Hi, welcome to Global Connection here on ThinkTech's live streaming network. I'm your host Grace Chang here today to talk with Dr. Steve Yarl Hansen, who is currently at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. And we'll be talking about jihadists in Africa, including the Islamic State and the situation there in Africa as far as how they're faring, whether they are gaining ground, losing ground. So I'd like to welcome Steve to our program and he's coming us live remote from Harvard. Hi, Steve. Thank you very much for having me, Grace. Yes, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you about this topic because, you know, since 1998, right, the U.S. embassies were hit in Kenya and in Tanzania and, you know, I know that the situation has been ongoing. We don't get a lot of press on this topic, I think, in the U.S. media. But we know, especially in recent years, Boko Haram's, kidnappings, some of the bombing in the shopping malls. And earlier this year, the head of U.S. Africa Command said that the Islamic State was doubling its forces in Libya. So I think it's kind of a, it seems like it's a pressing topic, but we hear a lot of conflicting things, whether they're gaining ground or losing ground in the continent. So you are an expert in the field, and so very happy to have you here to talk about this topic. So could you first tell us a little bit about yourself and your background here? No, I have conducted a lot of field studies in Africa, and especially Sub-Saharan Africa. So I traveled to Somalia from 2004 and onwards. I have been annually in Mogadishu, with the exception of 2013 and 2014. I also was a part of British military mission to Nigeria. So I had the opportunity to study Nigeria a little bit more closely, and I'm currently involved in a larger Jihadi war economy project studying Africa, but also the Levant. So I've worked with this a lot of years, and I talk to several of the leaders, especially in the Shabbab, which at times were a little bit challenging, both methodologically, but also security-wise. But I'm here, and perhaps most known for my work on the Harakat al-Shabbab, the radical group in Somalia. Yes, yes, and you wrote the book, Al-Shabbab in Somalia, right, the history and ideology of an Islamic group there. And it received quite good feedback. It was reviewed in the Economist and the Foreign Policy and received very good feedback. So currently, what would you say the situation is, and perhaps giving us a little bit of background, going back to maybe the 90s, as I was talking about, the US Embassy attacks? Yes, what you can see is you have several faces of violent Jihadists in Africa. Violent Jihadists meaning that you want to use violence to promote what you see is the religious values, basically. So you have the 90s, where you had this period when Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda established themselves in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, trying to support several smaller religious organizations at that stage. But these smaller organizations, they were very fragmented. So Al-Qaeda wasn't really a big success. Al-Qaeda was also following Sudanese foreign policies. So to a certain extent, it was kind of a puppet or a tool that Sudan used to further its foreign policy goals. So you had a close relationship between Sudan and Al-Qaeda in that period. But in 1996, Osama bin Laden moved away. And what remained in Africa since he fell out with the Sudanese authorities was more or less small networks. These networks, they were based in East Africa, and those networks were really hitting the embassies in Nairobi and Dara Salam. But this changed rapidly after September 11. Suddenly, a lot of movements in Africa exploded. Jihadists, violent Jihadist organizations increased in size and in numbers. So you will suddenly have the Bukuharam emerging in 2003. The interesting thing with the Bukuharam was that from 2003 to 2009, it was actually legal. And in some cases, even supported by the regional authorities inside the province, the Borno province, when they were active. So they had some support from the Nigerian government, which is very interesting. They were tolerated and sometimes supported to be used for political purposes. At the same time, on the other end of the continent, you had the Shabaab. Created in its first stages in 2003, 2004, in Somalia as a small network, but then riding piggyback on the Sharia courts of Mogadishu in 2006, and starting up really in 2007 as a clearly independent movement. Further north, in the west, you had also several movements in Mali. You have the Ansardin and the Mujahou who also had some connections to Al-Qaeda. And you had a local organization in Algeria who changed their name to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. So you had this period from 2000 to maybe 2012, where you had a really, really expansion of these organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. A large expansion and at the end of that period, a lot of these organizations strengthened their connection with Al-Qaeda. So in 2012, Shabaab will say that they were a part of Al-Qaeda. In the case of Mali, the Ansardin, they will have a leader that more or less married a daughter of one of the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leaders. So he got the kind of connection with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Mujahou, they had no infamous leader, Muqtar Bel Muqtar, who was behind the Namenas attack. They attacked against the oil facility in Algeria in 2013. They called him the one-night guy. And he also had strong Al-Qaeda connections. So you had this face with a lot of... First, a lot of jihadi organizations emerging. Then secondly, several of these organizations affiliating themselves with Al-Qaeda. It doesn't mean that they were directly controlled by Al-Qaeda, but they swore out or they had close connections with Al-Qaeda. Exactly how well they were centrally controlled, it's really hard to say. But Al-Qaeda, we have to say an insight, was kind of successful in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately for Al-Qaeda, then you had the Islamic State. So the Islamic State started to emerge and started to separate itself from Al-Qaeda. So we will have 2011, 2012, 2013, where the Islamic State is consolidating in the Levant and more or less breaking contact with Al-Qaeda, declaring themselves as a separate organization. At the start, they were a part of the Al-Qaeda network, but they became separate and then declaring this caliphate and taking large territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq. What this did was basically first to turn away some of the foreign recruitment, for example, to Sheba. So in the United States, you had a recruitment channel going out from Minnesota, first to the Sheba, and this recruitment channel was more or less turned towards the Islamic State. So the ethnic Somalis in Minnesota that previously were radical, they went to Somalia, but suddenly they started to go to Syria. So it was a loss for the Sheba. In addition to that, they started to view several organizations in Africa. First, Bukoharam in the M, the leader of Bukoharam, in the M swearing allegiance to the Islamic State. So the Bukoharam then became a part of the Islamic State. Again, it's hard to say how directly controlled it was. Bukoharam was then used in relation to the Sheba. So the Islamic State produced propaganda videos featuring Bukoharam leaders and Bukoharam activists to ask the Sheba to join the Islamic State. But the Sheba never joined the Islamic State. Further north, Muhtar Bel Muhtar's group in Mali, they had a sub-commander who swore allegiance on behalf of his organization to the Islamic State. So suddenly you saw the Sheba were challenged by the Islamic State. Bukoharam seemed to be in an alliance with the Islamic State. The remains of Mujahoo seem to be also having at least one leader who swore an oath to the Islamic State. So suddenly you had a wave of Islamic State coming into sub-Saharan Africa. Right. I mean, this seems to be, I'm sorry to cut you off, but this seems to be kind of the, what we're seeing is that al-Qaeda seems to have some preeminence among jihadi groups. But now we have Islamic State here with many groups kind of pledging the allegiance, including maybe slip splintering off from existing groups like from al-Shaba forming new groups that declare allegiance. We're seeing this kind of competition. Could you talk? We have a couple minutes for a break. Maybe give us a little more of what you were trying to say continuing with that. Yes, absolutely. Because what we see now is that al-Qaeda has broken back. So you can see that al-Qaeda is actually gaining back on the various Islamic State attempts. What happened in Somalia, if I can start with that, is basically the intelligence services of the Sheba, the amniad. They hit heavily back at Islamic State sympathizers within that organization. So a lot of them were killed. A lot of them were captured. And the groups that remained free inside the Sheba, inside the Sheba areas were on the periphery of the Sheba. So there was a large group into the north led by a guy called Sheikh Mu'min, and a large group to the south who was led originally by a German foreign fighter called Müller that remained separate. But it's important to understand that these groups are relatively small. So a couple of, one month ago in October, this group in the north of Somalia captured a small city called Kandela. And it was really depicted on the CNN as the Islamic State gaining a foothold in Africa. What it was really, this city was a pirate city before. It didn't have a police force. So the Islamic State basically went in and took a city that wasn't really controlled by anybody. So it was an easy military operation. The closest garrison of the local authorities was 13 hours away. And then the Islamic State militia under Mu'min Day withdrew. So it was a propaganda show. It didn't really show strength. The propaganda videos from these groups shows very few soldiers. And the German fighter that appeared on the start, Müller, that appeared on the start of these videos of the Islamic State group in the south, he was actually killed. So he died. And the Northern leader of Sheikh Mu'min, he was in hiding in the mountains. So really what happened here was not that impressive. And what's interesting for the Sheba was that their Kenyan affiliates, Tanzanian affiliates, Al-Hijira, they declared clear loyalty to Al-Qaeda and to the Sheba. So what happened in the case of the Sheba was only small, small groups, perifero. The Sheba kept control of their own forces and they remained in solid relationships to Al-Qaeda. What happened in the Bukoharam was actually it seems like the Islamic State weakened Bukoharam very seriously. You know, Bukoharam took some hits because of a new military offensive from the neighboring countries, involving Shadyan forces, involving Nigerian forces. That defeated them a lot in the battlefield. But in addition to this, the son of the founder of Bukoharam, he declares himself the new leader of what they call the West African province of the Islamic State. And the all leader, the infamous Abu Bukhashakao said that this was wrong, that Al-Baghdadi and the Islamic States, they outsold him. They tried to take control over his organization and that this would lead to a fight and he would be prepared to maintain control of the organization. So the splits in Bukoharam, it split into two. And for now, it seems like the old part, the Abu Bukhashakao part, actually is the most powerful and they now have declared themselves against Baghdadi. Okay, that's really interesting. So it's really not, it's causing a bit of a split. And let's talk about this a little bit more after we come back from this one minute break. Thank you for that great background and overview of all of the groups throughout the continent. We'll come back in a minute and talk more with Steve Hansen about jihadis in Africa. Stay tuned. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with Think Tech Hawaii, and I'd like to ask you to come watch my show, The Economy in You, each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. We live stream every Tuesday from noon to 12.30. And you get a chance to hear what people are doing about sustainability in Hawaii and what the issues are impacting all of us in all the islands. Join us, please. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, welcome back to Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Cheng, here talking with Steve Hansen of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They're at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and we're talking about the Islamic State and its situation in Africa as far as whether it's gaining ground, losing ground, and also covering this recent history of the Jihadi movements on the continent. Welcome back, Steve. Thank you. Hey, as you were saying, I mean, you gave us a great overview about all of these different movements that have kind of sprouted out in many situations. I mean, you suggested in Somalia one of the areas that Islamic State have captured was really just part of a, you know, one of the areas where the collapsed state of Somalia was not able to govern at all. So I mean, many, you know, we have many different reports in the sense of like, you know, it seems that a lot of these incidents are very sensationalized. So we have a big kind of sense that these groups are really gaining ground and expanding. I think earlier this year, the Senate had heard some testimony that there are more deaths from this kind of violence in Africa than in the Middle East. But there are other sources that say that, yeah, a lot of these groups are losing ground and as you were talking about before the break, this introduction of the rivalry between al-Qaeda and Islamic State has kind of weakened groups, splintered them and caused some internal rifts. Yeah, I think that's what's fascinating with Islamic State. You know, I won't say that they made a large inroad into Africa. In the case of Mali, where you had Mujaw entering into an alliance and creating another organization called Les Miraboutou. And in the case of Sheba, they captured small, small groups that in reality are in significance. Although some of the media tried to make them significant, like CNN talking a lot about the conquest of Candela by what they saw as Islamic State, it's a small group.  So you had these incidences in Mali where at best the Islamic State made small groups. And what they did in Nigeria was actually to split one of the most dangerous groups in Africa. You know, we haven't really seen the results. I think Abu Bakr Sheqqa'u will get on, Abu Bakr Sheqqa'u will get on the top of things. He will control Bukuharam, the major part of Bukuharam because Bukuharam had split before and he ended up on the top of it at that stage also. But his rival now is the son of the founder. It's Banawi who is the son of the founder. So this is going to be exciting to see. But what we see is a block of the Islamic State. You know, the Islamic State tried very hard. What they managed to do was to split up a large organization. Otherwise, it was rather peripheral. And when it comes to your second question, what is really the status of those movements now? If you look at Somalia, Shebab is actually quite stable. Shebab holds some territories. There's very bad security in the countryside so they can survive behind enemy lines because basically villages are not properly secured by the forces of the African Union. So they can go into villages, steal money, local villages, marrying off their daughters to the Shebab because they want to be safe. They can recruit people in these villages and then the Amazon will come there once a week. But Shebab will have a presence six days a week and run away when the Amazon comes and they will come back. So in one sense, they are ruling those cities anyway. So Shebab is stable and they have their eyes on Kenya. They have their eyes on Tanzania. In Kenya, the police have cracked on really efficiently at the Shebab structures. So it's little recruitment going into Somalia. But there are active Shebab cells inside Kenya. And the root causes the animosity towards the state in Kenya is not fixed. Inside Tanzania, it's a big question mark because there has been networks inside Tanzania. There have been a small group inside Tanzania who declared a kind of ought to watch the Islamic State. But it's very unclear what they really wanted. So there's something going on in Tanzania and Tanzania is not really prepared for it. But it's not something really heavy. They had an attack against the police station last year. It was very bloody. It seems like the people involved in that attack was taken out. In Nigeria, Nigeria, Bukoharam has faced a lot of problems. They have a northern Nigerian as a present, Bukohari. And Bukohari has transferred a lot of the military units into the north. You know, the Nigerians are weak because they get most of their income from the oil in the south. So they need military units in the south. But the northern president, Bukohari has taken a lot of chances and he's transferred army units to the north. In addition to that, one of Africa's most efficient armies, the Shadian army, has intervened directly, helping Nigeria, which is a kind of little embarrassing for Nigerians. It's a strong man of Africa and then it cannot help itself. The way Bukoharam seemed to have dealt with this is to pull back in face of superior forces. But also it seems like they have become more active in Niger. Niger before has been really calm when it comes to his violent Jihadists. But they are weak when it comes to their forces. They have been lenient on Bukoharam networks. Several Bukoharam members have tribal networks in that state, but it seemed to have been more active. In Mali, after the French intervention, the Islamist organizations withdraw and they reorganized and they're still active. They're far from defeated and they can hide out in the large ways of the Saharan desert. So it's really hard to defeat them. So what you can say is that for Mali and the northern part of West Africa and Somalia, it's more or less a stable situation where these violent Jihadist organizations still are powerful, but they are stable. They are not expanding. They're slightly on the defensive, but they will survive. In Nigeria, it's a little bit more complicated. They are split into two. As I said, they have major Nigerian army units fighting them. They have Chadian units fighting them. But I also dealt with Bukoharam before and they had similar crisis. They had the first crisis when they became illegal in 2009, where for the first time were banned by the Nigerian authorities. There was a big crackdown. The first leader, Yusuf, was killed by the police. They had the second crisis in 2013 when the Nigerian army organized an entirely new division and sent it north-north. I know they have another crisis, but all the time they managed to survive. So I think that's kind of interesting because I think we hear a great deal about Bukoharam because of the kidnappings of the schoolgirls and some of these other really dramatic, well, it's played up in the media quite dramatically, but that they were once a legal organization and then declared illegal. How are they different when they were legal? Did they really substantive change in terms of their objectives or was it their actions that made them be declared legal by the state? I'll tell you what, Grace. This is a very strange story. You know, Bukoharam, in its legal phase, was used by political parties in Borno as a kind of political stormtroopers. They had a lot of influence at times in regional politics to the extent that they were a part of the governmental apparatus that decided who could go to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage or not. So they were relatively involved in politics. They had quite extreme opinions also at that stage, but they didn't attack churches, etc., etc. They were more involved in the political showdowns. What happened was in 2009, there are several sources. Some of the sources will say that the Bukoharam really planned to go violent. So they were gathering arms and preparing to go violent. Other sources say that this was actually a car accident where there was an accident. There were several Bukoharam members who drove without helmets and the police wanted to capture them. And then everything escalated. So it was a big showdown in 2009 between them and the police. But certainly they became more violent after this showdown. So the violence escalated. But you don't know if these radical trends before the showdown would have escalated as well. And that we would have seen a more violent Bukoharam anyway. But it would have taken more time at least. I think that's fair to say. And what's very important with Bukoharam, never before declaring allegiance with the Islamic State, did they declare allegiance to al-Qaeda? In fact, they never declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. Sheba declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. Hijira in Kenya declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. And in Mali, Ansardin and Mujahou that we talked about had strong connections to al-Qaeda. They didn't declare allegiance either until quite recently when parts of Mujahou did this. But in the old days, they had strong connections. They had members from al-Qaeda in the ranks. They had, as I said, in Ansardin, one of the leaders married into al-Qaeda basically. And so you've given us a list of many different groups that you've been talking about. I mean, as far as their strength, there are so many of them. So it does sound very alarming. And then we hear the affiliations being declared with Islamic State and some groups declaring we are Islamic State of this particular region, of Greater Sahara, for example. But how significance are these groups? You said some of them are very, very pitifully small. Others, are they more significant? I mean, even if they're stable, do they constitute a major threat to the security in the region? I would say that if we start in the east, the threat from the Shebab against the United States has become less, because before, they recruited a lot in the United States. But they haven't managed. No, it's the Islamic State that started recruiting. And no, even the Islamic State is declining. So in one sense, their recruitment potentially in the U.S. were stolen away by the Islamic State. But mind you, and several of their videos, they have listed potentially American targets and said that if you cannot come to Somalia, you hit in the United States. So they are encouraging attacks inside the United States. But I don't think they will plan attacks in the United States. I think their focus is regional, and they always did that. They always hit regional targets, and they prefer to hit targets in the countries that are involved in the African Union inside Somalia. But mind you, when they do this, that's tourist targets as well, and they might hit westerners when they attack those tourist targets. And there might be a likelihood that Al-Qaeda centrally or other Al-Qaeda affiliates can take advantage of Shibab infrastructure if they plan larger attacks, including Al-Qaeda in their Arab Peninsula is rather close to the Shibab.  