Lord Peter Views the Body · The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager’s Will (1/3)

The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager’s Will

“You look a little worried, Bunter,” said his lordship kindly to his manservant. “Is there anything I can do?”

The valet’s face brightened as he released his employer’s grey trousers from the press.

“Perhaps your lordship could be so good as to think,” he said hopefully, “of a word in seven letters with S in the middle, meaning two.”

“Also,” suggested Lord Peter thoughtlessly.

“I beg your lordship’s pardon. T-w-o. And seven letters.”

“Nonsense!” said Lord Peter. “How about that bath?”

“It should be just about ready, my lord.”

Lord Peter Wimsey swung his mauve silk legs lightly over the edge of the bed and stretched appreciatively. It was a beautiful June that year. Through the open door he saw the delicate coils of steam wreathing across a shaft of yellow sunlight. Every step he took into the bathroom was a conscious act of enjoyment. In a husky light tenor he carolled a few bars of “Maman, dîtes-moi.” Then a thought struck him, and he turned back.

“Bunter!”

“My lord?”

“No bacon this morning. Quite the wrong smell.”

“I was thinking of buttered eggs, my lord.”

“Excellent. Like primroses. The Beaconsfield touch,” said his lordship approvingly.

His song died into a rapturous crooning as he settled into the verbena-scented water. His eyes roamed vaguely over the pale blue-and-white tiles of the bathroom walls.

Mr. Bunter had retired to the kitchen to put the coffee on the stove when the bell rang. Surprised, he hastened back to the bedroom. It was empty. With increased surprise, he realised that it must have been the bathroom bell. The words “heart-attack” formed swiftly in his mind, to be displaced by the still more alarming thought, “No soap.” He opened the door almost nervously.

“Did you ring, my lord?” he demanded of Lord Peter’s head, alone visible.

“Yes,” said his lordship abruptly; “Ambsace.”

“I beg your lordship’s pardon?”

“Ambsace. Word of seven letters. Meaning two. With S in the middle. Two aces. Ambsace.”

Bunter’s expression became beatified.

“Undoubtedly correct,” he said, pulling a small sheet of paper from his pocket, and entering the word upon it in pencil. “I am extremely obliged to your lordship. In that case the ‘indifferent cook in six letters ending with red’ must be Alfred.”

Lord Peter waved a dismissive hand.

On reentering his bedroom, Lord Peter was astonished to see his sister Mary seated in his own particular chair and consuming his buttered eggs. He greeted her with a friendly acerbity, demanding why she should look him up at that unearthly hour.

“I’m riding with Freddy Arbuthnot,” said her ladyship, “as you might see by my legs, if you were really as big a Sherlock as you make out.”

“Riding,” replied her brother, “I had already deduced, though I admit that Freddy’s name was not writ large, to my before-breakfast eye, upon the knees of your breeches. But why this visit?”

“Well, because you were on the way,” said Lady Mary, “and I’m booked up all day, and I want you to come and dine at the Soviet Club with me tonight.”

“Good God, Mary, why? You know I hate the place. Cooking’s beastly, the men don’t shave, and the conversation gets my goat. Besides, last time I went there, your friend Goyles plugged me in the shoulder. I thought you’d chucked the Soviet Club.”

“It isn’t me. It’s Hannah Marryat.”

“What, the intense young woman with the badly bobbed hair and the brogues?”

“Well, she’s never been able to afford a good hairdresser. That’s just what I want your help about.”

“My dear child, I can’t cut her hair for her. Bunter might. He can do most things.”

“Silly. No. But she’s got⁠—that is, she used to have⁠—an uncle, the very rich, curmudgeony sort, you know, who never gave anyone a penny. Well, he’s dead, and they can’t find his will.”

“Perhaps he didn’t make one.”

“Oh, yes, he did. He wrote and told her so. But the nasty old thing hid it, and it can’t be found.”

“Is the will in her favour?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the next of kin?”

“She and her mother are the only members of the family left.”

“Well, then, she’s only got to sit tight and she’ll get the goods.”

“No⁠—because the horrid old man left two wills, and, if she can’t find the latest one, they’ll prove the first one. He explained that to her carefully.”

“Oh, I see. H’m. By the way, I thought the young woman was a Socialist.”

“Oh, she is. Terrifically so. One really can’t help admiring her. She has done some wonderful work⁠—”

“Yes, I dare say. But in that case I don’t see why she need be so keen on getting uncle’s dollars.”

Mary began to chuckle.

“Ah! but that’s where Uncle Meleager⁠—”

“Uncle what?”

“Meleager. That’s his name. Meleager Finch.”

“Oh!”

“Yes⁠—well, that’s where he’s been so clever. Unless she finds the new will, the old will comes into force and hands over every penny of the money to the funds of the Primrose League.”

