Have His Carcase (61 page)

you know.’

The Inspector admitted that he was aware of the fact, and added, vaguely,

that this was a purely formal inquiry. ‘Part of our system,’ he explained, and

obscurely connected with the fact that Mr Morecambe was the legal owner of

the Bentley.

Mrs Morecambe smiled graciously. Wel, Mr Morecambe was at home, as it

happened. He had not been very wel, lately, but no doubt he would be ready

to assist the Inspector if it was realy necessary. She would ask him to come

down.

Inspector Umpelty indicated that this was not realy necessary. He would be

happy to accompany Mrs Morecambe to her husband’s room. At which

precaution Chief Inspector Parker smiled: any necessary arrangements between

the Morecambes would surely have been perfected by this time.

Mrs Morecambe led the way to the door, folowed by Mr Umpelty. She

glanced round as though expecting Parker to folow, but he kept his seat. After

a momentary hesitation, Mrs Morecambe went out, leaving her second guest to

his own devices. She went upstairs, with the Inspector padding behind her,

murmuring apologies and trying to keep his boots from making a noise.

The room they entered on the first floor was furnished as a study, and

beyond it, another door, half-open, led into a bedroom. At a table in the study

sat a smal, red-bearded man, who turned sharply to face them at their

entrance.

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Morecambe, ‘this is Inspector Umpelty of the

Wilvercombe police. He wants to know something about the car.’

‘Oh, yes, Inspector, what is it?’ Mr Morecambe spoke genialy, but his

geniality was as nothing compared to the geniality of the Inspector.

‘Hulo, Bright, my man!’ said he. ‘Risen a bit in the world since I last saw

you, haven’t you?’

Mr Morecambe raised his eyebrows, glanced at his wife, and then broke

into a hearty laugh.

‘Wel done, Inspector!’ said he. ‘What did I tel you, dear? You can’t

deceive our fine British police-force. With his usual acumen, the man has

spotted me! Wel, sit down, Inspector and have a drink, and I’l tel you al

about it.’

Umpelty cautiously lowered his large form into a chair and accepted a

whisky-and-soda.

‘First of al, congratulations on your sleuthing,’ said Mr Morecambe,

cheerfuly. ‘I thought I’d got rid of that felow in Selfridge’s, but I suppose the

other felow with the quick-change headgear managed to keep on the scent, in

spite of my artistic camouflage in the Cinema. Wel, now, I suppose you want

to know why Alfred Morecambe, commission-agent of London, was going

about at Wilvercombe disguised as Wiliam Bright, that seedy and

unsatisfactory tonsorial artist. I don’t blame you. I daresay it does look

queerish. Wel, to start with – here’s the explanation.’

He gathered up a number of sheets of paper from his writing-table and

pushed them across to Umpelty.

‘I’m writing a play for my wife,’ he said. ‘You have no doubt discovered that

she was the famous Tilie Tuliver before she married. I’ve written a play or two

before, under the name of Cedric St Denis – spare-time work, you know – and

this new one deals with the adventures of an itinerant hairdresser. The best way

to pick up local colour is to go and get it personaly.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘I ought to have told you al this at the time,’ said Mr Morecambe, with a

frank air of apology, ‘but it realy didn’t seem necessary. As a matter of fact, I

felt it would make me look a bit of a fool in the City. I was supposed to be

taking a holiday for my health, you see, and if my partner had known what I

was realy up to, he might have been a little annoyed. In any case, you had my

evidence, which was al that was realy necessary – and I must admit that I

rather enjoyed playing the ne’er-do-wel to al you people. I did it rather wel,

don’t you think? Thanks to my wife’s coaching, of course.’

‘I see, sir.’ Inspector Umpelty fastened promptly on the salient point of al

this. ‘Your account of your meeting with Paul Alexis was a fact, then?’

