Chapter 1

LORD PETER VIEWS THE BODY

By DOROTHY L. SAYERS

LONDON
VICTOR GOLLANCZ LIMITED
14 Henrietta Street Covent Garden

_First published November 1928_
_Second impression December 1928_
_Third impression (first cheap edition) October 1929_
_Fourth impression February 1930_
_Fifth impression April 1933_
_Sixth impression November 1933_
_Seventh impression September 1934_
_Eighth impression September 1935_
_Ninth impression January 1936_
_Tenth impression September 1936_
_Eleventh impression July 1937_
_Twelfth impression August 1938_
_Thirteenth impression (two shilling edition) July 1939_
_Fourteenth impression March 1940_
_Fifteenth impression November 1940_
_Sixteenth impression July 1941_
_Seventeenth impression (reset) January 1948_
_Eighteenth impression April 1949_

PRINTED AND BOUND IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES

THE STORIES

I. The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers

II. The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question

III. The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will

IV. The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag

V. The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker

VI. The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention

VII. The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps that Ran

VIII. The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste

IX. The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head

X. The Piscatorial Farce of the Stolen Stomach

XI. The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face

XII. The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba

THE ABOMINABLE HISTORY OF THE MAN WITH COPPER FINGERS

The Egotists' Club is one of the most genial places in London. It is a
place to which you may go when you want to tell that odd dream you had
last night, or to announce what a good dentist you have discovered.
You can write letters there if you like, and have the temperament of a
Jane Austen, for there is no silence room, and it would be a breach of
club manners to appear busy or absorbed when another member addresses
you. You must not mention golf or fish, however, and, if the Hon.
Freddy Arbuthnot's motion is carried at the next committee meeting
(and opinion so far appears very favourable), you will not be allowed
to mention wireless either. As Lord Peter Wimsey said when the matter
was mooted the other day in the smoking-room, those are things you can
talk about anywhere. Otherwise the club is not specially exclusive.
Nobody is ineligible _per se_, except strong, silent men. Nominees are,
however, required to pass certain tests, whose nature is sufficiently
indicated by the fact that a certain distinguished explorer came to
grief through accepting, and smoking, a powerful Trichinopoly cigar as
an accompaniment to a '63 port. On the other hand, dear old Sir Roger
Bunt (the coster millionaire who won the £20,000 ballot offered by the
_Sunday Shriek_, and used it to found his immense catering business
in the Midlands) was highly commended and unanimously elected after
declaring frankly that beer and a pipe were all he really cared for in
that way. As Lord Peter said again: "Nobody minds coarseness but one
must draw the line at cruelty."

On this particular evening, Masterman (the cubist poet) had brought
a guest with him, a man named Varden. Varden had started life as a
professional athlete, but a strained heart had obliged him to cut
short a brilliant career, and turn his handsome face and remarkably
beautiful body to account in the service of the cinema screen. He had
come to London from Los Angeles to stimulate publicity for his great
new film, _Marathon_, and turned out to be quite a pleasant, unspoiled
person--greatly to the relief of the club, since Masterman's guests
were apt to be something of a toss-up.

There were only eight men, including Varden, in the brown room that
evening. This, with its panelled walls, shaded lamps, and heavy
blue curtains was perhaps the cosiest and pleasantest of the small
smoking-rooms, of which the club possessed half a dozen or so. The
conversation had begun quite casually by Armstrong's relating a curious
little incident which he had witnessed that afternoon at the Temple
Station, and Bayes had gone on to say that that was nothing to the
really very odd thing which had happened to him, personally, in a
thick fog one night in the Euston Road.

