Lord Peter Views the Body · The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste (1/2)

The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste

“Halte-là!⁠ ⁠… Attention!⁠ ⁠… F⁠⸺⁠e!”

The young man in the grey suit pushed his way through the protesting porters and leapt nimbly for the footboard of the guard’s van as the Paris-Evreux express steamed out of the Invalides. The guard, with an eye to a tip, fielded him adroitly from among the detaining hands.

“It is happy for monsieur that he is so agile,” he remarked. “Monsieur is in a hurry?”

“Somewhat. Thank you. I can get through by the corridor?”

“But certainly. The premières are two coaches away, beyond the luggage-van.”

The young man rewarded his rescuer, and made his way forward, mopping his face. As he passed the piled-up luggage, something caught his eye, and he stopped to investigate. It was a suitcase, nearly new, of expensive-looking leather, labelled conspicuously:

Lord Peter Wimsey,
Hôtel Saumon d’Or,
Verneuil-sur-Eure

and bore witness to its itinerary thus:

London⁠–⁠Paris
(Waterloo) (Gare St. Lazare)
via Southampton-Havre

Paris⁠–⁠Verneuil
(Ch. de Fer de l’Ouest)

The young man whistled, and sat down on a trunk to think it out.

Somewhere there had been a leakage, and they were on his trail. Nor did they care who knew it. There were hundreds of people in London and Paris who would know the name of Wimsey, not counting the police of both countries. In addition to belonging to one of the oldest ducal families in England, Lord Peter had made himself conspicuous by his meddling with crime detection. A label like this was a gratuitous advertisement.

But the amazing thing was that the pursuers were not troubling to hide themselves from the pursued. That argued very great confidence. That he should have got into the guard’s van was, of course, an accident, but, even so, he might have seen it on the platform, or anywhere.

An accident? It occurred to him⁠—not for the first time, but definitely now, and without doubt⁠—that it was indeed an accident for them that he was here. The series of maddening delays that had held him up between London and the Invalides presented itself to him with an air of prearrangement. The preposterous accusation, for instance, of the woman who had accosted him in Piccadilly, and the slow process of extricating himself at Marlborough Street. It was easy to hold a man up on some trumped-up charge till an important plan had matured. Then there was the lavatory door at Waterloo, which had so ludicrously locked itself upon him. Being athletic, he had climbed over the partition, to find the attendant mysteriously absent. And, in Paris, was it by chance that he had had a deaf taxi-driver, who mistook the direction “Quai d’Orléans” for “Gare de Lyon,” and drove a mile and a half in the wrong direction before the shouts of his fare attracted his attention? They were clever, the pursuers, and circumspect. They had accurate information; they would delay him, but without taking any overt step; they knew that, if only they could keep time on their side, they needed no other ally.

Did they know he was on the train? If not, he still kept the advantage, for they would travel in a false security, thinking him to be left, raging and helpless, in the Invalides. He decided to make a cautious reconnaissance.

The first step was to change his grey suit for another of inconspicuous navy-blue cloth, which he had in his small black bag. This he did in the privacy of the toilet, substituting for his grey soft hat a large travelling-cap, which pulled well down over his eyes.

There was little difficulty in locating the man he was in search of. He found him seated in the inner corner of a first-class compartment, facing the engine, so that the watcher could approach unseen from behind. On the rack was a handsome dressing-case, with the initials P. D. B. W. The young man was familiar with Wimsey’s narrow, beaky face, flat yellow hair, and insolent dropped eyelids. He smiled a little grimly.

“He is confident,” he thought, “and has regrettably made the mistake of underrating the enemy. Good! This is where I retire into a seconde and keep my eyes open. The next act of this melodrama will take place, I fancy, at Dreux.”

It is a rule on the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest that all Paris-Evreux trains, whether of Grande Vitesse or what Lord Peter Wimsey preferred to call Grande Paresse, shall halt for an interminable period at Dreux. The young man (now in navy-blue) watched his quarry safely into the refreshment-room, and slipped unobtrusively out of the station. In a quarter of an hour he was back⁠—this time in a heavy motoring-coat, helmet, and goggles, at the wheel of a powerful hired Peugeot. Coming quietly on to the platform, he took up his station behind the wall of the lampisterie, whence he could keep an eye on the train and the buffet door. After fifteen minutes his patience was rewarded by the sight of his man again boarding the express, dressing-case in hand. The porters slammed the doors, crying: “Next stop Verneuil!” The engine panted and groaned; the long train of grey-green carriages clanked slowly away. The motorist drew a breath of satisfaction, and, hurrying past the barrier, started up the car. He knew that he had a good eighty miles an hour under his bonnet, and there is no speed-limit in France.

