He went round to 12 Great Ormond Street and routed Parker out of bed.
Parker listened thoughtfully to what he had to say.
“I wish we’d stopped Fentiman before he bolted,” he said.
“Yes; why didn’t you?”
“Well, Dykes seems to have muffed it rather. I wasn’t there myself. But everything seemed all right. Fentiman looked a bit nervy, but many people do when they’re interviewed by the police — think of their hideous pasts, I suppose and wonder what’s coming next. Or else it’s just stage-fright. He stuck to the same tale he told you — said he was quite sure the old General hadn’t taken any pills or anything in the taxi — didn’t attempt to pretend he knew anything about Lady Dormer’s will. There was nothing to detain him for. He said he had to get to his job in Great Portland Street. So they let him go. Dykes sent a man to follow him up, and he went along to Hubbard-Walmisley’s all right. Dykes said, might he just have a look round the place before he went, and Mrs. Fentiman said certainly. He didn’t expect to find anything, really. Just happened to step into the back-yard, and saw a bit of broken glass. He then had a look round, and there was the cap of the tablet-bottle in the dust-bin. Well, then, of course, he started to get interested, and was just having a hunt through for the rest of it, when old mother Munns appeared and said the dust-bin was her property. So they had to clear out. But Dykes oughtn’t to have let Fentiman go till they’d finished going over the place. He ’phoned through to Hubbard-Walmisley’s at once, and heard that Fentiman had arrived and immediately gone out with the car, to visit a prospective customer in Herts. The fellow who was supposed to be trailing Fentiman got carburettor trouble just beyond St. Albans, and by the time he was fixed, he’d lost Fentiman.”
“Did Fentiman go to the customer’s house?”
“Not he. Disappeared completely. We shall find the car, of course — it’s only a matter of time.”
“Yes,” said Wimsey. His voice sounded tired and constrained.
“This alters the look of things a bit,” said Parker, “doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“What have you done to your face, old man?”
Wimsey glanced at the looking-glass, and saw that an angry red flush had come up on the cheekbone.
“Had a bit of a dust-up with Robert,” he said.
“Oh!”
Parker was aware of a thin veil of hostility, drawn between himself and the friend he valued. He knew that for the first time, Wimsey was seeing him as the police. Wimsey was ashamed and his shame made Parker ashamed too.
“You’d better have some breakfast ” said Parker. His voice sounded awkward to himself.
“No — no thanks, old man. I’ll go home and get a bath and shave.”
“Oh, right-oh!”
There was a pause.
“Well, I’d better be going,” said Wimsey.
“Oh, yes,” said Parker again. “Right-oh!”
“Er — cheerio!” said Wimsey at the door.
“Cheerio!” said Parker.
The bedroom door shut. The flat-door shut. The front-door shut.
Parker pulled the telephone towards him and called up Scotland Yard.
*****
The atmosphere of his own office was bracing to Parker when he got down there. For one thing, he was taken aside by a friend and congratulated in conspiratorial whispers.
“Your promotion’s gone through,” said the friend. “Dead certainty. The Chief’s no end pleased. Between you and me, of course. But you’ve got your Chief-Inspectorship all right. Damn good.”
Then, at ten o’clock, the news came through that the missing Walmisley-Hubbard had turned up. It had been abandoned in a remote Hertfordshire lane. It was in perfectly good order, the gear-lever in neutral and the tank full of petrol. Evidently, Fentiman had left it and wandered away somewhere, but he could not be far off. Parker made the necessary arrangements for combing out the neighbourhood. The bustle and occupation soothed his mind. Guilty or insane or both, George Fentiman had to be found; it was just a job to be done.
The man who had been sent to interview Mrs. Munns (armed this time with a warrant) returned with the fragments of the bottle and tablets. Parker duly passed these along to the police analyst. One of the detectives who was shadowing Miss Dorland rang up to announce that a young woman had come to see her, and that the two had then come out carrying a suit-case and driven away in a taxi. Maddison, the other detective, was following them. Parker said, “All right; stay where you are for the present,” and considered this new development. The telephone rang again. He thought it would be Maddison, but it was Wimsey — a determinedly brisk and cheerful Wimsey this time.
“I say, Charles. I want something.”
“What?”
“I want to go and see Miss Dorland.”
“You can’t. She’s gone off somewhere. My man hasn’t reported yet.”
“Oh! Well, never mind her. What I really want to see is her studio.”
“Yes? Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”
“Will they let me in?”
“Probably not. I’ll meet you there and take you in with me. I was going out any way. I’ve got to interview the nurse. We’ve just got hold of her.”
“Thanks awfully. Sure you can spare the time?”
“Yes. I’d like your opinion.”
“I’m glad somebody wants it. I’m beginning to feel like a pelican in the wilderness.”
“Rot! I’ll be round in ten minutes.”
“Of course,” explained Parker, as he ushered Wimsey into the studio, “we’ve taken away all the chemicals and things. There’s not much to look at, really.”
“Well, you can deal best with all that. It’s the books and paintings I want to look at. H’m! Books, you know, Charles, are like lobster-shells. We surround ourselves, with ’em, and then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidences of our earlier stages of development.”
“That’s a fact,” said Parker. “I’ve got rows of school-boy stuff at home — never touch it now, of course. And W. J. Locke — read everything he wrote once upon a time. And Le Queux, and Conan Doyle, and all that stuff.”
“And now you read theology. And what else?”
“Well, I read Hardy a good bit. And when I’m not too tired, I have a go at Henry James.”
“The refined self-examinations of the infinitely-sophisticated. ’M-m. Well now. Let’s start with the shelves by the fireplace. Dorothy Richardson — Virginia Woolf — E. B. C. Jones — May Sinclair — Katherine Mansfield — the modern female writers are well represented, aren’t they? Galsworthy. Yes. No J. D. Beresford — no Wells — no Bennett. Dear me, quite a row of D. H. Lawrence. I wonder if she reads him very often.”
He pulled down “Women in Love” at random, and slapped the pages open and shut.