“Good God, Wimsey. Impossible. Think of the risk.”
“What risk? If anybody opened the door, there was old General Fentiman, who had gone in, not seeing the notice, and died of fury at not being able to get his call. Agitation acting on a weak heart and all that. Not very risky, really. Unless somebody was to think to inquire about the notice, and probably it wouldn’t occur to anyone in the excitement of the moment.”
“You’re an ingenious beast, Wimsey.”
“Aren’t I? But we can prove it. We’re going down to the Bellona Club to prove it now. Half-past eleven. A nice, quiet time. Shall I tell you what we are going to find inside that cabinet?”
“Fingerprints?” suggested Mr. Murbles, eagerly.
“Afraid that’s too much to hope for after all this time. What do you say, Charles?”
“I say we shall find a long scratch on the paint,” said Parker, “where the foot of the corpse rested and stiffened in that position.”
“Holed it in one, Charles. And that, you see, was when the leg had to be bent with violence in order to drag the corpse out.”
“And as the body was in a sitting position,” pursued Parker, “we shall, of course, find a seat inside the cabinet.”
“Yes, and, with luck, we may find a projecting nail or something which caught the General’s trouser-leg when the body was removed.”
“And possibly a bit of carpet.”
“To match the fragment of thread I got off the corpse’s right boot? I hope so.”
“Bless my soul,” said Mr. Murbles. “Let us go at once. Really, this is most exciting. That is, I am profoundly grieved. I hope it is not as you say.”
They hastened downstairs and stood for a few moments waiting for a taxi to pass. Suddenly Wimsey made a dive into a dark corner by the porch. There was a scuffle, and out into the light came a small man, heavily muffled in an overcoat, with his hat thrust down to his eyebrows in the manner of a stage detective. Wimsey unbonneted him with the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat.
“So it’s you, is it? I thought I knew your face. What the devil do you mean by following people about like this?”
The man ceased struggling and glanced sharply up at him with a pair of dark, beady eyes.
“Do you think it wise, my lord, to use violence?”
“Who is it?” asked Parker.
“Pritchard’s clerk. He’s been hanging round George Fentiman for days. Now he’s hanging round me. He’s probably the fellow that’s been hanging round the Bellona. If you go on like this, my man, you’ll find yourself hanging somewhere else one of these days. Now, see here. Do you want me to give you in charge?”
“That is entirely as your lordship pleases,” said the clerk, with a cunning sneer. “There is a policeman just round the corner, if you wish to attract publicity.”
Wimsey looked at him for a moment, and then began to laugh.
“When did you last see Mr. Pritchard? Come on, out with it! Yesterday? This morning? Have you seen him since lunch time?”
A shadow of indecision crossed the man’s face.
“You haven’t? I’m sure you haven’t! Have you?”
“And why not, my lord?”
“You go back to Mr. Pritchard,” said Wimsey, impressively, and shaking his captive gently by the coat-collar to add force to his words, “and if he doesn’t countermand your instructions and call you off this sleuthing business (which, by the way, you do very amateurishly), I’ll give you a fiver. See? Now, hop it. I know where to find you and you know where to find me. Good night and may Morpheus hover over your couch and bless your slumbers. Here’s our taxi.”
XIII
Spades Are Trumps
It was close on one o’clock when the three men emerged from the solemn portals of the Bellona Club. Mr. Murbles was very much subdued. Wimsey and Parker displayed the sober elation of men whose calculations have proved satisfactory. They had found the scratches. They had found the nail in the seat of the chair. They had even found the carpet. Moreover, they had found the origin of Oliver. Reconstructing the crime, they had sat in the end bay of the library, as Robert Fentiman might have sat, casting his eyes around him while he considered how he could best hide and cover up this extremely inopportune decease. They had noticed how the gilt lettering on the back of a volume caught the gleam from the shaded reading lamp. “Oliver Twist.” The name, not consciously noted at the time, had yet suggested itself an hour or so later to Fentiman, when, calling up from Charing Cross, he had been obliged to invent a surname on the spur of the moment.
And, finally, placing the light, spare form of the unwilling Mr. Murbles in the telephone cabinet, Parker had demonstrated that a fairly tall and strong man could have extricated the body from the box, carried it into the smoking-room and arranged it in the armchair by the fire, all in something under four minutes.
Mr. Murbles made one last effort on behalf of his client. “There were people in the smoking-room all morning, my dear Lord Peter. If it were as you suggest, how could Fentiman have made sure of four, or even three minutes secure from observation while he brought the body in?”
“Were people there all morning, sir? Are you sure? Wasn’t there just one period when one could be certain that everybody would be either out in the street or upstairs on the big balcony that runs along in front of the first-floor windows, looking out—and listening? It was Armistice Day, remember.”
Mr. Murbles was horror-struck.
“The two-minutes’ silence?—God bless my soul! How abominable! How—how blasphemous! Really, I cannot find words. This is the most disgraceful thing I ever heard of. At the moment when all our thoughts should be concentrated on the brave fellows who laid down their lives for us—to be engaged in perpetrating a fraud—an
