Have His Carcase (6 page)

Hearn. I don’t know what it costs, but here’s a ten-bob note. I’l cal for the

change another time. I’ve told my friends I shal be stuck in Wilvercombe for a

few days, Inspector. I suppose that’s right, isn’t it?’

This was disingenuous, but novelists and police-inspectors do not always see

eye to eye as regards publicity.

‘That’s right, miss. Have to ask you to stay on a bit while we look into this.

Better jump into the car and we’l run out to where you say you saw this body.

This gentleman is Dr Fenchurch. This is Sergeant Saunders.’

Harriet acknowledged the introduction.

‘Why
I’ve
been brought along I
don’t
know,’ said the police-surgeon in an

aggrieved voice. ‘If this man was down near low-water mark at two o’clock,

we shan’t see much of him tonight. Tide’s more than half-ful now, and a strong

wind blowing.’

‘That’s the devil of it,’ agreed the Inspector.

‘I know,’ said Harriet, mournfuly, ‘but realy I did my best.’ She recounted

the details of her odyssey, mentioning everything she had done at the rock and

producing the shoe, the cigarette-case, the hat, the handkerchief and the razor.

‘Wel, there,’ said the Inspector, ‘you seem to have done a pretty tidy job,

miss. Anybody’d think you’d made a study of it. Taking photographs and al.

Not but what,’ he added, sternly, ‘if you’d started sooner you’d have been

here before.’

‘I didn’t waste much time,’ pleaded Harriet, ‘and I thought, supposing the

body got washed away, or anything, it would be better to have
some
record of

it.’

‘That’s very true, miss, and I shouldn’t wonder but what you did the right

thing. Looks like a big wind rising, and that’l hold the tide up.’

‘Due south-west it is’ put in the policeman who was driving the car. ‘That

there rock wil be awash next low tide if it goes on like this, and with the sea

running it’l be a bit of a job to get out there.’

‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘The current sets very strong round the bay, and

you can’t get a boat in past the Grinders – not without you want her bottom

stove in.’

Indeed, when they arrived at ‘Murder Bay’, as Harriet had mentaly

christened it, there were no signs of the rock, stil less of the body. The sea was

half-way up the sand, roling in heavily. The little line of breakers that had

shown the hidden tops of the Grinders reef had disappeared. The wind was

freshening stil more, and the sun gleamed in spasms of briliance between

thickening banks of cloud.

‘That’s the place, miss, is it?’ asked the Inspector.

‘Oh, yes, that’s the place,’ replied Harriet, confidently.

The Inspector shook his head.

‘There’s seventeen feet of water over that rock by now,’ he said. ‘Tide’l be

ful in another hour. Can’t do anything about it now. Have to wait for low tide.

That’l be two ack emma, or thereabouts, Have to see if there’s any chance of

getting out to it then, but if you ask me, it’s working up for roughish weather.

There’s the chance, of course, that the body may get washed off and come

ashore somewhere. I’l run you up to Brennerton, Saunders; try and get some

of the men there to keep a look-out up and down the shore, and I’l cut along

back to Wilvercombe and see what I can arrange about getting a boat out.

You’l have to come along with me, miss, and make a statement.’

‘By al means,’ said Harriet, rather faintly.

The Inspector turned round and took a look at her.

‘I expect you’re feeling a bit upset, miss,’ he said, kindly, ‘and no wonder.

It’s not a pleasant thing for a young lady to have to deal with. It’s a miracle to

me, the way you handled it. Why, most young ladies would have run away, let

alone taking away al these boots and things.’

‘Wel, you see,’ explained Harriet, ‘I know what ought to be done. I write

detective stories, you know,’ she added, feeling as she spoke that this must

appear to the Inspector an idle and foolish occupation.

‘There now,’ said the Inspector. ‘It isn’t often, I daresay, you get a chance

of putting your own stories into practice, as you might say. What did you say

your name was, miss? Not that I read those sort of books much, except it might

be Edgar Walace now and again, but I’l have to know your name, of course,

in any case.’

