The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

  Wimsey whistled softly.

  ‘I quite agree with you,’ said Mr Murbles. ‘It is a most awkward situation. Lady Dormer died at precisely 10.37 a.m. on November 11th. General Fentiman died that same morning at some time, presumably after 10 o’clock, which was his usual hour for arriving at the Club, and certainly before 7 p.m., when his death was discovered. If he died immediately on his arrival, or at any time up to 10.36, then Miss Dorland is an important heiress, and my clients the Fentimans get only seven thousand pounds or so apiece. If, on the other hand, his death occurred even a few seconds after 10.37, Miss Dorland receives only twelve thousand pounds, George Fentiman is left with the small pittance bequeathed to him under his father’s will – while Robert Fentiman, the residuary legatee, inherits a very considerable fortune of well over half a million.’

  ‘And what,’ said Wimsey, ‘do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Why,’ replied the lawyer, with a slight cough, ‘it occurred to me that you, with your – if I may say so – remarkable powers of deduction and analysis, might be able to solve the extremely difficult and delicate problem of the precise moment of General Fentiman’s decease. You were in the Club when the death was discovered, you saw the body, you know the places and the persons involved, and you are, by your standing and personal character, exceptionally well fitted to carry out the necessary investigations without creating any – ahem! – public agitation or – er – scandal, or, in fact notoriety, which would, I need hardly say, be extremely painful to all concerned.’

  ‘It’s awkward,’ said Wimsey, ‘uncommonly awkward.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ said the lawyer with some warmth, ‘for, as we are now situated, it is impossible to execute either will or – or, in short, do anything at all. It is most unfortunate that the circumstances were not fully understood at the time, when the – um – the body of General Fentiman was available for inspection. Naturally, Mr Pritchard was quite unaware of the anomalous situation, and as I knew nothing about Lady Dormer’s will, I had no idea that anything beyond Dr Penberthy’s certificate was, or ever could become, necessary.’

  ‘Couldn’t you get the parties to come to some agreement?’ suggested Wimsey.

  ‘If we are unable to reach any satisfactory conclusion about the time of the death, that will probably be the only way out of the difficulty. But at the moment there are certain obstacles—’

  ‘Somebody’s being greedy, eh? You’d rather not say more definitely, I suppose? No. H’m, well! From a purely detached point of view it’s a very pleasin’ and pretty little problem, you know.’

  ‘You will undertake to solve it for us, then, Lord Peter?’

  Wimsey’s fingers tapped out an intricate fugal passage on the arm of his chair.

  ‘If I were you, Murbles, I’d try again to get a settlement.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ asked Mr Murbles, ‘that you think my clients have a losing case?’

  ‘No – I can’t say that. By the way, Murbles, who is your client – Robert or George?’

  ‘Well, the Fentiman family in general. I know, naturally, that Robert’s gain is George’s loss. But none of the parties wishes anything but that the actual facts of the case should be determined.’

  ‘I see. You’ll put up with anything I happen to dig out?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘However favourable or unfavourable it may be?’

  ‘I should not lend myself to any other course,’ said Mr Murbles, rather stiffly.

  ‘I know that, sir. But – well! – I only mean that – Look here, sir! when you were a boy, did you ever go about pokin’ sticks and things into peaceful, mysterious-lookin’ ponds, just to see what was at the bottom?’

  ‘Frequently,’ replied Mr Murbles. ‘I was extremely fond of natural history and had a quite remarkable collection (if I may say so at this distance of time) of pond fauna.’

  ‘Did you ever happen to stir up a deuce of a stink in the course of your researches?’

  ‘My dear Lord Peter – you are making me positively uneasy.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know that you need be. I am only giving you a general warning, you know. Of course, if you wish it, I’ll investigate this business like a shot.’

  ‘It’s very good of you,’ said Mr Murbles.

  ‘Not at all. I shall enjoy it all right. If anything odd comes of it, that’s your funeral. You never know, you know.’

