Thrones, Dominations by Sayers Dorothy L. & Walsh Jill Paton

Author:Sayers, Dorothy L. & Walsh, Jill Paton [Sayers, Dorothy L. & Walsh, Jill Paton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Crime, Historical, Classics
ISBN: 9780312181963
Amazon: 0312181965
Goodreads: 132671
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1998-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

‘It’s an odd thing about this case,’ said Chief Inspector Parker to his companion. ‘Everyone is devastated. Everyone is distraught about the death of the victim.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Peter Wimsey. He was sitting in the worn leather armchair in the Chief Inspector’s office.

‘Usually a murder victim turns out to have been not much loved,’ said Charles. ‘There are almost always people who, while not quite uninhibited enough to say so openly, are far from sorry that the deceased will trouble them no more. Just as there are usually people around with a motive for preferring the victim dead. Or else the victim is somebody friendless, vulnerable to attack.’

‘And this time we have a rich and beloved young woman whose death leaves everyone who knows her shattered and incoherent with grief? What does that suggest to you, Charles?’

‘Well, it might lend colour to the theory that the Sunbury attacker is responsible. That kind of random attack could strike someone with no enemies.’

‘Yes, it could. But Harriet tells me that if we put such a crime into a novel nobody would believe it. She has a point, don’t you think?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t read detective fiction,’ said Charles stiffly.

‘No; well, I expect all those tomes of theology make just as good an ethical training,’ said Wimsey. ‘What did you make of Mr Warren’s blackmailers, by the way?’

‘He had certainly believed in them himself. He was genuinely frightened.’

‘Yes, he was, poor old duffer.’

‘But when a blackmailing case has led to violence it is, in my experience, almost always a case of the victim turning on the tormentor rather than the other way about.’

‘I suppose,’ said Wimsey thoughtfully, ‘it is possible to imagine – suppose that the money dries up, and the blackmailer wants to turn the screws a bit. So he or they decide to frighten Rosamund, perhaps to leave a mark on her, because didn’t Warren say they had threatened disfigurement? And then it went wrong.’

‘If they meant to disfigure, they would have used a knife, or a cigarette lighter,’ said Parker.

‘If they just meant to terrify her, and then they held on a moment too long, or seized her throat in the wrong spot . . .’

‘It’s possible, I suppose. I think they did turn up at Hampton, by the way, because Warren’s description corresponds fairly closely with one of the non-regulars spotted by the ticket collector at the station. We have a search out for a pair of that description all over the country. When they turn up we can question them, but I don’t think . . .’

‘Neither do I,’ said Wimsey.

‘Meanwhile, something else has come up. We took a formal statement from the night porter at Hyde House, a Mr Jason, and in the course of making it he remembered that somebody had been asking for Mrs Harwell at about five. He was not yet on duty himself; he was having a cup of tea and a gossip with the day porter. The day porter let the visitor into the hallway, and he said he was calling on Mrs Harwell.

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