“Good God!” thought Willis, “the fellow's a tight-rope walker–or he's too drunk to fall.” There were yells of applause, and a girl began to shriek hysterically. Then a very tall woman, in a moonlight frock of oyster satin, who had made herself the centre of the most boisterous of all the parties, pushed past Willis and stood out on the edge of the basin, her fair hair standing out like a pale aureole round her vivid face.
“Dive!” she called out, “dive in! I dare you to! Dive in!”
“Shut up, Dian!” One of the soberer of the men caught her round the shoulders and put his hand over her mouth. “It's too shallow–he'll break his neck.”
She pushed him away.
“You be quiet. He shall dive. I want him to. Go to hell, Dickie. You wouldn't dare do it, but he will.”
“I certainly wouldn't. Stow it.”
“Come on, Harlequin, dive!”
The black and white figure raised its arms above its fantastic head and stood poised.
“Don't be a fool, man,” bawled Dickie.
But the other women were fired with the idea and their screams drowned his voice.
“Dive, Harlequin, dive.”
The slim body shot down through the spray, struck the surface with scarcely a splash and slid through the water like a fish. Willis caught his breath. It was perfectly done. It was magnificent. He forgot his furious hatred of the man and applauded with the rest. The girl Dian ran forward and caught hold of the swimmer as he emerged.
“Oh, you're marvellous, you're marvellous!” She clung to him, the water soaking into her draggled satin.
“Take me home, Harlequin–I adore you!”
The Harlequin bent his masked face and kissed her. The man called Dickie tried to pull him away, but was neatly tripped and fell with a jerk into the pool, amid a roar of laughter. The Harlequin tossed the tall girl across his shoulder.
“A prize!” he shouted. “A prize!”
Then he swung her lightly to her feet and took her hand. “Run,” he called, “run! Let's run away, and let them catch us if they can.”
There was a sudden stampede. Willis saw the angry face of Dickie as he lurched past him and heard him swearing. Somebody caught his hand. He ran up the rose-alley, panting. Something caught his foot, and he tripped and fell. His companion abandoned him, and ran on, hooting. He sat up, found his head enveloped in his hood and struggled to release himself.
A hand touched his shoulder.
“Come on, Mr. Willis,” said a mocking voice in his ear, “Mr. Bredon says I am to escort you home.”
He succeeded in dragging the black cloth from his head and scrambled to his feet.
Beside him stood Pamela Dean. She had taken off her mask, and her eyes were alight with mischief.
CHAPTER V
SURPRISING METAMORPHOSIS OF MR. BREDON
Lord Peter Wimsey had paid a call upon Chief-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, who was his brother-in-law.
He occupied a large and comfortable arm-chair in the Chief-Inspector's Bloomsbury flat. Opposite him, curled upon the chesterfield, was his sister, Lady Mary Parker, industriously knitting an infant's vest. On the window-seat, hugging his knees and smoking a pipe, was Mr. Parker himself. On a convenient table stood a couple of decanters and a soda siphon. On the hearthrug was a large tabby cat. The scene was almost ostentatiously peaceful and domestic.
“So you have become one of the world's workers, Peter,” said Lady Mary.
“Yes; I'm pulling down four solid quid a week. Amazin' sensation. First time I've ever earned a cent. Every week when I get my pay-envelope, I glow with honest pride.”
Lady Mary smiled, and glanced at her husband, who grinned cheerfully back. The difficulties which are apt to arise when a poor man marries a rich wife had, in their case, been amicably settled by an ingenious arrangement, under which all Lady Mary's money had been handed over to her brothers in trust for little Parkers to come, the trustee having the further duty of doling out each quarter to the wife a sum precisely equal to the earnings of the husband during that period. Thus a seemly balance was maintained between the two principals; and the trifling anomaly that Chief-Inspector Parker was actually a mere pauper in comparison with small Charles Peter and still smaller Mary Lucasta, now peacefully asleep in their cots on the floor above, disturbed nobody one whit. It pleased Mary to have the management of their moderate combined income, and incidentally did her a great deal of good. She now patronized her wealthy brother with all the superiority which the worker feels over the man who merely possesses money.
“But what is the case all about, exactly?” demanded Parker.
“Blest if I know,” admitted Wimsey, frankly. “I got hauled into it through Freddy Arbuthnot's wife–Rachel Levly that was, you know. She knows old Pym, and he met her at dinner somewhere and told her about this letter that was worrying him, and she said, Why not get somebody in to investigate it, and he said, Who? So she said she knew somebody–not mentioning my name, you see–and he said would she ask me to buzz along, so I buzzed and there I am.”
“Your narrative style,” said Parker, “though racy, is a little elliptical. Could you not begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, and then, if you are able to, stop?”
