Read Online Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers - Free Book Online Page A

self-made man, no one could call Sir Reuben vulgar, and my lady at any rate is county—Miss Ford, she was, one of the Hampshire Fords, and both of them always most considerate.”
    “I agree with you, Mr. Graves—his lordship and me have never held with being narrow-minded—why, yes, my dear, of course it's a footmark, this is the washstand linoleum. A good Jew can be a good man, that's what I've always said. And regular hours and considerate habits have a great deal to recommend them. Very simple in his tastes, now, Sir Reuben, isn't he? for such a rich man, I mean.”
    “Very simple indeed,” said the cook, “the meals he and her ladyship have when they're by themselves with Miss Rachel—well, there now—if it wasn't for the dinners, which is always good when there's company, I'd be wastin' my talents and education here, if you understand me, Mr. Bunter.”
    Mr. Bunter added the handle of the umbrella to his collection, and began to pin a sheet across the window, aided by the housemaid.
    “Admirable,” said he. “Now, if I might have this blanket on the table and another on a towel-horse or something of that kind by way of a background—you're very kind, Mrs. Pemming.... Ah! I wish his lordship never wanted valeting at night. Many's the time I've sat up till three and four, and up again to call him early to go off Sherlocking at the other end of the country. And the mud he gets on his clothes and his boots!”
    “I'm sure it's a shame, Mr. Bunter,” said Mrs. Pemming, warmly. “Low, I calls it. In my opinion, police-work ain't no fit occupation for a gentleman, let alone a lordship.”
    “Everything made so difficult, too,” said Mr. Bunter, nobly sacrificing his employer's character and his own feelings in a good cause; “boots chucked into a corner, clothes hung up on the floor, as they say——”
    “That's often the case with these men as are born with a silver spoon in their mouths,” said Mr. Graves. “Now, Sir Reuben, he's never lost his good, old-fashioned habits. Clothes folded up neat, boots put out in his dressing-room, so as a man could get them in the morning, everything made easy.”
    “He forgot them the night before last, though.”
    “The clothes, not the boots. Always thoughtful for others, is Sir Reuben. Ah! I hope nothing's happened to him.”
    “Indeed, no, poor gentleman,” chimed in the cook, “and as for what they're sayin', that he'd 'ave gone out surrepshous-like to do something he didn't ought, well, I'd never believe it of him, Mr. Bunter, not if I was to take my dying oath upon it.”
    “Ah!” said Mr. Bunter, adjusting his arc-lamps and connecting them with the nearest electric light, “and that's more than most of us could say of them as pays us.”

    °       °       °       °       °

    “Five-foot-ten,” said Lord Peter, “and not an inch more.” He peered dubiously at the depression in the bed-clothes, and measured it a second time with the gentleman-scout's vade-mecum. Parker entered this particular in a neat pocket-book.
    “I suppose,” he said, “a six-foot-two man might leave a five-foot-ten depression if he curled himself up.”
    “Have you any Scotch blood in you, Parker?” inquired his colleague, bitterly.
    “Not that I know of,” replied Parker. “Why?”
    “Because of all the cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded devils I know,” said Lord Peter, “you are the most cautious, ungenerous, deliberate and cold-blooded. Here am I, sweating my brains out to introduce a really sensational incident into your dull and disreputable little police investigation, and you refuse to show a single spark of enthusiasm.”
    “Well, it's no good jumping at conclusions.”
    “Jump? You don't even crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion. I believe if you caught the cat with her head in the cream-jug you'd say it was conceivable that the jug was empty when she got there.”
    “Well, it would be conceivable,