Harriet gave her name and her London address. The Inspector seemed to

come to attention rather suddenly.

‘I fancy I’ve heard that name before,’ he remarked.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet, a little grimly; ‘I expect you have. I am—’ she laughed

rather uncomfortably – ‘I’m the notorious Harriet Vane, who was tried for

poisoning Philip Boyes two years ago.’

‘Ah, just so!’ replied the Inspector. ‘Yes. They got the felow who did it,

too, didn’t they? Arsenic case. Yes, of course. There was some very pretty

medical evidence at the trial, if I remember rightly. Smart piece of work. Lord

Peter Wimsey had something to do with it, didn’t he?’

‘Quite a lot,’ said Harriet.

‘He seems to be a clever gentleman,’ observed the Inspector. ‘One’s always

hearing of him doing something or other.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Harriet; ‘he’s – ful of activities.’

‘You’l know him very wel, I expect?’ pursued the Inspector, filed with

what Harriet felt to be unnecessary curiosity.

‘Oh, yes, quite wel. Yes, of course.’ It struck her that this sounded

ungracious, seeing that Wimsey had undoubtedly saved her from a very

disagreeable position, if not from an ignominious death, and she went on, hastily

and stiltedly, ‘I have a great deal to thank him for.’

‘Naturaly,’ replied the Inspector. ‘Not but what’ (loyaly) ‘Scotland Yard

would probably have got the right man in the end. Stil’ (here local patriotism

seemed to take the upper hand), ‘they haven’t the advantages in some ways

that we have. They can’t know al the people in London same as we know

everybody hereabouts. Stands to reason they couldn’t. Now, in a case like this

one here, ten to one we shal be able to find al about the young man in a turn of

the hand, as you might say.’

‘He may be a visitor,’ said Harriet.

‘Very likely,’ said the Inspector, ‘but I expect there’l be somebody that

knows about him, al the same. This is where you get off, Saunders. Raise al

the help you can, and get Mr Coffin to run you over to Wilvercombe when

you’re through. Now then, miss. What did you say this young chap was like?’

Harriet again described the corpse.

‘Beard, eh?’ said the Inspector. ‘Sounds like a foreigner, doesn’t it? I can’t

just place him for the moment, but there’s not much doubt he’l be pretty easily

traced. Now, here we are at the police-station, miss. If you’l just step in here a

minute, the Superintendent would like to see you.’

Harriet accordingly stepped in and told her story once again, this time in

minute detail, to Superintendent Glaisher, who received it with flattering interest.

She handed over the various things taken from the body and her rol of film, and

was then questioned exhaustively as to how she had spent the day, both before

and after finding the body.

‘By the way,’ said the Superintendent, ‘this young felow you met on the

road – what’s become of him?’

Harriet stared about her as though she expected to find Mr Perkins stil at

her elbow.

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d forgotten al about him. He must have gone

off while I was ringing you up.’

‘Odd,’ said Glaisher, making a note to inquire after Mr Perkins.

‘But he can’t possibly know anything about it,’ said Harriet. ‘He was

fearfuly surprised – and frightened. That’s why he came back with me.’

‘We’l have to check up on him, though, as a matter of routine,’ said the

Superintendent. Harriet was about to protest that this was a waste of time,

when she suddenly realised that in al probability it was her own story that was

due to be ‘checked up on’. She was silent, and the Superintendent went on:

‘Wel, now, Miss Vane. I’m afraid we shal have to ask you to stay within

reach for a few days. What were you thinking of doing?’

‘Oh, I quite understand that. I suppose I’d better put up somewhere in

Wilvercombe. You needn’t be afraid of
my
running away. I want to be in on

this thing.’

The policeman looked a little disapproving. Everybody is, of course, only too

delighted to take the limelight in a gruesome tragedy, but a lady ought, surely, to

pretend the contrary. Inspector Umpelty, however, merely replied with the

modest suggestion that Clegg’s Temperance Hostel was generaly reckoned to

be as cheap and comfortable as you could require.

