Have His Carcase

‘Quite. As I’ve said before, I can’t quite swallow the Bolshevik theory; And yet — dash it all! I simply cannot fit these letters in with the Weldon, side of the business.’

‘What I want to know,’ put in the Inspector, ’is this. How did the murderers, whoever they were, get Alexis out to the Flat-Iron? Or if it was Bolsheviks that got him there, how, did Weldon & Co. know he was going to be there? It must be the same party that made the appointment and did the throat-cutting. Which brings us to the point that either Weldon’s party wrote the letter or the foreign party did the murder.’

‘True, O king.’

‘And where,’ asked Harriet, ‘does Olga Kohn come in?’

‘Ah!’ said Wimsey, ‘there, you are. That’s the deepest mystery of the lot. I’ll swear that girl was telling the truth, and I’ll swear; that the extremely un-Irish Mr Sullivan was telling the truth too. Little flower in the crannied wall I pluck you out of the crannies, but, as the poet goes on to say, if I could understand I should know who the guilty man is. But I don’t understand. Who is the mysterious bearded gentleman who asked Mr Sullivan for the portrait of a Russian-looking girl, and how did the portrait get into the corpse’s pocket-book, signed with the name Feodora? These are deep waters, Watson.’

‘I’m coming back to my original opinion,’ grumbled the inspector. ‘I believe the fellow was dotty and cut his own throat and there’s an end of it. He probably had a mania for collecting girls’ photographs and sending himself letters in cipher.’

‘And posting them in Czechoslovakia?’

‘Oh, well, somebody must have done that for him. As far as I can see, we’ve no case against Weldon and no case against Bright, and the case against Perkins is as full of holes as a colander. As for Bolsheviks — where are they? Your friend Chief-Inspector. Parker has put out inquiries about Bolshevik agents in this country, and the answer is that none of ’em are known to have been about here lately, and as regards Thursday, 18th, they all seem to be accounted for. You may say it’s an unknown Bolshevik agent, but there aren’t as many of those going about as you might think. These London chaps know quite a lot more than the ordinary public realises. If there’d been anything funny about Alexis and his crowd, they’d have been on to it like a shot.’

Wimsey sighed, and rose.

‘I’m going home to bed,’ he declared, ‘We must wait till we get the photographs of the paper. Life is dust and ashes. I can’t prove my theories and Bunter has deserted me again. He disappeared from — Wilvercombe on the same day as William Bright, leaving me a message to say that one of my favourite socks had been lost in the wash and that he had lodged a complaint with the management.’ Miss Vane, Harriet, if I may call you so, will you marry me and look after my socks, and, incidentally be the only woman-novelist who ever accepted a proposal of marriage in the presence of a superintendent and inspector of Police?’

‘Not even for the sake of the headlines.’

‘I thought not. Even publicity isn’t what it was. See here,’ Superintendent, will you take a bet that Alexis didn’t commit suicide and that he wasn’t murdered by Bolsheviks?’

The Superintendent replied cautiously that he wasn’t a sporting, man.

‘Crushed again!’ moaned his lordship. ‘All the same,’ he added, with a flash of his old spirit, ‘I’lI break that alibi if I die for it.’

Chapter XXVI. The Evidence Of The Bay Mare

‘Hail, shrine of blood!’

— The Bride’s Tragedy

Wednesday, I July

THE photographs of the paper found on the corpse duly arrived next morning, together with the original and Wimsey, comparing them together in the presence of Glaisher and Umpelty, had to confess that the experts had made a good job of it. Even the original paper was far more legible than it had been before. The chemicals that remove bloodstains and the stains of dyed leather, and the chemical that restore the lost colour to washed-out ink had done their work well, and the colour-screen that so ingeniously aid the lens to record one colour and cut out the next had produced from the original, thus modified, a result in which only a few letters here and there were irretrievably lost. But to read is one thing; to decipher; another. They gazed sadly at the inextricable jumble of letters.

XNATNX

RBEXMG

PRBFX ALI MKMG BFFY, MGTSQ JMRRY. ZBZE FLOX P.M. MSIU FKX FLDYPC FKAP — RPD KL DONA FMKPC FM NOR ANXP.

SOLFA TGMZ DXL LKKZM VXI BWHNZ MBFFY

MG, TSQ A NVPD NMM VFYQ CJU ROGA K.C. RAC RRMTN S.B. IF H.R HNZ ME? SSPXLZ DFAX LRAEL TLMK XATL RPX BM AEBF HS MPIKATL TO HOKCCI HNRY. TYM VDSM SUSSX GAMKR, BG AIL AXH NZMLF HVUL KNN RAGY QWMCK, MNQS TOIL AXFA AN IHMZS RPT HO KFLTI M. IF;MTGNLU H. M. CLM KLZM AHPE ALF AKMSM, ZULPR FH. Q— CMZT SXS RSMKRS GNKS FVMP RACY OSS QESBH NAE UZCK CON MGBNRY RMAL RSH NZM, BKTQAP MSH NZM TO ILG MELMS NAGMJU KC KC.

TQKFX BQZ NMEZLI BM ZLFA AYZ MARS UP QOS KMXBJ SUE UMIL PRKBG MSK QD.