Have His Carcase

‘But he did leave footprints. Oh, I see. You’re thinking of a possible murderer.’

‘I should prefer it to be murder, naturally. Shouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. Well, that’s a fact. A murderer might have walked along from either direction, if he did it that way. If he came from Lesston Hoe he must have arrived after me, because I could see the shore as I walked along, and there was no one walking there then. But he could have come at any time from the Wilvercombe side.’

‘No, he couldn’t,’ said Wimsey: ‘He wasn’t there, you said, at one o’clock,’

‘He might have, been standing on the seaward side of the Flat-Iron.’

‘So he might. Now, how about the corpse? We can tell pretty close when he came.’

‘How?’

‘You said there were no wet stains on his shoes. Therefore he went dry-shod to the rock. We only have to find out exactly when the sand on the landward side of the rock is uncovered.’

‘Of course. How stupid of me. Well, we can easily find that out. Where had I got to?’

‘You had been awakened by the cry of a sea-gull.’

‘Yes. Well, then, I walked round the point of the cliff and out to the rock, and there he was.’

‘And at that moment there was nobody within sight?’

‘Not a single soul, except a man in a boat’

‘Yes the boat. Now, supposing the boat had come in when the tide was out, and the occupant had walked or waded up to the rock?’

‘That’s possible, of course. The boat was some way out’

It all seems to depend on when the corpse got there. We must find that out.’

‘You’re determined it should be murder,’

Well, suicide seems so dull. And why go all that way to commit suicide?

‘Why riot? Much tidier than doing it in your bedroom or anywhere like that. Aren’t we beginning at the wrong end? If we knew who the man was, we might find he had left an explanatory note behind him to say why he was going to do it. I daresay the police know all about it by now.’

‘Possibly,’ said Wimsey in a dissatisfied tone.

‘What’s worrying you?’

’Two things. The gloves. Why should anybody cut his throat in gloves?’

‘I know. That bothered me too. Perhaps he had some sort of skin disease and was accustomed to wearing gloves for everything. I ought to have looked. I did start to take the gloves off, but they were messy.’

‘Um! I — see you still retain a few female frailties. The second point that troubles me is the weapon. Why should a gentleman with a, beard sport a cut-throat razor?’

‘Bought for the purpose.’

‘Yes; after all, why not? My dear Harriet, I think you are right. The man cut his throat, and that’s all there is to it. I am disappointed.’

‘It is disappointing, but it can’t be helped. Hallo! here’s my friend the Inspector.’

It was indeed Inspector Umpelty who was threading his way between the tables. He was in mufti — a large, comfortable-looking tweed-clad figure. He greeted Harriet pleasantly.

‘I thought you might like to see how your snaps have turned out, Miss Vane. And we’ve identified the man.’

‘No? Have you? Good work. This is Inspector Umpelty — Lord Peter Wimsey.’

The Inspector appeared gratified by the introduction.

‘You’re early on the job, my lord. But I don’t know that you’ll find anything very mysterious about this case. Just a plain suicide, I fancy.’

‘We had regretfully come to that conclusion,’ admitted Wimsey

‘Though — why he should have done it, I don’t know. But you never can tell with these foreigners, can you?’

‘I thought he looked rather foreign,’ said Harriet.

‘Yes. He’s a Russian, or something of that. Paul Alexis Goldschmidt, his name is; known as Paul Alexis. Comes from this very hotel, as a matter of fact. One of the professsional dancing-partners in the lounge here — you know the sort. They don’t seem to know much about him. Turned up here just over a year ago and asked for a job: Seemed to be a good dancer and all that and they had a vacancy, so they took him on. Age twenty-two or thereabouts. Unmarried.

Lived in rooms. Nothing known against him.’

‘Papers in order?’

‘Naturalised British subject. Said to have escaped from Russia at the Revolution. He must have been a kid of about nine, but we haven’t found out yet who had charge of him. He was alone when he turned up here, and his landlady doesn’t ever seem to have heard of anybody belonging to him. But we’ll soon find out when we go through his stuff’.’

‘He didn’t leave any letter for the coroner, or anything?’

‘We’ve found nothing so far. And as regards the coroner, that’s a bit of a bother, that is. I don’t know how long it’ll be, miss, before you’re wanted. You see, we can’t find the body.’

‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ said Wimsey, ‘that the evil eyed doctor and the mysterious Chinaman have already conveyed it to the lone house on the moor?’