‘How about a drink, Colonel?’ said Wimsey.
They went into the bar, which was just preparing to close for the night. Several other men were there, talking over their plans for Christmas.
‘I’m getting away south,’ said Tin-Tummy Challoner. ‘I’m fed up with this climate and this country.’
‘I wish you’d look us up, Wimsey,’ said another man. ‘We could give you some very decent shooting. We’re having a sort of house party; my wife, you know – must have all these young people round – awful crowd of women. But I’m getting one or two men who can play bridge and handle a gun, and it would be a positive charity to see me through. Deadly season, Christmas. Can’t think why they invented it.’
‘It’s all right if you’ve got kids,’ interrupted a large, red-faced man with a bald head. ‘The little beggars enjoy it. You ought to start a family, Anstruther.’
‘All very well,’ said Anstruther, ‘you’re cut out by nature to dress up as Father Christmas. I tell you, what with one thing and another, entertaining and going about, and the servants we have to keep in a place like ours, it’s a job to keep things going. If you know of a good thing, I wish you’d put me on to it. It’s not as though—’
‘Hallo,’ said Challoner. ‘What was that?’
‘Motor-bike, probably,’ said Anstruther. ‘As I was saying, it’s not as though—’
‘Something’s happened,’ broke in the red-faced man, setting down his glass.
There were voices, and the running to and fro of feet. The door was flung open. Startled faces turned towards it. Wetheridge burst in, pale and angry.
‘I say, you fellows,’ he cried, ‘here’s another unpleasantness. Penberthy’s shot himself in the library. People ought to have more consideration for the members. Where’s Culyer?’
Wimsey pushed his way out into the entrance-hall. There, as he had expected, he found the plainclothes detective who had been told off to shadow Penberthy.
‘Send for Inspector Parker,’ he said. ‘I have a paper to give him. Your job’s over; it’s the end of the case.’
POST-MORTEM
‘And George is all right again now?’
‘Thank heaven, yes – getting on splendidly. The doctor says he worked himself into it, just out of worry lest he should be suspected. It never occurred to me – but then George is very quick at putting two and two together.’
‘Of course he knew he was one of the last people to see his grandfather.’
‘Yes, and seeing the name on the bottle – and the police coming—’
‘That did it. And you’re sure he’s all right?’
‘Oh, rather. The minute he knew that it was all cleared up, he seemed to come out from under a blanket. He sent you all sorts of messages, by the way.’
‘Well, as soon as he’s fit you must come and dine with me . . .’
‘. . . A simple case, of course, as soon as you had disentangled the Robert part of it.’
‘A damned unsatisfactory case, Charles. Not the kind I like. No real proof.’
‘Nothing in it for us, of course. Just as well it never came to trial, though. With juries you never know.’
‘No; they might have let Penberthy off; or convicted them both.’
‘Exactly. If you ask me, I think Ann Dorland is a very lucky young woman.’
‘Oh, God! – you would say that . . .’
‘. . . Yes, of course, I’m sorry for Naomi Rushworth. But she needn’t be so spiteful. She goes about hinting that of course dear Walter was got over by that Dorland girl and sacrificed himself to save her.’
‘Well, that’s natural, I suppose. You thought Miss Dorland had done it yourself at one time, you know, Marjorie.’
‘I didn’t know then about her being engaged to Penberthy. And I think he deserved all he got . . . Well, I know he’s dead, but it was a rotten way to treat a girl, and Ann’s far too good for that kind of thing. People have a perfect right to want love affairs. You men always think—’
‘Not me, Marjorie, I don’t think.’
‘Oh, you! You’re almost human. I’d almost take you on myself if you asked me. You don’t feel inclined that way, I suppose?’
‘My dear – if a great liking and friendship were enough, I would – like a shot. But that wouldn’t satisfy you, would it?’
‘It wouldn’t satisfy you, Peter. I’m sorry. Forget it.’
‘I won’t forget it. It’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever had paid me. Great Scott! I only wish—’
‘There, that’s all right, you needn’t make a speech. And you won’t go away tactfully for ever, will you?’
