Have His Carcase

Mr Martin had been a tidy camper on the whole, leaving no obviously offensive debris. On the right-hand side of the camping-ground’ there was, however, the remains of a stunted thorn hedge, surrounding the battered remnants of Hinks’s Cottage. Half buried at the foot of this hedge, Wimsey discovered a repulsive cache, containing a great number of old tins and bottles, some recent and some obviously abandoned by previous campers, the heels of some loaves, the bones from a neck of mutton, an old dixie with a hole in the bottom, half a neck-tie, a safety-razor blade (still sharp enough to cut one’s fingers on) and a very dead gull. An elaborate and back-aching crawl over the whole surface of the camping-ground rewarded the earnest sleuth further with an immoderate quantity of burnt matches, six empty match-boxes of foreign make, the dottles of several pipes, three oat-grains, a broken bootlace (brown), the stalks of about a pound of strawberries, six-plum-stones, the stub of a pencil, a drawing-pin business end up, fifteen beer-corks, and an instrument for removing the patent caps of other beer-bottles. The rough grass showed no identifiable footprints

Weary and hot, Lord Peter gathered his loot together and stretched his cramped limbs. The wind, still blowing heavily in from seaward, was grateful to his perspiring brow, however much it might hold up. the Inspector’s salvage operations. The sky was cloudy, but so long as the wind held, there was, he felt, not much likelihood of rain, and he was glad, for he didn’t want rain. A vague possibility was forming itself in his ‘mind, and he wanted to take a walk next day with Harriet Vane. At the moment, he could do no more. He would go back and change and eat and be normal.

He drove back to Wilvercombe.

After a hot bath and the putting-on of a boiled shirt and dinner-jacket, he felt better and telephoned to the Resplendent to ask Harriet to dine with him.

‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t. I’m dining with Mrs Weldon and her son.’

‘Her son?’

‘Yes; he’s just arrived. Why not come round here after grub and be introduced?’

‘Dunno. What sort of bloke is he?’

‘Oh, yes — he’s here, and would like to meet you very much.’

‘Oh, I see. We are being overheard. I suppose I’d better come’ and look the blighter over. Is he handsome?’

‘Yes, rather! Come along about a quarter to nine.’

‘Well, you’d better tell him we’re engaged, and then I shan’t be obliged to assassinate him.’

‘You will? That’s splendid.’

‘Will you marry me?’

‘Of course not. We’ll, expect you at 8.45.’

‘All right, and I hope your rabbit dies.’

Wimsey ate his solitary dinner thoughtfully. So this was the son, was it? The one who was out of sympathy with his mother. What was he doing here? Had he suddenly become sympathetic? Or had she sent for him and compelled him to come in, by, financial or other pressure? Was he perhaps a new factor in the problem? He was the only son of his mother and she a rich widow. Here at last was a person to whom the removal of Paul Alexis might appear in the light of a; god-send. Undoubtedly the man must be looked into.

He went round to the Resplendent after dinner and found the party waiting for him in the lounge. Mrs Weldon, who wore a plain black semi-evening dress and looked her full age in it, greeted Wimsey effusively.

‘My dear Lord Peter! I am so glad to see you. May I introduce my son Henry? I wrote asking him to come and help us through this terrible time, and he has most kindly put his own business aside and come to me. So very sweet of you, Henry dear. I have just been telling Henry how good Mrs Vane has been to me, and how hard you and she are working to clear poor Paul’s memory.’

Harriet had merely been mischievous. Henry was certainly not handsome, though he was a good, sturdy specimen of his type. He stood about five foot eleven — a strongly built, heavyish man with a brick-red all-weather face. Evening dress did ‘not suit him, for the breadth of his shoulders and the shortness of his legs gave him a rather top-heavy appearance; one would expect him to look his best in country tweeds and leggings. His hair, rather rough and dull in texture, was mouse-coloured, and offered a pregnant suggestion of what his mother’s might once have looked like before it knew the touch of peroxide; indeed, he was, in a curious way, very like his mother, having the same low, narrow forehead. and the same long and obstinate chin; though, in the-mother-the expression was that of a weak, fanciful obstinacy, and, in the son, of stubborn and unimaginative obstinacy: Looking at him, Wimsey felt that he was hardly the sort of man’ to take kindly to a Paul Alexis for a step-father; he would not sympathise with the sterile romance of any woman who was past the age of child-bearing. Wimsey, summing him up with the man of the world’s experienced eye, placed him at once as a gentleman-farmer, who was not quite a gentleman and not much of a farmer.