Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online

wel. Yes, of course.’ It struck her that this sounded
    ungracious, seeing that Wimsey had undoubtedly saved her from a very
    disagreeable position, if not from an ignominious death, and she went on, hastily
    and stiltedly, ‘I have a great deal to thank him for.’
    ‘Naturaly,’ replied the Inspector. ‘Not but what’ (loyaly) ‘Scotland Yard
    would probably have got the right man in the end. Stil’ (here local patriotism
    seemed to take the upper hand), ‘they haven’t the advantages in some ways
    that we have. They can’t know al the people in London same as we know
    everybody hereabouts. Stands to reason they couldn’t. Now, in a case like this
    one here, ten to one we shal be able to find al about the young man in a turn of
    the hand, as you might say.’
    ‘He may be a visitor,’ said Harriet.
    ‘Very likely,’ said the Inspector, ‘but I expect there’l be somebody that
    knows about him, al the same. This is where you get off, Saunders. Raise al
    the help you can, and get Mr Coffin to run you over to Wilvercombe when
    you’re through. Now then, miss. What did you say this young chap was like?’
    Harriet again described the corpse.
    ‘Beard, eh?’ said the Inspector. ‘Sounds like a foreigner, doesn’t it? I can’t
    just place him for the moment, but there’s not much doubt he’l be pretty easily
    traced. Now, here we are at the police-station, miss. If you’l just step in here a
    minute, the Superintendent would like to see you.’
    Harriet accordingly stepped in and told her story once again, this time in
    minute detail, to Superintendent Glaisher, who received it with flattering interest.
    She handed over the various things taken from the body and her rol of film, and
    was then questioned exhaustively as to how she had spent the day, both before
    and after finding the body.
    ‘By the way,’ said the Superintendent, ‘this young felow you met on the
    road – what’s become of him?’
    Harriet stared about her as though she expected to find Mr Perkins stil at
    her elbow.
    ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d forgotten al about him. He must have gone

    off while I was ringing you up.’
    ‘Odd,’ said Glaisher, making a note to inquire after Mr Perkins.
    ‘But he can’t possibly know anything about it,’ said Harriet. ‘He was
    fearfuly surprised – and frightened. That’s why he came back with me.’
    ‘We’l have to check up on him, though, as a matter of routine,’ said the
    Superintendent. Harriet was about to protest that this was a waste of time,
    when she suddenly realised that in al probability it was her own story that was
    due to be ‘checked up on’. She was silent, and the Superintendent went on:
    ‘Wel, now, Miss Vane. I’m afraid we shal have to ask you to stay within
    reach for a few days. What were you thinking of doing?’
    ‘Oh, I quite understand that. I suppose I’d better put up somewhere in
    Wilvercombe. You needn’t be afraid of my running away. I want to be in on
    this thing.’
    The policeman looked a little disapproving. Everybody is, of course, only too
    delighted to take the limelight in a gruesome tragedy, but a lady ought, surely, to
    pretend the contrary. Inspector Umpelty, however, merely replied with the
    modest suggestion that Clegg’s Temperance Hostel was generaly reckoned to
    be as cheap and comfortable as you could require.
    Harriet laughed, remembering suddenly that a novelist owes a duty to her
    newspaper reporters. ‘Miss Harriet Vane, when interviewed by our
    correspondent at Clegg’s Temperance Hostel—’ That would never do.
    ‘I don’t care for Temperance Hostels,’ she said, firmly. ‘What’s the best
    hotel in the town?’
    ‘The Resplendent is the largest,’ said Glaisher.
    ‘Then you wil find me at the Resplendent,’ said Harriet, picking up her dusty
    knapsack and preparing for action.
    ‘Inspector Umpelty wil run you down there in the car,’ said the
    Superintendent, with a little nod to