Whose Body?, Dorothy L. Sayers [good summer reads .txt] 📗

“No, poor dear,” said the Duchess. “I only came up this morning, for this. Mrs. Thipps is staying with me⁠—one of Peter’s eccentricities, you know. Poor Christine! I must run round and see her. This is Mr. Parker,” she added, “who is investigating that case.”

“Oh,” said Sir Julian, and paused. “Do you know,” he said in a low voice to Parker, “I am very glad to meet you. Have you seen Lady Levy yet?”

“I saw her this morning.”

“Did she ask you to go on with the inquiry?”

“Yes,” said Parker; “she thinks,” he added, “that Sir Reuben may be detained in the hands of some financial rival or that perhaps some scoundrels are holding him to ransom.”

“And is that your opinion?” asked Sir Julian.

“I think it very likely,” said Parker, frankly.

Sir Julian hesitated again.

“I wish you would walk back with me when this is over,” he said.

“I should be delighted,” said Parker.

At this moment the jury returned and took their places, and there was a little rustle and hush. The Coroner addressed the foreman and inquired if they were agreed upon their verdict.

“We are agreed, Mr. Coroner, that deceased died of the effects of a blow upon the spine, but how that injury was inflicted we consider that there is not sufficient evidence to show.”

Mr. Parker and Sir Julian Freke walked up the road together.

“I had absolutely no idea until I saw Lady Levy this morning,” said the doctor, “that there was any idea of connecting this matter with the disappearance of Sir Reuben. The suggestion was perfectly monstrous, and could only have grown up in the mind of that ridiculous police officer. If I had had any idea what was in his mind I could have disabused him and avoided all this.”

“I did my best to do so,” said Parker, “as soon as I was called in to the Levy case⁠—”

“Who called you in, if I may ask?” inquired Sir Julian.

“Well, the household first of all, and then Sir Reuben’s uncle, Mr. Levy of Portman Square, wrote to me to go on with the investigation.”

“And now Lady Levy has confirmed those instructions?”

“Certainly,” said Parker in some surprise.

Sir Julian was silent for a little time.

“I’m afraid I was the first person to put the idea into Sugg’s head,” said Parker, rather penitently. “When Sir Reuben disappeared, my first step, almost, was to hunt up all the street accidents and suicides and so on that had turned up during the day, and I went down to see this Battersea Park body as a matter of routine. Of course, I saw that the thing was ridiculous as soon as I got there, but Sugg froze on to the idea⁠—and it’s true there was a good deal of resemblance between the dead man and the portraits I’ve seen of Sir Reuben.”

“A strong superficial likeness,” said Sir Julian. “The upper part of the face is a not uncommon type, and as Sir Reuben wore a heavy beard and there was no opportunity of comparing the mouths and chins, I can understand the idea occurring to anybody. But only to be dismissed at once. I am sorry,” he added, “as the whole matter has been painful to Lady Levy. You may know, Mr. Parker, that I am an old, though I should not call myself an intimate, friend of the Levys.”

“I understood something of the sort.”

“Yes. When I was a young man I⁠—in short, Mr. Parker, I hoped once to marry Lady Levy.” (Mr. Parker gave the usual sympathetic groan.) “I have never married, as you know,” pursued Sir Julian. “We have remained good friends. I have always done what I could to spare her pain.”

“Believe me, Sir Julian,” said Parker, “that I sympathize very much with you and with Lady Levy, and that I did all I could to disabuse Inspector Sugg of this notion. Unhappily, the coincidence of Sir Reuben’s being seen that evening in the Battersea Park Road⁠—”

“Ah, yes,” said Sir Julian. “Dear me, here we are at home. Perhaps you would come in for a moment, Mr. Parker, and have tea or a whisky-and-soda or something.”

Parker promptly accepted this invitation, feeling that there were other things to be said.

The two men stepped into a square, finely furnished hall with a fireplace on the same side as the door, and a staircase opposite. The dining-room door stood open on their right, and as Sir Julian rang the bell a manservant appeared at the far end of the hall.

“What will you take?” asked the doctor.

“After that dreadfully cold place,” said Parker, “what I really want is gallons of hot tea, if you, as a nerve specialist, can bear the thought of it.”

“Provided you allow of a judicious blend of China in it,” replied Sir Julian in the same tone, “I have no objection to make. Tea in the library at once,” he added to the servant, and led the way upstairs.

“I don’t use the downstairs rooms much, except the dining-room,” he explained as he ushered his guest into a small but cheerful library on the first floor. “This room leads out of my bedroom and is more convenient. I only live part of my time here, but it’s very handy for my research work at the hospital. That’s what I do there, mostly. It’s a fatal thing for a theorist, Mr. Parker, to let the practical work get behindhand. Dissection is the basis of all good theory and all correct diagnosis. One must keep one’s hand and eye in training. This place is far more important to me than Harley Street, and some day I shall abandon my consulting practice altogether and settle down here to cut up my subjects and write my books in peace. So many things in this life are a waste of time, Mr. Parker.”

Mr. Parker assented to this.

“Very often,” said Sir Julian, “the only time I get for any research work⁠—necessitating as it does the keenest observation and the faculties at their acutest⁠—has to be at night, after a long day’s work and by artificial light, which,