“Yes, but I don’t think he murdered Philip Boyes, do you? I had to see him to make sure. Where do we go next?”
“We’ll try Joey Trimbles’. That’s the stronghold of the opposition show.”
Joey Trimbles occupied a studio over a mews. Here there was the same crowd, the same smoke, more kippers, still more drinks and still more heat and conversation. In addition there was a blaze of electric light, a gramophone, five dogs and a strong smell of oil paints. Sylvia Marriott was expected. Wimsey found himself involved in a discussion of free love, D. H. Lawrence, the prurience of prudery and the immoral significance of long skirts. In time, however, he was rescued by the arrival of a masculine looking middle-aged woman with a sinister smile and a pack of cards, who proceeded to tell everybody’s fortune. The company gathered around her, and at the same time a girl came in and announced that Sylvia had sprained her ankle and couldn’t come. Everybody said warmly, “Oh, how sickening, poor dear!” and forgot the subject immediately.
“We’ll scoot off,” said Marjorie. “Never mind about saying goodbye. Nobody marks you. It’s good luck about Sylvia, because she’ll be at home and can’t escape us, I sometimes wish they’d all sprain their ankles. And yet, you know, nearly all those people are doing very good work. Even the Kropotky crowd. I used to enjoy this kind of thing myself, once.”
“We’re getting old, you and I,” said Wimsey. “Sorry, that’s rude. But do you know, I’m getting on for forty, Marjorie.”
“You wear well. But you are looking a bit fagged tonight, Peter dear. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing at all but middle age.”
“You’ll be settling down if you’re not careful.”
“Oh, I’ve been settled for years.”
“With Bunter and the books. I envy you sometimes, Peter.”
Wimsey said nothing. Marjorie looked at him almost in alarm, and tucked her arm in his.
“Peter—do please be happy. I mean, you’ve always been the comfortable sort of person that nothing could touch. Don’t alter, will you?”
That was the second time Wimsey had been asked not to alter himself; the first time, the request had exalted him; this time, it terrified him. As the taxi lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool’s Tragedy, he could have cried, “Oh, I am changing, changing, fearfully changing.” Whether his present enterprise failed or succeeded, things would never be the same again. It was not that his heart would be broken by a disastrous love—he had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognised the loss of something. From now on, every hour of lightheartedness would be, not a prerogative but an achievement—one more axe or case bottle or fowling piece, rescued, Crusoe fashion, from a sinking ship.
For the first time, too, he doubted his own power to carry through what he had undertaken. His personal feelings had been involved before this in his investigations, but they had never before clouded his mind. He was fumbling—grasping uncertainly here and there at fugitive and mocking possibilities. He asked questions at random, doubtful of his object, and the shortness of the time, which would once have stimulated, now frightened and confused him.
“I’m sorry, Marjorie,” he said, rousing himself, “I’m afraid I’m being damned dull. Oxygen starvation, probably. D’you mind if we have the window down a bit? That’s better. Give me good food and a little air to breathe and I will caper, goat like, to a dishonourable old age. People will point me out, as I creep, bald and yellow and supported by discreet corsetry, into the nightclubs of my great grandchildren, and they’ll say, ‘Look, darling! that’s the wicked Lord Peter, celebrated for never having spoken a reasonable word for the last ninety-six years. He was the only aristocrat who escaped the guillotine in the revolution of 1960. We keep him as a pet for the children.’ And I shall wag my head and display my up-to-date dentures and say, ‘Ah, ha! They don’t have the fun we used to have in my young days, the poor, well regulated creatures!’ ”
“There won’t be any nightclubs then for you to creep into, if they’re as disciplined as all that.”
“Oh, yes—nature will have her revenge. They will slink away from the Government Communal Games to play solitaire in catacombs over a bowl of unsterilised skim milk. Is this the place?”
“Yes; I hope there’s someone to let us in at the bottom, if Sylvia’s bust her leg. Yes—I hear footsteps. Oh, it’s you, Eiluned; how’s Sylvia?”
“Pretty all right, only swelled up—the ankle, that is. Coming up?”
“Is she visible?”
“Yes, perfectly respectable.”
“Good; because I’m bringing Lord Peter Wimsey up, too.”
“Oh,” said the girl. “How do you do? You detect things, don’t you? Have you come for the body or anything?”
“Lord Peter’s looking into Harriet Vane’s business for her.”
“Is he? That’s good. Glad somebody’s doing something about it.” She was a short, stout girl with a pugnacious nose and a twinkle. “What do you say it was? I say he did it himself. He was the self pitying sort, you know. Hullo, Syl—here’s Marjorie, with a bloke who’s going to get Harriet out of jug.”
“Produce him instantly!” was the reply from within. The door opened upon a small bed-sitting room, furnished with the severest simplicity, and inhabited by a pale, spectacled young woman in a Morris chair, her bandaged foot stretched out upon a packing case.
“I can’t get up, because, as Jenny Wren said, my back’s bad and my leg’s queer. Who’s the champion, Marjorie?”
Wimsey was introduced, and Eiluned Price immediately inquired, rather truculently:
“Can he drink coffee, Marjorie? Or does he require masculine refreshment?”
“He’s perfectly godly, righteous and sober, and drinks anything but cocoa and fizzy lemonade.”
“Oh! I only asked because some of your male
