Whose Body? quotes

“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi, driver!”

The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.

“I’m afraid it’s an awkward place to turn in,” said Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the words.

His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.

The taxi, under the severe eye of a policeman, revolved by slow jerks, with a noise like the grinding of teeth.

“What?—no, no, we haven’t finished. Please don’t cut us off. Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Mother? Hullo!—Mother!—Oh, yes—sorry, the girl was trying to cut us off. What sort of body?”

“A dead man, dear, with nothing on but a pair of pince-nez. Mrs. Throgmorton positively blushed when she was telling me. I’m afraid people do get a little narrow-minded in country vicarages.”

“Well, it sounds a bit unusual. Was it anybody he knew?”

The features were thick, fleshy and strongly marked, with prominent dark eyes, and a long nose curving down to a heavy chin. The clean-shaven lips were full and sensual, and the dropped jaw showed teeth stained with tobacco.

On the dead face the handsome pair of gold pince-nez mocked death with grotesque elegance; the fine gold chain curved over the naked breast.

The legs lay stiffly stretched out side by side; the arms reposed close to the body; the fingers were flexed naturally. Lord Peter lifted one arm, and looked at the hand with a little frown.

The Inspector spoke to the officer on duty at the Mansions, and turned a suspicious gaze on Lord Peter’s retreating back.

“Dear old Sugg,” said that nobleman, fondly, “dear, dear old bird! How he does hate me, to be sure.”

“It wouldn’t be my place to say so, my lord.”

“No, Bunter, I pay you £200 a year to keep your thoughts to yourself. Tell me, Bunter, in these democratic days, don’t you think that’s unfair?”

“You don’t. D’you mind telling me frankly why you don’t think it unfair?”

… refinement, since he had all the apparatus of an elegant toilet handy, and a man of bizarre, and almost perverted imagination, as is shown in the two horrible touches of putting the body in the bath and of adorning it with a pair of pince-nez.”

“He is a poet of crime,” said Wimsey.

“By the way, your difficulty about the pince-nez is cleared up. Obviously, the pince-nez never belonged to the body.”

“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, wouldn’t it?”

Meanwhile Mr. Thipps, wiping his brow with a handkerchief, had summoned up courage.

He stood up with a kind of weak dignity, like a small white rabbit brought to bay.

“I would rather tell you,” he said, “though it’s reelly very unpleasant for a man in my position. But I reelly couldn’t have it thought for a moment that I’d committed this dreadful crime. I assure you, gentlemen, I couldn’t bear that. No.

“That’s just what happened, as a matter of fact,” said Lord Peter. “You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you’ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas.

Most people don’t associate anythin’⁠—their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise and goin’ nowhere, but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?

”

… don’t associate anythin’—their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise and goin’ nowhere, but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?”

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Tommy Frayle, with a little scream, “what a blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all!”

“Y’see,” said Lord Peter, balancing a piece of duck on his fork and frowning, “it’s only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that, that people think things out logically. Or’nar’ly, if somebody tells you somethin’ out of the way, you just say, ‘By Jove!’

“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.

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:

They ran out from the thought of Levy, last seen at ten o’clock in Prince of Wales Road. They ran back from the picture of the grotesque dead man in Mr. Thipps’s bathroom—they ran over the roof, and were lost—lost in the sand.

Rivers running into the sand⁠—rivers running underground, very far down⁠—

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Lord Peter Wimsey was not a young man who habitually took himself very seriously, but this time he was frankly appalled.

“It’s impossible,” said his reason, feebly; “credo quia impossibile,” said his interior certainty with impervious self-satisfaction.

“All right,” said conscience, instantly allying itself with blind faith, “what are you going to do about it?”

His aim in life was to prevent the two ends of the problem from linking up. And there were two of the links, literally side by side.

Many criminals are wrecked by over-caution.

”

Despite Parker’s admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by “Raffles” and “Sherlock Holmes,” or the sentiments for which they stand.

He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.

“I am an amateur,” said Lord Peter.

Despite Parker’s admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by “Raffles” and “Sherlock Holmes,” or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.

“I am an amateur,” said Lord Peter.

Nevertheless, while communing with Dante, he made up his mind.

The silence was like a shock. The blue eyes did not waver; they burned down steadily upon the heavy white lids below them. Then these slowly lifted; the grey eyes met the blue—coldly, steadily—and held them.

When lovers embrace, there seems no sound in the world but their own breathing. So the two men breathed face to face.

“As you like, of course, Lord Peter,” said Sir Julian, courteously.

The vile, raw fog tore your throat and ravaged your eyes. You could not see your feet.

You stumbled in your walk over poor men’s graves.