So they've been focused mainly on one province inside Nigeria historically. But for the last three years, you saw that they had some interest in Cameroon, and as I said, they moved into Niger to try to implement terrorist attacks in Niger, but also as a safe zone basically. Cameroon is rather weak militarily. I don't see Bukuharam attacking internationally at all. I don't think that they are very interested in it. But I do see them attacking staging terrorist attacks in larger cities inside Nigeria and Niger as well. What you see in Mali, it's slightly more serious. And I think Inamena shows that, if you go a little bit further north from Mali, you will have oil installations operated by Western oil pump. Yeah, because of the location. Wow, Steak. So we have about a couple seconds left. So I'm sorry, we don't have more time. Not enough time for this is a very big topic and really appreciate your sharing your expertise on all of these groups. Love to have you back and talk more depth. I think we talked a lot in depth already, but there's obviously there's so much more. But it seems like, yeah, a lot of the groups are not as significant as far as the scope of their reach and impact as we might see it. So thank you so much. I'm here with Steve Hansen of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  See me here next Thursday or actually next Thursday Thanksgiving. And other Thursdays at 1 p.m. Thank you so much again, Steve. Thank you.


My name is Staff Sgt. Nathen Verenkel. I'm with the 2ID Sustainment Brigade, 23rd Seabroom Battalion. I'm 74 Delta with the heavy Decon Platoon. This order is going to be our personal running through. If you have any questions while they're running through, go free to ask me. So today we're working on detailed troop decontamination, detailed aircraft decontamination and operational decon. We try to work as much with the other units on post. This is one of our great culminating events where we can do some joint training with the aviation brigade to work on both seabroom techniques and decontamination techniques. For the detailed troop decontamination, it's eight stations in total and the detailed aircraft decontamination is five stations in total. For our casualty things we call EPDS, that's the Emergency Personal Decontamination Station. So that's where if we have a casualty that ends up in the hot zone or if we have a casualty that's actually on the line, we get them to that station to get it cut out of their suit. We have the cutting tools to get them out, decontaminate them and then get them through to get them to further medical attention that they'll need. I hope that from this training that they take away some of these techniques and things that we're trying to pass on so that when they come on to contamination with their units that they have the skills and the techniques prepared to decontaminate their own elements and handle and tackle any contamination that can come across in the field.


vantage, and to drive off for a time pressing difficulties. L. C. J. Campbell summing up in Reg versus Palmer Shorthand Report, page 308, C. C. C. May 1856, C. S. Pa. 5, Italics Mine, D. L. S. End footnote. You are thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched. I've got it. You've got it.  Sticking it onto women, poor devils.  You needn't fidget. You know it's true. He'll take a disappointment, but not a humiliation. I knew a man once who'd been turned down, not too charitably, by a girl he was engaged to. He spoke quite decently about her. I asked what had become of her. Oh, he said. She married the other fellow. And then burst out. Couldn't help himself. Lord yes, he cried. I think of it. Jilted for a scotchman. I don't know why he didn't like scots, but that was what got him on the raw. Look at Frecky. I've read his books.  Yet he can't bear opposition, even in his work, which is where any first-class man is most sane and open-minded. Do you think he's a man to take a beating from any man on a side issue? On a man's most sensitive side issue? People are opinionated about side issues, you know. I see red if anybody questions my judgment about a book. And Levy, who was nobody twenty years ago, romps in and carries off Frecky's girl from under his nose. It isn't the girl Frecky would bother about. It's having his aristocratic nose put out of joint by a little Jewish nobody. There's another thing. Frecky's got another side issue. He likes crime. In that criminology book of his he gloats over a hardened murderer. I've read it. And I've seen the admiration simply glaring out between the lines whenever he writes about a callous and successful criminal. He reserves his contempt for the victims, or the penitents, or the men who lose their heads and get found out. His heroes are Edmund de la Pomerée, who persuaded his mistress into becoming an accessory to her own murder, and George Joseph Smith, of brides in a bath fame, who could make passionate love to his wife in the night and carry out his plot to murder her in the morning. After all, he thinks conscience is a sort of vermaform appendix. Chop it out, and you'll feel all the better. Frecky isn't troubled by the usual conscientious deterrent. Witness his own hand in his books. Now again, the man who went to Levy's house in his place knew the house. Frecky knew the house. He was a red-haired man, smaller than Levy, but not much smaller, since he could wear his clothes without appearing ludicrous. You have seen Frecky, you know his height, about five foot eleven, I suppose, and his auburn mane. He probably wore surgical gloves. Frecky is a surgeon. He was a methodical and daring man. Surgeons are obliged to be both daring and methodical. Now take the other side. The man who got hold of the Battersea Corpse had to have access to dead bodies. Frecky obviously had access to dead bodies. He had to be cool and quick and callous about handling a dead body. Surgeons are all that. He had to be a strong man to carry the body across the roofs and dump it in at Thip's window. Frecky is a powerful man and a member of the Alpine Club. He probably wore surgical gloves and he let the body down from the roof with a surgical bandage. This points to a surgeon again. He undoubtedly lives in the neighborhood. Frecky lives next door. The girl you interviewed heard a bump on the roof of the End House. That is the house next to Frecky's. Every time we look at Frecky, he leads somewhere, whereas Milligan and Thip's and Cripplesham and all the other people we've honored with our suspicion simply lead nowhere. Yes, but it's not quite so simple as you make out. What was Levy doing in that surreptitious way at Frecky's on Monday night? Well, you have Frecky's explanation. Rot, whimsy. You said yourself it wouldn't do. Excellent. It won't do. Therefore, Frecky was lying. Why should he lie about it, unless he had some object in hiding the truth? Well, but why mention it at all? Because Levy, contrary to all expectation, had been seen at the corner of the road. That was a nasty accident for Frecky. He thought it best to be beforehand with an explanation of sorts. He reckoned, of course, on nobody's ever connecting Levy with Battersea Park. Well, then, we come back to the first question. Why did Levy go there? I don't know, but he was got there somehow. Why did Frecky buy all those Peruvian oil shares? I don't know, said Parker in his turn. Anyway, went on whimsy. Frecky expected him, and made arrangement to let him in himself, so that Cummings shouldn't see who the caller was. But the caller left again at ten. Oh, Charles, I did not expect this of you. This is the purest sugary. Who saw him go? Somebody said, good night, and walked away down the street, and you believe it was Levy because Frecky didn't go out of his way to explain that it wasn't. Do you mean that Frecky walked cheerfully out of the house to Park Lane and left Levy behind, dead or alive, for Cummings to find? We have Cummings' word that he did nothing of the sort.  