“I'll try,” said his lordship, “but I always find the stopping part of the business so difficult. Well, look! On a Monday afternoon–the 25th of May, to be particular, a young man, Victor Dean by name, employed as a copy-writer in the firm of Pym's Publicity, Ltd., Advertising Agents, fell down an iron spiral staircase on their premises, situate in the upper part of Southampton Row, and died immediately of injuries received, to wit: one broken neck, one cracked skull, one broken leg and minor cuts and contusions, various. The time of this disaster was, as nearly as can be ascertained, 3.30 in the afternoon.”
“Hum!” said Parker. “Pretty extensive injuries for a fall of that kind.”
“So I thought, before I saw the staircase. To proceed. On the day after this occurrence, the sister of deceased sends to Mr. Pym a fragment of a half-finished letter which she has found on her brother's desk. It warns him that there is something of a fishy nature going on in the office. The letter is dated about ten days previous to the death, and appears to have been laid aside as though the writer wanted to think over the wording a bit more carefully. Very good. Now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality–except, of course, as regards his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money–”
“How about truth in advertising?”
“Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There's yeast in bread, but you can't make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously, “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words 'with' and 'from.' Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or, not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say 'Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,' then it's got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made 'from pears,' without the 'only,' the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, 'made with pears,' you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you–such are the niceties of our English tongue.”
“Make a note, Mary, next time you go shopping, and buy nothing that is not 'from, only.' Proceed, Peter–and let us have a little less of your English tongue.”
“Yes. Well, here is a young man who starts to write a warning letter. Before he can complete it, he falls downstairs and is killed. Is that, or is it not, a darned suspicious circumstance?”
“So suspicious that it is probably the purest coincidence. But since you have a fancy for melodrama, we will allow it to be suspicious. Who saw him die?”
“I, said the fly. Meaning one Mr. Atkin
s and one Mrs. Crump, who saw the fall from below, and one Mr. Prout who saw it from above. All their evidence is interesting. Mr. Prout says that the staircase was well-lit, and that deceased was not going extra fast, while the others say that he fell all of a heap, forwards, clutching The Times Atlas in so fierce a grip that it could afterwards hardly be prised from his fingers. What does that suggest to you?”
“Only that the death was instantaneous, which it would be if one broke one's neck.”
“I know. But look here! You are going downstairs and your foot slips. What happens? Do you crumple forwards and dive down head first? Or do you sit down suddenly on your tail and do the rest of the journey that way?”
“It depends. If it was actually a slip, I should probably come down on my tail. But if I tripped, I should very likely dive forwards. You can't tell, without knowing just how it happened.”
“All right. You always have an answer. Well now–do you clutch what you're carrying with a deathly grip–or do you chuck it, and try to save yourself by grabbing hold of the banisters?”
Mr. Parker paused. “I should probably grab,” he said, slowly, “unless I was carrying a tray full of crockery, or anything. And even then ... I don't know. Perhaps it's an instinct to hold on to what one's got. But equally it's an instinct to try and save one's self. I don't know. All this arguing about what you and I would do and what the reasonable man would do is very unsatisfactory.”
Wimsey groaned. “Put it this way, doubting Thomas. If the death-grip was due to instantaneous rigor, he must have been dead so quickly that he couldn't think of saving himself. Now, there are two possible causes of death–the broken neck, which he must have got when he pitched on his head at the bottom, and the crack on the temple, which is attributed to his hitting his skull on one of the knobs on the banisters. Now, falling down a staircase isn't like falling off a roof–you do it in instalments, and have time to think about it. If he killed himself by hitting the banisters, he must have fallen first and hit himself afterwards. The same thing applies, with still more force, to his breaking his neck. Why, when he felt himself going, didn't he drop everything and break his fall?”
“I know what you want me to say,” said Parker. “That he was sandbagged first and dead before he fell. But I don't see it. I say he would have caught his toe in something and tripped forwards and struck his head straight away and died of that. There's nothing impossible about it.”
“Then I'll try again. How's this? That same evening, Mrs. Crump, the head charwoman, picked up this onyx scarab in the passage, just beneath the iron staircase. It is, as you see, rounded and smooth and heavy for its size, which is much about that of the iron knobs on the staircase. It has, as you also see, a slight chip on one side. It belonged to the dead man, who was accustomed to carry it in his waistcoat pocket or keep it sitting on the desk beside him while he worked. What about it?”
“I should say it fell from his pocket when he fell.”
“And the chip?”
“If it wasn't there before–”
“It wasn't; his sister says she's sure it wasn't.”
“Then it got chipped in falling.”
“You think that?”
“I do.”
“I think you were meant to think that. To continue: some few days earlier, Mrs. Crump found a smooth pebble of much the same size as the scarab lying in the same passage at the foot of the same iron staircase.”
“Did she?” said Parker. He uncurled himself from the window-seat and made for the decanters. “What does she say about it?”
“Says that you'd scarcely believe the queer odds and ends she finds when she's cleaning out the office. Attributes the stone to Mr. Atkins, he having taken his seaside holiday early on account of ill-health.”
“Well,” said Parker, releasing the lever of the soda-siphon, “and why not?”
