And —
«I thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth have smiled,»
said Lord Peter, «and taught me to be bestially impertinent when I choose. Cat!»
Two a. m. saw Lord Peter Wimsey arrive in a friend's car at the Dower House, Denver Castle, in company with a deaf and aged lady and an antique portmanteau.
* * *
«It's very nice to see you, dear,» said the Dowager Duchess, placidly. She was a small, plump woman, with perfectly white hair and exquisite hands. In feature she was as unlike her second son as she was like him in character; her black eyes twinkled cheerfully, and her manners and movements were marked with a neat and rapid decision. She wore a charming wrap from Liberty's, and sat watching Lord Peter eat cold beef and cheese as though his arrival in such incongruous circumstances and company were the most ordinary event possible, which with him, indeed, it was.
«Have you got the old lady to bed?» asked Lord Peter.
«Oh, yes, dear. Such a striking old person, isn't she? And very courageous. She tells me she has never been in a motor-car before. But she thinks you a very nice lad, dear — that careful of her, you remind her of her own son. Poor little Mr. Thipps — whatever made your friend the inspector think he could have murdered anybody?»
«My friend the inspector — no, no more, thank you, Mother — is determined to prove that the intrusive person in Thipps's bath is Sir Reuben Levy, who disappeared mysteriously from his house last night. His line of reasoning is: We've lost a middle-aged gentleman without any clothes on in Park Lane; we've found a middle-aged gentleman without any clothes on in Battersea. Therefore they're one and the same person, Q.E.D., and put little Thipps in quod.»