Lord Peter Views the Body quotes

The Egotists’ Club is one of the most genial places in London.

It is a place to which you may go when you want to tell that odd dream you had last night, or to announce what a good dentist you have discovered.

As Lord Peter said again:

“Nobody minds coarseness but one must draw the line at cruelty.”

On this particular evening, Masterman (the cubist poet) had brought a guest with him, a man named Varden.

“God bless my soul, child, what do you want?” demanded the duchess.

“Boys like you don’t flatter an old woman for nothing.”

“I want to tell you my sins, duchess.”

“I want to tell you my sins, duchess.”

“You should have lived in the great days,” said the voice appreciatively. “Your talents are wasted on the young fry.”

“That is why I want to talk to you, duchess.”

“Oh, I think it’s a good thing,” said Peter.

“I have rather an unwholesome weakness for policemen.”

On the morning of the wedding-day, Lord Peter emerged from Bunter’s hands a marvel of sleek brilliance.

“Was he, by Jove?” said his lordship absently, and then, with sudden energy:

“Bunter, I’d like to double your salary, but I suppose you’d take it as an insult.”

The conversation bore fruit at dinner.

Lord Peter’s eyes narrowed. “M’m, yes, I fancy I’ve seen him about the clubs. New Army, but transferred himself into the Regulars. Dark. Showy. Bit of an ampelopsis, what?”

“Suburban plant that climbs by suction. You know⁠—first year, tender little shoots⁠—second year, fine show⁠—next year, all over the shop. Now tell me I am rude.”

Mrs. Ruyslaender giggled. “Now you mention it, he is exactly like an ampelopsis. What a relief to be able to think of him as that. … Well, he is some sort of distant relation of my husband’s. He called one evening when I was alone.

“Oh, dear, dear!” said Wimsey, peering dismally into this sepulchre of forgotten learning.

With his shoulders hunched like the neck-feathers of a chilly bird, with his long nose and half-shut eyes, he resembled a dilapidated heron, brooding over the stagnation of a wintry pool.

“What a freezing-cold place,” exclaimed Mrs. Hancock. “You really ought to scold Mrs. Lovall, Mr. Burdock. When she was put in here as caretaker, I said to my husband—didn’t I, Philip?—that your father had chosen the laziest woman in Little Doddering.

“Sure of that?” exclaimed the vicar. “My dear Lord Peter, you were present at the funeral. You saw him buried yourself.”

“I saw his coffin buried,” said Wimsey mildly. “That the body was in it is merely an unverified inference.”

“I think,” said Mr. Frobisher-Pym, “this is rather an unseemly kind of jest. There is no reason to imagine that the body was not in the coffin.”

It throws, as Mr. Pecksniff would say, a sad light on human nature. But I resent extremely the way in which I was wangled up to that bookshelf and made to be the bright little independent witness who found the will.

I may be an ass, Mr. Haviland Burdock, but I’m not a bloody ass.

Good night. I will wait in the car till you are all ready.”

“Yes. Dr. Hartman has a theory.

In any investigation, my Bunter, it is most damnably dangerous to have a theory.

”

the only place tended and loved, petted and spoiled, heir to the long solicitude which counts of a more lighthearted day had given to stable and kennel, portrait-gallery and ballroom.

And below, in the cool cellar, lie row upon row the dusty bottles, each an enchanted glass coffin in which the Sleeping Beauty of the vine grows ever more ravishing in sleep.

As the Peugeot came to a standstill in the courtyard, the driver observed with considerable surprise that he was not the count’s only visitor.

The mournful state of a nobility without an allegiance surrounds it. The stone nymphs droop greenly over their dry and mouldering fountains. An occasional peasant creaks with a single wagon-load of wood along the ill-forested glades.

It has the atmosphere of sunset at all hours of the day.

The woodwork is dry and gaping for lack of paint. Through the jalousies one sees the prim salon, with its beautiful and faded furniture.

“Oh, my name is Bredon all right,” said the young man cheerfully. “

I loathe aliases. Like another fellow’s clothes, you know⁠—never seem quite to fit.

Peter Death Bredon Wimsey—a bit lengthy and all that, but handy when taken in instalments. I’ve got a passport and all those things, too, but I didn’t offer them, as their reputation here seems a little blown upon, so to speak.

“That’s awfully true. Yes, naturally, you’re dead by then and it doesn’t matter. May be a bit trying for your relations, of course, to learn what a bad boy you’ve been.

Great fun annoyin’ one’s relations. Always do it myself.