Masterman said that the more secluded London squares teemed with
subjects for a writer, and instanced his own singular encounter with a
weeping woman and a dead monkey, and then Judson took up the tale and
narrated how, in a lonely suburb, late at night, he had come upon the
dead body of a woman stretched on the pavement with a knife in her side
and a policeman standing motionless near by. He had asked if he could
do anything, but the policeman had only said, "I wouldn't interfere
if I was you, sir; she deserved what she got." Judson said he had
not been able to get the incident out of his mind, and then Pettifer
told them of a queer case in his own medical practice, when a totally
unknown man had led him to a house in Bloomsbury where there was a
woman suffering from strychnine poisoning. This man had helped him in
the most intelligent manner all night, and, when the patient was out
of danger, had walked straight out of the house and never reappeared;
the odd thing being that, when he (Pettifer) questioned the woman, she
answered in great surprise that she had never seen the man in her life
and had taken him to be Pettifer's assistant.

"That reminds me," said Varden, "of something still stranger that
happened to me once in New York--I've never been able to make out
whether it was a madman or a practical joke, or whether I really had a
very narrow shave."

This sounded promising, and the guest was urged to go on with his story.

"Well, it really started ages ago," said the actor, "seven years
it must have been--just before America came into the war. I was
twenty-five at the time, and had been in the film business a little
over two years. There was a man called Eric P. Loder, pretty well known
in New York at that period, who would have been a very fine sculptor if
he hadn't had more money than was good for him, or so I understood from
the people who go in for that kind of thing. He used to exhibit a good
deal and had a lot of one-man shows of his stuff to which the highbrow
people went--he did a good many bronzes, I believe. Perhaps you know
about him, Masterman?"

"I've never seen any of his things," said the poet, "but I remember
some photographs in _The Art of To-Morrow_. Clever, but rather
overripe. Didn't he go in for a lot of that chryselephantine stuff?
Just to show he could afford to pay for the materials, I suppose."

"Yes, that sounds very like him."

"Of course--and he did a very slick and very ugly realistic group
called Lucina, and had the impudence to have it cast in solid gold and
stood in his front hall."

"Oh, that thing! Yes--simply beastly I thought it, but then I never
could see anything artistic in the idea. Realism, I suppose you'd call
it. I like a picture or a statue to make you feel good, or what's it
there for? Still, there was something very attractive about Loder."

"How did you come across him?"

"Oh, yes. Well, he saw me in that little picture of mine, _Apollo comes
to New York_--perhaps you remember it. It was my first star part. About
a statue that's brought to life--one of the old gods, you know--and how
he gets on in a modern city. Dear old Reubenssohn produced it. Now,
there was a man who could put a thing through with consummate artistry.
You couldn't find an atom of offence from beginning to end, it was all
so tasteful, though in the first part one didn't have anything to wear
except a sort of scarf--taken from the classical statue, you know."

"The Belvedere?"

"I dare say. Well. Loder wrote to me, and said as a sculptor he was
interested in me, because I was a good shape and so on, and would
I come and pay him a visit in New York when I was free. So I found
out about Loder, and decided it would be good publicity, and when my
contract was up, and I had a bit of time to fill in, I went up east and
called on him. He was very decent to me, and asked me to stay a few
weeks with him while I was looking around.

"He had a magnificent great house about five miles out of the city,
crammed full of pictures and antiques and so on. He was somewhere
between thirty-five and forty, I should think, dark and smooth, and
very quick and lively in his movements. He talked very well; seemed
to have been everywhere and have seen everything and not to have any
too good an opinion of anybody. You could sit and listen to him for
hours; he'd got anecdotes about everybody, from the Pope to old Phineas
E. Groot of the Chicago Ring. The only kind of story I didn't care
about hearing from him was the improper sort. Not that I don't enjoy
an after-dinner story--no, sir, I wouldn't like you to think I was a
prig--but he'd tell it with his eye upon you as if he suspected you of
having something to do with it. I've known women do that, and I've seen
men do it to women and seen the women squirm, but he was the only man
that's ever given me that feeling. Still, apart from that, Loder was
the most fascinating fellow I've ever known. And, as I say, his house
surely was beautiful, and he kept a first-class table.

