Read Online Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers - Free Book Online

one is the back door, but you’ll find that bolted. The little one is the front door—it’s a patent, burglar-proof lock—you may find it a little difficult if you don’t know the way it works. Perhaps, after all, I ought to come over and show you—’
      ‘Not a bit of it. Miss Twitterton. I know these locks quite well. Really. Thank you ever so much. Good night. And many apologies.’
      ‘ I must apologise for Uncle. I really cannot understand his treating you in this cavalier way. I do hope you’ll find everything all right. Mrs Ruddle is not very intelligent.’
      Harriet assured Miss Twitterton that Bunter would see to everything, and they succeeded at length in extricating themselves. Their return to Talboys was remarkable only for Peter’s observing that unforgettable was the epithet for Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine and that if one was going to be sick on one’s wedding night one might just as well have done it between Southampton and Le Havre.
      Bunter and Mrs Ruddle had by now been joined by the dilatory Bert (with his ‘trousis’ but without his gun); yet even thus supported, Mrs Ruddle had a chastened appearance. The door being opened, and Bunter having produced an electric torch, the party stepped into a wide stone passage strongly permeated by an odour of dry-rot and beer. On the right, a door led into a vast, low-ceilinged, stone-paved kitchen, its rafters black with time, its enormous, old fashioned range clean and garnished under the engulfing chimney-breast. On the whitewashed hearth stood a small oil cooking-stove and before it an arm-chair whose seat sagged with age and use. The deal table held the remains of two boiled eggs, the heel of a stale loaf, and a piece of cheese together with a cup which had contained cocoa, and a half-burnt candle in a bedroom candlestick.
      ‘There!’ exclaimed Mrs Ruddle. ‘If Mr Noakes ’ad let me know, I’d a-cleaned all them things away. That’ll be ’is supper wot ’e ’ad afore ’e caught the ten o’clock. But me not knowing and ’avin’ no key, you see, I couldn’t. But it won’ take me a minnit, m’lady, now we are here. Mr Noakes took all ’is meals in ’ere, but you’ll find it comfortabler in the settin’-room, m’lady, if you’ll come this way—it’s a much brighter room, like, and furnished beautiful, as you’ll see m’lord.’ Here Mrs Ruddle dropped something like a curtsy.
      The sitting-room was, indeed, ‘brighter’ than the kitchen. Two ancient oak-settles, flanking the chimney-piece at right angles, and an old-fashioned American eight-day clock on the inner wall, were all that remained of the old farmhouse furniture that Harriet remembered. The flame of the kitchen candle, which Mrs Ruddle had lit, danced flickeringly over a suite of Edwardian chairs with crimson upholstery, a top-heavy sideboard, a round mahogany table with wax fruit on it, a bamboo what-not with mirrors and little shelves sprouting from it in all directions, a row of aspidistras in pots in the window-ledge, with strange hanging plants above them in wire baskets, a large radio cabinet, over which hung an unnaturally distorted cactus in a brass Benares bowl, mirrors with roses painted on the glass, a chesterfield sofa upholstered in electric blue plush, two carpets of violently coloured and mutually intolerant patterns juxtaposed to hide the black oak floor-boards—a collection of objects, in fact, suggesting that Mr Noakes had furnished his house out of auction-sale bargains that he had not been able to resell, together with a few remnants of genuine old stuff and a little borrowing from the stock-in-trade of the wireless business. They were allowed every opportunity to inspect his collection of bric-à-brac, for Mrs Ruddle made the round of the room, candle in hand, to point out all its beauties.
      ‘Fine!’ said Peter, cutting short Mrs Ruddle’s panegyric on the radio cabinet (‘which you can hear it lovely right over at