‘Absolutely true in every particular. Except, of course, that I never realy had

the slightest intention of committing suicide. As a matter of fact, the idea of

passing the night in one of the lodging-houses appropriate to my impersonation

didn’t greatly appeal to me at that moment, and I was putting off the evil hour

as long as possible. It’s quite true that I made up a hard-luck story for Alexis –

though I didn’t actualy take any money from the poor felow. I drew the line at

that. The pound-note I paid out that night was my own. But you nearly tied me

up over that business about the tide. I rather over-reached myself there with al

that picturesque detail.’ He laughed again.

‘Wel, wel,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’ve led us a fine dance, sir.’ He glanced

at the manuscript sheets in his hands, which appeared, so far as he could make

out, to substantiate Morecambe’s story. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t take us into your

confidence, sir. We could probably have arranged for nothing to come out

about it in the press. However – if I take a fresh statement from you now, that

wil clear that up al right.’

He cocked his head for a moment as though listening, and then went on

rapidly:

‘I take it, that statement wil just confirm the evidence you gave at the

inquest? Nothing to add to it in any way?’

‘Nothing at al.’

‘You never, for instance, came across this Mr Henry Weldon at any time?’

‘Weldon?’

‘The man I gave the lift to,’ prompted Mrs Morecambe, ‘whose mother was

engaged to the dead man.’

‘Oh, him? Never saw him in my life. Don’t suppose I’d recognise him now if

I saw him. He didn’t give evidence, did he?’

‘No, sir. Very good, then. If you like, I wil take a statement from you now.

I’l just cal in my coleague, if you don’t mind, to witness it.’

The Inspector threw open the door. Chief Inspector Parker must have been

waiting on the landing, for he marched in at once, folowed by a respectable-

looking working-woman and a large, stout man smoking a cigar. The Inspector

kept his eye on the Morecambes. The wife looked merely surprised, but

Morecambe’s face changed.

‘Now, Mrs Sterne,’ said Parker, ‘have you ever seen this gentleman

before?’

‘Why, yes, sir; this is Mr Field, as was staying with Mr Weldon down at

Fourways in February. I’d know him anywhere.’

‘That’s who he is, is he?’ said the stout gentleman. ‘I thought it might be

Potts or Spink. Wel, Mr Maurice Vavasour, did you give the little Kohn girl a

show after al?’

Mr Morecambe opened his mouth, but no sound came. Inspector Umpelty

consulted the Scotland Yard man by a glance, cleared his throat, took his

courage in both hands, and advanced upon his prey:

‘Alfred Morecambe,’ he said, ‘alias Wiliam Bright, alias Wiliam Simpson,

alias Field, alias Cedric St Denis, alias Maurice Vavasour, I arrest you for being

concerned in the murder of Paul Alexis Goldschmidt, otherwise Pavlo

Alexeivitch, and I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used

in evidence at your trial.’

He wiped his forehead.

Alibi or no alibi, he had burnt his boats.

XXXIII

EVIDENCE OF WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED

‘Now see you how this dragon egg of ours

Swells with its ripening plot?’

Death’s Jest-Book

Wednesday, 8 July

‘Turning my hair grey, that’s what it is,’ said Inspector Umpelty.

‘Not a book, not a scrap of paper, not as much as a line on the blotting pad

. . .

‘No, not even a bottle of purple ink . . .

‘He’s an artful one if you like. Always posted his own letters, or so the girl

says . . .

‘Yes, I know, it’s al very wel saying he must have been up to mischief – the

job is to prove it. You know what juries are . . .

‘Weldon’s the fool of the two, but he’s not talking. And we shan’t find

anything at his place – Morecambe never trusted
him
with anything . . .

‘No; we haven’t traced his friend in Warsaw – not yet . . .

‘Oh, I know; but meantime we’ve got to charge them with something that

looks like something. And do it quick. There’s such a thing as Habeas Corpus

. . .

‘It’s absolutely positive that neither of them could have been at the Flat-Iron

cutting throats, nor yet the lady. And it’s a bit awkward to fetch up three

people and charge ’em with being accomplices to a murder which you can’t

even prove
is
a murder . . .