"He liked to have everything of the best. There was his mistress, Maria
Morano. I don't think I've ever seen anything to touch her, and when
you work for the screen you're apt to have a pretty exacting standard
of female beauty. She was one of those big, slow, beautifully moving
creatures, very placid, with a slow, wide smile. We don't grow them in
the States. She'd come from the South--had been a cabaret dancer he
said, and she didn't contradict him. He was very proud of her, and she
seemed to be devoted to him in her own fashion. He'd show her off in
the studio with nothing on but a fig-leaf or so--stand her up beside
one of the figures he was always doing of her, and compare them point
by point. There was literally only one half inch of her, it seemed,
that wasn't absolutely perfect from the sculptor's point of view--the
second toe of her left foot was shorter than the big toe. He used to
correct it, of course, in the statues. She'd listen to it all with
a good-natured smile, sort of vaguely flattered, you know. Though I
think the poor girl sometimes got tired of being gloated over that way.
She'd sometimes hunt me out and confide to me that what she had always
hoped for was to run a restaurant of her own, with a cabaret show and
a great many cooks with white aprons, and lots of polished electric
cookers. 'And then I would marry,' she'd say, 'and have four sons and
one daughter,' and she told me all the names she had chosen for the
family. I thought it was rather pathetic. Loder came in at the end of
one of these conversations. He had a sort of a grin on, so I dare say
he'd overheard. I don't suppose he attached much importance to it,
which shows that he never really understood the girl. I don't think he
ever imagined any woman would chuck up the sort of life he'd accustomed
her to, and if he was a bit possessive in his manner, at least he never
gave her a rival. For all his talk and his ugly statues, she'd got him,
and she knew it.

"I stayed there getting on for a month altogether, having a thundering
good time. On two occasions Loder had an art spasm, and shut himself up
in his studio to work and wouldn't let anybody in for several days on
end. He was rather given to that sort of stunt, and when it was over we
would have a party, and all Loder's friends and hangers-on would come
to have a look at the work of art. He was doing a figure of some nymph
or goddess, I fancy, to be cast in silver, and Maria used to go along
and sit for him. Apart from those times, he went about everywhere, and
we saw all there was to be seen.

"I was fairly annoyed, I admit, when it came to an end. War was
declared, and I'd made up my mind to join up when that happened. My
heart put me out of the running for trench service, but I counted on
getting some sort of a job, with perseverance, so I packed up and went
off.

"I wouldn't have believed Loder would have been so genuinely sorry to
say good-bye to me. He said over and over again that we'd meet again
soon. However, I did get a job with the hospital people, and was sent
over to Europe, and it wasn't till 1920 that I saw Loder again.

"He'd written to me before, but I'd had two big pictures to make in
'19, and it couldn't be done. However, in '20 I found myself back in
New York, doing publicity for _The Passion Streak_, and got a note from
Loder begging me to stay with him, and saying he wanted me to sit for
him. Well, that was advertisement that he'd pay for himself, you know,
so I agreed. I had accepted an engagement to go out with Mystofilms
Ltd. in _Jake of Dead Man's Bush_--the dwarfmen picture, you know,
taken on the spot among the Australian bushmen. I wired them that I
would join them at Sydney the third week in April, and took my bags out
to Loder's.

"Loder greeted me very cordially, though I thought he looked older than
when I last saw him. He had certainly grown more nervous in his manner.
He was--how shall I describe it?--more _intense_--more real, in a way.
He brought out his pet cynicisms as if he thoroughly meant them, and
more and more with that air of getting at you personally. I used to
think his disbelief in everything was a kind of artistic pose, but I
began to feel I had done him an injustice. He was really unhappy, I
could see that quite well, and soon I discovered the reason. As we were
driving out in the car I asked after Maria.

"'She has left me,' he said.

"Well, now, you know, that really surprised me. Honestly, I hadn't
thought the girl had that much initiative. 'Why,' I said, 'has she gone
and set up in that restaurant of her own she wanted so much?'

