Unnatural Death

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  Now it is easy to be mistaken in faces, but almost impossible not to recognise a back. Miss Climpson’s heart gave a bound. “Mary Whittaker!” she said to herself, and started to follow.

  The woman stopped to look into a shop window. Miss Climpson hesitated to come closer. If Mary Whittaker was at large, then—why then the kidnapping had been done with her own consent. Puzzled, Miss Climpson determined to play a waiting game. The woman went into the shop. The friendly chemist’s was almost opposite. Miss Climpson decided that this was the moment to reclaim her latchkey. She went in and asked for it. It had been put aside for her and the assistant produced it at once. The woman was still in the shop over the way. Miss Climpson embarked upon a long string of apologies and circumstantial details about her carelessness. The woman came out. Miss Climpson gave her a longish start, brought the conversation to a close, and fussed out again, replacing the glasses which she had removed for the chemist’s benefit.

  The woman walked on without stopping, but she looked into the shop windows from time to time. A man with a fruiterer’s barrow removed his cap as she passed and scratched his head. Almost at once, the woman turned quickly and came back. The fruiterer picked up the handles of his barrow and trundled it away into a side street. The woman came straight on, and Miss Climpson was obliged to dive into a doorway and pretend to be tying a bootlace, to avoid a face to face encounter.

  Apparently the woman had only forgotten to buy cigarettes. She went into a tobacconist’s and emerged again in a minute or two, passing Miss Climpson again. That lady had dropped her bag and was agitatedly sorting its contents. The woman passed her without a glance and went on. Miss Climpson, flushed from stooping, followed again. The woman turned in at the entrance to a block of flats next door to a florist’s. Miss Climpson was hard on her heels now, for she was afraid of losing her.

  Mary Whittaker—if it was Mary Whittaker—went straight through the hall to the lift, which was one of the kind worked by the passenger. She stepped in and shot up. Miss Climpson—gazing at the orchids and roses in the florist’s window—watched the lift out of sight. Then, with her subscription card prominently in her hand, she too entered the flats.

  There was a porter on duty in a little glass case. He at once spotted Miss Climpson as a stranger and asked politely if he could do anything for her. Miss Climpson, selecting a name at random from the list of occupants in the entrance, asked which was Mrs. Forrest’s flat. The man replied that that it was on the fourth floor, and stepped forward to bring the lift down for her. A man, to whom he had been chatting, moved quietly from the glass case and took up a position in the doorway. As the lift ascended, Miss Climpson noticed that the fruiterer had returned. His barrow now stood just outside.

  The porter had come up with her, and pointed out the door of Mrs. Forrest’s flat. His presence was reassuring. She wished he would stay within call till she had concluded her search of the building. However, having asked for Mrs. Forrest, she must begin there. She pressed the bell.

  At first she thought the flat was empty, but after ringing a second time she heard footsteps. The door opened, and a heavily over-dressed and peroxided lady made her appearance, whom Lord Peter would at once—and embarrassingly—have recognised.

  “I have come,” said Miss Climpson, wedging herself briskly in at the doorway with the skill of the practised canvasser, “to try if I can enlist your help for our Mission Settlement. May I come in? I am sure you—”

  “No thanks,” said Mrs. Forrest, shortly, and in a hurried, breathless tone, as if there was somebody behind her who she was anxious should not overhear her, “I’m not interested in Missions.”

  She tried to shut the door. But Miss Climpson had seen and heard enough.

  “Good gracious!” she cried, staring, “why, it’s—”

  “Come in.” Mrs. Forrest caught her by the arm almost roughly and pulled her over the threshold, slamming the door behind them.

  “How extraordinary!” said Miss Climpson, “I hardly recognised you, Miss Whittaker, with your hair like that.”

  “You!” said Mary Whittaker. “You—of all people!” They sat facing one another in the sitting-room with its tawdry pink silk cushions. “I knew you were a meddler. How did you get here? Is there anyone with you?”

  “No—yes—I just happened,” began Miss Climpson vaguely. One thought was uppermost in her mind. “How did you get free? What happened? Who killed Vera?” She knew she was asking her questions crudely and stupidly. “Why are you disguised like that?”