Then, well, there's a side door to the house, I suppose. In fact, you know there is. Cummings said so, through the hospital. Yes, well, where was Levy? Levy went up to the library and never came down. You've been in Frecky's library. Where would you have put him? In my bedroom next door. Then that's where he did put him. But suppose the man went in to turn down the bed. Beds are turned down by the housekeeper, earlier than ten o'clock. Yes, but Cummings heard Frecky about the house all night. He heard him go in and out two or three times. He'd expect him to do that anyway. Do you mean to say Frecky got all that job finished before three in the morning? Why not? Quick work. Well, call it quick work. Besides, why three? Cummings never saw him again till he called him for eight o'clock breakfast. But he was having a bath at three. I don't say he didn't get back from Park Lane before three, but I don't suppose Cummings went and looked through the bathroom keyhole to see if he was in the bath. Parker considered again. How about Krimpelschirm's Pence-nay, he asked? That is a bit mysterious, said Lord Peter. And why Thipps' bathroom? Why, indeed, pure accident, perhaps, or pure devilry? Do you think all this elaborate scheme could have been put together in a night, Whimsy? Far from it. It was conceived as soon as that man who bore a superficial resemblance to Levy came into the workhouse. He had several days. I see. Frecky gave himself away at the inquest. He and Grimbold disagreed about the length of the man's illness. If a small man, comparatively speaking, like Grimbold, presumes to disagree with a man like Frecky, it's because he is sure of his ground. Then, if your theory is sound, Frecky made a mistake. Yes, a very slight one. He was guarding with unnecessary caution against starting a train of thought in the mind of anybody, say, the workhouse doctor. Up till then he'd been reckoning on the fact that people don't think a second time about anything, a body, say, that's once been accounted for. What made him lose his head? A chain of unforeseen accidents. Levy's having been recognized. My mother's son having foolishly advertised in the times his connection with the Battersea end of the mystery. Detective Parker, whose photograph has been a little prominent in the illustrated press lately, seen sitting next door to the Duchess of Denver at the inquest. His aim in life was to prevent the two ends of the problem from linking up, and there were two of the links literally side by side. Many criminals are wrecked by over-caution. Parker was silent. is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Whose body by Dorothy L. Sayers. Chapter 11. A regular piece super by Jove, said Lord Peter. Parker grunted and struggled irritably into an overcoat. It affords me, if I may say so, the greatest satisfaction, continued the noble lord, that in a collaboration like ours, all the uninteresting and disagreeable routine work is done by you. Parker grunted again. Do you anticipate any difficulty about the warrant? Enquired Lord Peter. Parker grunted a third time. I suppose you've seen to it that all this business is kept quiet. Of course. You've muzzled the workhouse people. Of course. And the police. Yes. Because if you haven't, they'll probably be nobody to arrest. My dear whimsy, do you think I'm a fool? I had no such hope. Parker grunted finally and departed. Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by raffles and Sherlock Holmes, or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox. I'm an amateur, said Lord Peter. Nevertheless, while communing with Dante, he made up his mind. In the afternoon he found himself in Harley Street. Sir Julian Frecky might be consulted about one's nerves from two till four on Tuesdays and Fridays. Lord Peter rang the bell. Have you an appointment, sir? Enquired the man who opened the door. No, said Lord Peter. But will you give Sir Julian my card? I think it possible he may see me without one. He sat down in the beautiful room in which Sir Julian's patience awaited his healing council. It was full of people. Two or three fashionably dressed women were discussing shops and servants together and teasing a toy griffin. A big, worried-looking man by himself in a corner looked at his watch twenty times a minute. Lord Peter knew him by sight.  He controlled the finances of five countries, but he could not control his nerves. The finances of five countries were in Sir Julian Frecky's capable hands. By the fireplace sat a soldierly-looking young man of about Peter's own age. His face was prematurely lined and worn. He sat bolt upright, his restless eyes darting in the direction of every slightest sound. On the sofa was an elderly woman of modest appearance, with a young girl. The girl seemed listless and wretched. The woman's look showed deep affection and anxiety tempered with a timid hope. Close beside Lord Peter was another younger woman, with a little girl. And Lord Peter noticed in both of them the broad cheekbones and beautiful gray, slanting eyes of the Slav. The child, moving restlessly about, trod on Lord Peter's patent leather toe, and the mother admonished her in French before turning to apologize to Lord Peter. Mais je vous en prie, madame," said the young man. It is nothing. She is nervous, pauvre petite, said the young woman. You are seeking advice for her? Yes, he is wonderful, the doctor. Figure to yourself, monsieur. She cannot forget poor child the things she has seen. She leaned near so that the child might not hear. We have escaped from starving Russia six months ago. I dare not tell you she has such quick ears. And the then, the cries, the trembling, the convulsions, they all begin again. We were skeletons when we arrived, mon Dieu. But that is better now. See, she is thin, but she is not starved. She would be fatter, but for the nerves that keep her from eating. We who are older, we forget. Enfin on apprend de ne pas y penser. But these children, when one is young, monsieur, tous a impression trop. Lord Peter, escaping from the thralldom of British good form, expressed himself in that language in which sympathy is not condemned to mutism. But she is much better, much better, said the mother proudly, the great doctor. He does marvels. C'est ton homme, Précius, said Lord Peter. Ah, monsieur, c'est ton sang qui opère des miracles. Ne pruyant pour lui, ne tâchez-moi tous les jours. N'est-ce pas, chérie? And consider, monsieur, that he does all, ce grand homme, cet homme illustre, for nothing at all. When we come here, we have not even the clothes upon our backs. We are ruined, famished. Et avec ça que nous sommes de bonne famille. Mais alas, monsieur, en Russie, comme vous savez, ça ne vous vaut que des insultes, des atrocités. Enfin, the great Sir Julian sees us. He says, madame, your little girl is very interesting to me. Say no more, I cure her for nothing. Pour ses beaux yeux. A-t-il ajouté en riant? Ah, monsieur, c'est ton sang, en véritable sang. And the Natasha is much, much better. Madame, je vous en féliciter.  You also suffer? It is still the war, perhaps? A little remains of shell-shock, said Lord Peter. Ah yes, so many good brave young men. Sir Julian can spare you a few minutes, my lord, if you will come in now, said the servant. Lord Peter bowed to his neighbour and walked across the waiting room. As the door of the consulting room closed behind him, he remembered having once gone disguised into the staff room of a German officer. He experienced the same feeling, the feeling of being caught in a trap, and mingling of bravado and shame. He had seen Sir Julian frecky several times from a distance, but never close. Now, while carefully and quite truthfully detailing the circumstances of his recent nervous attack, he considered the man before him. A man taller than himself, with immense breadth of shoulder and wonderful hands. A face beautiful, impassioned and inhuman, fanatical, compelling eyes, bright blue amid the ruddy brush of hair and beard. They were not the cool and kindly eyes of the family doctor. They were the brooding eyes of the inspired scientist, and they searched one through. Well, thought Lord Peter, I shan't have to be explicit anyhow. Yes, said Sir Julian. Yes.  Yes, more than that perhaps, troubling your mind shall we say. I found myself faced with a very alarming contingency. Yes, unexpectedly perhaps. Very unexpected indeed. Yes, following on a period of mental and physical strain. Well, perhaps. Nothing out of the way. Yes, the unexpected contingency was personal to yourself. It demanded an immediate decision as to my own actions, yes, in that sense it was certainly personal. Quite so. You would have to assume some responsibility no doubt. A very grave responsibility. Affecting others besides yourself? Affecting one other person vitally, and a great number indirectly. Yes, the time was night. You were sitting in the dark? And not at first. I think I put the light out afterwards. Quite so. That action would naturally suggest itself to you. Were you warm? I think the fire had died down. My man tells me that my teeth were chattering when I went into him. Yes, you live in Piccadilly? Yes. Heavy traffic sometimes goes past during night, I expect. Oh, frequently. Just so. Now this decision you refer to. You had taken that decision? Yes. Your mind was made up. Oh, yes. You had decided to take the action, whatever it was. Yes. Yes. It involved perhaps a period of inaction. Of comparative inaction, yes. Of suspense, shall we say? Yes, of suspense certainly. Possibly of some danger. I don't know that that was in my mind at the time. No. It was a case in which you could not possibly consider yourself. If you like to put it that way. Quite so. Yes, you had these attacks frequently in 1918? Yes, I was very ill for some months. Quite. Since then they have recurred less frequently? Much less frequently. Yes, when did the last occur? About nine months ago. Under what circumstances? I was being worried by certain family matters. It was a question of deciding about some investments, and I was largely responsible. Yes, you were interested last year, I think in some police case. Yes, the recovery of Lord Attenbury's emerald necklace. That involved some severe mental exercise. I suppose so, but I enjoyed it very much. Yes, was the exertion of solving the problem attended by any bad result physically. None. No, you were interested but not distressed. Exactly. Yes, you have been engaged in other investigations of the kind? Yes, little ones. With bad results for your health? Not a bit of it. On the contrary, I took up these cases as a sort of distraction. I had a bad knock just after the war, which didn't make matters any better for me, don't you know? Ah, you are not married? No. No. Will you allow me to make an examination? Just come a little near to the light, I want to see your eyes. Whose advice have you had till now? Sir James Hodges. Ah, yes. He was a sad loss to the medical profession. A really great man, a true scientist. Yes, thank you. Now I should like to try you with this little invention. What's it do? Well, it tells me about your nervous reactions. Will you sit here? The examination that followed was purely medical. When it was concluded, Sir Julian said, Now, Lord Peter, I'll tell you about yourself in quite untechnical language. Thanks, said Peter. That's kind of you. I'm an awful fool about long words. Yes. Are you fond of private theatricals, Lord Peter? Not particularly, said Peter, genuinely surprised. Awful borers rule, why? I thought you might be, said the specialist, Riley. Well now, you know quite well that the strain you put on your nerves during the war has left its mark on you. It has left what I may call old wounds in your brain. Sensations received by your nerve endings, sent messages to your brain, and produced minute physical changes there. Changes we are only beginning to be able to detect, even with our most delicate instruments. These changes in their turn set up sensations, or I should say more accurately, that sensations are the names we give to these changes of tissue when we perceive them. We call them horror, fear, sense of responsibility, and so on. Yes, I follow you. Very well.  