‘Thank you, my lord, I don’t mind if I do.’

‘I freely admit,’ said Wimsey, ‘that it’s the queerest case I ever struck.

We’ve got al the evidence – at least, not al, but overwhelming evidence – of

an elaborate conspiracy to do something or the other, And we’ve got a corpse

which looks like the victim of a conspiracy to murder. But when we come to

put the two together, they don’t fit. Everything in the garden is lovely except the

melancholy fact that none of the people engaged in the conspiracy could

possibly have done the murder. Harriet! It’s your business to work out

problems of this sort – how do you propose to tackle this one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet. ‘I can only suggest a few methods and

precedents. There’s the Roger Sheringham method, for instance. You prove

elaborately and in detail that A did the murder; then you give the story one final

shake, twist it round a fresh corner, and find that the real murderer is B – the

person you suspected first and then lost sight of.’

‘That’s no good; the cases aren’t paralel. We can’t even plausibly fix

anything on A, let alone B.’

‘No; wel, there’s the Philo Vance method. You shake your head and say:

“There’s worse yet to come,” and then the murderer kils five more people, and

that thins the suspects out a bit and you spot who it is.’

‘Wasteful, wasteful,’ said Wimsey. ‘And too slow.’

‘True. There’s the Inspector French method – you break the unbreakable

alibi.’

Wimsey groaned.

‘If anybody says “alibi” to me again, I’l – I’l—’

‘Al right. There are plenty of methods left. There’s the Thorndyke type of

solution, which, as Thorndyke himself says, can be put in a nut-shel. “You have

got the wrong man, you have got the wrong box, and you have got the wrong

body.” Suppose, for instance, that Paul Alexis is realy—’

‘The Emperor of Japan! Thank you.’

‘Wel, that might not be so far off. He thought he was an Emperor, or next

door to it, anyhow. Though even if he had fifty kinds of Imperial blood in his

veins instead of only two or three, it wouldn’t help us to explain how he

managed to get kiled with nobody near him. The real difficulty—’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Wimsey. ‘Say that again.’

Harriet said it again. ‘The real difficulty,’ she persisted, ‘is that one can’t see

how
anybody
– let alone Morecambe or Henry Weldon – could have done the

murder. Even if Polock—’

‘The real difficulty,’ interrupted Wimsey, in a suddenly high-pitched and

excited voice, ‘is the time of the death, isn’t it?’

‘Wel, yes, I suppose it is.’

‘Of course it is. If it wasn’t for that, we could explain everything.’ He

laughed. ‘You know, I
always
thought it was funny, if Henry Weldon did the

murder, that he shouldn’t seem to know what time he did it at. Look! Let’s

pretend we’ve planned this murder ourselves and have timed it for twelve

o’clock, shal we?’

‘What’s the good of that? We know it wasn’t actualy done til two o’clock.

You can’t get round that, my lord.’

‘Ah! but I want to look at the original murder as it was planned. It’s true that

the murderers later on found themselves faced with an unexpected alteration in

the time-scheme, but just for the moment we’l work out the time-scheme as it

originaly stood. Do you mind? I want to.’

The Inspector grunted, and Wimsey sat for a few minutes, apparently

thinking hard. Then he spoke, without any trace of his former excitement.

‘It’s February,’ he said. ‘You’re Henry Weldon. You have just heard that

your elderly and foolish mother is going to marry a dancing dago thirty-five

years younger than herself, and disinherit you. You are badly in need of money

and you want to stop this at al costs. You make yourself unpleasant, but you

find it’s no good: you’l only lose al the money instead of only part. You are not

an inventive man yourself, but you consult – yes, why do you consult

Morecambe, Inspector?’

‘Wel, my lord, it seems that when Weldon came down here to see his

mother, he picked up with Mrs Morecambe somewhere or other. He’s a great

man with the ladies, and she probably thought there was money to be made out

of him, seeing his mother was a rich woman. He pretty soon put her right about