  “Who sent you?” reiterated Mary Whittaker.

  “Who is the man with you?” pursued Miss Climpson. “Is he here? Did he do the murder?”

  “What man?”

  “The man Vera saw leaving your flat. Did he—?”

  “So that’s it. Vera told you. The liar. I thought I had been quick enough.”

  Suddenly, something which had been troubling Miss Climpson for weeks crystallised and became plain to her. The expression in Mary Whittaker’s eyes. A long time ago, Miss Climpson had assisted a relative to run a boarding-house, and there had been a young man who paid his bill by cheque. She had had to make a certain amount of unpleasantness about the bill, and he had written the cheque unwillingly, sitting, with her eye upon him, at the little plush-covered table in the drawing-room. Then he had gone away—slinking out with his bag when no one was about. And the cheque had come back, like the bad penny that it was. A forgery. Miss Climpson had had to give evidence. She remembered now the odd, defiant look with which the young man had taken up his pen for his first plunge into crime. And today she was seeing it again—an unattractive mingling of recklessness and calculation. It was with the look which had once warned Wimsey and should have warned her. She breathed more quickly.

  “Who was the man?”

  “The man?” Mary Whittaker laughed suddenly. “A man called Templeton—no friend of mine. It’s really funny that you should think he was a friend of mine. I would have killed him if I could.”

  “But where is he? What are you doing? Don’t you know that everybody is looking for you? Why don’t you—?”

  “That’s why!”

  Mary Whittaker flung her ten o’clock edition of the Evening Banner, which was lying on the sofa. Miss Climpson read the glaring headlines:

  “AMAZING NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN CROW’S BEACH CRIME.

  WOUNDS ON BODY INFLICTED AFTER DEATH.

  FAKED FOOTPRINTS.”

  Miss Climpson gasped with amazement, and bent over the smaller type. “How extraordinary!” she said, looking up quickly.

  Not quite quickly enough. The heavy brass lamp missed her head indeed, but fell numbingly on her shoulder. She sprang to her feet with a loud shriek, just as Mary Whittaker’s strong white hands closed upon her throat.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  —AND SMOTE HIM, THUS

  “ ’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.”

  ROMEO AND JULIET

  LORD PETER MISSED BOTH Miss Climpson’s communications. Absorbed in the police inquiry, he never thought to go back to Leahampton. Bunter had duly arrived with “Mrs. Merdle” on the Saturday evening. Immense police activity was displayed in the neighbourhood of the downs, and at Southampton and Portsmouth, in order to foster the idea that the authorities supposed the “gang” to be lurking in those districts. Nothing, as a matter of fact was farther from Parker’s thoughts. “Let her think she is safe,” he said, “and she’ll come back. It’s the cat-and-mouse act for us, old man,” Wimsey fretted. He wanted the analysis of the body to be complete and loathed the thought of the long days he had to wait. And he had small hope of the result.

  “It’s all very well sitting round with your large disguised policemen outside Mrs. Forrest’s flat,” he said irritably, over the bacon and eggs on Monday morning, “but you do realise, don’t you, that we’ve still got no proof of murder. Not in one single case.”

  “That’s so,” replied Park
er, placidly.

  “Well, doesn’t it make your blood boil?” said Wimsey.

  “Hardly,” said Parker. “This kind of thing happens too often. If my blood boiled every time there was a delay in getting evidence, I should be in a perpetual fever. Why worry? It may be that perfect crime you’re so fond of talking about—the one that leaves no trace. You ought to be charmed with it.”

  “Oh, I daresay. O Turpitude, where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face? Time’s called at the Criminals’ Arms, and there isn’t a drink in the place. Wimsey’s Standard Poets, with emendations by Thingummy. As a matter of fact, I’m not at all sure that Miss Dawson’s death wasn’t the perfect crime—if only the Whittaker girl had stopped at that and not tried to cover it up. If you notice, the deaths are becoming more, and more violent, elaborate and unlikely in appearance. Telephone again. If the Post Office accounts don’t show a handsome profit on telephones this year it won’t be your fault.”

