superintendent Glaisher was conveniently engaged, and Sergeant Saunders was deputed to show them the razor.
‘Has it been examined for finger-prints?’ asked Wimsey.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Any result?’
‘I couldn’t exactly say, my lord, but I believe not.’
/> ‘Well, anyway, one is allowed to handle it.’ Wimsey turned it over in his fingers, inspecting it carefully, first with the naked eye and secondly with a watchmaker’s lens. Beyond a very slight crack on the ivory handle, it showed no very striking peculiarities.
‘If there’s any blood left on it, it will be hanging about the joint,’ he observed. ‘But the sea seems to have done its work pretty thoroughly.’
‘You aren’t suggesting,’ said Harriet, ‘that the weapon isn’t really the weapon after all?’
‘I should like to,’ said Wimsey. ‘The weapon never is the weapon, is it?’
‘Of course not; and the corpse is never the corpse. The body is, obviously, not that of Peter Alexis—’
‘But of the Prime Minister of Ruritania—’
‘It did not die of a cut throat—’
‘But of an obscure poison, known only to the Bushmen of Central Australia—’
‘And the throat was cut after death—’
‘By a middle-aged man of short temper and careless habits, with a stiff beard and expensive tastes—’
‘Recently returned from China,’ finished up Harriet, triumphantly.
The sergeant, who had gaped in astonishment at the beginning of this exchange, now burst into a hearty guffaw.
‘That’s very good,’ he said, indulgently. ‘Comic, ain’t it, the stuff these writer-fellows put into their books? Would your lordship like to see the other exhibits?’
Wimsey replied gravely that he should, very much, and the hat, cigarette-case, shoe and handkerchief were produced.
‘H’m,’ said Wimsey. ‘Hat fair to middling, but not exclusive. Cranial capacity on the small side. Brilliantine, ordinary stinking variety. Physical condition pretty fair—’
‘The man was a dancer.’
‘I thought we agreed he was a Prime Minister. Hair, dark, curly and rather on the long side. Last year’s hat, reblocked, with new ribbon. Shape, a little more emphatic than is quite necessary. Deduction: not wealthy, but keen on his personal appearance. Do we conclude that the hat belongs to the corpse?’
‘Yes, I think so. The brilliantine corresponds all right.’
‘Cigarette-case – this is different. Fifteen-carat gold, plain and fairly new, with monogram P.A. and containing six de Reszkes. The case is pukka, all right. Probably a gift from some wealthy female admirer.’
‘Or, of course, the cigarette-case appropriate to a Prime Minister.’
‘As you say. Handkerchief – silk, but not from Burlington Arcade. Colour beastly. Laundry-mark—’
‘Laundry-mark’s all right,’ put in the policeman. ‘Wilver-combe Sanitary Steam Laundry; mark O.K. for this fellow Alexis.’
‘Suspicious circumstance,’ said Harriet, shaking her head. ‘I’ve got three handkerchiefs in my pack with not only the laundry-marks but the initials of total strangers.’
‘It’s the Prime Minister, all right,’ agreed Wimsey, with a doleful nod. ‘Prime Ministers, especially Ruritanian ones, are notoriously careless about their laundry. Now the shoe. Oh, yes. Nearly new. Thin sole. Foul colour and worse shape. Hand-made, so that the horrid appearance is due to malice aforethought. Not the shoe of a man who does much walking. Made, I observe, in Wilvercombe.’
‘That’s O.K., too,’ put in the sergeant. ‘We’ve seen the man. He made that shoe for Mr Alexis all right. Knows him well.’
‘And you took this actually off the foot of the corpse? These are deep waters, Watson. Another man’s handkerchief is nothing, but a Prime Minister in another fellow’s shoes—’
‘You will have your joke, my lord,’ said the sergeant, with another hoot of laughter.
‘I never joke,’ said Wimsey. He brought the lens to bear on the sole of the shoe. ‘Slight traces of salt water here, but none on the uppers. Inference: he walked over the sand when it was very wet, but did not actually wade through salt water. Two or three scratches on the toe-cap, probably got when clambering up the rock. Well, thanks awfully, sergeant. You are quite at liberty to inform Inspector Umpelty of all the valuable deductions we have drawn. Have a drink.’
‘Thank you very much, my lord.’
Wimsey said nothing more till they were in the car again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he then announced, as they threaded their way through the side-streets, ‘to renounce our little programme of viewing the town. I should have enjoyed that simple pleasure. But unless I start at once, I shan’t get to town and back tonight.’
Harriet, who had been preparing to say that she had work to do and could not waste time rubber-necking round Wilvercombe with Lord Peter, experienced an unreasonable feeling of having been cheated.
‘To town?’ she repeated.