  ‘If you decide that no satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at,’ said Mr Murbles, ‘we can always fall back on the settlement. I am sure all parties wish to avoid litigation.’

  ‘In case the estate vanishes in costs? Very wise. I hope it may be feasible. Have you made any preliminary inquiries?’

  ‘None to speak of. I would rather you undertook the whole investigation from the beginning.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll start tomorrow and let you know how it gets on.’

  The lawyer thanked him and took his departure. Wimsey sat pondering for a short time, then rang the bell for his manservant.

  ‘A new notebook, please, Bunter. Head it “Fentiman”, and be ready to come round with me to the Bellona Club tomorrow, complete with camera and the rest of the outfit.’

  ‘Very good, my lord. I take it your lordship has a new inquiry in hand?’

  ‘Yes, Bunter – quite new.’

  ‘May I venture to ask if it is a promising case, my lord?’

  ‘It has its points. So has a porcupine. No matter. Begone, dull care! Be at great pains, Bunter, to cultivate a detached outlook on life. Take example by the bloodhound, who will follow up with equal and impartial zest the trail of a parricide or of a bottle of aniseed.’

  ‘I will bear it in mind, my lord.’

  Wimsey moved slowly across to the little black baby grand that stood in the corner of the library.

  ‘Not Bach this evening,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Bach for tomorrow, when the grey matter begins to revolve.’ A melody of Parry’s formed itself crooningly under his fingers. ‘For man walketh in a vain shadow . . . he heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.’ He laughed suddenly, and plunged into an odd, noisy, and painfully inharmonious study by a modern composer in the key of seven sharps.

  4

  LORD PETER LEADS A CLUB

  ‘You are quite sure this suit is all right, Bunter?’ said Lord Peter anxiously.

  It was an easy lounge suit, tweedy in texture, and a trifle more pronounced in colour and pattern than Wimsey usually permitted himself. While not unsuitable for town wear, it yet diffused a faint suggestion of hills and the sea.

  ‘I want to look approachable,’ he went on, ‘but on no account loud. I can’t help wondering whether that stripe of invisible green wouldn’t have looked better if it had been a remote purple.’

  This suggestion seemed to disconcert Bunter. There was a pause while he visualised a remote purple stripe. At length, however, the palpitating balance of his mind seemed to settle definitely down.

  ‘No, my lord,’ he said firmly. ‘I do not think purple would be an improvement. Interesting – yes; but, if I may so express myself, decidedly less affable.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said his lordship. ‘I’m sure you’re right. You always are. And it would have been a bore to get it changed now. You are sure you’ve removed all the newness, eh? Hate new clothes.’

  ‘Positive, my lord. I assure your lordship that the garments have every appearance of being several months old.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Well, give me the malacca with the foot-rule marked on it – and where’s my lens?’

  ‘Here, my lord.’ Bunter produced an innocent-looking monocle, which was, in reality, a powerful magnifier. ‘And the finger-print powder is in your lordship’s right-hand coat pocket.’

  ‘Thanks. Well, I think that’s all. I’ll go on now, and I want you to follow on with the doings in about an hour’s time.’

  The Bellona Club is situated in Piccadilly, not many hundred yards west of Wimsey’s own flat,
which overlooks the Green Park. The commissionaire greeted him with a pleased smile.

  ‘Mornin’, Rogers. How are you?’

  ‘Very well, my lord. I thank you.’

  ‘D’you know if Major Fentiman is in the Club, by the way?’

  ‘No, my lord. Major Fentiman is not residing with us at present. I believe he is occupying the late General Fentiman’s flat, my lord.’

  ‘Ah, yes – very sad business, that.’

  ‘Very melancholy, my lord. Not a pleasant thing to happen in the Club. Very shocking, my lord.’

  ‘Yes – still, he was a very old man. I suppose it had to be some day. Queer to think of ’em all sittin’ round him there and never noticin’, eh, what?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. It gave Mrs Rogers quite a turn when I told her about it.’

