The Inspector was very willing that Lord Peter should see the razor. ‘And if you like to comerlongerme,’ he added kindly, ‘you’ll dodge all these reporters.’
‘Not me!’ said Harriet. ‘I’ve got to see them and tell them all about my new book. A razor is only a razor, but good advance publicity means sales. You two run along; I’ll follow you down.’
She strolled away in search of the reporters. The Inspector grinned uneasily.
‘No flies on that young lady,’ he observed. ‘But can she be trusted to hold her tongue?’
‘Oh, she won’t chuck away a good plot,’ said Wimsey, lightly. ‘Come and have a drink.’
‘
‘Too soon after breakfast,’ objected the Inspector.
‘Or a smoke,’ suggested Wimsey. The Inspector declined.
‘Or a nice sit-down in the; lounge,’ said Wimsey, sitting down:
‘Excuse me,’ said Inspector Umpelty, ‘I must be getting along. — I’ll tell them at the Station about you wanting to look at the razor… Fair tied to that young woman’s apron-strings,’ he reflected, as he shouldered his bulky way through the revolving doors. ‘The poor mutt!’ Harriet, escaping half an hour later from Salcombe Hardy and his colleagues, found Wimsey faithfully in attendance.
‘I’ve got rid of the Inspector,’ observed that gentleman, cheerfully. ‘Get your hat on and we’ll go.’
Their simultaneous exit from the Resplendent was observed and recorded by the photographic; contingent, who had just returned from the shore. Between an avenue of clicking shutters, they descended the marble steps, and climbed into Wimsey’s Daimler.
‘I feel,’’ said Harriet, maliciously, ’as if we had just been married at St. George’s, Hanover Square.’
‘No, you don’t,’ retorted Wimsey. ‘If we had, you would be trembling like a fluttered partridge. Being married to me is a tremendous experience you’ve no idea. We’ll be all right at the police-station, provided the Super doesn’t turn sticky on us.
Superintendent Glaisher was conveniently engaged, and Sergeant Saunders was deputed to show them the razor.
‘Has it been examined for finger-prints?’ asked Wimsey.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Any result?’
‘I couldn’t exactly say, my, lord, but I believe not.’
‘Well, anyway one is allowed to handle it.’ Wimsey turned it over in his fingers, inspecting it carefully, first with the naked eye and secondly with a watchmaker’s lens. Beyond a very slight crack on the ivory handle, it showed no very striking, peculiarities.
“If there’s any blood left on it, it will be hanging about the joint,’ he observed. ‘But the sea seems to have done its work pretty thoroughly.’
You aren’t suggesting,’, said Harriet, ‘that the weapon isn’t really the weapon after all?’’
‘I should like to,’ said Wimsey. ‘The weapon never is the weapon, is it?’
‘Of course not; and the corpse is never the corpse. The body is, obviously, not that of Peter Alexis—’
‘But of the Prime Minister of Ruritania-’
‘It did not die of a cut throat-’
‘But of an obscure poison, known only to the Bushmen of Central Australia—’
‘And the throat was cut after death-’
‘By a middle-aged man of short temper and careless habits, with a stiff beard and expensive tastes—’
‘Recently returned from China,’ finished up Harriet, triumphantly.
The sergeant, who had gaped, in astonishment at the beginning of this exchange, now burst into a hearty guffaw.
‘That’s very good,’ he said, indulgently. ‘Comic, ain’t it, the stuff these writer-fellows put into their books? Would your lordship like to see the other exhibits?’
Wimsey replied gravely that he should, very much, and the hat, cigarette-case, shoe and handkerchief were produced.
‘H’m,’ said Wimsey. ‘Hat fair to middling, but not exclusive. Cranial capacity on the small side. Brilliantine, ordinary stinking variety. Physical condition pretty fair
‘The ‘The man was a dancer.’
‘I thought we agreed he was a Prime Minister. Hair, dark, curly and rather on the long side. Last year’s hat, reblocked, with new ribbon. Shape, a little more emphatic than is quite necessary. Deduction: not wealthy, but keen on his personal appearance. Do we conclude that the hat belongs to the corpse?’
‘Yes, I think so. The brilliantine corresponds all right.’
‘Cigarette-case — this is different. Fifteen-carat gold, plain and fairly new, with monogram P.A. and containing six de Reszkes. The case is pukka, all right. Probably a gift from some wealthy female admirer.’
‘Or, of course, the cigarette-case appropriate to a Prime Minister.’
‘As you say. Handkerchief — silk, but not from Burlington Arcade. Colour beastly. Laundry-mark—’
‘Laundry-mark’s all right,’ put in the policeman. ‘Wilvercombe Sanitary Steam Laundry, mark O. K. for this fellow Alexis.’
‘Suspicious circumstance,’ said. Harriet, shaking her head. ‘I’ve got three handkerchiefs in my pack with not only the laundry-marks but the initials of total strangers.’
‘It’s the Prime Minister, all right,’ agreed Wimsey, with a doleful nod. ‘Prime Ministers, especially Ruritanian ones, are notoriously careless about their laundry. Now the shoe. Oh, yes. Nearly new. Thin sole. Foul colour and worse shape. Hand-made, so that the horrid appearance is due to malice aforethought. Not the shoe of a man who does much walking. Made, I observe, in Wilvercombe.’
‘That’s O.K., too,’ put in the sergeant. ‘We’ve seen the man. He made that shoe for Mr Alexis all right. Knows him well.’
‘And you took this actually off the foot of the corpse? These are deep waters, Watson. Another man’s handkerchief is nothing, but a Prime Minister in another fellow’s shoes—’
‘You will have your joke, my lord,’ said the sergeant, with another hoot of laughter.
‘I never joke,’ said Wimsey. He brought the lens to bear on the sole of the shoe. ‘Slight traces of salt water here, but none on the uppers. Inference: he walked over the sand when it was very wet, but did not actually wade through salt water. Two or three scratches on the toe-cap, probably got when clambering up the rock. Well, thanks awfully, sergeant. You are quite at liberty to inform Inspector Umpelty of all the valuable deductions we have drawn. Have a drink.’
‘Thank you very much, my lord.’
Wimsey said nothing more till they were in the car again.
‘I’m sorry,’ he then announced, as, they threaded their way through the side-streets, ‘to renounce our little programme of viewing the town. I should have enjoyed that simple pleasure. But unless I start at once, I shan’t get to town and back tonight’
Harriet, who had been preparing to say that she had work to do and could not waste time rubber-necking round Wilvercombe with Lord Peter, experienced an unreasonable feeling of having been cheated.