Mon Souci, the seat of that eccentric and eremitical genius the Comte de Rueil, is situated three kilometres from Verneuil. It is a sorrowful and decayed château, desolate at the termination of its neglected avenue of pines. The mournful state of a nobility without an allegiance surrounds it. The stone nymphs droop greenly over their dry and mouldering fountains. An occasional peasant creaks with a single wagon-load of wood along the ill-forested glades. It has the atmosphere of sunset at all hours of the day. The woodwork is dry and gaping for lack of paint. Through the jalousies one sees the prim salon, with its beautiful and faded furniture. Even the last of its ill-dressed, ill-favoured women has withered away from Mon Souci, with her inbred, exaggerated features and her long white gloves. But at the rear of the château a chimney smokes incessantly. It is the furnace of the laboratory, the only living and modern thing among the old and dying; the only place tended and loved, petted and spoiled, heir to the long solicitude which counts of a more lighthearted day had given to stable and kennel, portrait-gallery and ballroom. And below, in the cool cellar, lie row upon row the dusty bottles, each an enchanted glass coffin in which the Sleeping Beauty of the vine grows ever more ravishing in sleep.

As the Peugeot came to a standstill in the courtyard, the driver observed with considerable surprise that he was not the count’s only visitor. An immense super-Renault, like a merveilleuse of the Directoire, all bonnet and no body, had been drawn so ostentatiously across the entrance as to embarrass the approach of any newcomer. Its glittering panels were embellished with a coat of arms, and the count’s elderly servant was at that moment staggering beneath the weight of two large and elaborate suitcases, bearing in silver letters that could be read a mile away the legend: “Lord Peter Wimsey.”

The Peugeot driver gazed with astonishment at this display, and grinned sardonically. “Lord Peter seems rather ubiquitous in this country,” he observed to himself. Then, taking pen and paper from his bag, he busied himself with a little letter-writing. By the time that the suitcases had been carried in, and the Renault had purred its smooth way to the outbuildings, the document was complete and enclosed in an envelope addressed to the Comte de Rueil. “The hoist with his own petard touch,” said the young man, and, stepping up to the door, presented the envelope to the manservant.

“I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to monsieur le comte,” he said. “Will you have the obligingness to present it to him? My name is Bredon⁠—Death Bredon.”

The man bowed, and begged him to enter.

“If monsieur will have the goodness to seat himself in the hall for a few moments. Monsieur le comte is engaged with another gentleman, but I will lose no time in making monsieur’s arrival known.”

The young man sat down and waited. The windows of the hall looked out upon the entrance, and it was not long before the château’s sleep was disturbed by the hooting of yet another motor-horn. A station taxicab came noisily up the avenue. The man from the first-class carriage and the luggage labelled P. D. B. W. were deposited upon the doorstep. Lord Peter Wimsey dismissed the driver and rang the bell.

“Now,” said Mr. Bredon, “the fun is going to begin.” He effaced himself as far as possible in the shadow of a tall armoire normande.

“Good evening,” said the newcomer to the manservant, in admirable French, “I am Lord Peter Wimsey. I arrive upon the invitation of Monsieur le comte de Rueil. Monsieur le comte is at liberty?”

“Milord Peter Wimsey? Pardon, monsieur, but I do not understand. Milord de Wimsey is already arrived and is with monsieur le comte at this moment.”

“You surprise me,” said the other, with complete imperturbability, “for certainly no one but myself has any right to that name. It seems as though some person more ingenious than honest has had the bright idea of impersonating me.”

The servant was clearly at a loss.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “monsieur can show his papiers d’identité.”

“Although it is somewhat unusual to produce one’s credentials on the doorstep when paying a private visit,” replied his lordship, with unaltered good humour, “I have not the slightest objection. Here is my passport, here is a permis de sejour granted to me in Paris, here my visiting-card, and here a quantity of correspondence addressed to me at the Hotel Meurice, Paris, at my flat in Piccadilly, London, at the Marlborough Club, London, and at my brother’s house at King’s Denver. Is that sufficiently in order?”

The servant perused the documents carefully, appearing particularly impressed by the permis de sejour.

“It appears there is some mistake,” he murmured dubiously; “if monsieur will follow me, I will acquaint monsieur le comte.”

They disappeared through the folding doors at the back of the hall, and Bredon was left alone.

