After a hot bath and the putting-on of a boiled shirt and dinner-jacket, he felt better and telephoned to the Resplendent to ask Harriet to dine with him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t. I’m dining with Mrs Weldon and her son.’
‘Her son?’
‘Yes; he’s just arrived. Why not come round here after grub and be introduced?’
‘Dunno. What sort of bloke is he?’
‘Oh, yes — he’s here, and would like to meet you very much.’
‘Oh, I see. We are being overheard. I suppose I’d better come’ and look the blighter over. Is he handsome?’
‘Yes, rather! Come along about a quarter to nine.’
‘Well, you’d better tell him we’re engaged, and then I shan’t be obliged to assassinate him.’
‘You will? That’s splendid.’
‘Will you marry me?’
‘Of course not. We’ll, expect you at 8.45.’
‘All right, and I hope your rabbit dies.’
Wimsey ate his solitary dinner thoughtfully. So this was the son, was it? The one who was out of sympathy with his mother. What was he doing here? Had he suddenly become sympathetic? Or had she sent for him and compelled him to come in, by, financial or other pressure? Was he perhaps a new factor in the problem? He was the only son of his mother and she a rich widow. Here at last was a person to whom the removal of Paul Alexis might appear in the light of a; god-send. Undoubtedly the man must be looked into.
He went round to the Resplendent after dinner and found the party waiting for him in the lounge. Mrs Weldon, who wore a plain black semi-evening dress and looked her full age in it, greeted Wimsey effusively.
‘My dear Lord Peter! I am so glad to see you. May I introduce my son Henry? I wrote asking him to come and help us through this terrible time, and he has most kindly put his own business aside and come to me. So very sweet of you, Henry dear. I have just been telling Henry how good Mrs Vane has been to me, and how hard you and she are working to clear poor Paul’s memory.’
Harriet had merely been mischievous. Henry was certainly not handsome, though he was a good, sturdy specimen of his type. He stood about five foot eleven — a strongly built, heavyish man with a brick-red all-weather face. Evening dress did ‘not suit him, for the breadth of his shoulders and the shortness of his legs gave him a rather top-heavy appearance; one would expect him to look his best in country tweeds and leggings. His hair, rather rough and dull in texture, was mouse-coloured, and offered a pregnant suggestion of what his mother’s might once have looked like before it knew the touch of peroxide; indeed, he was, in a curious way, very like his mother, having the same low, narrow forehead. and the same long and obstinate chin; though, in the-mother-the expression was that of a weak, fanciful obstinacy, and, in the son, of stubborn and unimaginative obstinacy: Looking at him, Wimsey felt that he was hardly the sort of man’ to take kindly to a Paul Alexis for a step-father; he would not sympathise with the sterile romance of any woman who was past the age of child-bearing. Wimsey, summing him up with the man of the world’s experienced eye, placed him at once as a gentleman-farmer, who was not quite a gentleman and not much of a farmer.
At the moment, the understanding between Henry Weldon and his mother seemed, nevertheless, to be excellent.
‘Henry is so delighted,’ said Mrs Weldon, ‘that you are here to help us, Lord Peter. That policeman is so stupid. He doesn’t seem to believe a word I tell him. Of’ course, he’s a very well-meaning, honest man, and most polite, but how can a person like that possibly understand a nature like Paul’s. I knew Paul. So did Henry, didn’t you, dear?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Henry, ‘certainly. Very pleasant fellow.’
‘Henry knows how utterly devoted Paul was to me. You know, don’t you, dear, that he never would have taken his own life and left me like that without a word. It hurts me so when people say such things — I feel I could
‘There, there, Mother,’ muttered Henry, embarrassed by the prospect of emotion and possible break-down in a public place, ‘You ‘must try to beer up. Of course we know Alexis was all right. Damned fond of you — of course, of course. Police are always silly fools. Don’t let ’em worry
you.,
‘No dear, I’m sorry,’ said Mrs. Weldon, dabbing her eyes apologetically with a small handkerchief, u s all been such a shock to me. But I mustn’t be weak and silly. We must all be courageous and work hard to do something about it.’
Wimsey suggested that a spot of something or other might do them all good, and, further, that he and Henry might make a concerted masculine raid on the bar, instructing the waiter to attend upon the ladies. He felt that he could dissect Henry more conveniently in a private interview.
As the two men’s backs disappeared in the direction of the bar, Mrs Weldon turned her anxious eyes on Harriet.
‘How nice — Lord Peter is,’ she, said, ‘and what a comforting thing, it is for us both to have a man to rely on.’
This sentiment was not very well received Harriet averted her gaze from Lord Peter’s back, on which it had been absentmindedly and unaccountably fixed, and frowned; but Mrs Weldon bleated on, unheeding.
‘It’s beautiful how kind everybody is when one is in trouble. Henry and I haven’t always been as close to one another as a mother and son should be. He takes after his father in a great many ways, though people say he is like me to look at, and when he was a little boy he had the dearest golden curls — just like’ mine. But he loves sport and out-door life you can tell that by his looks, can’t you? He’s always out and about, seeing after his farm, and that’s what makes him look a little older than his years. He’s really quite a young man — I was a mere child when I married, as I told you before. — But though, as I say, we haven’t always been as much in harmony as one would have liked, he has been perfectly sweet to me about this sad affair. When I wrote to him and told him how much I felt the dreadful things. they were saying about Paul, he came at once to help me, though I know he must be terribly busy just now. I really feel that poor Paul’s death has brought us closer together.’’
Harriet said that that must be a great comfort to Mrs Weldon. It was the only possible answer.
Henry, meanwhile, had his own view of the matter to put before Lord Peter.
‘Bit of a staggerer for the old lady, this,’ he observed over a glass of Scotch. ‘Takes it hard. Between you and, me, it’s all for the best. How’s a-woman of her age going to be happy with a feller like that? Eh? Don’t like these Popoffsky blighters, anyway, and. she’s fifty-seven if she’s a day. I’m thirty-six myself. Consider I’m well out of it. Makes a chap look a bit of a fool when his mother proposes to give him a twenty-year-old lounge lizard for, a step-papa. Suppose it’s all over the place now. Bet everybody’s grinning at me behind my back. Let ’em grin. All over now, anyway. Suppose the chappie did do himself in, didn’t he?’
‘It looks like it,’ admitted Wimsey.
‘Couldn’t face the prospect, eh? All his own fault. Hard up, I suppose, poor devil! The old girl’s not a bad sort, really. She’d have given the feller a damn good time if he’d stuck to his bargain. But you can’t trust these foreigners. Like collies — lick your boots one minute and bite you the next. Don’t like collies, myself. Give me a good-bull-terrier any day.’