  “It’s the cap and shoes,” said Parker, mildly. “They’ve traced them. They were ordered from an outfitter’s in Stepney, to be sent to the Rev. H. Dawson, Peveril Hotel, Bloomsbury, to await arrival.”

  “The Peveril again!’

  “Yes. I recognise the hand of Mr. Trigg’s mysterious charmer. The Rev. Hallelujah Dawson’s card, with message ‘Please give parcel to bearer,’ was presented by a District Messenger next day, with a verbal explanation that the gentleman found he could not get up to town after all. The messenger, obeying instructions received by telephone, took the parcel to a lady in a nurse’s dress on the platform at Charing Cross. Asked to describe the lady, he said she was tall and wore blue glasses and the usual cloak and bonnet. So that’s that.”

  “How were the goods paid for?”

  “Postal order, purchased at the West Central office at the busiest moment of the day.”

  “And when did all this happen?”

  “That’s the most interesting part of the business. Last month, shortly before Miss Whittaker and Miss Findlater returned from Kent. This plot was well thought out beforehand.”

  “Yes. Well, that’s something more for you to pin on to Mrs. Forrest. It looks like proof of conspiracy, but whether it’s proof of murder—”

  “It’s meant to look like a conspiracy of Cousin Hallelujah’s, I suppose. Oh, well, we shall have to trace the letters and the typewriter that wrote them and interrogate all these people, I suppose. God! what a grind! Hullo! Come in! Oh, it’s you, doctor?”

  “Excuse my interrupting your breakfast,” said Dr. Faulkner, “but early this morning, while lying awake, I was visited with a bright idea. So I had to come and work it off on you while it was fresh. About the blow on the head and the marks on the arms, you know. Do you suppose they served a double purpose? Besides making it look like the work of a gang, could they be hiding some other, smaller mark? Poison, for instance, could be injected, and the mark covered up by scratches and cuts inflicted after death.”

  “Frankly,” said Parker, “I wish I could think it. It’s a very sound idea and may be the right one. Our trouble is, that in the two previous deaths which we have been investigating, and which we are inclined to think form a part of the same series as this one, there have been no signs or traces of poison discoverable in the bodies at all by any examination or analysis that skill can devise. In fact, not only no proof of poison, but no proof of any thing but natural death.”

  And he related the cases in fuller detail.

  “Odd,” said the doctor. “And you think this may turn out the same way. Still, in this case the death can’t very well have been natural—or why these elaborate efforts to cover it up?”

  “It wasn’t,” said Parker; “the proof being that—as we now know—the plot was laid nearly two months ago.”

  “But the method!” cried Wimsey, “the method! Hang it all—here are all we people with our brilliant brains and our professional reputations—and this half-trained girl out of a hospital can beat the lot of us. How was it done?”

  “It’s probably something so simple and obvious that it’s never occurred to us,” said Parker. “The sort of principle you learn when you’re in the fourth form and never apply to anything. Rudimentary. Like that motor-cycling imbecile we met up at Crofton, who sat in the rain and prayed for help because he’d never heard of an air-lock in his feed. Now I daresay that boy had learnt—What’s the matter with you?”

  “My God!” cried Wimsey. He smashed his hand down among the breakfast things, upsetting his cup. “My God! But that’s it! You’ve got it—you’ve done it—Obvious? God Almighty—it doesn’t need a doctor. A garage hand could have told you. People die of it every day. Of course, it was an air-lock in the feed.”

  “Bear up, doctor,” said Parker, “he’s always like this when he gets an idea. It wears off in time. D’you mind explaining yourself, old thing?”

  Wimsey’s pallid face was flushed. He turned on the doctor.

  “Look here,” he said, “the body’s a pumping engine, isn’t it? The jolly old heart pumps the blood round the arteries and back through the veins and so on, doesn’t it? That’s what keeps things working, what? Round and home again in two minutes—that sort of thing?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Little valve to let the blood out; ’nother little valve to let it in—just like an internal combustion engine, which it is?”

  “Of course.”

