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

all so busy looking for a burglar whom nobody had ever seen, that they couldn’t recognise the footprints of the household, so to speak. Then I spent two years learning to be cautious.”

“Hum,” said Lord Peter, “theology must be good exercise for the brain then, for you’re easily the most cautious devil I know. But I say, do go on reading⁠—it’s a shame for me to come and root you up in your off-time like this.”

“It’s all right, old man,” said Parker.

The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said:

“D’you like your job?”

The detective considered the question, and replied:

“Yes⁠—yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it quite well⁠—not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the mark and not get slack. And there’s a future to it. Yes, I like it. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Peter. “It’s a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it⁠—up to a point. If it was all on paper I’d enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job⁠—when one doesn’t know any of the people and it’s just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don’t seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin’ in, since I don’t have to make my livin’ by it. And I feel as if I oughtn’t ever to find it amusin’. But I do.”

Parker gave this speech his careful attention.

“I see what you mean,” he said.

“There’s old Milligan, f’r instance,” said Lord Peter. “On paper, nothin’ would be funnier than to catch old Milligan out. But he’s rather a decent old bird to talk to. Mother likes him. He’s taken a fancy to me. It’s awfully entertainin’ goin’ and pumpin’ him with stuff about a bazaar for church expenses, but when he’s so jolly pleased about it and that, I feel a worm. S’pose old Milligan has cut Levy’s throat and plugged him into the Thames. It ain’t my business.”

“It’s as much yours as anybody’s,” said Parker; “it’s no better to do it for money than to do it for nothing.”

“Yes, it is,” said Peter stubbornly. “Havin’ to live is the only excuse there is for doin’ that kind of thing.”

“Well, but look here!” said Parker. “If Milligan has cut poor old Levy’s throat for no reason except to make himself richer, I don’t see why he should buy himself off by giving £1,000 to Duke’s Denver church roof, or why he should be forgiven just because he’s childishly vain, or childishly snobbish.”

“That’s a nasty one,” said Lord Peter.

“Well, if you like, even because he has taken a fancy to you.”

“No, but⁠—”

“Look here, Wimsey⁠—do you think he has murdered Levy?”

“Well, he may have.”

“But do you think he has?”

“I don’t want to think so.”

“Because he has taken a fancy to you?”

“Well, that biases me, of course⁠—”

“I daresay it’s quite a legitimate bias. You don’t think a callous murderer would be likely to take a fancy to you?”

“Well⁠—besides, I’ve taken rather a fancy to him.”

“I daresay that’s quite legitimate, too. You’ve observed him and made a subconscious deduction from your observations, and the result is, you don’t think he did it. Well, why not? You’re entitled to take that into account.”

“But perhaps I’m wrong and he did do it.”

“Then why let your vainglorious conceit in your own power of estimating character stand in the way of unmasking the singularly cold-blooded murder of an innocent and lovable man?”

“I know⁠—but I don’t feel I’m playing the game somehow.”

“Look here, Peter,” said the other with some earnestness, “suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?”

“That’s what I’m ashamed of, really,” said Lord Peter. “It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said the detective, “but that’s because you’re thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that’s childish. If you’ve any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That’s all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn’t any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent⁠—what’s that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, ‘Well played⁠—hard luck⁠—you shall have your revenge tomorrow!’ Well, you can’t do it like that. Life’s not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You can’t be a sportsman. You’re a responsible person.”

“I don’t think you ought to read so much theology,” said Lord Peter. “It has a brutalizing influence.”

He got up and paced about the room, looking idly over the bookshelves. Then he sat down again, filled and lit his pipe, and said:

“Well, I’d better tell you about the ferocious and hardened Crimplesham.”

He detailed his visit to Salisbury. Once assured of his bona fides, Mr. Crimplesham had given him the fullest details of his visit to town.

“And