“It’s very good of you—”
“No, no, not at all. It’s my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don’t mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer frightfully ho and all that. And I’ll call again, if I may.”
“I will give the footman orders to admit you,” said the prisoner, gravely; “you will always find me at home.”
Wimsey walked down the dingy street with a feeling of being almost lightheaded.
“I do believe I’ll pull it off—she’s sore, of course—no wonder, after that rotten brute—but she doesn’t feel repelled—one couldn’t cope with being repulsive—her skin is like honey—she ought to wear deep red—and old garnets—and lots of rings, rather old-fashioned ones—I could work to make it up to her—she’s got a sense of humour too—brains—one wouldn’t be dull—one would wake up, and there’d be a whole day for jolly things to happen in—and then one would come home and go to bed—that would be jolly, too—and while she was writing, I could go out and mess round, so we shouldn’t either of us be dull—I wonder if Bunter was right about this suit—it’s a little dark, I always think, but the line is good—”
He paused before a shop window to get a surreptitious view of his own reflection. A large coloured window bill caught his eye—
Great Special Offer
One Month Only
“Oh, God!” he said softly, sobered at once. “One month—four weeks—thirty-one days. There isn’t much time. And I don’t know where to begin.”
V
“Well now,” said Wimsey, “why do people kill people?”
He was sitting in Miss Katharine Climpson’s private office. The establishment was ostensibly a typing bureau, and indeed there were three efficient female typists who did very excellent work for authors and men of science from time to time. Apparently the business was a large and flourishing one, for work frequently had to be refused on the ground that the staff was working at full pressure. But on other floors of the building there were other activities. All the employees were women—mostly elderly, but a few still young and attractive—and if the private register in the steel safe had been consulted, it would have been seen that all these women were of the class unkindly known as “superfluous.” There were spinsters with small fixed incomes, or no income at all; widows without family; women deserted by peripatetic husbands and living on a restricted alimony, who, previous to their engagement by Miss Climpson, had had no resources but bridge and boardinghouse gossip. There were retired and disappointed schoolteachers; out-of-work actresses; courageous people who had failed with hat shops and tea parlours; and even a few Bright Young Things, for whom the cocktail party and the nightclub had grown boring. These women seemed to spend most of their time in answering advertisements. Unmarried gentlemen who desired to meet ladies possessed of competences, with a view to matrimony; sprightly sexagenarians, who wanted housekeepers for remote country districts; ingenious gentlemen with financial schemes on the lookout for capital; literary gentlemen, anxious for female collaborators; plausible gentlemen about to engage talent for productions in the provinces; benevolent gentlemen, who could tell people how to make money in their spare time—gentlemen such as these were very liable to receive applications from members of Miss Climpson’s staff. It may have been coincidence that these gentlemen so very often had the misfortune to appear shortly afterwards before the magistrate on charges of fraud, blackmail or attempted procuration, but it is a fact that Miss Climpson’s office boasted a private telephone line to Scotland Yard, and that few of her ladies were quite so unprotected as they appeared. It is also a fact that the money which paid for the rent and upkeep of the premises might, by zealous enquirers, have been traced to Lord Peter Wimsey’s banking account. His lordship was somewhat reticent about this venture of his, but occasionally, when closeted with Chief Inspector Parker or other intimate friends, referred to it as “My Cattery.”
Miss Climpson poured out a cup of tea before replying. She wore a quantity of little bangles on her spare, lace covered wrists, and they chinked aggressively with every movement.
“I really don’t know,” she said, apparently taking the problem as a psychological one, “it is so dangerous, as well as so terribly wicked, one wonders that anybody has the effrontery to undertake it. And very often they gain so little by it.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Wimsey, “what do they set out to gain? Of course, some people seem to do it for the fun of the thing, like that German female, what’s her name, who enjoyed seeing people die.”
“Such a strange taste,” said Miss Climpson. “No sugar, I think?—You know, dear Lord Peter, it has been my melancholy duty to attend many deathbeds, and, though a number of them—such as my dear father’s—were most Christian and beautiful, I could not call them fun. People have very different ideas of fun, of course, and personally I have never greatly cared for George Robey, though Charlie Chaplin always makes me laugh—still, you know, there are disagreeable details attending any deathbed which one would think could hardly be to anybody’s taste, however depraved.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Wimsey. “But it must be fun, in one sense, to feel that you can control
