“I suppose not.”
“Well, then, you came round to me, sir, and insisted on making the uproar. I warned you, you know, to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I wish you had spoken more openly.”
“If I had, would you have cared to hush the matter up?”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Murbles, polishing his eyeglasses.
“Just so. The next step was to try and find out what had actually happened to the General on the night of the 10th, and morning of the 11th. And the moment I got round to his flat I was faced with two entirely contradictory pieces of evidence. First, there was the story about Oliver, which appeared more or less remarkable upon the face of it. And secondly, there was Woodward’s evidence about the clothes.”
“What about them?”
“I asked him, you remember, whether anything at all had been removed from the clothes after he had fetched them away from the cloakroom at the Bellona, and he said, nothing. His memory as to other points seemed pretty reliable, and I felt sure that he was honest and straightforward. So I was forced to the conclusion that, wherever the General had spent the night, he had certainly never set foot in the street the next morning.”
“Why?” asked Mr. Murbles. “What did you expect to find on the clothes?”
“My dear sir, consider what day it was. November 11th. Is it conceivable that, if the old man had been walking in the streets as a free agent on Armistice Day, he would have gone into the Club without his Flanders poppy? A patriotic, military old bird like that? It was really unthinkable.”
“Then where was he? And how did he get into the Club? He was there, you know.”
“True; he was there—in a state of advanced rigor. In fact, according to Penberthy’s account, which, by the way, I had checked by the woman who laid out the body later, the rigor was even then beginning to pass off. Making every possible allowance for the warmth of the room and so on, he must have been dead long before ten in the morning, which was his usual time for going to the Club.”
“But, my dear lad, bless my soul, that’s impossible. He couldn’t have been carried in there dead. Somebody would have noticed it.”
“So they would. And the odd thing is that nobody ever saw him arrive at all. What is more, nobody saw him leave for the last time on the previous evening. General Fentiman—one of the best-known figures in the Club! And he seems to have become suddenly invisible. That won’t do, you know.”
“What is your idea, then? That he slept the night in the Club?”
“I think he slept a very peaceful and untroubled sleep that night—in the Club.”
“You shock me inexpressibly,” said Mr. Murbles. “I understand you to suggest that he died—”
“Some time the previous evening. Yes.”
“But he couldn’t have sat there all night in the smoking-room. The servants would have been bound to—er—notice him.”
“Of course. But it was to somebody’s interest to see that they didn’t notice. Somebody who wanted it thought that he hadn’t died till the following day, after the death of Lady Dormer.”
“Robert Fentiman.”
“Precisely.”
“But how did Robert know about Lady Dormer?”
“Ah! That is a point I’m not altogether happy about. George had an interview with General Fentiman after the old man’s visit to his sister. George denies that the General mentioned anything to him about the will, but then, if George was in the plot he naturally would deny it. I am rather concerned about George.”
“What had he to gain?”
“Well, if George’s information was going to make a difference of half a million to Robert, he would naturally expect to be given a share of the boodle, don’t you think?”
Mr. Murbles groaned.
“Look here,” broke in Parker, “this is a very pretty theory, Peter, but, allowing that the General died, as you say, on the evening of the tenth, where was the body? As Mr. Murbles says, it would have been a trifle noticeable if left about.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Murbles, seized with an idea. “Repellent as the whole notion is to me, I see no difficulty about that. Robert Fentiman was at that time living in the Club. No doubt the General died in Robert’s bedroom and was concealed there till the next morning!”
Wimsey shook his head. “That won’t work. I think the General’s hat and coat and things were in Robert’s bedroom, but the corpse couldn’t have been. Think, sir. Here is a photograph of the entrance-hall, with the big staircase running up in full view of the front door and the desk and the bar-entrance. Would you risk carrying a corpse downstairs in the middle of the morning, with servants and members passing in and out continually? And the service stairs would be even worse. They are right round the other side of the building, with continual kitchen traffic going on all the time. No. The body wasn’t in Robert’s bedroom.”
“Where, then?”
“Yes, where? After all, Peter, we’ve got to make this story hold water.”
Wimsey spread the rest of the photographs out upon the table.
“Look for yourselves,” he said. “Here is the end bay of the library, where the General was sitting making notes about the money he was to inherit. A very nice, retired spot, invisible from the doorway, supplied with ink, blotter, writing-paper and every modern convenience, including the works of Charles Dickens elegantly bound in morocco. Here is a shot of the library taken from the smoking-room, clean through the anteroom and down the gangway—again a tribute to the convenience of the Bellona Club. Observe how handily the telephone cabinet is situated, in case—”
“The telephone cabinet?”
“Which, you will remember, was so annoyingly labeled ‘Out of Order’ when Wetheridge wanted to telephone. I can’t find anybody who remembers putting