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
‘And you won’t be embarrassed?’
‘No, I won’t be embarrassed. Portrait of a young man poking the fire to bits to indicate complete freedom from embarrassment. Let’s go and feed somewhere, shall we? . . .’
‘. . . Well, and how did you get on with the heiress and the lawyers and all that lot?’
‘Oh! there was a long argument. Miss Dorland insisted on dividing the money, and I said no, I couldn’t think of it. She said it was only hers as the result of a crime, and Pritchard and Murbles said she wasn’t responsible for other people’s crimes, and I said it would look like my profiting by my own attempt at fraud, and she said, not at all, and we went on and on, don’t you know. That’s a damned decent girl, Wimsey.’
‘Yes, I know. The moment I found she preferred burgundy to champagne I had the highest opinion of her.’
‘No, really – there’s something very fine and straightforward about her.’
‘Oh, yes – not a bad girl at all; though I shouldn’t have said she was quite your sort.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well – arty and all that. And her looks aren’t her strong point.’
‘You needn’t be offensive, Wimsey. Surely I may be allowed to appreciate a woman of intelligence and character. I may not be highbrow, but I have some ideas beyond the front row of the chorus. And what that girl went through with that blighter Penberthy makes my blood boil.’
‘Oh, you’ve heard all about that?’
‘I have. She told me, and I respected her for it. I thought it most courageous of her. It’s about time somebody brought a little brightness into that poor girl’s life. You don’t realise how desperately lonely she has been. She had to take up that art business to give her an interest, poor child, but she’s really cut out for an ordinary, sensible, feminine life. You may not understand that, with your ideas, but she has really a very sweet nature.’
‘Sorry, Fentiman.’
‘She made me ashamed, the way she took the whole thing. When I think of the trouble I got her into, owing to my damned dishonest tinkering about with – you know—’
‘My dear man, you were perfectly providential. If you hadn’t tinkered about, as you say, she’d be married to Penberthy by now.’
‘That’s true – and that makes it so amazing of her to forgive me. She loved that blighter, Wimsey. You don’t know. It’s absolutely pathetic.’
‘Well, you’ll have to do your best to make her forget it.’
‘I look on that as a duty, Wimsey.’
‘Just so. Doing anything tonight? Care to come and look at a show?’
‘Sorry – I’m booked. Taking Miss Dorland to the new thing at the Palladium, in fact. Thought it’d do her good – buck her up and so on.’
‘Oh? good work! Here’s luck to it . . .’
‘. . . and the cooking is getting perfectly disgraceful. I spoke to Culyer about it only yesterday. But he won’t do anything. I don’t know what’s the good of the committee. This Club isn’t half what it used to be. In fact, Wimsey, I’m thinking of resigning.’
‘Oh, don’t do that, Wetheridge. It wouldn’t be the same place without you.’
‘Look at all the disturbance there has been lately. Police and reporters – and then Penberthy blowing his brains out in the library. And the coal’s a
ll slate. Only yesterday something exploded like a shell – I assure you, exactly like a shell – in the card-room; and as nearly as possible got me in the eye. I said to Culyer, “This must not occur again.” You may laugh, but I knew a man who was blinded by a thing popping out suddenly like that. These things never happened before the War, and – great heavens! great heavens, William! Look at this wine! Smell it! Taste it! Corked? Yes, I should think it was corked. My God! I don’t know what’s come to this Club.’
This re-issue of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (which has received some corrections and amendments from MISS SAYERS) has for postscript a short biography of Lord Peter Wimsey, brought up to date (May 1935) and communicated by his uncle PAUL AUSTIN DELAGARDIE.
I am asked by Miss Sayers to fill up certain lacunae and correct a few trifling errors of fact in her account of my nephew Peter’s career. I shall do so with pleasure. To appear publicly in print is every man’s ambition, and by acting as a kind of running footman to my nephew’s triumph I shall only be showing a modesty suitable to my advanced age.
