“Where is Major Fentiman?” he asked.
“Returning to town, my lord. I have represented to him that I have now all the necessary information to go upon, and that his presence in Venice would only hamper my movements, now that he has made himself known to the party.”
“Quite so. Well, I think you might as well send your man on to Venice, just in case it’s a true bill. And listen”… He gave some further instructions, ending with: “And ask Major Fentiman to come and see me as soon as he arrives.”
“Certainly, my lord.”
“What price the gipsy’s warning now?” said Lord Peter, as he communicated that piece of intelligence to Bunter.
Major Fentiman came round to the flat that afternoon, in a whirl of apology and indignation.
“I’m sorry, old man. It was damned stupid of me, but I lost my temper. To hear that fellow calmly denying that he had ever seen me or poor old grandfather, and coming out with his bits of evidence so pat, put my bristles up. Of course, I see now that I made a mistake. I quite realise that I ought to have followed him up quietly. But how was I to know that he wouldn’t answer to his name?”
“But you ought to have guessed when he didn’t, that either you had made a mistake or that he had some very good motive for trying to get away,” said Wimsey.
“I wasn’t accusing him of anything.”
“Of course not, but he seems to have thought you were.”
“But why? — I mean, when I first spoke to him, I just said, ‘Mr. Oliver, I think?’ And he said, ‘You are mistaken.’ And I said, ‘Surely not. My name’s Fentiman, and you knew my grandfather, old General Fentiman.’ And he said he hadn’t the pleasure. So I explained that we wanted to know where the old boy had spent the night before he died, and he looked at me as if I was a lunatic. That annoyed me, and I said I knew he was Oliver, and then he complained to the guard. And when I saw him just trying to hop off like that, without giving us any help, and when I thought about that half-million, it made me so mad I just collared him. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ I said — and that was how the fun began, don’t you see.”
“I see perfectly,” said Wimsey. “But don’t you see, that if he really is Oliver and has gone off in that elaborate manner, with false passports and everything, he must have something important to conceal.”
Fentiman’s jaw dropped.
“You don’t mean — you don’t mean there’s anything funny about the death? Oh! surely not.”
“There must be something funny about Oliver, anyway, mustn’t there? On your own showing?”
“Well, if you look at it that way, I suppose there must. I tell you what, he’s probably got into some bother or other and is clearing out. Debt, or a woman, or something. Of course that must be it. And I was beastly inconvenient popping up like that. So he pushed me off. I see it all now. Well, in that case, we’d better let him rip. We can’t get him back, and I daresay he won’t be able to tell us anything after all.”
“That’s possible, of course. But when you bear in mind that he seems to have disappeared from Gatti’s, where you used to see him, almost immediately after the General’s death, doesn’t it look rather as though he was afraid of being connected up with that particular incident?”
Fentiman wriggled uncomfortably.
“Oh, but, hang it all! What could he have to do with the old man’s death?”
“I don’t know. But I think we might try to find out.”
“How?”
“Well, we might apply for an exhumation order.”
“Dig him up!” cried Fentiman, scandalised.
“Yes. There was no post-mortem, you know.”
“No, but Penberthy knew all about it and gave the certificate.”
“Yes; but at that time there was no reason to suppose that anything was wrong.”
“And there isn’t now.”
“There are a number of peculiar circumstances, to say the least.”
“There’s only Oliver — and I may have been mistaken about him.”
“But I thought you were so sure?”
“So I was. But — this is preposterous, Wimsey! Besides, think what a scandal it would make!”
“Why should it? You are the executor. You can make a private application and the whole thing can be done quite privately.”
“Yes, but surely the Home Office would never consent, on such flimsy grounds.”
“I’ll see that they do. They’ll know I wouldn’t be keen on anything flimsy. Little bits of fluff were never in my line.”
“Oh, do be serious. What reason can we give?”
“Quite apart from Oliver, we can give a very good one. We can say that we want to examine the contents of the viscera to see how soon the General died after taking his last meal. That might be of great assistance in solving the question of the survivorship. And the law, generally speaking, is nuts on what they call the orderly devolution of property.”
“Hold on! D’you mean to say you can tell when a bloke died just by looking inside his tummy?”
“Not exactly, of course. But one might get an idea. If we found, that is, that he’d only that moment swallowed his brekker, it would show that he’d died not very long after arriving at the Club.”
“Good lord! — that would be a poor look-out for me.”
“It might be the other way, you know.”
“I don’t like it, Wimsey. It’s very unpleasant. I wish to goodness we could compromise on it.”
“But the lady in the case won’t compromise. You know that. We’ve got to get at the facts somehow. I shall certainly get Murbles to suggest the exhumation to Pritchard.”
“Oh, lord! What’ll he do?”
“Pritchard? If he’s an honest man and his client’s an honest woman, they’ll support the application. If they don’t, I shall fancy they’ve something to conceal.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. They’re a low-down lot. But they can’t do anything without my consent, can they?”
“Not exactly — at least, not without a lot of trouble and publicity. But if you’re an honest man, you’ll give your consent. You’ve nothing to conceal, I suppose?”
“Of course not. Still, it seems rather—”
“They suspect us already of some kind of dirty work,” persisted Wimsey. “That brute Pritchard as good as told me so. I’m expecting every day to hear that he has suggested exhumation off his own bat. I’d rather we got in first with it.”
“If that’s the case, I suppose we must do it. But I can’t believe it’ll do a bit of good, and it’s sure to get round and make an upheaval. Isn’t there some other way — you’re so darned clever—”