The doctor considered a moment, then shook his head.
“It’s very good of you, but I think I’d rather not. I’ve got into enough bothers already. Anyway, it isn’t professional to talk, and if I stirred up any more fuss, I should probably have to chuck this country altogether and end up as one of those drunken ship’s doctors in the South Seas or somewhere, who are always telling their life-history to people and delivering awful warnings. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. Thanks very much, all the same.”
“As you like,” said Wimsey. “But I’ll think it over, and if any useful suggestion occurs to me, I’ll let you know.”
“It’s very good of you,” replied the visitor, absently, taking his hat and stick from the man-servant, who had answered Wimsey’s ring. “Well, good night, and many thanks for hearing me so patiently. By the way, though,” he added, turning suddenly at the door, “how do you propose to let me know when you haven’t got my name and address?”
Lord Peter laughed.
“I’m Hawkshaw, the detective,” he answered, “and you shall hear from me anyhow before the end of the week.”
Chapter 3 Use for Spinsters
“There are two million more females than males in England and Wales! And this is an awe-inspiring circumstance.”
GILBERT FRANKAU
What do you really think of that story?” inquired Parker. He had dropped in to breakfast with Wimsey the next morning, before departing in the Notting Dale direction, in quest of an elusive anonymous letter-writer. “I thought it sounded rather as though our friend had been a bit too cocksure about his grand medical specialising. After all, the old girl might so easily have had some sort of heart attack. She was very old and ill.”
“So she might, though I believe as a matter of fact cancer patients very seldom pop off in that unexpected way. As a rule, they surprise everybody by the way they cling to life. Still, I wouldn’t think much of that if it wasn’t for the niece. She prepared the way for the death, you see, by describing her aunt as so much worse than she was.”
“I thought the same when the doctor was telling his tale. But what did the niece do? She can’t have poisoned her aunt or even smothered her, I suppose, or they’d have found signs of it on the body. And the aunt did die- so perhaps the niece was right and the opinionated young medico wrong.”
“Just so. And of course, we’ve only got his version of the niece and the nurse- and he obviously has what the Scotch call ta’en a scunner at the nurse. We musn’t lose sight of her, by the way. She was the last person to be with the old lady before her death, and it was she who administered that injection.”
“Yes, yes- but the injection had nothing to do with it. If any thing’s clear, that is. I say, do you think the nurse can have said anything that agitated the old lady and gave her a shock that way. The patient was a bit gaga, but she may have had sense enough to understand something really startling. Possibly the nurse just said something stupid about dying- the lady appears to have been very sensitive on the point.”
“Ah!”said Lord Peter, “I was waiting for you to get on to that. Have you that there really is one rather sinister figure in the story, and that’s the family lawyer.”
“The one who came down to say something about the will, you mean, and was so abruptly sent packing.”
“Yes. Suppose he’d wanted the patient to make a will in favour of somebody quite different- somebody outside the story as we know it. And when he found he couldn’t get any attention paid to him, he sent the new nurse down as a sort of substitute.”
“It would be rather an elaborate plot,” said Parker, dubiously. “He couldn’t know that the doctor’s fiancée was going to be sent away. Unless he was in league with the niece, of course, and induced her to engineer the change of nurses.”
“That cock won’t fight, Charles. The niece wouldn’t be in league with the lawyer to get herself disinherited.”
“No, I suppose not. Still, I think there’s something in the idea that the old girl was either accidentally or deliberately startled to death.”
“Yes- and whichever way it was, it probably wasn’t legal murder in that case. However, I think it’s worth looking into. That reminds me.” He rang the bell. “Bunter, just take a note to the post for me, would you?”
“Certainly, my lord.”
Lord Peter drew a writing pad towards him.
“What are you going to write?” asked Parker, looking over his shoulder with some amusement.
Lord Peter wrote:
“Isn’t civilisation wonderful?”
He signed this simple message and slipped it into an envelope.
“If you want to be immune from silly letters, Charles,” he said, “don’t carry your monomark in your hat.”
“And what do you propose to do next?” asked Parker. “Not, I hope, to send me round to Monomark House to get the name of a client. I couldn’t do that without authority, and they would probably kick up an awful shindy.”
“No,” replied his friend, “I don’t propose violating the secrets of the confessional. Not in that quarter at any rate. T think, if you can spare a moment from your mysterious correspondent, who probably does not intend to be found, I will ask you to come and pay a visit to a friend of mine. It won’t take long. I think you’ll be interested. I- in fact, you’ll be the first person I’ve ever taken to see her. She will be very much touched and pleased.”
He laughed a little self-consciously.
“Oh,” said Parker, embarrassed. Although the men were great friends, Wimsey had always preserved a reticence about his personal affairs- not so much by concealing as by ignoring them. This revelation seemed to mark a new stage of intimacy, and Parker was not sure that he liked it. He conducted his own life with an earnest middle-class morality which he owed to his birth and up-bringing, and, while theoretically recognising that Lord Peter’s world acknowledged different standards, he had never contemplated being personally faced with any result of their application in practice.
“- rather an experiment,” Wimsey was saying a trifle shyly; “anyway, she’s quite comfortably fixed in a little flat in Pimlico. You can come, can’t you, Charles? I really should like you two to meet.”
“Oh, yes, rather,” said Parker, hastily, “I should like to very much. Er- how long-I mean- ”
“Oh, the arrangement’s only been going a few months,” said Wimsey, leading the way to the lift, “but it really seems to be working out quite satisfactorily. Of course, it makes things much easier for me.”
“Just so,” said Parker.
“Of course, as you’ll understand- I won’t go into it all till we get there, and then you’ll see for yourself,” Wimsey chattered on, slamming the gates of the lift with unnecessary violence- “but, as I was saying, you’ll observe it’s quite a new departure. I don’t suppose there’s ever been anything exactly like it before. I course, there’s nothing new under the sun, as Solomon said, but after all, I daresay all those wives and porcupines, as the child said, must have soured his disposition a little, don’t you know.”
“Quite,” said Parker. “Poor fish,” he added to himself, “they always seem to think it’s different.”
“Outlet,” said Wimsey, energetically, “hi! taxi!… outlet- everybody needs an outlet- 97A, St. George’s Square -and after all, one can’t really blame people if it’s just that they need an outlet. I mean, why be bitter? They can’t help it. I think it’s much kinder to give them an outlet than to make fun of them in books- and, after all, it isn’t really difficult to write books. Especially if you either write a rotten story in good English or a good story in rotten English, which is as far as most people seem to get nowadays. Don’t you agree?”