I mean that if you get nerve sensations of any kind, producing the reactions which we call horror, fear, and sense of responsibility. They may go on to make disturbance right along the old channel, and produce in their turn physical changes which you will call by the names you are accustomed to associate with them. Dread of German minds, responsibility for the lives of your men, strained attention, and the inability to distinguish small sounds through the overpowering noise of guns. I see. This effect would be increased by extraneous circumstances, producing other familiar physical sensations. Night, cold, or the rattling of heavy traffic, for instance. Yes. Yes. The old wounds are nearly healed, but not quite.  It is only when you excite the injured part of your brain. Yes, I see. Yes. You must avoid these occasions. You must learn to be irresponsible, Lord Peter. My friends say I'm only too irresponsible already. Very likely.  Oh. Yes, this particular responsibility you were speaking of still rests upon you. Yes, it does. You have not yet completed the course of action on which you have decided. Not yet. You feel bound to carry it through. Oh yes, I can't back out of it now. No. You are expecting further strain? A certain amount. Do you expect it to last much longer? Very little longer now. Ah.  No? No. Nothing to be alarmed about, but you must exercise care while undergoing this strain, and afterwards you should take a complete rest. How about a voyage in the Mediterranean, or the South Seas, or somewhere? Thanks, I'll think about it. Meanwhile, to carry you over the immediate trouble, I will give you something to strengthen your nerves.  Thank you. Sir Julian got up and went into a small surgery leading out of the consulting room. Lord Peter watched him moving about, boiling something in writing. Presently, he returned with a paper and a hypodermic syringe. Here is the prescription.  I will deal with the necessity of the immediate moment. Lord Peter obediently rolled up his sleeve. Sir Julian Frecky selected a portion of his forearm and anointed it with iodine. What's that you're going to stick into me, bugs? The surgeon laughed. Not exactly, he said. He pinched up a portion of flesh between his finger and thumb. You've had this kind of thing before, I expect. Oh yes, said Lord Peter. He watched the cool fingers, fascinated, and the steady approach of the needle. Yes, I've had it before. And you know, I don't care frightfully about it. He had brought up his right hand and it closed over the surgeon's wrist like a vice. The silence was like a shock. The blue eyes did not waver. They burned down steadily upon the heavy white lids below them. Then these slowly lifted. The grey met the blue, coldly, steadily, and held them. When lovers embrace, there seems no sound in the world but their own breathing. So the two men breathed, face to face. As you like, of course, Lord Peter, said Sir Julian courteously. I'm afraid I'm rather a silly ass, said Lord Peter, but I never could abide these little gadgets. I had one once that went wrong and gave me a rotten bad time. They make me a bit nervous. In that case, replied Sir Julian, it would certainly be better not to have the injection. It might rouse up just those sensations which we are desirous of avoiding. You will take the prescription then and do what you can to lessen the immediate strain as far as possible. Oh yes, I'll take it easy, thanks, said Lord Peter. He rolled his sleeve down neatly. I'm much obliged to you. If I have any further troubles, I'll look in again. Do, do, said Sir Julian cheerfully, only make an appointment another time. I'm rather rushed these days.  I saw her the other day at the Battersea Inquest. You should have been there. It would have interested you. End of Chapter 11.  The feel of Parker's old trench coat beneath your fingers was comforting. You had felt it in worse places. You clung on now for fear you should get separated.  Take care, gentlemen, said a toneless voice out of the yellow darkness. There's an open grave just hereabouts. You bore away to the right and floundered in a mass of freshly turned clay. Hold up, old man, said Parker. Where's Lady Levy? In the mortuary, the Duchess of Denver is with her.  Isn't she? said Lord Peter. A dim blue light carried by somebody ahead wavered and stood still. Here you are, said a voice. Two Dante-esque shapes with pitchforks loomed up. Have you finished? asked somebody. Nearly done, sir. The demons fell to work again with the pitchforks. No, spades. Somebody sneezed. Parker located the sneezer and introduced him. Mr. Levitt represents the home secretary, Lord Peter Wimsey.  It's all in the day's work, said Mr. Levitt Horsley. He was muffled to the eyes. The sound of spades for many minutes. An iron noise of tools thrown down. Demons stooping and straining. A black-bearded specter at your elbow introduced. The master of the workhouse. A very painful matter, Lord Peter. You will forgive me for hoping you and Mr. Parker may be mistaken. I should like to be able to hope so too. Something heaving, straining, coming up out of the ground. Steady men, this way can you see? Be careful of the graves they lie pretty thick hereabouts. Are you ready? Right you are, sir.  We can follow you. Lumbering footsteps. Catch hold of Parker's trench coat again. That you old man. Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Levitt. I thought you were Parker. Hello, Wimsey. Here you are. More graves. A headstone shouldered crookedly a slant.  The squeal of gravel under your feet. This way, gentlemen, mind the step. The mortuary. Raw red brick. And sizzling gas jets. Two women in black and Dr. Grimbold. The coffin laid on the table with a heavy thump. Have you got that there, screwdriver Bill? Thank you. Be careful with the chisel now. Not much substance of the easier boards, sir. Several long creaks. A sob. The duchess's voice. Kind but peremptory. Hush, Christine. You mustn't cry. A mutter of voices. The lurching departure of the Dante demons. Good decent demons in Cordroy. Dr. Grimbold's voice. Cool and detached as if in the consulting room. Now, have you got that lamp, Mr. Wingate? Thank you. Yes, here on the table, please. Be careful not to catch your elbow in the flex, Mr. Leavitt. It would be better, I think, if you came on this side. Yes, yes, thank you. That's excellent. The sudden brilliant circle of an electric lamp over the table. Dr. Grimbold's beard and spectacles. Mr. Leavitt blowing his nose. Park or bending close. The master of the workhouse peering over him. The rest of the room in the enhancement room. The rest of the room in the enhanced dimness of the gas jets and the fog. A low murmur of voices. All heads bent over the work. Dr. Grimbold again, beyond the circle of the lamp light. We don't want to distress you unnecessarily, Lady Levy. If you will just tell us what to look for. The yes, yes, certainly. And yes, stopped with gold. Yes, the lower jaw, the last but one on the right. Yes, no teeth missing. No, yes, what kind of a mole? Yes, just over the left breast. Oh, I beg your pardon, just under. Yes, appendicitis. Yes, a long one, yes, in the middle. Yes, I quite understand. A scar on the arm. Yes, I don't know if we shall be able to find that. Yes, any little constitutional weakness that might. Oh yes, arthritis, yes. Thank you, Lady Levy. That's very clear. Don't come unless I ask you to. Now, Wingate. A pause. A murmur. Pulled out. After death, you think? Well, so do I. Where is Dr. Kohlgrove? You attended this man in the workhouse? Yes. Do you recollect? No. You're quite certain about that? Yes, we mustn't make a mistake, you know. Yes, but there are reasons why Sir Julian can't be present. I'm asking you, Dr. Kohlgrove. Well, you're certain, that's all I want to know. Just bring the light closer, Mr. Wingate, if you please. These miserable shells let the damp in so quickly. Ah, what do you make of this? Yes, yes, well, that's rather unmistakable. Isn't it? Who did the head? Oh, frecky, of course. I was going to say they did good work at St. Luke's. Beautiful, isn't it, Dr. Kohlgrove? A wonderful surgeon. I saw him when he was at Guy's. Oh no, gave it up years ago. Nothing like keeping your hand in. Ah, yes, undoubtedly that's it. Have you a towel handy, Sir? Thank you. Over the head, if you please. I think we might have another here. Now, Lady Levy, I am going to ask you to look at a scar and see if you recognize it. I am sure you are going to help us by being very firm. Take your time. You won't see anything more than you absolutely must. Lucy, don't leave me. No, dear. A space cleared at the table. The lamp light on the Duchess's white hair. Oh yes, oh yes. No, no, I couldn't be mistaken. There's that funny little kink in it. I've seen it hundreds of times. Oh Lucy, Ruben. Only a moment more, Lady Levy, the mole. I, I think so. Oh yes, that is the very place. Yes, and the scar. Was it three-cornered, just above the elbow? Yes, oh yes. Is this it? Yes, yes. I must ask you definitely, Lady Levy. Do you, from these three marks, identify the body as that of your husband? Oh, I must, mustn't I? Nobody else could have them just the same in just those places. It is my husband. It is Ruben. Oh. Thank you, Lady Levy. You have been very brave and very helpful. But I don't understand yet. How did he come here? Who did this dreadful thing? Hush, dear, said the Duchess. The man is going to be punished. Oh, but how cruel, poor Ruben, who could have wanted to hurt him. Can I see his face? No, dear, said the Duchess. That isn't possible. Come away. You mustn't distress the doctors and people. Oh, no. They've all been so kind. Oh, Lucy. We'll go home, dear. You don't want us any more, Dr. Grimbold? No, Duchess, thank you. We are very grateful to you and to Lady Levy for coming. There was a pause while the two women went out. Parker collected and helpful, escorting them to their waiting car. Then Dr. Grimbold again. I think Lord Peter Wimsey ought to see the correctness of his deductions. Lord Peter, very painful. You may wish to see. Yes, I was uneasy at the inquest. Yes, Lady Levy. Remarkably clear evidence. Yes, most shocking case. Ah, here's Mr. Parker. You and Lord Peter Wimsey entirely justified. Do I really understand? Really. I can hardly believe it. So distinguished a man. As you say, when a great brain turns to crime. Yes. Look here. Marvelous work. Marvelous. Somewhat obscured by this time, of course. But the most beautiful sections. Here you see the left hemisphere and here, through the corpus striatum. Here again, the very track of the damage done by the blow. Wonderful. Guest it. Saw the effect of the blow as he struck it, you know. Ah, I should like to see his brain, Mr. Parker. And to think that. Heavens.  Oh, my dear sir, can you ask me? My lips are sealed, of course. All our lips are sealed. The way back through the burial ground. Fog again. And the squeal of wet gravel. Are your men ready, Charles? They have gone. I sent them off when I saw Lady Levy to the car. Who's with them? Sug. Sug? Yes, poor devil. They've had him up on the mat at headquarters for bungling the case. All that evidence of thipses about the nightclub was corroborated, you know. That girl he gave the gin and bitters to was caught and came and identified him and they decided their case wasn't good enough and let tips and the Horrocks girl go. Then they told Sug he had overstepped his duty and ought to have been more careful.  