Lord Peter gave a little yelp of joy.

“Good for Uncle Meleager! But, look here, Polly, I’m a Tory, if anything. I’m certainly not a Red. Why should I help to snatch the good gold from the Primrose Leaguers and hand it over to the Third International? Uncle Meleager’s a sport. I take to Uncle Meleager.”

“Oh, but Peter, I really don’t think she’ll do that with it. Not at present, anyway. They’re awfully poor, and her mother ought to have some frightfully difficult operation or something, and go and live abroad, so it really is ever so important they should get the money. And perhaps Hannah wouldn’t be quite so Red if she’d ever had a bean of her own. Besides, you could make it a condition of helping her that she should go and get properly shingled at Bresil’s.”

“You are a very cynically-minded person,” said his lordship. “However, it would be fun to have a go at Uncle M. Was he obliging enough to give any clues for finding the will?”

“He wrote a funny sort of letter, which we can’t make head or tail of. Come to the club tonight and she’ll show it to you.”

“Right-ho! Seven o’clock do? And we could go on and see a show afterwards. Do you mind clearing out now? I’m going to get dressed.”

Amid a deafening babble of voices in a low-pitched cellar, the Soviet Club meets and dines. Ethics and sociology, the latest vortices of the Whirligig school of verse, combine with the smoke of countless cigarettes to produce an inspissated atmosphere, through which flat, angular mural paintings dimly lower upon the revellers. There is painfully little room for the elbows, or indeed for any part of one’s body. Lord Peter⁠—his feet curled under his chair to avoid the stray kicks of the heavy brogues opposite him⁠—was acutely conscious of an unbecoming attitude and an overheated feeling about the head. He found it difficult to get any response from Hannah Marryat. Under her heavy, ill-cut fringe her dark eyes gloomed sombrely at him. At the same time he received a strong impression of something enormously vital. He had a sudden fancy that if she were set free from self-defensiveness and the importance of being earnest, she would exhibit unexpected powers of enjoyment. He was interested, but oppressed. Mary, to his great relief, suggested that they should have their coffee upstairs.

They found a quiet corner with comfortable chairs.

“Well, now,” said Mary encouragingly.

“Of course you understand,” said Miss Marryat mournfully, “that if it were not for the monstrous injustice of Uncle Meleager’s other will, and mother being so ill, I shouldn’t take any steps. But when there is £250,000, and the prospect of doing real good with it⁠—”

“Naturally,” said Lord Peter, “it isn’t the money you care about, as the dear old bromide says, it’s the principle of the thing. Right you are! Now supposin’ we have a look at Uncle Meleager’s letter.”

Miss Marryat rummaged in a very large handbag and passed the paper over.

This was Uncle Meleager’s letter, dated from Siena twelve months previously:

My dear Hannah⁠—When I die⁠—which I propose to do at my own convenience and not at that of my family⁠—you will at last discover my monetary worth. It is, of course, considerably less than you had hoped, and quite fails, I assure you, adequately to represent my actual worth in the eyes of the discerning. I made my will yesterday, leaving the entire sum, such as it is, to the Primrose League⁠—a body quite as fatuous as any other in our preposterous state, but which has the advantage of being peculiarly obnoxious to yourself. This will will be found in the safe in the library.

I am not, however, unmindful of the fact that your mother is my sister, and you and she my only surviving relatives. I shall accordingly amuse myself by drawing up today a second will, superseding the other and leaving the money to you.

I have always held that woman is a frivolous animal. A woman who pretends to be serious is wasting her time and spoiling her appearance. I consider that you have wasted your time to a really shocking extent. Accordingly, I intend to conceal this will, and that in such a manner that you will certainly never find it unless by the exercise of a sustained frivolity.

I hope you will contrive to be frivolous enough to become the heiress of your affectionate

“Couldn’t we use that letter as proof of the testator’s intention, and fight the will?” asked Mary anxiously.

“ ’Fraid not,” said Lord Peter. “You see, there’s no evidence here that the will was ever actually drawn up. Though I suppose we could find the witnesses.”

“We’ve tried,” said Miss Marryat, “but, as you see, Uncle Meleager was travelling abroad at the time, and he probably got some obscure people in some obscure Italian town to witness it for him. We advertised, but got no answer.”

“H’m. Uncle Meleager doesn’t seem to have left things to chance. And, anyhow, wills are queer things, and so are the probate and divorce wallahs. Obviously the thing to do is to find the other will. Did the clues he speaks of turn up among his papers?”

“We hunted through everything. And, of course, we had the whole house searched from top to bottom for the will. But it was quite useless.”

“You’ve not destroyed anything, of course. Who were the executors of the Primrose League will?”

“Mother and Mr. Sands, Uncle Meleager’s solicitor. The will left mother a silver teapot for her trouble.”

