‘Sounds as though.young Alexis was a bit of a blackguard,’; said Inspector Umpelty. ‘First, he chucks his girl, Secondly, he leads poor old Mrs Weldon up the garden, by pretending to go in with an engagement he doesn’t mean to carry out.’
No,’ said Wimsey. ‘You don’t allow for the Imperial outlook. A prince in exile may form irregular attachments, but, when the call comes to him to take up his imperial station, all personal ties must be sacrificed to his public duty. A mere kept woman, like Leila, can be simply dismissed or handed over to somebody else. A person to whom he is bound by more honourable ties will also have to be sacrificed, but with more ceremony. We do not know, and we never shall know, exactly what Alexis meant to do about Mrs Weldon. We have her word for it that he tried to prepare her for some grand and surprising development in the near future, though, naturally, she put the wrong interpretation on the thing. I imagine that what Alexis intended to do was to write her a letter, after his departure for War saw, telling her what had happened to him and offering her his hospitality at his Imperial court; The whole affair would have been surrounded with a halo of romance and splendour and self-sacrifice, and no doubt Mrs Weldon would have enjoyed it down to the ground. There’s one thing:, although, before all this Russian business started, Alexis had Mrs Weldon completely under his thumb, he apparently always refused to take any large sums of money from her and that, I think, is greatly to his credit, and shows that he had the instincts of a gentleman, if not necessarily of a prince.’
‘That’s true,’ said Glaisher. ‘I suppose, if the plot had never been started, he would have married her.’
‘Oh, yes, I should think so. He’d have married her and done his duty by her according to his own lights, which were probably — well, continental.’ He would have been a charming husband to her and kept a mistress in a discreet and decent manner.’
Inspector Umpelty seemed disposed to quarrel with the term ‘decent,’ but Wimsey hurried on with his argument.
‘I fancy, too, that Alexis. may have shown a little reluctance to take this course with Leila and Mrs Weldon. He may have been really fond of Leila; or he may have felt uncomfortable about letting Mrs Weldon down. So that was why they invented Feodora.’
‘And who was Feodora.’
‘Feodora was no, doubt supposed to be the lady of lofty lineage destined. to be the bride of the new Tsar Pavlo Alexeivitch. What was easier than to go to a theatrical agent, find the photograph of a not-too-well-known lady of Russian extraction, and send it to Alexis as the portrait of the Princess Feodora, the lovely lady who was waiting and working for him in exile until the time should come for her to take her place beside him on the Imperial throne? Those blessed romances that Alexis was so fond of are full of that kind of thing. There would be letters, perhaps, from Feodora, full of tender anticipation. She would be already in love with the Grand-Duke Pavlo from all she had heard of him. The glamour of the whole idea would bewitch him. And besides, it would be his duty to his people to marry Feodora. How could he hesitate? A glance at that very beautiful face, crowned with its, regal head-dress of pearls—’
‘Oh!’ said Glaisher. ‘Yes, of course. That would be one reason why they hit on that particular photograph.’
‘Of course. No doubt the pearls were merely the best Woolworth, like the whole pathetic illusion, but these things serve their purpose, Glaisher, they serve their purpose. My God, Glaisher — when you think of that poor silly devil, going to his death on a lonely rock, with his brain spinning with the idea of being crowned Emperor—’
Wimsey broke off, shaken by an unwonted vehemence of feeling. The two policemen shuffled their feet sympathetic calls.
‘Well, it does seem a shame, my lord, and that’s a-fact,’ said Glaisher. ‘Let’s hope he died quick, without knowing any better.’
‘Ah!’ said Wimsey, ‘but; how did he die? That’s the snag, you know. Well, never mind that for the moment. What next? Oh, the three hundred pounds in gold. That’s a funny little incident, and very. nearly upset the conspiracy altogether.
‘I can’t believe that that was any part of the plot as originally worked out. Morecambe couldn’t have foreseen the opportunity of collecting that gold. I think that must have been Paul Alexis’ own contribution to the romance., He had probably, read in books about gold — about its passing current everywhere, and all that — and thought it would somehow be a fine thing to set out to conquer a throne with a beltful of gold. It was ridiculous, of course — an absurd little sum, bulky and awkward to carry about — but it was Gold. Gold has its glitter, you know. As somebody says, “the glitter is the gold”. That sounds like relativity physics, but it’s psychological fact. If you were a romantic young prince, Glaisher, or thought you were, would you rather pay your bills with a few dirty bits of paper, or with this?’
He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a handful of gold sovereigns. They rolled ringing over the table as he threw them down, and Glaisher and Umpelty flung out eager hands to catch them as they spun away in the lamplight. They picked them up and weighed them in their palms; they held them between their fingers, passing inquisitive fingers along the milled edges and over the smooth relief of the gleaming George — and Dragon.
‘Yes,’ said Wimsey, ‘they feel pleasant, don’t they? There are ten of them there, and they’re worth no more than paper pounds, and to me they’re actually worth nothing, because, being a tom-fool, I can’t bring myself to spend them. But they’re gold. I wouldn’t mind possessing £300 worth of them, though they might weigh five pounds avoirdupois and be an infernal nuisance. But the queer thing is this — that that extra five pounds of weight just disturbed the very delicate balance between the corpse and the water. The specific gravity of a dead body is just less than sufficient to sink it — but only just. A very heavy pair of boots or a belt stuffed with gold is enough: to carry it down and, wedge it among the Grinder rocks as you know to your cost, Umpelty. It would have been uncommonly awkward for
The conspirators of Alexis had never been found. In time Mrs Weldon would have come to believe in his death, I daresay — but she might have squandered a fortune first, in hunting for him.’
‘It’s a queer story altogether,’ said Glaisher, ‘and what nobody that hadn’t been through it all from the beginning as you might say would hardly be disposed to believe. But now, my lord, allowing that it was all worked out as you say, how about the murder?’
‘Exactly. As regards the murder I frankly admit we’re not much further on than before. The preliminaries are, all easy enough. First of all, somebody must have come along to have a look at the place. I don’t quite know who that was, but I think I can guess, Somebody who already knew the lie of the land, from having stayed here before. Somebody who had a car to spin about the country in. Somebody who had a very good excuse for being in the neighbourhood and respectable friends whose guests were above suspicion.’