I was sorry for him. It may do him some good to be in at the death. After all, Peter, you and I had special advantages. Yes, well, it doesn't matter. Whoever goes won't get there in time. Sug's as good as another. But Sug, an experience rare in his career, was in time. Parker and Lord Peter were at 110 Piccadilly. Lord Peter was playing Bach and Parker was reading Origen when Sug was announced. We've got our man, sir, said he. Good God, said Peter, alive. We were just in time, my lord. We rang the bell and marched straight up past his man to the library. He was sitting there doing some writing. When we came in he made a grab for his hypodermic, but we were too quick for him, my lord. We didn't mean to let him slip through our hands, having got so far.  He is actually in jail then. Oh yes, safe enough, with two warders to see he doesn't make a way with himself. You surprise me, inspector, have a drink. Thank you, my lord. I may say that I'm very grateful to you. This case was turning out a pretty bad egg for me, if I was rude to your lordship. Oh, it's all right, inspector, said Lord Peter hastily. I don't see how you could possibly have worked it out. I had the good luck to know something about it from other sources. That's what Frecky says. Already the great surgeon was a common criminal in the inspector's eyes, a mere surname. He was writing a full confession when we got hold of him, addressed to your lordship. The police will have to have it, of course, but seeing it's written for you, I brought it along for you to see first. Here it is. He handed Peter a bulky document. Thanks, said Peter. Like to hear it, Charles? Rather. Accordingly, Lord Peter read it aloud. End of Chapter 12. Read by Kara Schellenberg, www.kra.org, on February 15, 2007, in Oceanside, California. He was a very bad and very slow player, and he could never see when a checkmate was inevitable, but insisted on playing every move out. I never had any patience with that kind of attitude, and I will freely admit now that the game is yours. I must either stay at home and be hanged or escape abroad and live in an idle and insecure obscurity. I prefer to acknowledge defeat. If you have read my book on criminal lunacy, you will remember that I wrote, in the majority of cases, the criminal betrays himself by some abnormality attendant upon this pathological condition of the nervous tissues. His mental instability shows itself in various forms, an overweening vanity leading him to brag of his achievement, a disproportionate sense of the importance of the offense, resulting from the hallucination of religion and driving him into confession, egomania producing the sense of horror or conviction of sin, and driving him into headlong flight without covering his tracks, a reckless confidence resulting in the neglect of the most ordinary precautions, as in the case of Henry Wainwright, who left a boy in charge of the murdered woman's remains while he went to Colicab, or on the other hand, a nervous distrust of apperceptions in the past, causing him to revisit the scene of the crime to assure himself that all traces have been as safely removed as his own judgment knows them to be. I will not hesitate to assert that a perfectly sane man, not intimidated by religious or other delusions, could always render himself perfectly secure from detection, provided, that is, that the crime was sufficiently premeditated, and that he were not pressed for time or thrown out in his calculations by purely fortuitous coincidence. You know, as well as I do, how far I have made this assertion good in practice. The two accidents which betrayed me, I could not by any possibility have foreseen. The first was the chance recognition of Levy by the girl in the Battersea Park Road, which suggested a connection between the two problems. The second was that Thipps should have arranged to go down to Denver on the Tuesday morning, thus enabling your mother to get word of the matter through to you before the body was removed by the police, and to suggest a motive for the murder out of what she knew of my previous personal history. If I had been able to destroy these two accidentally forged links of circumstance, I will venture to say that you would never have so much as suspected me, still less obtain sufficient evidence to convict. Of all human emotions, except perhaps those of hunger and fear, the sexual appetite produces the most violent and, under some circumstances, the most persistent reactions. I think, however, I am right in saying that at the time when I wrote my book, my original sensual impulse to kill Sir Reuben Levy had already become profoundly modified by my habits of thought. To the animal lost to slay and the primitive human desire for revenge, there was added the rational intention of substantiating my own theories for the satisfaction of myself and the world. If all had turned out as I had planned, I should have deposited a sealed account of my experiment with the Bank of England, instructing my executors to publish it after my death. Now that accident has spoiled the completeness of my demonstration, I entrust the account to you, whom it cannot fail to interest, with the request that you will make it known among scientific men, injustice to my professional reputation. The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule the man who can make the first can make the second. During my early career, I thought I was fairly well off. I had not absolute command of circumstance. Accordingly, I devoted myself to my profession, and contented myself with keeping up a friendly connection with Reuben Levy and his family. This enabled me to remain in touch with his fortunes and interests, so that when the moment for action should arrive, I might know what weapons to use. Meanwhile, I carefully studied criminology in fiction and fact. My work on criminal lunacy was a side product of this activity, and saw how in every murder, the real crux of the problem was the disposal of the body. As a doctor, the means of death were always ready to my hand, and I was not likely to make any error in that connection, nor was I likely to betray myself on account of any illusory sense of wrongdoing. The sole difficulty would be that of destroying all connection between my personality and that of the corpse. You will remember that Michael Finnsbury, in Stephenson's entertaining romance, observes what hangs people is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt. It became clear to me that the mere leaving about of a superfluous corpse could convict nobody, provided that nobody was guilty in connection with that particular corpse. Thus the idea of substituting the one body for the other was early arrived at. Though it was not till I obtained the practical direction of St Luke's Hospital that I found myself perfectly unfettered in the choice and handling of dead bodies. From this period on, I kept a careful watch on all the material brought in for dissection. My opportunity did not present itself until the week before Sirubin's disappearance, when the medical officer at the Chelsea Workhouse sent word to me that an unknown vagrant had been injured that morning by the fall of a piece of scaffolding, and was exhibiting some very interesting nervous and cerebral reactions. I went round and saw the case, and was immediately struck by the man's strong superficial resemblance to Sirubin. He had been heavily struck on the back of the neck, dislocating the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, and heavily bruising the spinal cord. It seemed highly unlikely that he would ever recover, either mentally or physically, and in any case there appeared to me to be no object in indefinitely prolonging so unprofitable an existence. He had obviously been able to support life until recently, as he was fairly well nourished, but the state of his feet and clothing showed that he was unemployed, and under present conditions he was likely to remain so. I decided that he would suit my purpose very well, and immediately put in train certain transactions in the city, which I had already sketched out in my own mind. In the meantime, the reactions mentioned by the Workhouse doctor were interesting, and I made careful studies of them, and arranged for the delivery of the body to the hospital, when I should have completed my preparations. On the Thursday and Friday of that week, I made private arrangements with various brokers to buy the stock of certain Peruvian oil fields, which had gone down almost to waste paper. This part of my experiment did not cost me very much, but I contrived to arouse considerable curiosity and even a mild excitement. At this point I was of course careful not to let my name appear. The incidents of Saturday and Sunday gave me some anxiety lest my man should after all die before I was ready for him. But by the use of saline injections I contrived to keep him alive and, late on Sunday night, he even manifested disquieting symptoms of, at any rate, a partial recovery. On Monday morning the market in Peruvians opened briskly. Rumors had evidently got about that somebody knew something, and this day I was not the only buyer in the market. I bought a couple of hundred more shares in my own name, and left the matter to take care of itself. At lunchtime I made my arrangements to run into Levy accidentally at the corner of the mansion house. He expressed, as I expected, his surprise at seeing me in that part of London. I simulated some embarrassment and suggested that we should lunch together. I dragged him to a place a bit off the usual beat, and there ordered a good wine, and drank of it as much as he might suppose sufficient to induce a confidential mood. I asked him how things were going on change. He said, oh, all right, but appeared a little doubtful, and asked me whether I did anything in that way. I said I had a little flutter occasionally, and that as a matter of fact I'd been put on to a rather good thing. I glanced round apprehensively at this point, and shifted my chair nearer to his. I don't suppose you know anything about Peruvian oil, do you? He said. I started, and looked round again, and leaning across to him said, dropping my voice. Well, I do as a matter of fact, but I don't want it to get about. I stand to make a good bit on it. But I thought the thing was hollow, he said. It hasn't paid a dividend for umpteen years. No, I said, it hasn't. But it's going to. I've got inside information. He looked a bit unconvinced, and I emptied off my glass and edged right up to his ear. Look here, I said. I'm not giving this away to everyone, but I don't mind doing you and Christine a good turn. You know, I've always kept a soft place in my heart for her, ever since the old days. You got in ahead of me that time, and now it's up to me to heap coals of fire on you both. I was a little excited by this time, and he thought I was drunk. It's very kind of you, old man, he said. But I'm a cautious bird, you know, always was. I'd like a bit of proof. And he shrugged up his shoulders and looked like a pawnbroker. I'll give it to you, I said. But it isn't safe here. Come round to my place tonight after dinner, and I'll show you the report. How do you get hold of it, said he. I'll tell you tonight, said I. Come round after dinner, any time after nine, say. To Harley Street, he asked, and I saw that he meant coming. No, I said, to Battersea, Prince of Wales Road. I've got some work to do at the hospital, and look here, I said.  