  ‘Seems almost unbelievable, don’t it? Sittin’ round all those hours – must have been several hours, I gather, from what the doctor says. I suppose the old boy came in at his usual time, eh?’

  ‘Ah! regular as clockwork, the General was. Always on the stroke of ten. “Good morning, Rogers,” he’d say, a bit stiff-like, but very friendly. And then, “Fine morning,” he’d say, as like as not. And sometimes ask after Mrs Rogers and the family. A fine old gentleman, my lord. We shall all miss him.’

  ‘Did you notice whether he seemed specially feeble or tired that morning at all?’ inquired Wimsey casually, tapping a cigarette on the back of his hand.

  ‘Why, no, my lord. I beg your pardon; I fancied you knew. I wasn’t on duty that day, my lord. I was kindly given permission to attend the ceremony at the Cenotaph. Very grand sight it was, too, my lord. Mrs Rogers was greatly moved.’

  ‘Oh, of course, Rogers – I was forgetting. Naturally, you would be there. So you didn’t see the General to say good-bye, as it were. Still, it wouldn’t have done to miss the Cenotaph. Matthews took over duty, I suppose?’

  ‘No, my lord, Matthews is laid up with ’flue, I am sorry to say. It was Weston who was at the door all morning, my lord.’

  ‘Weston? Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s new, my lord, Took the place of Briggs. You recollect Briggs – his uncle died and left him a fish-shop.’

  ‘Of course he did; just so. When does Weston come on parade? I must make his acquaintance.’

  ‘He’ll be here at one o’clock, when I go to my lunch, my lord.’

  ‘Oh, right! I’ll probably be about then. Hallo, Penberthy! You’re just the man I want to see. Had your morning’s inspiration? Or come in to look for it?’

  ‘Just tracking it to its lair. Have it with me.’

  ‘Right you are, old chap – half a mo’ while I deposit my outer husk, I’ll follow you.’

  He glanced irresolutely at the hall-porter’s desk, but seeing the man already engaged with two or three inquiries, plunged abruptly into the cloak-room, where the attendant, a bright Cockney with a Sam Weller face and an artificial leg, was ready enough to talk about General Fentiman.

  ‘Well, now, my lord, that’s funny you should ask me that,’ he said, when Wimsey had dexterously worked in an inquiry as to the time of the General’s arrival at Bellona. ‘Dr Penberthy was askin’ the same question. It’s a fair puzzle that is. I could count on the fingers of one ’and the mornings I’ve missed seein’ the General come in. Wonderful regular, the General was, and him being such a very old gentleman, I’d make a point of being ’andy, to ’elp him off with his overcoat and such. But there! He must ’a’ come in a bit late that morning, for I never see him, and I thought at lunch-time, “The General must be ill,” I thinks. And I goes round, and there I see his coat and ’at ’ung up on his usual peg, So I must ’a’ missed him. There was a lot of gentlemen in and out that morning, my lord, bein’ Armistice Day. A number of members come up from the country and wanting their ’ats and boots attended to, my lord, so that’s how I came not to notice, I suppose.’

  ‘Possibly. Well, he was in before lunch, at any rate.’

  ‘Oh, yes, my lord. ’Alf-past twelve I goes off, and his hat and coat were on the peg then, because I seen ’em.’

  ‘That gives us a terminus ad quem, at any rate,’ said Wimsey, half to himself.

  ‘I beg your lordship’s pardon.’

  ‘I was saying, that shows he came in before half-past twelve – and later than ten o’clock, you think?’

  ‘Yes, my lord, I couldn’t say to a fraction, but I’m sure if ’e’d arrived before a quarter-past ten I should have seen ’im. But after that, I recollect I was very busy, and he must ’a’ slipped in without me noticing him.’

  ‘Ah, yes – poor old boy! Still, no doubt he’d have liked to pass out quietly like that. Not a bad way to go home, Williamson.’

