Have His Carcase

‘Formulae. “There’s nothing like a mother’s instinct.”

“Dogs and children always know.”

“Kind hearts are more than coronets.”

“Suffering refines the character”—that sort of guff, despite all evidence to the contrary.’

Ye-es,’ replied Mr Weldon. ‘What I mean is, you know, they think a thing ought to be so, and so they say it is so’

‘Yes; I grasped that that was what you meant.’ Wimsey thought that if ever human being had the air of repeating a formula without a clear idea of its meaning, Mr Weldon was that human being; yet he pronounced the magic words with a kind of pride, taking credit to himself for a discovery.

‘What you really mean,’ went on Wimsey, is; I take it, that we can’t rely on Miss Vane’s evidence at all? You say She hears a shriek, she finds a man with his throat, cut and a razor beside him; it looks as though he’d that moment committed suicide, therefore she takes it for granted that he has that moment committed suicide. In that case the blood ought to be still flowing. Therefore she persuades herself that it was still flowing. Is that it?’

That’s it,’ said Mr Weldon.

Therefore the jury bring in a verdict of suicide. But you and I, who know all about women, know that the evidence about the blood was probably wrong, and that therefore it may quite well have been murder. Is that it?’

‘Oh, no — I don’t mean that,’ protested Mr Weldon. ‘I feel perfectly certain it was suicide.’

Then what are you grumbling at? It seems so obvious. If the man was murdered after two. o’clock, Miss Vane would have seen the murderer. She didn’t see the murderer. Therefore it was suicide. The proof of the suicide really depends on Miss Vane’s evidence, which shows that the man died after two o’clock. Doesn’t it?’

Mr Weldon grappled for some moments with this surprising piece of logic, but failed to detect either the petitio eleuchi, the undistributed middle or the inaccurate major premiss which is contrived to combine. His face cleared.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Yes. I see that. Obviously it must have been suicide, and Miss Vane’s evidence proves that it was. So she must be right after all.’

This was a syllogistic monstrosity even worse than the last, thought Wimsey. A, man who could reason like that could not reason at all: He constructed a new syllogism for himself.

The man who committed this murder was not a fool.

Weldon is a fool.

Therefore Weldon did not commit this murder.

That appeared to be sound, so far as it went. But what was Weldon bothering about, in that case? One could only suppose that he was worried over having no perfect alibi for two o’clock. And indeed that was worrying Wimsey himself. All the best murderers have alibis for the time of the murder.

Then, suddenly, illumination came flooding, stabbing across the dark places of his mind like a searchlight. And, good God! if this was the true solution, Weldon; was anything but a fool. He was one of the subtlest criminals a detective had ever encountered. Wimsey studied Weldon’s obstinate profile — was it possible? Yes, it was possible — and the scheme might quite well have been successful, if only Harriet Vane had not turned up with her evidence.