I bought a couple of hundred shares today in my own name, and people are sure to get wind of it. If we're known to be about together, someone'll tweak something. In fact, it's anything but safe talking about it in this place. All right, he said. I won't say a word to anybody. I'll turn up about nine o'clock. You're sure it's a sound thing? It can't go wrong, I assured him, and I meant it. We parted after that, and I went round to the workhouse. My man had died at about eleven o'clock. I had seen him just after breakfast and was not surprised. I completed the usual formalities with the workhouse authorities, and arranged for his delivery at the hospital about seven o'clock. In the afternoon, as it was not one of my days to be in Harley Street, I looked up an old friend who lives close to Hyde Park, and found that he was just off to brighten on some business or other. I had tea with him and saw him off by the 535 from Victoria. On issuing from the barrier, it occurred to me to purchase an evening paper, and I thoughtlessly turned my steps to the bookstore. The usual crowds were rushing to catch the suburban trains home, and on moving away I found myself involved in a contrary stream of travellers, coming up out of the underground, or bolting from all sides for the 545 to Battersea Park in Wandsworth Common. I disengaged myself after some buffeting, and went home in a taxi, and it was not till I was safely seated there that I discovered somebody's gold-rimmed Pantsnay involved in the astrakhan collar of my overcoat. The time, from 6.15 to 7, I spent concocting something to look like a bogus report for suburban. At 7 I went through to the hospital, and found the workhouse van just delivering my subject at the side door. I had him taken straight up to the theatre, and told the attendant, William Watts, that I intended to work there that night. I told him I would prepare the body myself. The injection of a preservative would have been a most regrettable complication. I sent him about his business, and then went home and had dinner. I told my man that I should be working in the hospital that evening, and that he could go to bed at 10.30 as usual, as I could not tell whether I should be late or not. He is used to my erratic ways. I only keep two servants in the Battersea House, the man-servant and his wife, who cooks for me. The rougher domestic work is done by a charwoman, who sleeps out. The servant's bedroom is at the top of the house, overlooking Prince of Wales Road. As soon as I had dined I established myself in the hall with some papers. My man had cleared dinner by a quarter past eight, and I told him to give me the siphon and tantalus, and sent him downstairs. Levy rang the bell at twenty minutes past nine, and I opened the door to him myself. My man appeared at the other end of the hall, but I called to him that it was all right, and he went away. Levy wore an overcoat with evening dress and carried an umbrella. Why, how wet you are! I said. How did you come? By bus, he said, and the fool of a conductor forgot to put me down at the end of the road. It's pouring cats and dogs and pitch dark. I couldn't see where I was. I was glad he hadn't taken a taxi, but I had rather reckoned on as not doing so.  I said. I was right there. But I hadn't reckoned on there being the death of me as well. I say again I could not have foreseen it. I sat him down by the fire and gave him a whiskey. He was in high spirits about some deal in the Argentines he was bringing off the next day. We talked money for about a quarter of an hour, and then he said, well, how about this Peruvian mare's nest of yours? It's no mare's nest, I said. Come and have a look at it. I took him upstairs into the library and switched on the central light and the reading lamp on the writing table. I gave him a chair at the table with his back to the fire and fetched the papers I had been faking out of the safe. He took them and began to read them, poking over them in his short-sided way while I mended the fire. As soon as I saw his head in a favourable position, I struck him heavily with the poker. Just over the fourth cervical. It was delicate work calculating the exact force necessary to kill him without breaking the skin. But my professional experience was useful to me. He gave one loud gasp and tumbled forward onto the table quite noiselessly. I put the poker back and examined him. His neck was broken, and he was quite dead. I carried him into my bedroom and undressed him, and cleared up the papers in the library. Then I went downstairs, took Levy's umbrella, and let myself out at the hall door shouting, Good night, loudly enough to be heard in the basement if the servants should be listening. I walked briskly away down the street, went in by the hospital side door, and returned to the house noiselessly by way of the private passage. It would have been awkward if anybody had seen me then, but I leaned over the back stairs and heard the cook and her husband still talking in the kitchen. I slipped back into the hall, replaced the umbrella in the stand, cleared up my papers there, went up into the library and rang the bell. When the man appeared I told him to lock up everything except the private door to the hospital. I waited in the library until he had done so, and about ten thirty I heard both servants go up to bed. I waited a quarter of an hour longer and then went through to the dissecting room. I wheeled one of the stretcher tables through the passage to the house door, and then went to fetch Levy. It was a nuisance having to get him downstairs, but I had not liked to make away with him in any of the ground floor rooms, in case my servant should take a fancy to poke his head in during the few minutes that I was out of the house, or while locking up. Besides, that was a flea-bite to what I should have to do later. I put Levy on the table, wheeled him across to the hospital, and substituted him for my interesting pauper. I was sorry to have to abandon the idea of getting a look at the latter's brain, but I could not afford to incur suspicion. It was still rather early, so I knocked down a few minutes getting Levy ready for dissection. Then I put my pauper on the table and trundled him over to the house. It was now five past eleven, and I thought I might conclude that the servants were in bed. I carried the body to my bedroom. He was rather heavy, but less so than Levy, and my alpine experience had taught me how to handle bodies. It is as much a matter of knack as of strength, and I am, in any case, a powerful man for my height. I put the body into the bed, not that I expected anyone to look in during my absence. But if they should, they might just as well see me apparently asleep in the bed. I drew the clothes a little over his head, stripped, and put on Levy's clothes, which were fortunately a little big for me everywhere, not forgetting to take his spectacles, watch, and other oddments. At a little before half past eleven, I was on the road looking for a cab. People were just beginning to come home from the theatre, and I was easily secured one at the corner of Prince of Wales Road. I told the man to drive me to Hyde Park Corner. There, I got out, tipped him well, and asked him to pick me up again at the same place in an hour's time. He assented with an understanding grin, and I walked on up Park Lane. I had my own clothes with me in a suitcase, and carried my own overcoat and Levy's umbrella. When I got to number nine, there were lights in some of the top windows. It was very nearly too early, owing to the old man's having sent the servants to the theatre. I waited about for a few minutes, and heard it strike the quarter past midnight. The lights were extinguished shortly after, and I let myself in with Levy's key. It had been my original intention, when I thought over this plan of murder, to let Levy disappear from the study or the dining room, leaving only a heap of clothes on the hearth rug. The accident of my having been able to secure Lady Levy's absence from London, however, made possible a solution more misleading, though less pleasantly fantastic. I turned on the whole light, hung up Levy's wet overcoat, and placed his umbrella in the stand. I walked up noisily and heavily to the bedroom, and turned off the light by the duplicate switch on the landing. I knew the house well enough, of course. There was no chance of my running into the man-servant. Old Levy was a simple man who liked doing things for himself. He gave his valet little work, and never required any attendance at night. In the bedroom I took off Levy's gloves and put on a surgical pair, so as to leave no telltale fingerprints. As I wished to convey the impression that Levy had gone to bed in the usual way, I simply went to bed. The surest and simplest method of making a thing appear to have been done is to do it. A bed that has been rumpled about with one's hands, for instance, never looks like a bed that has been slept in. I dared not use Levy's brush, of course, as my hair is not of his colour. But I did everything else. I supposed that a thoughtful old man like Levy would put his boots handy for his valet. And I ought to have deduced that he would fold up his clothes. That was a mistake, but not an important one. Remembering that well thought-out little work of Mr. Bentley's, I had examined Levy's mouth for false teeth. But he had none. I did not forget, however, to wet his toothbrush. At one o'clock I got up and dressed in my own clothes by the light of my own pocket torch. I dared not turn on the bedroom lights as there were little blinds to the windows. I put on my own boots and an old pair of glashes outside the door. There was a thick turkey carpet on the stairs and hall floor, and I was not afraid of leaving marks. I hesitated whether to chance the banging of the front door, but decided it would be safer to take the latch-key. It is now in the Thames. I dropped it over Battersea Bridge the next day. I slipped quietly down and listened for a few minutes with my ear to the letterbox. I heard a constable tramp past. As soon as his steps had died away in the distance, I