“I know. But one gets a general idea.”
“Oh, yes. Only you have to check up your ideas by other things—facts, and so on. You can’t just theorize.”
“Very dangerous things, theories. F’r instance—take this case—I’ve seen one or two stiff ’uns in my short life, and, if I’d started theorizin’ about this business, just from the look of the body, d’you know what I’d have said?”
“God knows what a layman would say about a medical question,” retorted the doctor, with a sour little grin.
“Hear, hear!—Well, I should have said he’d been dead a long time.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“You said yourself that rigor was well advanced. Give it, say, six hours to set in and—when did it pass off?”
“It was passing off then—I remarked upon it at the time.”
“So you did. I thought rigor usually lasted twenty-four hours or so.”
“It does, sometimes. Sometimes it goes off quickly. Quick come, quick go, as a rule. Still, I agree with you, that in the absence of other evidence, I should have put the death rather earlier than ten o’clock.”
“You admit that?”
“I do. But we know he came in not earlier than a quarter past ten.”
“You’ve seen Williamson, then?”
“Oh, yes. I thought it better to check up on the thing as far as possible. So I can only suppose that, what with the death being sudden, and what with the warmth of the room—he was very close to the fire, you know—the whole thing came on and worked itself off very quickly.”
“H’m! Of course, you knew the old boy’s constitution very well.”
“Oh, rather. He was very frail. Heart gets a bit worn-out when you’re over the fourscore and ten, you know. I should never have been surprised at his dropping down anywhere. And then, he’d had a bit of a shock, you see.”
“What was that?”
“Seeing his sister the afternoon before. They told you about that, I imagine, since you seem to know all about the business. He came along to Harley Street afterwards and saw me. I told him to go to bed and keep quiet. Arteries very strained, and pulse erratic. He was excited—naturally. He ought to have taken a complete rest. As I see it, he must have insisted on getting up, in spite of feeling groggy, walked here—he would do it—and collapsed straight away.”
“That’s all right, Penberthy, but when—just when—did it happen?”
“Lord knows. I don’t. Have another?”
“No, thanks; not for the moment. I say, I suppose you are perfectly satisfied about it all?”
“Satisfied?” The doctor stared at him. “Yes, of course. If you mean, satisfied as to what he died of—of course I’m satisfied. I shouldn’t have given a certificate if I hadn’t been satisfied.”
“Nothing about the body struck you as queer?”
“What sort of thing?”
“You know what I mean as well as I do,” said Wimsey, suddenly turning and looking the other straight in the face. The change in him was almost startling—it was as if a steel blade had whipped suddenly out of its velvet scabbard. Penberthy met his eye, and nodded slowly.
“Yes, I do know what you mean. But not here. We’d better go up to the Library. There won’t be anybody there.”
V
—And Finds the Club Suit Blocked
There never was anybody in the library at the Bellona. It was a large, quiet, pleasant room, with the bookshelves arranged in bays; each of which contained a writing-table and three or four chairs. Occasionally someone would wander in to consult the Times Atlas, or a work on Strategy and Tactics, or to hunt up an ancient Army list, but for the most part it was deserted. Sitting in the farthest bay, immured by books and silence, confidential conversation could be carried on with all the privacy of the confessional.
“Well, now,” said Wimsey, “what about it?”
“About—?” prompted the doctor, with professional caution.
“About that leg?”
“I wonder if anybody else noticed that?” said Penberthy.
“I doubt it. I did, of course. But then, I make that kind of thing my hobby. Not a popular one, perhaps—an ill-favored thing, but mine own. In fact. I’ve got rather a turn for corpses. But not knowin’ quite what it meant, and seein’ you didn’t seem to want to call attention to it, I didn’t put myself forward.”
“No—I wanted to think it over. You see, it suggested, at the first blush, something rather—”
“Unpleasant,” said Wimsey. “If you knew how often I’d heard that word in the last two days! Well, let’s face it. Let’s admit, straight away, that, once rigor sets in, it stays in till it starts to pass off, and that, when it does start to go it usually begins with the face and jaw, and not suddenly in one knee-joint. Now Fentiman’s jaw and neck were as rigid as wood—I felt ’em. But the left leg swung loose from the knee. Now how do you explain that?”
“It is extremely puzzling. As no doubt you are aware, the obvious explanation would be that the joint had been forcibly loosened by somebody or something, after rigor had set in. In that case of course, it wouldn’t stiffen up again. It would remain loose until the whole body relaxed. But how it happened—”
“That’s just it. Dead people don’t go about jamming their legs into things and forcing their own joints. And surely, if anybody had found the body like that he would have mentioned it. I mean, can you imagine one of the waiter-johnnies, for instance, finding an old gentleman stiff as a poker in the best armchair and then just givin’ him a dose of knee-jerks and leavin’ him there?”
“The only thing I could think of,” said Penberthy, “was that a waiter or somebody had found him, and tried to move him—and then got frightened and barged off without saying anything. It sounds absurd. But people do do odd things, especially if they’re scared.”
“But what was there to be scared of?”
“It might seem alarming to a man in