  “And s’posin’ that stops?”

  “You die.”

  “Yes. Now, look here. S’posin’ you take a good big hypodermic, empty, and dig it into one of the big arteries and push the handle—what would happen? What would happen, doctor? You’d be pumpin’ a big air-bubble into your engine feed, wouldn’t you? What would become of your circulation, then?”

  “It would stop it,” said the doctor, without hesitation.

  “That is why nurses have to be particular to fill the syringe properly, especially when doing an intra-venous injection.”

  “I knew it was the kind of thing you learnt in the fourth form. Well, go on. Your circulation would stop—it would be like an embolism in its effect, wouldn’t it?”

  “Only if it was in a main artery, of course. In a small vein the blood would find a way round. That is why” (this seemed to be the doctor’s favourite opening) “that is why it is so important that embolisms—blood-clots—should be dispersed as soon as possible and not left to wander about the system.”

  “Yes—yes—but the air-bubble, doctor—in a main artery—say the femoral or the big vein in the bend of the elbow—that would stop the circulation, wouldn’t it? How soon?”

  “Why, at once. The heart would stop beating.”

  “And then?”

  “You would die.”

  “With what symptoms?”

  “None to speak of. Just a gasp or two. The lungs would make a desperate effort to keep things going. Then you’d just stop. Like heart failure. It would be heart failure.”

  “How well I know it. … That sneeze in the carburettor—a gasping, as you say. And what would be the postmortem symptoms?”

  “None. Just the appearances of heart failure. And, of course, the little mark of the needle, if you happened to be looking for it.”

  “You’re sure of all this, doctor?” said Parker.

  “Well, it’s simple, isn’t it? A plain problem in mechanics. Of course that would happen. It must happen.”

  “Could it be proved?” insisted Parker.

  “That’s more difficult.”

  “We must try,” said Parker. “It’s ingenious, and it explains a lot of things. Doctor, will you go down to the mortuary again and see if you can find any puncture mark on the body. I really think you’ve got the explanation of the whole thing, Peter. Oh, dear! Who’s on the phone now? … What?—what?—oh, hell! Well, that’s torn it. She’ll never come back now. Warn all the ports—send out an all-stations call—watch the railways and go through Bloomsbury with a toothcomb—that’s the part she kno
ws best. I’m coming straight up to Town now—yes, immediately. Right you are.” He hung up the receiver with a few brief, choice expressions.

  “That adjectival imbecile, Pillington, has let out all he knows. The whole story is in the early editions of the Banner. We’re doing no good here. Mary Whittaker will know the game’s up, and she’ll be out of the country in two twos, if she isn’t already. Coming back to Town, Wimsey?”

  “Naturally. Take you up in the car. Lose no time. Ring the bell for Bunter, would you? Oh, Burner, we’re going up to Town. How soon can we start?”

  “At once, my lord. I have been holding your lordship’s and Mr. Parker’s things ready packed from hour to hour, in case a hurried adjournment should be necessary.”

  “Good man.”

  “And there is a letter for you, Mr. Parker, sir.”

  “Oh, thanks. Ah, yes. The finger-prints off the cheque. H’m. Two sets only—besides those of the cashier, of course—Cousin Hallelujah’s and a female set, presumably those of Mary Whittaker. Yes, obviously—here are the four fingers of the left hand, just as one would place them to hold the cheque flat while signing.”

  “Pardon me, sir—but might I look at that photograph?”

  “Certainly. Take a copy for yourself. I know it interests you as a photographer. Well, cheerio, doctor. See you in Town some time. Come on, Peter.”

  Lord Peter came on. And that, as Dr. Faulkner would say, was why Miss Climpson’s second letter was brought up from the police-station too late to catch him.

  They reached Town at twelve—owing to Wimsey’s brisk work at the wheel—and went straight to Scotland Yard, dropping Bunter, at his own request, as he was anxious to return to the flat. They found the Chief Commissioner in rather a brusque mood—angry with the Banner and annoyed with Parker for having failed to muzzle Pillington.

  “God knows where she will be found next. She’s probably got a disguise and a get-away all ready.”