"'Oh! she talked to you about restaurants, did she?' said Loder. 'I
suppose you are one of the men that women tell things to. No. She made
a fool of herself. She's gone.'

"I didn't quite know what to say. He was so obviously hurt in his
vanity, you know, as well as in his feelings. I muttered the usual
things, and added that it must be a great loss to his work as well as
in other ways. He said it was.

"I asked him when it had happened and whether he'd finished the nymph
he was working on before I left. He said, 'Oh, yes, he'd finished that
and done another--something pretty original, which I should like.'

"Well, we got to the house and dined, and Loder told me he was going
to Europe shortly, a few days after I left myself, in fact. The nymph
stood in the dining-room, in a special niche let into the wall. It
really was a beautiful thing, not so showy as most of Loder's work,
and a wonderful likeness of Maria. Loder put me opposite it, so that I
could see it during dinner, and, really, I could hardly take my eyes
off it. He seemed very proud of it, and kept on telling me over and
over again how glad he was that I liked it. It struck me that he was
falling into a trick of repeating himself.

"We went into the smoking-room after dinner. He'd had it rearranged,
and the first thing that caught one's eye was a big settee drawn
before the fire. It stood about a couple of feet from the ground,
and consisted of a base made like a Roman couch, with cushions and
a highish back, all made of oak with a silver inlay, and on top of
this, forming the actual seat one sat on, if you follow me, there was
a great silver figure of a nude woman, fully life-size, lying with
her head back and her arms extended along the sides of the couch. A
few big loose cushions made it possible to use the thing as an actual
settee, though I must say it never was really comfortable to sit on
respectably. As a stage prop. for registering dissipation it would
have been excellent, but to see Loder sprawling over it by his own
fireside gave me a kind of shock. He seemed very much attached to it,
though.

"'I told you,' he said, 'that it was something original.'

"Then I looked more closely at it, and saw that the figure actually was
Maria's, though the face was rather sketchily done, if you understand
what I mean. I suppose he thought a bolder treatment more suited to a
piece of furniture.

"But I did begin to think Loder a trifle degenerate when I saw that
couch. And in the fortnight that followed I grew more and more
uncomfortable with him. That personal manner of his grew more marked
every day, and sometimes, while I was giving him sittings, he would
sit there and tell one of the most beastly things, with his eyes fixed
on one in the nastiest way, just to see how one would take it. Upon my
word, though he certainly did me uncommonly well, I began to feel I'd
be more at ease among the bushmen.

"Well, now I come to the odd thing."

Everybody sat up and listened a little more eagerly.

"It was the evening before I had to leave New York," went on Varden. "I
was sitting----"

Here somebody opened the door of the brown room, to be greeted by a
warning sign from Bayes. The intruder sank obscurely into a large chair
and mixed himself a whisky with extreme care not to disturb the speaker.

"I was sitting in the smoking-room," continued Varden, "waiting for
Loder to come in. I had the house to myself, for Loder had given the
servants leave to go to some show or lecture or other, and he himself
was getting his things together for his European trip and had had to
keep an appointment with his man of business. I must have been very
nearly asleep, because it was dusk when I came to with a start and saw
a young man quite close to me.

"He wasn't at all like a housebreaker, and still less like a ghost. He
was, I might almost say, exceptionally ordinary-looking. He was dressed
in a grey English suit, with a fawn overcoat on his arm, and his soft
hat and stick in his hand. He had sleek, pale hair, and one of those
rather stupid faces, with a long nose and a monocle. I stared at him,
for I knew the front door was locked, but before I could get my wits
together he spoke. He had a curious, hesitating, husky voice and a
strong English accent. He said, surprisingly:

"'Are you Mr. Varden?'

"'You have the advantage of me,' I said.

"He said, 'Please excuse my butting in; I know it looks like bad
manners, but you'd better clear out of this place very quickly, don't
you know.'

"'What the hell do you mean?' I said.