“I like Uncle Meleager more and more. Anyhow, he did the sporting thing. I’m beginnin’ to enjoy this case like anything. Where did Uncle Meleager hang out?”

“It’s an old house down at Dorking. It’s rather quaint. Somebody had a fancy to build a little Roman villa sort of thing there, with a verandah behind, with columns and a pond in the front hall, and statues. It’s very decent there just now, though it’s awfully cold in the winter, with all those stone floors and stone stairs and the skylight over the hall! Mother said perhaps you would be very kind and come down and have a look at it.”

“I’d simply love to. Can we start tomorrow? I promise you we’ll be frivolous enough to please even Uncle Meleager, if you’ll do your bit, Miss Marryat. Won’t we, Mary?”

“Rather! And, I say, hadn’t we better be moving if we’re going to the Pallambra?”

“I never go to music halls,” said Miss Marryat ungraciously.

“Oh, but you must come tonight,” said his lordship persuasively. “It’s so frivolous. Just think how it would please Uncle Meleager.”

Accordingly, the next day found the party, including the indispensable Mr. Bunter, assembled at Uncle Meleager’s house. Pending the settlement of the will question, there had seemed every reason why Mr. Finch’s executrix and next-of-kin should live in the house, thus providing every facility for what Lord Peter called the “Treasure-hunt.” After being introduced to Mrs. Marryat, who was an invalid and remained in her room, Lady Mary and her brother were shown over the house by Miss Marryat, who explained to them how carefully the search had been conducted. Every paper had been examined, every book in the library scrutinised page by page, the walls and chimneys tapped for hiding-places, the boards taken up, and so forth, but with no result.

“Y’know,” said his lordship, “I’m sure you’ve been going the wrong way to work. My idea is, old Uncle Meleager was a man of his word. If he said frivolous, he meant really frivolous. Something beastly silly. I wonder what it was.”

He was still wondering when he went up to dress. Bunter was putting studs in his shirt. Lord Peter gazed thoughtfully at him, and then enquired:

“Are any of Mr. Finch’s old staff still here?”

“Yes, my lord. The cook and the housekeeper. Wonderful old gentleman they say he was, too. Eighty-three, but as up-to-date as you please. Had his wireless in his bedroom, and enjoyed the Savoy bands every night of his life. Followed his politics, and was always ready with the details of the latest big law-cases. If a young lady came to see him, he’d like to see she had her hair shingled and the latest style in fashions. They say he took up crosswords as soon as they came in, and was remarkably quick at solving them, my lord, and inventing them. Took a £10 prize in the Daily Yell for one, and was wonderfully pleased to get it, they say, my lord, rich as he was.”

“Indeed.”

“Yes, my lord. He was a great man for acrostics before that, I understood them to say, but, when crosswords came in, he threw away his acrostics and said he liked the new game better. Wonderfully adaptable, if I may say so, he seems to have been for an old gentleman.”

“Was he, by Jove?” said his lordship absently, and then, with sudden energy:

“Bunter, I’d like to double your salary, but I suppose you’d take it as an insult.”

The conversation bore fruit at dinner.

“What,” enquired his lordship, “happened to Uncle Meleager’s crosswords?”

“Crosswords?” said Hannah Marryat, knitting her heavy brows. “Oh, those puzzle things! Poor old man, he went mad over them. He had every newspaper sent him, and in his last illness he’d be trying to fill the wretched things in. It was worse than his acrostics and his jigsaw puzzles. Poor old creature, he must have been senile, I’m afraid. Of course, we looked through them, but there wasn’t anything there. We put them all in the attic.”

“The attic for me,” said Lord Peter.

“And for me,” said Mary. “I don’t believe there was anything senile about Uncle Meleager.”

The evening was warm, and they had dined in the little viridarium at the back of the house, with its tall vases and hanging baskets of flowers and little marble statues.

“Is there an attic here?” said Peter. “It seems such a⁠—well, such an un-attic thing to have in a house like this.”

“It’s just a horrid, poky little hole over the porch,” said Miss Marryat, rising and leading the way. “Don’t tumble into the pond, will you? It’s a great nuisance having it there, especially at night. I always tell them to leave a light on.”

Lord Peter glanced into the miniature impluvium, with its tiling of red, white, and black marble.

“That’s not a very classic design,” he observed.

“No. Uncle Meleager used to complain about it and say he must have it altered. There was a proper one once, I believe, but it got damaged, and the man before Uncle Meleager had it replaced by some local idiot. He built three bay windows out of the dining-room at the same time, which made it very much lighter and pleasanter, of course, but it looks awful. Now, this tiling is all right; uncle put that in himself.”

She pointed to a mosaic dog at the threshold, with the motto, “Cave canem,” and Lord Peter recognised it as a copy of a Pompeian original.