‘It will not have escaped your notice,’ said Wimsey, skimming with horrible dexterity between a bath-chair and a butcher’s van, ‘that the matter of the razor requires investigation.’
‘Of course – a visit to the Ruritanian Legation is indicated.’
‘H’m – well; I don’t know that I shall get any farther than Jermyn Street.’
‘In search of the middle-aged man of careless habits?’
‘Yes, ultimately.’
‘He really exists, then?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t swear to his exact age.’
‘Or his habits?’
‘No, they might be the habits of his valet.’
‘Or his stiff beard and short temper?’
‘Well, I think one may be reasonably certain about the beard.’
‘I give in,’ said Harriet, meekly. ‘Please explain.’
Wimsey drew up the car at the entrance to the Hotel Resplendent, and looked at his watch.
‘I can give you ten minutes,’ he remarked, in an aloof tone. ‘Let us take a seat in the lounge and order some refreshment. It is a little early, to be sure, but I always drive more mellowly on a pint of beer. Good. Now, as to the razor. You will have observed that it is an instrument of excellent and expensive quality by a first-class maker, and that, in addition to the name of the manufacturer, it is engraved on the reverse side with the mystic word “Endicott”.’
‘Yes; what is Endicott?’
‘Endicott is, or was, one of the most exclusive hairdressers in the West End. So fearfully exclusive and grand that he won’t even call himself a hairdresser in the snobbish modern way, but prefers to be known by the old-world epithet of “barber”. He will, or would, hardly condescend to shave anybody who has not been in Debrett for the last three hundred years. Other people, however rich or titled, have the misfortune to find his chairs always occupied and his basins engaged. His shop has the rarefied atmosphere of one of the more aristocratic mid-Victorian clubs. It is said of Endicott’s that a certain peer, who made his money during the War by cornering bootlaces or buttons or something, was once accidentally admitted to one of the sacred chairs by a new assistant who had been most unfortunately taken on with insufficient West End experience during the temporary war-time shortage of barbers. After ten minutes in that dreadful atmosphere, his hair froze, his limbs became perfectly petrified, and he had to be removed to the Crystal Palace and placed among the antediluvian monsters.’
‘Well?’
‘Well! Consider first of all the anomaly of the man who buys his razor from Endicott’s and yet wears the regrettable shoes and mass-production millinery found on the corpse. Mind you,’ added Wimsey, ‘it is not a question of expense, exactly. The shoes are hand-made – which merely proves that a dancer has to take care of his feet. But could a man who is shaved by Endicott possibly order – deliberately order – shoes of that colour and shape? A thing imagination boggles at.’
‘I’m afraid,’ admitted Harriet, ‘that I have never managed to learn all the subtle rules and regulations about male clothing. That’s why I made Robert Templeton one of those untidy dressers.’
‘Robert Templeton’s clothes have always pained me,’ confessed Wimsey. ‘The one blot on your otherwise fascinating tales. But to leave that dis
tressing subject and come back to the razor. That razor has seen a good deal of hard wear. It has been re-ground a considerable number of times, as you can tell by the edge. Now, a really first-class razor like that needs very little in the way of grinding and setting, provided it is mercifully used and kept carefully stropped. Therefore, either the man who used it was very clumsy and careless about using the strop, or his beard was abnormally stiff, or both – probably both. I visualise him as one of those men who are heavy-handed with tools – you know the kind. Their fountain pens always make blots and their watches get over-wound. They neglect to strop their razors until the strop gets hard and dry, and then they strop them ferociously and jag the edge of the blade. Then they lose their tempers and curse the razor and send it away to be ground and set. The new edge only lasts them for a few weeks and then back the razor goes again, accompanied by a rude message.’
‘I see. Well, I didn’t know all that. But why did you say the man was middle-aged?’
‘That was rather guess-work. But I suggest that a young man who had so much difficulty with his razor would be more likely to change over to a safety and use a new blade every few days. But a man of middle-age would not be so likely to change his habits. In any case, I’m sure that razor has had more than three years’ hard wear. And if the dead man is only twenty-two now, and has a full beard, then I don’t see how he could very well have worn the blade down to that extent, with any amount of grinding and setting. We must find out from the hotel manager here whether he was already wearing the beard when he came a year ago. That would narrow the time down still further. But the first thing to do is to trace old Endicott and find out from him whether it was possible for one of his razors to have been sold later than 1925.’
‘Why 1925?’
‘Because that was the date at which old Endicott sold his premises and retired with varicose veins and a small fortune.’
‘And who kept on the business?’
‘Nobody. The shop is now a place where you buy the most recherché kind of hams and potted meats. There were no sons to carry on – the only young Endicott was killed in the Salient, poor chap. Old Endicott said he wouldn’t sell his name to anybody. And anyhow, Endicott’s without an Endicott wouldn’t be Endicott’s. So that was that.’