Harriet laughed, remembering suddenly that a novelist owes a duty to her

newspaper reporters. ‘Miss Harriet Vane, when interviewed by our

correspondent at Clegg’s Temperance Hostel—’ That would never do.

‘I don’t care for Temperance Hostels,’ she said, firmly. ‘What’s the best

hotel in the town?’

‘The Resplendent is the largest,’ said Glaisher.

‘Then you wil find me at the Resplendent,’ said Harriet, picking up her dusty

knapsack and preparing for action.

‘Inspector Umpelty wil run you down there in the car,’ said the

Superintendent, with a little nod to Umpelty.

‘Very good of him,’ answered Harriet, amused.

Within a very few minutes the car deposited her at one of those monster

seaside palaces which look as though they had been designed by a German

manufacturer of children’s cardboard toys. Its glass porch was crowded with

hothouse plants, and the lofty dome of its reception-hal was supported on gilt

pilasters rising out of an ocean of blue plush. Harriet tramped heedlessly

through its spacious splendours and demanded a large single bedroom with

private bath, on the first floor, and overlooking the sea.

‘Ai’m afraid,’ said the receptionist, casting a languid glance of disfavour at

Harriet’s knapsack and shoes, ‘that al our rooms are engaged.’

‘Surely not,’ said Harriet, ‘so early in the season. Just ask the manager to

come and speak to me for a moment.’ She sat down with a determined air in

the nearest wel-stuffed armchair and, hailing a waiter, demanded a cocktail.

‘Wil you join me, Inspector?’

The Inspector thanked her, but explained that a certain discretion was due to

his position.

‘Another time, then,’ said Harriet, smiling, and dropping a pound-note on the

waiter’s tray, with a somewhat ostentatious display of a wel-filed note-case.

Inspector Umpelty grinned faintly as he saw the receptionist beckon to the

water. Then he moved gently across to the desk and spoke a few words.

Presently the assistant-receptionist approached Harriet with a deprecating

smile.

‘We find, madam, that we can efter al accommodate you. An American

gentleman has informed us thet he is vacating his room on the first floor. It

overlooks the Esplanade. Ai think you wil find it quaite satisfactory.’

‘Has it a private bath?’ demanded Harriet, without enthusiasm.

‘Oh, yes, madam. And a belcony.’

‘Al right,’ said Harriet, ‘What number? Twenty-three. It has a telephone, I

suppose? Wel, Inspector, you’l know where to find me, won’t you?’

She grinned a friendly grin at him.

‘Yes, miss,’ said Inspector Umpelty, grinning also. He had his private cause

for amusement. If Harriet’s note-case had ensured her reception at the

Resplendent, it was his own private whisper of ‘friend of Lord Peter Wimsey’

that had produced the view over the sea, the bath and the balcony. It was just

as wel that Harriet did not know this. It would have annoyed her.

Curiously enough, however, the image of Lord Peter kept intruding upon her

mind while she was telephoning her address to the
Morning Star
, and even

while she was working her way through the Resplendent’s expensive and

admirable dinner. If the relations between them had not been what they were, it

would have been only fair to ring him up and tel him about the corpse with the

cut throat. But under the circumstances, the action might be misinterpreted.

And, in any case, the thing was probably only the dulest kind of suicide, not

worth bringing to his attention. Not nearly so complicated and interesting a

problem, for instance, as the central situation in
The Fountain-Pen Mystery
. In

that absorbing mystery, the vilain was at the moment engaged in committing a

crime in Edinburgh, while constructing an ingenious alibi involving a steam-

yacht, a wireless time-signal, five clocks and the change from summer to winter

time. (Apparently the cut-throat gentleman had come from the Wilvercombe

direction. By road? by train? Had he walked from Darley Halt? If not, who had

brought him?) Realy, she must try and concentrate on this alibi. The town-

clock was the great difficulty. How could that be altered? And altered it must