  ‘Very good way, my lord. We’ve seen worse than that. And what’s it all come to, after all? They’re all sayin’ as it’s an unpleasant thing for the Club, but I say, where’s the odds? There ain’t many ’ouses what somebody ain’t died in, some time or another. We don’t think any the worse of the ’ouses, so why think the worse of the Club?’

  ‘You’re a philosopher, Williamson.’ Wimsey climbed the short flight of marble steps and turned into the bar. ‘It’s narrowin’ down,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Between ten-fifteen and twelve-thirty. Looks as if it was goin’ to be a close run for the Dormer stakes. But – dash it all! Let’s hear what Penberthy has to say.’

  The doctor was already standing at the bar with a whisky-and-soda before him. Wimsey demanded a Worthington and dived into his subject without more ado.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I just wanted a word with you about old Fentiman. Frightfully confidential, and all that. But it seems the exact time of the poor old blighter’s departure has become an important item. Question of succession. Get me? They don’t want a row made. Asked me, as friend of the family and all that, don’t y’ know, to barge round and ask questions. Obviously, you’re the first man to come to. What’s your opinion? Medical opinion, apart from anything else?’

  Penberthy raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, there’s a question, is there? Thought there might be. That lawyer-fellow, what’s-his-name, was here the other day, trying to pin me down. Seemed to think one can say to a minute when a man died by looking at his back teeth. I told him it wasn’t possible. Once give these birds an opinion, and the next thing is, you find yourself in a witness-box, swearing to it.’

  ‘I know. But one gets a general idea.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Only you have to check up your ideas by other things – facts, and so on. You can’t just theorise.’

  ‘Very dangerous things, theories. F’r instance – take this case. I’ve seen one or two stiff ’uns in my short life, and if I’d started theorisin’ about this business, just from the look of the body, d’you know what I’d have said?’

  ‘God knows what a layman would say about a medical question!’ retorted the doctor, with a sour little grin.

  ‘Hear, hear! Well, I should have said he’d been dead a long time.’

  ‘That’s pretty vague.’

  ‘You said yourself that rigor was well advanced. Give it, say, six hours to set in, and – when did it pass off?’

  ‘It was passing off then – I remarked upon it at the time.’

  ‘So you did. I thought rigor usually lasted twenty-four hours or so.’

  ‘It does, sometimes. Sometimes it goes off quickly. Quick come, quick go, as a rule. Still, I agree with you that, in the absence of other evidence, I should have put the death rather earlier than ten o’clock.’

  ‘You admit that?’

  ‘I do. But we know he came in not earlier than a quarter-past ten.’

  ‘You’ve seen Williamson, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I thought it better to check up on the thing as far as possible. So I can only suppose that, what with the death being sudden, and what with the warmth of the room – he was very close to the fire, you know – the whole thing came on and worked itself off very quickly.’

  ??
?H’m! Of course, you knew the old boy’s constitution very well?’

  ‘Oh, rather. He was very frail. Heart gets a bit worn-out when you’re over the four-score and ten, you know. I should never have been surprised at his dropping down anywhere. And then he’d had a bit of a shock, you see.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Seeing his sister the afternoon before. They told you about that, I imagine, since you seem to know all about the business. He came along to Harley Street afterwards and saw me. I told him to go to bed and keep quiet. Arteries very strained, and pulse erratic. He was excited – naturally. He ought to have taken a complete rest. As I see it, he must have insisted on getting up, in spite of feeling groggy, walked here – he would do it – and collapsed straight away.’

  ‘That’s all right, Penberthy, but when – just when – did it happen?’

  ‘Lord knows! I don’t. Have another?’

  ‘No, thanks; not for the moment. I say, I suppose you are perfectly satisfied about it all?’

  ‘Satisfied?’ The doctor stared at him. ‘Yes, of course. If you mean satisfied as to what he died of, of course I’m satisfied. I shouldn’t have given a certificate if I hadn’t been satisfied.’

  ‘Nothing about the body struck you as queer?’