"He said, 'I don't mean it in any impertinent way, but you must realise
that Loder's never forgiven you, and I'm afraid he means to make you
into a hat-stand or an electric-light fitting, or something of that
sort.'

"My God! I can tell you I felt queer. It was such a quiet voice, and
his manners were perfect, and yet the words were quite meaningless!
I remembered that madmen are supposed to be extra strong, and edged
towards the bell--and then it came over me with rather a chill that I
was alone in the house.

"'How did you get here?' I asked, putting a bold face on it.

"'I'm afraid I picked the lock,' he said, as casually as though he
were apologising for not having a card about him. 'I couldn't be sure
Loder hadn't come back. But I do really think you had better get out as
quickly as possible.'

"'See here,' I said, 'who are you and what the hell are you driving at?
What do you mean about Loder never forgiving me? Forgiving me what?'

"'Why,' he said, 'about--you _will_ pardon me prancing in on your
private affairs, won't you--about Maria Morano.'

"'_What_ about her, in the devil's name?' I cried. 'What do you know
about her, anyway? She went off while I was at the war. What's it to do
with me?'

"'Oh!' said the very odd young man, 'I beg your pardon. Perhaps I have
been relying too much on Loder's judgment. Damned foolish; but the
possibility of his being mistaken did not occur to me. He fancies you
were Maria Morano's lover when you were here last time.'

"'Maria's lover?' I said. 'Preposterous! She went off with her man,
whoever he was. He must know she didn't go with me.'

"'Maria never left the house,' said the young man, 'and if you don't
get out of it this moment, I won't answer for _your_ ever leaving,
either.'

"'In God's name,' I cried, exasperated, 'what do you mean?'

"The man turned and threw the blue cushions off the foot of the silver
couch.

"'Have you ever examined the toes of this?' he asked.

"'Not particularly,' I said, more and more astonished. 'Why should I?'

"'Did you ever know Loder make any figure of her but this with that
short toe on the left foot?' he went on.

"Well, I did take a look at it then, and saw it was as he said--the
left foot had a short second toe.

"'So it is,' I said, 'but, after all, why not?'

"'Why not, indeed?' said the young man. 'Wouldn't you like to see why,
of all the figures Loder made of Maria Morano, this is the only one
that has the feet of the living woman?'

"He picked up the poker.

"'Look!' he said.

"With a lot more strength than I should have expected from him,
he brought the head of the poker down with a heavy crack on the
silver couch. It struck one of the arms of the figure neatly at the
elbow-joint, smashing a jagged hole in the silver. He wrenched at the
arm and brought it away. It was hollow, and, as I am alive, I tell you
there was a long, dry arm-bone inside it!"

Varden paused, and put away a good mouthful of whisky.

"Well?" cried several breathless voices.

"Well," said Varden, "I'm not ashamed to say I went out of that house
like an old buck-rabbit that hears the man with the gun. There was a
car standing just outside, and the driver opened the door. I tumbled
in, and then it came over me that the whole thing might be a trap, and
I tumbled out again and ran till I reached the trolley-cars. But I
found my bags at the station next day, duly registered for Vancouver.

"When I pulled myself together I did rather wonder what Loder was
thinking about my disappearance, but I could no more have gone back
into that horrible house than I could have taken poison. I left for
Vancouver next morning, and from that day to this I never saw either of
those men again. I've still not the faintest idea who the fair man was,
or what became of him, but I heard in a round-about way that Loder was
dead--in some kind of an accident, I fancy."

There was a pause. Then:

"It's a damned good story, Mr. Varden," said Armstrong--he was a
dabbler in various kinds of handiwork, and was, indeed, chiefly
responsible for Mr. Arbuthnot's motion to ban wireless--"but are you
suggesting there was a complete skeleton inside that silver casting?
Do you mean Loder put it into the core of the mould when the casting
was done? It would be awfully difficult and dangerous--the slightest
accident would have put him at the mercy of his workmen. And that
statue must have been considerably over life-size to allow of the
skeleton being well covered."

