Have His Carcass lpw-8

by Dorothy L. Sayers

2. Find out where her money came from: whether it is at her sole disposal; what she proposed to do with it (a) before meeting Alexis, (b) after marrying Alexis; what she means to do with it now.

  Things to be Noted

  3. She attributes death of Alexis to Bolshevik plot

  Things to be Done

  3. Get information from Scotland Yard about Bolshevik agents. No theory is too silly to be dismissed without investigation.

  HENRY WELDON

  Things to be Noted

  1. Personal characteristics: Tallish, broad, powerful resembles his mother facially; obstinate, ill — mannered, countrified apparently not very intelligent.

  Things to be Done

  1 Kick him, (P. W.) Well, no, that wouldn’t be politic. String him along and see if he is really

  as; stupid as he makes out (H. V.) All right, but kick him afterwards. (P. W.)

  Things to be Noted

  2. He has suddenly left his farm at the busiest time to suck up to his mother and pretend to help her clear P. A.’s memory. But actually he is doing his best — to drive P. W. to chucking up the investigation.

  Things to be Done

  2. Find out what the state of his finances is, and what his farm is like. Also his local reputation.

  (Query: Why not give Bunter something to do?)

  Things to be Noted

  3. The news of P. A.’s death was ‘in the papers on Friday morning; H. W. arrived Wilvercombe Monday evening, in answer to letter presumably sent by Mrs W. on Friday, and addressed to Huntingdonshire.

  Things to be Done

  3. Find out where HenryWeldon was on Thursday.

  ESDRAS POLLOCK

  Things to be Noted

  1. Personal characteristics: Aged seventy or more, sturdy for his age; bent, grey, smells of fish; manners none and customs beastly, unpopular with the fishing population.

  Things to be Done

  1. Pump fishing population

  Things to be Noted

  2. He was in his boat off the Flat-Iron at 2.10 P.M. on Thursday, with his grandson.

  Things to be Done

  2. A fact

  Things to be Noted

  3. He is reluctant to say what he was doing there, and the grandson has disappeared to Cork.

  Things to be Done

  3. Trace grandson. (Police.)

  Things to be Noted

  4. He states that he hugged the shore between his cottage and the Flat-Iron and saw nobody along the shore; but when questioned about events at the Flat-Iron at two o’clock, contradicts himself and says that he was then in deep water. (N.B. He saw what H. V. was doing all right at 2.50.)

  Things to be Done

  4. Try the grandson on this when traced: (Police:)

  Things to be Noted

  5 When pressed, says he first saw P. A. on rock about two o’clock, and that he was then alone and already lying down.

  Things to be Done

  5. How about a little Third Degree? Once again, trace and interrogate grandson. Police.)

  Things to be Noted

  6 Curiously enough, when asked if anyone was with him in the boat,’ says’Nobody’—but when grandson is mentioned, admits grandson. Who did he think was meant?

  Things to be Done

  6. Find out whether P. A. could have reached Flat-Iron in Pollock’s boat. Find out what has hap pened to the £300 in gold. Search boat for blood stains. (Police.)

  PERKINS (of London)

  Things to be Noted

  1. Personal characteristics: Small, weakish, round-shouldered. Wore spectacles and was apparently shortsighted. Complained of blistered heel. Cockney accent. Appeared to be of timid disposition.

  Things to be Done

  1. Find him

  Things to be Noted

  2. Met H. V. on road at 4.15 about half-a-mile on the far side of Pollock’s cottage, i.e. about one and a half miles from Flat-Iron and three miles from Darley. Said he had walked from Wilvercombe.

  Things to be Done

  2. Find out if anybody noticed him on the way. Note: it is only seven miles from Wilvercombe to the place where H. V. met him. When did he start out? Where did he sleep Tuesday night? (Police must have done something about this — ask Umpelty.)

  Things to be Noted

  3. On hearing from H. V. about body, turned back and accompanied her, ostensibly to protect her, (but was about as useful as a rain-coat under machine-gun fire).

  Things to be Done

  3 Find him and see what he’s made of.

  Things to be Noted

  4. Went willingly to Pollock’s cottage, but was annoyed with H. V. for addressing Martin.

  4. Find him! Find Martin!

  Things to be Noted

  5. Disappeared mysteriously while H. V. was telephoning police, took car to Wilvercombe station and undiscoverable.

  Things to be Done

  5. Find him! find him! find him, curse you! (Meaning the police.).

  Wimsey put his head to one side. ‘Really, every character seems more suspicious than the last. Who else is there? How about the cast-off Leila Garland, for instance? Or this chap Antoine? Or Leila’s new man?’

