Whose Body? - Dorothy L. Sayers (8 ebook reader .txt) š
- Author: Dorothy L. Sayers
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āI do wish youād keep out of the police courts,ā grumbled the Duke. āIt makes it so dashed awkward for me, havinā a brother makinā himself conspicuous.ā
āSorry, Gerald,ā said the other; āI know Iām a beastly blot on the āscutcheon.ā
āWhy canāt you marry and settle down and live quietly, doinā something useful?ā said the Duke, unappeased.
āBecause that was a washout as you perfectly well know,ā said Peter; ābesides,ā he added cheerfully, āIām beinā no end useful. You may come to want me yourself, you never know. When anybody comes blackmailinā you, Gerald, or your first deserted wife turns up unexpectedly from the West Indies, youāll realize the pull of havinā a private detective in the family. āDelicate private business arranged with tact and discretion. Investigations undertaken. Divorce evidence a specialty. Every guarantee!ā Come, now.ā
āAss!ā said Lord Denver, throwing the newspaper violently into his armchair. āWhen do you want the car?ā
āAlmost at once. I say, Jerry, Iām taking Mother up with me.ā
āWhy should she be mixed up in it?ā
āWell, I want her help.ā
āI call it most unsuitable,ā said the Duke.
The Dowager Duchess, however, made no objection.
āI used to know her quite well,ā she said, āwhen she was Christine Ford. Why, dear?ā
āBecause,ā said Lord Peter, āthereās a terrible piece of news to be broken to her about her husband.ā
āIs he dead, dear?ā
āYes; and she will have to come and identify him.ā
āPoor Christine.ā
āUnder very revolting circumstances, Mother.ā
āIāll come with you, dear.ā
āThank you, Mother, youāre a brick. Dāyou mind gettinā your things on straight away and cominā up with me? Iāll tell you about it in the car.ā
XMr. Parker, a faithful though doubting Thomas, had duly secured his medical student: a large young man like an overgrown puppy, with innocent eyes and a freckled face. He sat on the Chesterfield before Lord Peterās library fire, bewildered in equal measure by his errand, his surroundings and the drink which he was absorbing. His palate, though untutored, was naturally a good one, and he realized that even to call this liquid a drinkā āthe term ordinarily used by him to designate cheap whisky, postwar beer or a dubious glass of claret in a Soho restaurantā āwas a sacrilege; this was something outside normal experience: a genie in a bottle.
The man called Parker, whom he had happened to run across the evening before in the public-house at the corner of Prince of Wales Road, seemed to be a good sort. He had insisted on bringing him round to see this friend of his, who lived splendidly in Piccadilly. Parker was quite understandable; he put him down as a government servant, or perhaps something in the City. The friend was embarrassing; he was a lord, to begin with, and his clothes were a kind of rebuke to the world at large. He talked the most fatuous nonsense, certainly, but in a disconcerting way. He didnāt dig into a joke and get all the fun out of it; he made it in passing, so to speak, and skipped away to something else before your retort was ready. He had a truly terrible manservantā āthe sort you read about in booksā āwho froze the marrow in your bones with silent criticism. Parker appeared to bear up under the strain, and this made you think more highly of Parker; he must be more habituated to the surroundings of the great than you would think to look at him. You wondered what the carpet had cost on which Parker was carelessly spilling cigar ash; your father was an upholstererā āMr. Piggott, of Piggott & Piggott, Liverpoolā āand you knew enough about carpets to know that you couldnāt even guess at the price of this one. When you moved your head on the bulging silk cushion in the corner of the sofa, it made you wish you shaved more often and more carefully. The sofa was a monsterā ābut even so, it hardly seemed big enough to contain you. This Lord Peter was not very tallā āin fact, he was rather a small man, but he didnāt look undersized. He looked right; he made you feel that to be six-foot-three was rather vulgarly assertive; you felt like Motherās new drawing-room curtainsā āall over great big blobs. But everybody was very decent to you, and nobody said anything you couldnāt understand, or sneered at you. There were some frightfully deep-looking books on the shelves all round, and you had looked into a great folio Dante which was lying on the table, but your hosts were talking quite ordinarily and rationally about the sort of books you read yourselfā āclinking good love stories and detective stories. You had read a lot of those, and could give an opinion, and they listened to what you had to say, though Lord Peter had a funny way of talking about books, too, as if the author had confided in him beforehand, and told him how the story was put together, and which bit was written first. It reminded you of the way old Freke took a body to pieces.
āThing I object to in detective stories,ā said Mr. Piggott, āis the way fellows remember every bloominā thing thatās happened to āem within the last six months. Theyāre always ready with their time of day and was it raininā or not, and what were they doinā on such anā such a day. Reel it all off like a page of poetry. But one aināt like that in real life, dāyou think so, Lord Peter?ā Lord Peter smiled, and young Piggott, instantly embarrassed, appealed to his earlier acquaintance. āYou know what I mean, Parker. Come now. One dayās so like another, Iām sure I couldnāt rememberā āwell, I might remember yesterday, pārāaps, but I couldnāt be certain about what I was doinā last week if I was to be shot for it.ā
āNo,ā said Parker, āand evidence given in police statements sounds just as
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