"Mr. Varden has unintentionally misled you, Armstrong," said a quiet,
husky voice suddenly from the shadow behind Varden's chair. "The figure
was not silver, but electro-plated on a copper base deposited direct
on the body. The lady was Sheffield-plated, in fact. I fancy the
soft parts of her must have been digested away with pepsin, or some
preparation of the kind, after the process was complete, but I can't be
positive about that."

"Hullo, Wimsey," said Armstrong, "was that you came in just now? And
why this confident pronouncement?"

The effect of Wimsey's voice on Varden had been extraordinary. He had
leapt to his feet, and turned the lamp so as to light up Wimsey's face.

"Good evening, Mr. Varden," said Lord Peter. "I'm delighted to meet you
again and to apologise for my unceremonious behaviour on the occasion
of our last encounter."

Varden took the proffered hand, but was speechless.

"D'you mean to say, you mad mystery-monger, that _you_ were Varden's
Great Unknown?" demanded Bayes. "Ah, well," he added rudely, "we might
have guessed it from his vivid description."

"Well, since you're here," said Smith-Hartington, the _Morning Yell_
man, "I think you ought to come across with the rest of the story."

"Was it just a joke?" asked Judson.

"Of course not," interrupted Pettifer, before Lord Peter had time to
reply. "Why should it be? Wimsey's seen enough queer things not to have
to waste his time inventing them."

"That's true enough," said Bayes. "Comes of having deductive powers and
all that sort of thing, and always sticking one's nose into things that
are better not investigated."

"That's all very well, Bayes," said his lordship, "but if I hadn't just
mentioned the matter to Mr. Varden that evening, where would he be?"

"Ah, where? That's exactly what we want to know," demanded
Smith-Hartington. "Come on, Wimsey, no shirking; we must have the tale."

"And the whole tale," added Pettifer.

"And nothing but the tale," said Armstrong, dexterously whisking away
the whisky-bottle and the cigars from under Lord Peter's nose. "Get on
with it, old son. Not a smoke do you smoke and not a sup do you sip
till Burd Ellen is set free."

"Brute!" said his lordship plaintively. "As a matter of fact,"
he went on, with a change of tone, "it's not really a story I
want to get about. It might land me in a very unpleasant sort of
position--manslaughter probably, and murder possibly."

"Gosh!" said Bayes.

"That's all right," said Armstrong, "nobody's going to talk. We can't
afford to lose you from the club, you know. Smith-Hartington will have
to control his passion for copy, that's all."

Pledges of discretion having been given all round, Lord Peter settled
himself back and began his tale.

* * * * *

"The curious case of Eric P. Loder affords one more instance of the
strange manner in which some power beyond our puny human wills arranges
the affairs of men. Call it Providence--call it Destiny----"

"We'll call it off," said Bayes; "you can leave out that part."

Lord Peter groaned and began again.

"Well, the first thing that made me feel a bit inquisitive about Loder
was a casual remark by a man at the Emigration Office in New York
where I happened to go about that silly affair of Mrs. Bilt's. He said,
'What on earth is Eric Loder going to do in Australia? I should have
thought Europe was more in his line.'

"'Australia?' I said, 'you're wandering, dear old thing. He told me the
other day he was off to Italy in three weeks' time.'

"'Italy, nothing,' he said, 'he was all over our place to-day, asking
about how you got to Sydney and what were the necessary formalities,
and so on.'

"'Oh,' I said, 'I suppose he's going by the Pacific route, and calling
at Sydney on his way.' But I wondered why he hadn't said so when I'd
met him the day before. He had distinctly talked about sailing for
Europe and doing Paris before he went on to Rome.

"I felt so darned inquisitive that I went and called on Loder two
nights later.

"He seemed quite pleased to see me, and was full of his forthcoming
trip. I asked him again about his route, and he told me quite
distinctly he was going via Paris.

"Well, that was that, and it wasn't really any of my business, and we
chatted about other things.