The Wimsey family is an ancient one – too ancient, if you ask me. The only sensible thing Peter’s father ever did was to ally his exhausted stock with the vigorous French-English strain of the Delagardies. Even so, my nephew Gerald (the present Duke of Denver) is nothing but a beef-witted English squire, and my niece Mary was flighty and foolish enough till she married a policeman and settled down. Peter, I am glad to say, takes after his mother and me. True, he is all nerves and nose – but that is better than being all brawn and no brains like his father and brother, or a mere bundle of emotions, like Gerald’s boy, Saint-George. He has at least inherited the Delagardie brains, by way of safeguard to the unfortunate Wimsey temperament.
Peter was born in 1890. His mother was being very much worried at the time by her husband’s behaviour (Denver was always tiresome, though the big scandal did not break out till the Jubilee year), and her anxieties may have affected the boy. He was a colourless shrimp of a child, very restless and mischievous, and always much too sharp for his age. He had nothing of Gerald’s robust physical beauty, but he developed what I can best call a kind of bodily cleverness, more skill than strength. He had a quick eye for a ball and beautiful hands for a horse. He had the devil’s own pluck, too: the intelligent sort of pluck that sees the risk before he takes it. He suffered badly from nightmares as a child. To his father’s consternation he grew up with a passion for books and music.
His early school-days were not happy. He was a fastidious child, and I suppose it was natural that his school-fellows should call him ‘Flimsy’ and treat him as a kind of comic turn. And he might, in sheer self-protection, have accepted the position and degenerated into a mere licensed buffoon, if some games-master at Eton had not discovered that he was a brilliant natural cricketer. After that, of course, all his eccentricities were accepted as wit, and Gerald underwent the salutary shock of seeing his despised younger brother become a bigger personality than himself. By the time he reached the Sixth Form, Peter had contrived to become the fashion – athlete, scholar, arbiter elegantiarum – nec pluribus impar. Cricket had a great deal to do with it – plenty of Eton men will remember the ‘Great Flim’ and his performance against Harrow – but I take credit to myself for introducing him to a good tailor, showing him the way about Town, and teaching him to distinguish good wine from bad. Denver bothered little about him – he had too many entanglements of his own and in addition was taken up with Gerald, who by this time was making a prize fool of himself at Oxford. As a matter of fact Peter never got on with his father, he was a ruthless young critic of the paternal misdemeanours, and his sympathy for his mother had a destructive effect upon his sense of humour.
Denver, needless to say, was the last person to tolerate his own failings in his offspring. It cost him a good deal of money to extricate Gerald from the Oxford affair, and he was willing enough to turn his other son over to me. Indeed, at the age of seventeen, Peter came to me of his own accord. He was old for his age and exceedingly reasonable, and I treated him as a man of the world. I established him in trustworthy hands in Paris, instructing him to keep his affairs upon a sound business footing and to see that they terminated with goodwill on both sides and generosity on his. He fully justified my confidence. I believe that no woman has ever found cause to complain of Peter’s treatment; and two at least of them have since married royalty (rather obscure royalties, I admit, but royalty of a sort). Here again, I insist upon my due share of the credit; however good the material one has to work upon it is ridiculous to leave any young man’s social education to chance.
The Peter of this period was really charming, very frank, modest and well-mannered, with a pretty, lively wit. In 1909 he went up with a scholarship to read History at Balliol, and here, I must confess, he became rather intolerable. The world was at his feet, and he began to give himself airs. He acquired affectations, an exaggerated Oxford manner and a monocle, and aired his opinions a good deal, both in and out of the Union, though I will do him the justice to say that he never attempted to patronise his mother or me. He was in his second year when Denver broke his neck out hunting and Gerald succeeded to the title. Gerald showed more sense of responsibility than I had expected in dealing with the estate; his worst mistake was to marry his cousin Helen, a scrawny, over-bred prude, all county from head to heel. She and Peter loathed each other cordially; but he could always take refuge with his mother at the Dower House.