Now, what were we sayin’? Ah! yes—the will. (I’m always so absentminded.) Whose will, you said?

Wimsey pointed silently with his hand. A long, unseemly object, like a drab purse, lay on the shore. The gulls, indignant, rose higher, squawking at the intruders. Wimsey ran forward, stooped, rose again with the long bag dangling from his fingers.

“Great-Uncle Joseph, I presume,” he said, and raised his hat with old-fashioned courtesy.

“The gulls have had a wee peck at it here and there,” said Jock. “It’ll be tough for them. Aye. They havena done so vera much with it.”

“I hope not, I’m sure,” said the first-class passenger. “I mean, it rather destroys the interest, don’t you think?

I like a nice, quiet, domestic murder myself with the millionaire found dead in the library.

The minute I open a detective story and find a Camorra in it, my interest seems to dry up and turn to dust and ashes—a sort of Sodom and Camorra, as you might say.”

“Of course,” said Miss Twitterton, “they had to say he was popular with his colleagues.

Haven’t you noticed that murdered people are always well dressed and popular?

”

“Of course,” said Miss Twitterton, “they had to say he was popular with his colleagues. Haven’t you noticed that murdered people are always well dressed and popular?”

“They have to be,” said Wimsey. “It makes it more mysterious and pathetic. Just as girls who disappear are always bright and home-loving and have no men friends.”

“Silly, isn’t it?” said Miss Twitterton, with her mouth full of roast duck and green peas. “I should think everybody was only too glad to get rid of Plant—nasty, rude creature. So mean, too, always taking credit for other people’s work.

He sees it as so much cover, so many landmarks to aim by, so many gun-emplacements. And when the war is over and he goes back to it, he will still see it as cover and landmarks and gun-emplacements.

It isn’t a landscape any more. It’s a war map.

”

“A painter gets just the same feeling of deadly familiarity with every line of a face he’s once painted,” pursued Wimsey. “And, if it’s a face he hates, he hates it with a new and more irritable hatred.

It’s like a defective barrel-organ, everlastingly grinding out the same old maddening tune, and making the same damned awful wrong note every time the barrel goes round.

”

Wimsey remained after he had gone, still looking at the portrait.

“ ‘What is Truth?’ said jesting Pilate. No wonder, since it is so completely unbelievable.⁠ ⁠… I could prove it⁠ ⁠… if I liked⁠ ⁠… but the man had a villainous face, and there are few good painters in the world.”

… will, I am sure, be glad to know that these two brave men have been spared the ordeal of so great a temptation to dishonour, and that they will not be called upon to face a public trial and the rigours of a long imprisonment.”

A hiss of intaken breath moved across the assembled members like the wind over a barley-field.

“Their dependants will be discreetly compensated in the usual manner. I call upon Numbers Twelve and Thirty-four to undertake this agreeable task. They will attend me in my office for their instructions after the meeting.

Partners who had been standing close together fell distrustfully apart.

Each member seemed to shrink, as a snail shrinks from the touch of a finger.

“You will remember the disappointing outcome of the Dinglewood affair,” went on the President, in his harsh voice. “You may recall other smaller matters which have not turned out satisfactorily. All these troubles have been traced to their origin.

When it stopped, amid the usual applause, everyone stood, detached, stiffened in expectation. The President’s voice was raised again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please behave naturally. This is a dance, not a public meeting.”

Rogers led his partner to a chair and fetched her an ice. As he stooped over her, he noticed the hurried rise and fall of her bosom.

Number Thirty-seven sank down upon a chair. He pushed his handkerchief under the mask to wipe his face. Two tall men closed in upon him.

The rest fell back, feeling the recoil of humanity from one stricken by mortal disease.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I will now name the traitor. Number Twenty-one, stand forward.”

“We thought you were dead.”

“Naturally. You were intended to think so.”

“What has become of the genuine Joseph Rogers?”

I not only took Rogers’s place; I was Rogers. Even when I was alone, I walked like Rogers, I sat like Rogers, I read Rogers’s books, and wore Rogers’s clothes. In the end, I almost thought Rogers’s thoughts.

The only way to keep up a successful impersonation is never to relax.

”

“It was.

It was a very ugly tiara⁠—no real loss to anybody with decent taste. May I smoke, by the way?

”

The President took the head of the table.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, as usual⁠—and the foolish courtesy had never sounded so sinister

—“I will not conceal from you the seriousness of the situation. The prisoner has recited to me more than twenty names and addresses which were thought to be unknown, except to their owners and to me.