“Why not, indeed? This other pebble, which I here produce, was found by me on the roof of the lavatory. I had to shin down a pipe to get it, and ruined a pair of flannel bags.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Okay, captain. That's where I found it. I also found a place where the paint had been chipped off the skylight.”
“What skylight?”
“The skylight that is directly over the iron staircase. It's one of those pointed things, like a young greenhouse, and it has windows that open all round–you know the kind I mean–which are kept open in hot weather. It was hot weather when young Dean departed this life.”
“The idea being that somebody heaved a stone at him through the skylight?”
“You said it, chief. Or, to be exact, not a stone, but the stone. Meaning the scarab.”
“And how about the other stones?”
“Practice shots. I've ascertained that the office is always practically empty during the lunch-hour. Nobody much ever goes on the roof, except the office-boys for their P.J.'s at 8.30 ack emma.”
“People who live in glass skylights shouldn't throw stones. Do you mean to suggest that by chucking a small stone like this at a fellow, you're going to crack his skull open and break his neck for him?”
“Not if you just throw it, of course. But how about a sling or a catapult?”
“Oh, in that case, you've only got to ask the people in the neighbouring offices if they've seen anybody enjoying a spot of David and Goliath exercise on Pym's roof, and you've got him.”
“It's not as simple as that. The roof's quite a good bit higher than the roofs of the surrounding buildings, and it has a solid stone parapet all round about three feet high–to give an air of still greater magnificence, I suppose. To sling a stone through on to the iron staircase you'd have to kneel down in a special position between that skylight and the next, and you can't be seen from anywhere–unless somebody happened to be on the staircase looking up–which nobody obviously was, except Victor Dean, poor lad. It's safe as houses.”
“Very well, then. Find out if any member of the staff has frequently stayed in at lunch-time.”
Wimsey shook his head.
“No bon. The staff clock in every morning, but there are no special tabs kept on them at 1 o'clock. The reception clerk goes out to his lunch, and one of the elder boys takes his place at the desk, just in case any message or parcel comes in, but he's not there necessarily every moment of the time. Then there's the lad who hops round with Jeyes' Fluid in a squirt, but he doesn't go on to the roof. There's nothing to prevent anybody from going up, say at half-past twelve, and staying there till he's done his bit of work and then simply walking out down the staircase. The lift-man, or his locum tenens, would be on duty, but you've only to keep on the blind side of the lift as you pass and he couldn't possibly see you. Besides, the lift might quite well have gone down to the basement. All the bloke would have to do would just be to bide his time and walk out. There's nothing in it. Similarly, on the day of the death. He goes through towards the lavatory, which is reached from the stairs. When the coast is clear, he ascends to the roof. He lurks there, till he sees his victim start down the iron staircase, which everybody does, fifty times a day. He whangs off his bolt and departs. Everybody is picking up the body and exclaiming over it, when in walks our friend, innocently, from the lav. It's as simple as pie.”
“Wouldn't it be noticed, if he was out of his own room all that time?”
“My dear old man, if you knew Pym's! Everybody is always out of his room. If he isn't chatting with the copy-department, or fooling round the typists, he's in the studio, clamouring for a lay-out, or in the printing, complaining about a folder, or in the press-department, inquiring about an appropriation, or in the vouchers, demanding back numbers of something, or if he isn't in any of those places, he's somewhere else–slipping out for surreptitious coffee or haircuts. The word alibi has no meaning in a place like Pym's.”
“You're going to have a lovely time with it all, I can see that,” said Parker. “But what sort of irregularity could possibly be going on in a place like that, which would lead to mu
rder?”
“Now we're coming to it. Young Dean used to tag round with the de Momerie crowd–”
Parker whistled.
“Sinning above his station in life?”
“Very much so. But you know Dian de Momerie. She gets more kick out of corrupting the bourgeois–she enjoys the wrestle with their little consciences. She's a bad lot, that girl. I took her home last night, so I ought to know.”
“Peter!” said Lady Mary. “Quite apart from your morals, which alarm me, how did you get into that gang? I should have thought they'd as soon have taken up with Charles, here, or the Chief Commissioner.”
“Oh, I went incog. A comedy of masks. And you needn't worry about my morals. The young woman became incapably drunk on the way home, so I pushed her inside her dinky little maisonette in Garlic Mews and tucked her up on a divan in the sitting-room to astonish her maid in the morning. Though she's probably past being astonished. But, the point is that I found out a good bit about Victor Dean.”
“Just a moment,” interrupted Parker, “did he dope?”
“Apparently not, though I'll swear it wasn't Dian's fault if he didn't. According to his sister, he was too strong-minded. Possibly he tried it once and felt so rotten that he didn't try it again.... Yes–I know what you're thinking. If he was dopey, he might have fallen downstairs on his own account. But I don't think that'll work. These things have a way of coming out at post-mortems. The question was raised ... no; it wasn't that.”