  ‘We can’t do much about them’ till we’ve seen them.’

  ‘No; but either Leila or the man — what’s his name — da

  Soto — might have a motive for getting rid of Alexis!’

  ‘Well. We’ve already put down that they’ve got to be looked into, Is that all? Oh, no!’

  ‘No. We now come to my own pet particular prize suspect, the sinister Mr Martin.’

  HAVILAND MARTIN

  Things to be Noted

  1. Personal characteristics: Tall, massive, dark hair; black spectacles; tattoo-mark on right wrist;

  dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, with wide-brimmed soft hat.

  Things to be Done

  1. Keep your mind on the tattoo-mark! You can fake them, you know. (H. V.) Bah! (P. W.)

  Things to be Noted

  2. Arrived Darley six o’clock Tuesday, 16th, with hired Morgan, coming from Heathbury direction.

  Things to be Done

  2. A fact. Why a Morgan?

  Things to be Noted

  3. Though no one had ever seen him in the village before, knew all about Hinks’s Lane and Mr Goodrich.

  Things to be Done

  3. Find out if anyone saw him in Heathbury or anywhere else and told him.

  Things to be Noted

  4. Seen at Three Feathers about one o’clock on Thursday, i 8th, and lunched there.

  Things to be Done

  4. A fact, apparently.

  Things to be Noted

  5. Left Feathers not earlier than 5.30.

  Things to be Done

  5. Also a fact, alas!

  Things to be Noted

  6. Seen by Mr Polwhistle and Tom at garage and in Hinks’s Lane from 3 PM — to 4 P.M.

  Things to be Done

  6. Yet another fact, unless they are abominable liars!

  Things to be Noted

  7. Obtained car from London garage on previous Friday by means of reference to Cambridge bank. No settled address. Cambridge bank confirms he has had account there for five years.

  Things to be Done

  7. Watch bank. Try to get information out of manager somehow.

  Things to be Noted

  8. It is certain that he did not reach the Flat-Iron by road on Thursday. He had no time to walk by the shore before two o’clock. (Aeroplanes are not practical politics.)

  Things to be Done

  8. Bust this alibi if you can, Sherlock!!

  Things to be Noted

  9. Search at his camping — ground revealed a number of miscellaneous ob jects (see the Wimsey Collection). No complaints about him, except that Farmer Newcombe complains of gap made in his fence.

  Things to be Done

  9. Walk along shore from Flat-Iron to Darley thisafternoon — nice little job for H. V. and P. W. ‘And that,’ said Wimsey, trium
phantly adding a flourish at the foot of this schedule, ‘rounds off the inquiry charmingly.’

  ‘It does.’ Harriet frowned. Then—

  ‘Have you ever considered this?’ she asked, with a not too steady voice. She scribbled for a moment.

  HARRIET VANE

  Things to be Noted

  1. Personal characteristics: Once tried for murder of her lover, and acquitted by the skin of her teeth.

  2. May have known Paul Alexis in London.

  3. Says she found Alexis dead at 2.10, but, can bring no evidence to prove that she did not see him alive.

  4. Took an unconscionable time getting to the Flat-Iron from Lesston Hoe.

  5. Took three hours to walk four and a half miles to inform the police.

  6. Is the sole witness to the finding of the razor, the time of the death and the conditions at the Flat-Iron.

  7. Was immediately suspected by Perkins, and is probably still suspected by the police, who have been searching her room.

  Wimsey’s face darkened.

  ‘Have they, by God?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t look like that. They couldi’t very well do anything else, could they?’

  ‘I’ll have something to say to Umpelty.’

  ‘No, You can spare me that.’

  ‘But it’s absurd.’

  ‘It is not. Do you think I have no wits? Do you think I don’t know why’ you came galloping down here at five minutes’ notice? Of course it’s very nice of you, and I ought to be grateful, but do you think I like it?’

  Wimsey, with a grey face, got up and walked to the window.

