Whose Body?, Dorothy L. Sayers [books to read to get smarter .TXT] 📗

Mr. Parker was a bachelor, and occupied a Georgian but inconvenient flat at No. 12A Great Ormond Street, for which he paid a pound a week. His exertions in the cause of civilization were rewarded, not by the gift of diamond rings from empresses or munificent cheques from grateful Prime Ministers, but by a modest, though sufficient, salary, drawn from the pockets of the British taxpayer. He awoke, after a long day of arduous and inconclusive labour, to the smell of burnt porridge. Through his bedroom window, hygienically open top and bottom, a raw fog was rolling slowly in, and the sight of a pair of winter pants, flung hastily over a chair the previous night, fretted him with a sense of the sordid absurdity of the human form. The telephone bell rang, and he crawled wretchedly out of bed and into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Munns, who did for him by the day, was laying the table, sneezing as she went.

Mr. Bunter was speaking.

“His lordship says he’d be very glad, sir, if you could make it convenient to step round to breakfast.”

If the odour of kidneys and bacon had been wafted along the wire, Mr. Parker could not have experienced a more vivid sense of consolation.

“Tell his lordship I’ll be with him in half an hour,” he said, thankfully, and plunging into the bathroom, which was also the kitchen, he informed Mrs. Munns, who was just making tea from a kettle which had gone off the boil, that he should be out to breakfast.

“You can take the porridge home for the family,” he added, viciously, and flung off his dressing-gown with such determination that Mrs. Munns could only scuttle away with a snort.

A 19 ’bus deposited him in Piccadilly only fifteen minutes later than his rather sanguine impulse had prompted him to suggest, and Mr. Bunter served him with glorious food, incomparable coffee, and the Daily Mail before a blazing fire of wood and coal. A distant voice singing the “et iterum venturus est” from Bach’s Mass in B minor proclaimed that for the owner of the flat cleanliness and godliness met at least once a day, and presently Lord Peter roamed in, moist and verbena-scented, in a bath-robe cheerfully patterned with unnaturally variegated peacocks.

“Mornin’, old dear,” said that gentleman. “Beast of a day, ain’t it? Very good of you to trundle out in it, but I had a letter I wanted you to see, and I hadn’t the energy to come round to your place. Bunter and I’ve been makin’ a night of it.”

“What’s the letter?” asked Parker.

“Never talk business with your mouth full,” said Lord Peter, reprovingly; “have some Oxford marmalade—and then I’ll show you my Dante; they brought it round last night. What ought I to read this morning, Bunter?”

“Lord Erith’s collection is going to be sold, my lord. There is a column about it in the Morning Post. I think your lordship should look at this review of Sir Julian Freke’s new book on ‘The Physiological Bases of the Conscience’ in the Times Literary Supplement. Then there is a very singular little burglary in the Chronicle, my lord, and an attack on titled families in the Herald—rather ill-written, if I may say so, but not without unconscious humour which your lordship will appreciate.”

“All right, give me that and the burglary,” said his lordship.

“I have looked over the other papers,” pursued Mr. Bunter, indicating a formidable pile, “and marked your lordship’s after-breakfast reading.”

“Oh, pray don’t allude to it,” said Lord Peter; “you take my appetite away.”

There was silence, but for the crunching of toast and the crackling of paper.

“I see they adjourned the inquest,” said Parker presently.

“Nothing else to do,” said Lord Peter; “but Lady Levy arrived last night, and will have to go and fail to identify the body this morning for Sugg’s benefit.”

“Time, too,” said Mr. Parker shortly.

Silence fell again.

“I don’t think much of your burglary, Bunter,” said Lord Peter. “Competent, of course, but no imagination. I want imagination in a criminal. Where’s the Morning Post?”

After a further silence, Lord Peter said: “You might send for the catalogue, Bunter, that Apollonios Rhodios[C] might be worth looking at. No, I’m damned if I’m going to stodge through that review, but you can stick the book on the library list if you like. His book on crime was entertainin’ enough as far as it went, but the fellow’s got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God’s a secretion of the liver—all right once in a way, but there’s no need to keep on about it. There’s nothing you can’t prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. Look at Sugg.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Parker; “I wasn’t attending. Argentines are steadying a little, I see.”

“Milligan,” said Lord Peter.

“Oil’s in a bad way. Levy’s made a difference there. That funny little boom in Peruvians that came on just before he disappeared has died away again. I wonder if he was concerned in it. D’you know at all?”

“I’ll find out,” said Lord Peter. “What was it?”

“Oh, an absolutely dud enterprise that hadn’t been heard of for years. It suddenly took a little lease of life last week. I happened to notice it because my mother got let in for a couple of hundred shares a long time ago. It never paid a dividend. Now it’s petered out again.”

Wimsey pushed his plate aside and lit a pipe.

“Having finished, I don’t mind doing some work,” he said. “How did you get on yesterday?”

“I didn’t,” replied Parker. “I sleuthed up and down those flats in my own bodily shape and two different disguises. I was a gas-meter man and a collector for a Home for Lost Doggies, and I didn’t get a thing to go on, except a servant in the top flat at the Battersea Bridge Road end of the row who said she thought she heard a bump on the roof one night. Asked which night, she couldn’t rightly say. Asked if it was Monday night, she thought it very likely. Asked if it mightn’t have been in that high wind on Saturday night that blew my chimney-pot off, she couldn’t say but what it might have been. Asked if she was sure it was on the roof and not inside the flat, said to be sure they did find a picture tumbled down next morning. Very suggestible girl. I saw your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Appledore, who received me coldly, but could make no definite complaint about Thipps except that his mother dropped her h’s, and that he once called on them uninvited, armed with a pamphlet about anti-vivisection. The Indian Colonel on the first floor was loud, but unexpectedly friendly. He gave me Indian curry for supper and some very good whisky, but he’s a sort of hermit, and all he could tell me was that he couldn’t stand Mrs. Appledore.”

“Did you get nothing at the house?”

“Only Levy’s private diary. I brought it away with me. Here it is. It doesn’t tell one much, though. It’s full of entries like: ‘Tom and Annie to dinner’; and ‘My dear wife’s birthday; gave her an old opal ring’; ‘Mr. Arbuthnot dropped in to tea; he wants to marry Rachel, but I should like someone steadier for my treasure.’ Still, I thought it would show who came to the house and so on. He evidently wrote it up at night. There’s no entry for Monday.”

“I expect it’ll be useful,” said Lord Peter, turning over the pages. “Poor old buffer. I say, I’m not so certain now he was done away with.”

He detailed to Mr. Parker his day’s work.

“Arbuthnot?” said Parker. “Is that the Arbuthnot of the diary?”

“I suppose so. I hunted him up because I knew he was fond of fooling round the Stock Exchange. As for Milligan, he looks all right, but I believe he’s pretty ruthless in business and you never can tell. Then there’s the red-haired secretary—lightnin’ calculator man with a face like a fish, keeps on sayin’ nuthin’—got the Tarbaby in his family tree, I should think. Milligan’s got a jolly good motive for, at any