And then, in his last year at Oxford, Peter fell in love with a child of seventeen and instantly forgot everything he had ever been taught. He treated that girl as if she was made of gossamer, and me as a hardened old monster of depravity who had made him unfit to touch her delicate purity. I won’t deny that they made an exquisite pair – all white and gold – a prince and princess of moonlight, people said. Moonshine would have been nearer the mark. What Peter was to do in twenty years’ time with a wife who had neither brains nor character nobody but his mother and myself ever troubled to ask, and he, of course, was completely besotted. Happily, Barbara’s parents decided that she was too young to marry; so Peter went in for his final Schools in the temper of a Sir Eglamore achieving his first dragon; laid his First-Class Honours at his lady’s feet like the dragon’s head, and settled down to a period of virtuous probation.
Then came the War. Of course the young idiot was mad to get married before he went. But his own honourable scruples made him mere wax in other people’s hand. It was pointed out to him that if he came back mutilated it would be very unfair to the girl. He hadn’t thought of that, and rushed off in a frenzy of self-abnegation to release her from the engagement. I had no hand in that; I was glad enough of the result, but I couldn’t stomach the means.
He did very well in France; he made a good officer and the men liked him. And then, if you please, he came back on leave with his captaincy in ’16, to find the girl married – to a hardbitten rake of a Major Somebody, whom she had nursed in the V.A.D. hospital, and whose motto with women was catch ’em quick and treat ’em rough. It was pretty brutal; for the girl hadn’t had the nerve to tell Peter beforehand. They got married in a hurry when they heard he was coming home, and all he got on landing was a letter, announcing the fait accompli and reminding him that he had set her free himself.
I will say for Peter that he came straight to me and admitted that he had been a fool. ‘All right,’ said I, ‘you’ve had your lesson. Don’t go and make a fool of yourself in the other direction.’ So he went back to his job with (I am sure) the fixed intention of getting killed; but all he got was his majority and his D.S.O. for some recklessly good intelligence work behind the German front. In 1918 he was blown up and buried in a shell-hole near Caudry, and that left him with a bad nervous breakdown, lasting, on and off, for two years. After that, he set himself up in a flat in Piccadilly, with the man Bunter (who had been his sergeant and was, and is, devoted to him), and started out to put himself together again.
I don’t mind saying that I was prepared for almost anything. He had lost all his beautiful frankness, he shut everybody out of his confidence, including his mother and me, adopted an impenetrable frivolity of manner and a dilettante pose, and became, in fact, the complete comedian. He was wealthy and could do as he chose, and it gave me a certain amount of sardonic entertainment to watch the efforts of post-war feminine London to capture him. ‘It can’t,’ said one solicitous matron, ‘be good for poor Peter to live like a hermit.’ ‘Madam,’ said I, ‘if he did, it wouldn’t be.’ No; from that point of view he gave me no anxiety. But I could not but think it dangerous that a man of his ability should have no job to occupy his mind, and I told him so.
In 1921 came the business of the Attenbury Emeralds. That affair has never been written up, but it made a good deal of noise, even at that noisiest of periods. The trial of the thief was a series of red-hot sensations, and the biggest sensation of the bunch was when Lord Peter Wimsey walked into the witness-box as chief witness for the prosecution.
That was notoriety with a vengeance. Actually, to an experienced intelligence officer, I don’t suppose the investigation had offered any great difficulties; but a ‘noble sleuth’ was something new in thrills. Denver was furious; personally, I didn’t mind what Peter did, provided he did something. I thought he seemed happier for the work, and I liked the Scotland Yard man he had picked up during the run of the case. Charles Parker is a quiet, sensible, well-bred fellow, and has been a good friend and brother-in-law to Peter. He has the valuable quality of being fond of people without wanting to turn them inside out.
The only trouble about Peter’s new hobby was that it had to be more than a hobby, if it was to be any hobby for a gentleman. You cannot get murderers hanged for your private entertainment. Peter’s intellect pulled him one way and his nerves another, till I began to be afraid they would pull him to pieces. At the end of every case we had the old nightmares and shell-shock over again. And then Denver, of all people – Denver, the crashing great booby, in the middle of his fulminations against Peter’s degrading and notorious police activities, must needs get himself indicted on a murder charge and stand his trial in the House of Lords, amid a blaze of publicity which made all Peter’s efforts in that direction look like damp squibs.