Selecting a back window which he judged to belong to Mrs. Forrest’s flat, Wimsey promptly grasped a drainpipe and began to swarm up it with the agility of a cat-burglar. About fifteen feet from the ground he paused, reached up, appeared to detach something with a quick jerk, and then slid very gingerly to the ground again, holding his right hand at a cautious distance from his body, as though it were breakable.
And indeed, to his amazement, Parker observed that Wimsey now held a long-stemmed glass in his fingers, similar to those from which they had drunk in Mrs. Forrest’s sitting-room.
“What on earth—?” said Parker.
“Hush! I’m Hawkshaw the detective—gathering fingerprints. Here we come a-wassailing and gathering prints in May. That’s why I took the glass back. I brought a different one in the second time. Sorry I had to do this athletic stunt, but the only cotton-reel I could find hadn’t much on it. When I changed the glass, I tiptoed into the bathroom and hung it out of the window. Hope she hasn’t been in there since. Just brush my bags down, will you, old man? Gently—don’t touch the glass.”
“What the devil do you want fingerprints for?”
“You’re a grateful sort of person. Why, for all you know, Mrs. Forrest is someone the Yard has been looking for for years. And anyway, you could compare the prints with those on the Bass bottle, if any. Besides, you never know when fingerprints mayn’t come in handy. They’re excellent things to have about the house. Coast clear? Right. Hail a taxi, will you? I can’t wave my hand with this glass in it. Look so silly, don’t you know. I say!”
“Well?”
“I saw something else. The first time I went out for the drinks, I had a peep into her bedroom.”
“Yes?”
“What do you think I found in the washstand drawer?”
“What?”
“A hypodermic syringe!”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes, and an innocent little box of ampullae, with a doctor’s prescription headed ‘The injection, Mrs. Forrest. One to be injected when the pain is very severe.’ What do you think of that?”
“Tell you when we’ve got the results of that postmortem,” said Parker, really impressed. “You didn’t bring the prescription, I suppose?”
“No, and I didn’t inform the lady who we were or what we were after or ask her permission to carry away the family crystal. But I made a note of the chemist’s address.”
“Did you?” ejaculated Parker. “Occasionally, my lad, you have some glimmerings of sound detective sense.”
VIII
Concerning Crime
“Society is at the mercy of a murderer who is remorseless, who takes no accomplices and who keeps his head.”
Edmund Pearson: Murder at Smutty Nose
Letter from Miss Alexandra Katherine Climpson to Lord Peter Wimsey
Fair View,
Nelson Avenue,
Leahampton..
My dear Lord Peter,
I have not yet been able to get all the information you ask for, as Miss Whittaker has been away for some weeks, inspecting chicken farms!! With a view to purchase, I mean, of course, and not in any sanitary capacity. I really think she means to set up farming with Miss Findlater, though what Miss Whittaker can see in that very gushing and really silly young woman I cannot think. However, Miss Findlater has evidently quite a “pash” (as we used to call it at school) for Miss Whittaker, and I am afraid none of us are above being flattered by such outspoken admiration. I must say, I think it rather unhealthy—you may remember Miss Clemence Dane’s very clever book on the subject?—I have seen so much of that kind of thing in my rather Woman-Ridden existence! It has such a bad effect, as a rule, upon the weaker character of the two—But I must not take up your time with my twaddle!!
Miss Murgatroyd, who was quite a friend of old Miss Dawson, however, has been able to tell me a little about her past life.
It seems that, until five years ago, Miss Dawson lived in Warwickshire with her cousin, a Miss Clara Whittaker, Mary Whittaker’s great-aunt on the father’s side. This Miss Clara was evidently rather a “character,” as my dear father used to call it. In her day she was considered very “advanced” and not quite nice (!) because she refused several good offers, cut her hair short (!!) and set up in business for herself as a horse-breeder!!! Of course, nowadays, nobody would think anything of it, but then the old lady—or young lady as she was when she embarked on this revolutionary proceeding, was quite a pioneer.
Agatha Dawson was a schoolfellow of hers, and deeply attached to her. And as a result of this friendship, Agatha’s sister, Harriet, married Clara Whittaker’s brother James! But Agatha did not care about marriage, any more than Clara, and the two ladies lived together in a big old house, with immense stables, in a village in Warwickshire—Crofton, I think the name was. Clara Whittaker turned out to be a remarkably good business woman, and worked up a big “connection” among the hunting folk in those parts. Her hunters became quite famous, and from a capital of a few thousand pounds with which she started she made quite a fortune, and was a very rich woman before her death! Agatha Dawson never had anything to do with the horsey part of the business. She was the “domestic” partner, and looked after the house and the servants.
When Clara Whittaker died, she left all her money to Agatha, passing over her own family, with whom she was not on very good terms—owing to the narrow-minded attitude they had taken up about her horse-dealing!! Her nephew, Charles Whittaker, who was a clergyman, and the father of our Miss Whittaker, resented very much not getting the money, though, as he had kept up the feud in a very unchristian manner, he had really no
