they have there. But of course--being only human--it breaks down now and again--doesn't it?'
She folded her wrinkled hands over one another on the edge of the table, and he saw a kind of shadow flicker over her sharp dark eyes.
'If I'm not bothering you too much--in what name was the other registered?'
The hands trembled a little, but she said steadily:
'I don't understand you.'
'I'm frightfully sorry. Never was good at explaining myself. There were twin boys, weren't there? Under what name did they register the other? I'm sorry to be a nuisance, but it's really rather important.'
'What makes you suppose that there were twins?'
'Oh, I don't suppose it. I wouldn't have bothered you for a supposition. I know there was a twin brother. What became--at least, I do know more or less what became of him--'
'It died,' she said hurriedly.
'I hate to seem contradictory,' said Wimsey. 'Most unattractive behaviour. But it didn't die, you know. In fact, it's alive now. It's only the name I want to know, you know.'
'And why should I tell you anything, young man?'
'Because,' said Wimsey, 'if you will pardon the mention of anything so disagreeable to a refined taste, there's been a murder committed and your nephew Robert is suspected. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that the murder was done by the brother. That's why I want to get hold of him, don't you see. It would be such a relief to my mind--I am naturally nice-minded--if you would help me to find him. Because, if not, I shall have to go to the police, and then you might be subpoena'd as a witness, and I shouldn't like--I really shouldn't like--to see you in the witness-box at a murder trial. So much unpleasant publicity, don't you know. Whereas, if we can lay hands on the brother quickly, you and Robert need never come into it at all.'
Mrs Brown sat in grim thought for a few minutes.
'Very well,' she said, 'I will tell you.'
'Of course,' said Wimsey to Chief-Inspector Parker a few days later, 'the whole thing was quite obvious when one had heard about the reversal of friend Duckworthy's interior economy.'
'No doubt, no doubt,' said Parker. 'Nothing could be simpler. But all the same, you are aching to tell me how you deduced it and I am willing to be instructed. Are all twins wrong-sided? And are all wrong-sided people twins?'
'Yes. No. Or rather, no, yes. Dissimilar twins and some kinds of similar twins may both be quite normal. But the kind of similar twins that result from the splitting of a single cell may come out as looking-glass twins. It depends on the line of fission in the original cell. You can do it artificially with tadpoles and a bit of horsehair.'
'I will make a note to do it at once,' said Parker gravely.
'In fact, I've read somewhere that a person with a reversed inside practically always turns out to be one of a pair of similar twins. So you see, while poor old R.D. was burbling on about the Student of Prague and the fourth dimension, I was expecting the twin-brother.
'Apparently what happened was this. There were three sisters of the name of Dart--Susan, Hester and Emily. Susan married a man called Brown; Hester married a man called Duckworthy; Emily was unmarried. By one of those cheery little ironies of which life is so full, the only sister who had a baby, or who was apparently capable of having babies, was the unmarried Emily. By way of compensation, she overdid it and had twins.
'When this catastrophe was about to occur, Emily (deserted, of course, by the father) confided in her sisters, the parents being dead. Susan was a tartar--besides, she had married above her station and was climbing steadily on a ladder of good works. She delivered herself of a few texts and washed her hands of the business. Hester was a kind-hearted soul. She offered to adopt the infant, when produced, and bring it up as her own. Well, the baby came, and, as I said before, it was twins.
'That was a bit too much for Duckworthy. He had agreed to one baby, but twins were more than he had bargained for. Hester was allowed to pick her twin, and, being a kindly soul, she picked the weaklier-looking one, which was our Robert--the mirror-image twin. Emily had to keep the other, and, as soon as she was strong enough, decamped with him to Australia, after which she was no more heard of.
'Emily's twin was registered in her own name of Dart and baptised Richard. Robert and Richard were two pretty men. Robert was registered as Hester Duckworthy's own child--there were no tiresome rules in those days requiring notification of births by doctors and midwives, so one could do as one liked about these matters. The Duckworthys, complete with baby, moved to Brixton, where Robert was looked upon as being a perfectly genuine little Duckworthy.
'Apparently Emily died in Australia, and Richard, then a boy of fifteen, worked his passage home to London. He does not seem to have been a nice little boy. Two years afterwards, his path crossed that of Brother Robert and produced the episode of the air-raid night.
'Hester may have known about the wrong-sidedness of Robert, or she may not. Anyway, he wasn't told. I imagine that the shock of the explosion caused him to revert more strongly to his natural left-handed tendency. It also seems to have induced a new tendency to amnesia under similar shock-conditions. The whole thing preyed on his mind, and he became more and more vague and somnambulant.
'I rather think that Richard may have discovered the existence of his double and turned it to account. That explains the central incident of the mirror. I think Robert must have mistaken the glass door of the tea-shop for the door of the barber's shop. It really was Richard who came to meet him, and who retired again so hurriedly for fear of being seen and noted. Circumstances played into his hands, of course--but these meetings do take place, and the fact that they were both wearing soft hats and burberries is not astonishing on a dark, wet day.
'And then there is the photograph. No doubt the original mistake was the photographer's, but I shouldn't be surprised if Richard welcomed it and chose that particular print on that account. Though that would mean, of course, that he knew about the wrong-sidedness of Robert. I don't know how he could have done that, but he may have had opportunities for inquiry. It was known in the Army, and rumours may have got round. But I won't press that point.
'There's one rather queer thing, and that is that Robert should have had that dream about strangling, on the very night, as far as one could make out, that Richard was engaged in doing away with Jessie Haynes. They say that similar twins are always in close sympathy with one another--that each knows what the other is thinking about, for instance, and contracts the same illness on the same day and all that. Richard was the stronger twin of the two, and perhaps he dominated Robert more than Robert did him. I'm sure I don't know. Daresay it's all bosh. The point is that you've found him all right.'
'Yes. Once we'd got the clue there was no difficulty.'
'Well, let's toddle round to the Cri and have one.'
Wimsey got up and set his tie to rights before the glass.
'All the same,' he said, 'there's something queer about mirrors. Uncanny, a bit, don't you think so?'
THE INCREDIBLE ELOPEMENT OF LORD PETER WIMSEY
A Lord Peter Wimsey Story
............
'That house, senor?' said the landlord of the little posada. 'That is the house of the American physician, whose wife, may the blessed saints preserve us, is bewitched.' He crossed himself, and so did his wife and daughter.
'Bewitched, is she?' said Langley sympathetically. He was a professor of ethnology, and this was not his first visit to the Pyrenees. He had, however, never before penetrated to any place quite so remote as this tiny hamlet, clinging, like a rock-plant, high up the scarred granite shoulders of the mountain. He scented material here for his book on Basque folk-lore. With tact, he might persuade the old man to tell his story.
'And in what manner,' he asked, 'is the lady bespelled?'
'Who knows?' replied the landlord, shrugging his shoulders. ''The man that asked questions on Friday was buried on Saturday'. Will your honour consent to take his supper?'
Langley took the hint. To press the question would be to encounter obstinate silence. Later, when they knew him better, perhaps--
His dinner was served to him at the family table--the oily, pepper-flavoured stew to which he was so well
