Whose Body?, Dorothy L. Sayers [good summer reads .txt] 📗

Wimsey, “they can’t lay hands on the bottle. Somethin’ fishy there, don’t you think, what?”

The secretary’s interest seemed to have evaporated. He inserted a fresh sheet into his looseleaf ledger, and carried forward a row of digits from the preceding page.

“I daresay there’s nothin’ in it,” said Lord Peter, rising to go. “Well, it’s uncommonly good of you to be bothered with me like this, Mr. Milligan⁠—my mother’ll be no end pleased. She’ll write you about the date.”

“I’m charmed,” said Mr. Milligan. “Very pleased to have met you.”

Mr. Scoot rose silently to open the door, uncoiling as he did so a portentous length of thin leg, hitherto hidden by the desk. With a mental sigh Lord Peter estimated him at six-foot-four.

“It’s a pity I can’t put Scoot’s head on Milligan’s shoulders,” said Lord Peter, emerging into the swirl of the city. “And what will my mother say?”

V

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 bathrobe 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 Rhodios3 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.