“Quite a little boom in Richmonds today,” he observed, “each of us more unscrupulous than the last. The occasion obviously calls for a refined subtlety of method.”

After what he judged to be a hectic ten minutes in the count’s library, the servant reappeared, searching for him.

“Monsieur le comte’s compliments, and would monsieur step this way?”

Bredon entered the room with a jaunty step. He had created for himself the mastery of this situation. The count, a thin, elderly man, his fingers deeply stained with chemicals, sat, with a perturbed expression, at his desk. In two armchairs sat the two Wimseys. Bredon noted that, while the Wimsey he had seen in the train (whom he mentally named Peter I) retained his unruffled smile, Peter II (he of the Renault) had the flushed and indignant air of an Englishman affronted. The two men were superficially alike⁠—both fair, lean, and long-nosed, with the nondescript, inelastic face which predominates in any assembly of well-bred Anglo-Saxons.

“Mr. Bredon,” said the count, “I am charmed to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and regret that I must at once call upon you for a service as singular as it is important. You have presented to me a letter of introduction from your cousin, Lord Peter Wimsey. Will you now be good enough to inform me which of these gentlemen he is?”

Bredon let his glance pass slowly from the one claimant to the other, meditating what answer would best serve his own ends. One, at any rate, of the men in this room was a formidable intellect, trained in the detection of imposture.

“Well?” said Peter II. “Are you going to acknowledge me, Bredon?”

Peter I extracted a cigarette from a silver case. “Your confederate does not seem very well up in his part,” he remarked, with a quiet smile at Peter II.

“Monsieur le comte,” said Bredon, “I regret extremely that I cannot assist you in the matter. My acquaintance with my cousin, like your own, has been made and maintained entirely through correspondence on a subject of common interest. My profession,” he added, “has made me unpopular with my family.”

There was a very slight sigh of relief somewhere. The false Wimsey⁠—whichever he was⁠—had gained a respite. Bredon smiled.

“An excellent move, Mr. Bredon,” said Peter I, “but it will hardly explain⁠—Allow me.” He took the letter from the count’s hesitating hand. “It will hardly explain the fact that the ink of this letter of recommendation, dated three weeks ago, is even now scarcely dry⁠—though I congratulate you on the very plausible imitation of my handwriting.”

“If you can forge my handwriting,” said Peter II, “so can this Mr. Bredon.” He read the letter aloud over his double’s shoulder.

“ ‘Monsieur le comte⁠—I have the honour to present to you my friend and cousin, Mr. Death Bredon, who, I understand, is to be travelling in your part of France next month. He is very anxious to view your interesting library. Although a journalist by profession, he really knows something about books.’ I am delighted to learn for the first time that I have such a cousin. An interviewer’s trick, I fancy, monsieur le comte. Fleet Street appears well informed about our family names. Possibly it is equally well informed about the object of my visit to Mon Souci?”

“If,” said Bredon boldly, “you refer to the acquisition of the de Rueil formula for poison gas for the British Government, I can answer for my own knowledge, though possibly the rest of Fleet Street is less completely enlightened.” He weighed his words carefully now, warned by his slip. The sharp eyes and detective ability of Peter I alarmed him far more than the caustic tongue of Peter II.

The count uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “one thing is obvious⁠—that there has been somewhere a disastrous leakage of information. Which of you is the Lord Peter Wimsey to whom I should entrust the formula I do not know. Both of you are supplied with papers of identity; both appear completely instructed in this matter; both of your handwritings correspond with the letters I have previously received from Lord Peter, and both of you have offered me the sum agreed upon in Bank of England notes. In addition, this third gentleman arrives endowed with an equal facility in handwritings, an introductory letter surrounded by most suspicious circumstances, and a degree of acquaintance with this whole matter which alarms me. I can see but one solution. All of you must remain here at the château while I send to England for some elucidation of this mystery. To the genuine Lord Peter I offer my apologies, and assure him that I will endeavour to make his stay as agreeable as possible. Will this satisfy you? It will? I am delighted to hear it. My servants will show you to your bedrooms, and dinner will be at half-past seven.”

“It is delightful to think,” said Mr. Bredon, as he fingered his glass and passed it before his nostrils with the air of a connoisseur, “that whichever of these gentlemen has the right to the name which he assumes is assured tonight of a truly Olympian satisfaction.” His impudence had returned to him, and he challenged the company with an air. “Your cellars, monsieur le comte, are as well known among men endowed with a palate as your talents among men of science. No eloquence could say more.”

The two Lord Peters murmured assent.