stepped out and pulled the door gingerly too. It closed almost soundlessly, and I walked away to pick up my cab. I had an overcoat of much the same pattern as Levy's, and had taken the precaution to pack an opera hat in my suitcase. I hoped the man would not notice that I had no umbrella this time. Fortunately the rain had diminished for the moment to a sort of drizzle, and if he noticed anything he made no observation. I told him to stop at fifty over-strand mansions, and I paid him off there, and stood under the porch till he had driven away. Then I hurried round to my own side door and let myself in. It was about a quarter to two. The harder part of my task still lay before me. My first step was to alter the appearance of my subject, as to eliminate any immediate suggestion either of Levy or of the workhouse vagrant. A fairly superficial alteration was all I considered necessary, since there was not likely to be any human cry after the popper. He was fairly accounted for, and his deputy was at hand to represent him. Nor, if Levy was after all tracked to my house, would it be difficult to show that the body in evidence was, as a matter of fact, not his. A clean shave and a little hair oiling and a manicuring seemed sufficient to suggest a distinct personality for my silent accomplice. His hands had been well washed in hospital, and though calloused were not grimy. I was not able to do the work as thoroughly as I should have liked, because time was getting on. I was not sure how long it would take me to dispose of him, and moreover I feared the onset of rigor mortis, which would make my task more difficult. When I had him barbed to my satisfaction, I fetched a strong sheet and a couple of wide roller bandages, and fastened him up carefully, padding him with cotton wool wherever the bandages might chafe or leave a bruise. Now came the really ticklish part of the business. I had already decided in my own mind that the only way of conveying him from the house was by the roof. To go through the garden at the back in this soft wet weather was to leave a ruinous trail behind us, to carry a dead man down a suburban street in the middle of the night, seemed outside the range of practical politics. On the roof, on the other hand, the rain, which would have betrayed me on the ground, would stand my friend. To reach the roof it was necessary to carry my burden to the top of the house, past my servant's room, and hoist him out through the trap door in the box room roof. Had it merely been a question of going quietly up there myself, I should have had no fear of waking the servants, but to do so burdened by a heavy body was more difficult. It would be possible, provided that the man and his wife were soundly asleep, but if not, the lumbering tread on the narrow stair and the noise of opening the trap door would be only too plainly audible. I tiptoed delicately up the stair and listened at their door.  I looked at my watch. My preparations had taken nearly an hour, first and last, and I dared not be too late on the roof. I determined to take a bold step and, as it were, bluff out in alibi. I went without precaution against noise into the bathroom, turned on the hot and cold water taps to the full and pulled out the plug. My household has often had occasion to complain of my habit of using the bath at a regular night hours. Not only does the rush of water into the cistern disturb any sleepers on the Prince of Wales roadside of the house, but my cistern is afflicted with peculiarly loud gurgling and thumpings, while frequently the pipes emit a loud groaning sound. To my delight, on this particular occasion, the cistern was in excellent form, honking, whistling and booming like a railway terminus. I gave the noise five minutes start, and when I calculated that the sleepers would have finished cursing me and put their heads under the clothes to shut out the den, I reduced the flow of water to a small stream and left the bathroom, taking good care to leave the light burning and lock the door after me. Then I picked up my pauper and carried him upstairs as lightly as possible. The box-room is a small attic on the side of the landing opposite to the servant's bedroom and the cistern-room. It has a trap-door, reached by a short wooden ladder. I set this up, hoisted up my pauper and climbed up after him. The water was still racing into the cistern, which was making a noise as though it were trying to digest an iron chain, and with the reduced flow in the bathroom the groaning of the pipes had risen almost to a hoot. I was not afraid of anybody hearing other noises. I pulled the ladder through onto the roof after me. Between my house and the last house in Queen Caroline Mansions, there is a space of only a few feet. Indeed, when the mansions were put up, I believed there was some trouble about ancient lights, but I suppose the parties compromised somehow. Anyhow, my seven-foot ladder reached well across. I tied the body firmly to the ladder and pushed it over till the far end was resting on the parapet of the opposite house. Then I took a short run across the cistern-room and box-room roof and landed easily on the other side, the parapet being happily both low and narrow. The rest was simple. I carried my pauper along the flat roofs, intending to leave him, like the hunchback in the story, on someone's staircase or down a chimney.  It occurred to me pleasantly how delightful it would be to deposit my parcel with him and see what he made of it. I lay down and peered over the parapet at the back. It was pitch dark and pouring with rain again by this time, and I risked using my torch. That was the only unconscious thing I did, and the odds against being seen from the house's opposite were long enough. One second's flash showed me what I had hardly dared to hope, an open window just below me. I knew those flats well enough to be sure it was either the bathroom or the kitchen. I made a noose and a third bandage that I had brought with me, and made it fast under the arms of the corpse. I twisted it into a double rope and secured the end to the iron stanchion of a chimney stack. Then I dangled our friend over. I went down after him myself with the aid of a drainpipe, and was soon hauling him in by Thips's bathroom window. By that time I had got a little conceited with myself, and spared a few minutes to lay him out prettily and make him ship-shape. A sudden inspiration suggested that I should give him the pair of pants-nay, which I had happened to pick up at Victoria. I came across them in my pocket while I was looking for a pen-knife to loosen a knot, and I saw what distinction they would lend his appearance, besides making it more misleading. I fixed them on him, and faced all traces of my presence as far as possible, and departed as I had come, going easily up between the drainpipe and the rope. I walked quietly back, recrossed my crevasse, and carried in my ladder and sheet. My discreet accomplice greeted me with a reassuring gurgle and thump. I didn't make a sound on the stairs, seeing that I had now been having a bath for about three-quarters of an hour.  I also felt it was time I had a little myself. First, however, I had to go over to the hospital and make all safe there. I took off Levy's head, and started to open up the face. In twenty minutes his own wife could not have recognized him. I returned, leaving my wet glashes and macintosh by the garden door. My trousers I dried by the gas stove in my bedroom, and brushed away all traces of mud and brick dust. My papa's beard I burned in the library. I got a good two hours sleep from five to seven, when my man called me as usual. I apologized for having kept the water running so long and so late, and added that I thought I would have the cistern seen too. I was interested to note that I was rather extra hungry at breakfast, showing that my night's work had caused a certain wear and tear of tissue. I went over afterwards to continue my dissection. During the morning, a peculiarly thick-headed police inspector came to inquire whether a body had escaped from the hospital. I had him brought to me where I was. And had the pleasure of showing him the work I was doing on Sir Rubin Levy's head. Afterwards, I went round with him to the thipses, and was able to satisfy myself that my papa looked very convincing. As soon as the stock exchange opened, I telephoned my various brokers, and by exercising a little care was able to sell out the greater part of my Peruvian stock on a rising market. Towards the end of the day, however, Bios became rather unsettled as a result of Levy's death, and in the end I did not make more than a few hundred by the transaction. Trusting, I have now made clear to you any point which you may have found obscure, and with congratulations on the good fortune and perspicacity which have enabled you to defeat me, I remain, with kind remembrances to your mother, yours very truly Julian Frecky. Post Scriptum My will is made, leaving my money to St. Luke's Hospital, and bequeathing my body to the same institution for dissection. I feel sure that my brain will be of interest to the scientific world. As I shall die by my own hand, I imagine that there may be a little difficulty about this. Will you do me the favour, if you can, of seeing the persons concerned in the inquest, and obtaining that the brain is not damaged by an unskillful practitioner at the post-mortem, and that the body is disposed of according to my wish? By the way, it may be of interest to you to know that I appreciate your motive in calling this afternoon. It conveyed a warning, and I am acting upon it. In spite of the disastrous consequences to myself, I was pleased to realise that you had not underestimated my nerve and intelligence and refused the injection. Had you submitted to it, you would of course never have reached home alive. No trace would have been left in your body of the injection, which consisted of a harmless preparation of strychnine, mixed with an almost unknown poison, for which there is at present no recognised test. A concentrated solution of s... At this point, the manuscript broke off. Well, that's all clear enough, said Parker. Isn't it queer, said Lord Peter, all that coolness, all those brains, and then he couldn't resist writing a confession to show how clever he was, even to keep his head out of the noose. And a very good thing for us, said Inspector Sugg, but Lord bless you, sir, these criminals are all alike. Frecky's epitaph, said Parker, when the inspector had departed. What next, Peter? I shall now give a dinner party, said Lord Peter, to Mr. John P. Milligan and his secretary, and to Mrs. Crimplesham and Wicks. I feel they deserve it for not having murdered Levy. Well, don't forget the tipses, said Mr. Parker. On no account, said Lord Peter, would I deprive myself of the pleasure of Mrs. Thips's company. Bunter, my Lord. The Napoleon Brandy. End of Chapter 13, And End of Whose Body, by Dorothy L. Sayers.