  ‘You thought I was pretty brazen, I expect, when you found me getting publicity out of the thing. So I was. There’s no choice for a person like me to be anything but brazen. Would it have been better too wait till the papers dragged the juicy bits out of the, dustbin for themselves? I can’t hide my name — it’s what I live by. If I did hide it, that would only be another, suspicious circumstance, wouldn’t it? But do you think it makes matters any more agreeable to know that it is only the patronage of Lord Peter Wimsey that prevent men like Umpelty from being openly hostile?’

  ‘I have been afraid of this,’ said Wimsey.

  ‘Then why did you come?’

  ‘So that you might not have to send for me.’

  ‘Oh,’

  There was a strained pause, while Wimsey painfully recalled the terms of the message that had originally reached him from Salcombe Hardy of the Morning Star Hardy, a little drunk and wholly derisory, announcing over the telephone, ‘I say, Wimsey, that Vane woman of yours has got herself mixed-up in another queer story.’ Then his own furious and terrified irruption into Fleet Street, and the violent bullying of a repentant and sentimental Hardy, till the Morning Star report was hammered into a form that set the tone for the comments of the press. Then the return home to find that the Wilvercombe police were already besieging him, in the politest and most restrained manner, for, information as to Miss Harriet Vane’s recent movements and behaviour. And finally, the certainty that the best way out of a bad situation was to brazen it out — Harriet’s word — even if it meant making a public exhibition of his feelings, and the annihilation of all the delicate structure of confidence which he had been so cautiously toiling to build up between this scathed and embittered woman and himself.

  He said nothing; but watched the wreck of his fortune in Harriet’s stormy eyes.

  Harriet, meanwhile, having worked herself up into committing an act of what she obscurely felt to be injustice, was seized by an unreasonable hatred against the injured party. The fact that, until five minutes earlier, she had felt perfectly happy and at ease with this man, before she had placed both him and herself in an intolerable position, she felt somehow as one more added to the list of his offences. She looked round for something really savage to do to him.

  ‘I suppose you think I haven’t been humiliated enough already, without all this parade of chivalry. You think you can sit up there all day like King Cophetua being noble and generous and’ expecting people to be brought to your feet. Of course everybody will, say, “Look what he did for that woman — isn’t it marvellous of him!” Isn’t that nice for you? You think if you go on long enough, I ought to be

  touched and softened. Well, you’re mistaken, that’s all. I suppose every man thinks he’s only got to go on being superior and any woman will come tumbling into his arms. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Wimsey, ‘I may be everything you say’—patronising, interfering,’ conceited, intolerable and all the rest of it. But do give me credit for a little. intelligence. Do you think I don’t know all that? Do you think it’s pleasant for any man who feels about a woman as I do about, you, to have to fight his way along under this detestable burden of gratitude? Damn it, do you think I don’t know perfectly, well that I’d have a better chance if I was deaf, blind, maimed, starving, drunken or dissolute, so’ that you could have the fun of being magnanimous? Why do’ you suppose I treat my own sincerest feelings like something out of a comic opera, if it isn’t to save myself the bitter humiliation

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  of seeing you try not to be utterly nauseated by them? Can’t you understand that this damned dirty trick of fate has robbed me of the common man’s right to be serious about his own passions? Is that a position for any man to be proud of?’

  ‘Don’t talk like that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, if you didn’t force me. And you might have the justice to remember that you can hurt me a damned sight more than I can possibly hurt you.’—

  ‘I know I’m being horribly ungrateful-’

  ‘Hell!’

  All endurance has its limits, and Wimsey had reached his.

  ‘Grateful! Good God! Am I’ never to get away from the bleat of that filthy adjective? I don’t want gratitude. I don’t want kindness. I don’t want — sentimentality. I don’t even want love_ I could make you give me that — of a sort. I want common honesty.’

  Do you? But that’s. what I’ve always wanted I don’t think it’s to be got.’

  ‘Listen, Harriet. I do understand. I know you don’t want either to give or to take. You’ve tried being the giver, and you’ve found that the giver is always, fooled., And you won’t be the taker, because that’s very. difcult, and because you know that the taker always ends by hating the giver. You don’t want ever again to have to depend for happiness or) another person.’

  ‘That’s true. That’s the truest thing you ever said.’

  ‘All right. I can respect that. Only you’ve got to play the game. Don’t force an emotional situation and then blame me for it’

  But I don’t want any situation. I want to be left in peace.’