Lord Peter ramblings
My love for Lord Peter books by Dorothy Sayers began completely incidentally. fire_snake mentioned reading ‘Clouds of Witness’ which sounded interesting. I picked up ‘Strong Poison’ in the library and was gone.
For those who don’t know, Dorothy Sayers was a British novelist who wrote a series of novels, set (and written) during the 1920s and 1930s in England, about Lord Peter Wimsey, a blond, monocled, seemingly scatterbrained member of nobility (brother of a Duke) who is a brilliant detective.
If you think this sounds facile, silly, or cliché, think again. Lord Peter, with his gift for intellectualism and quotations, his nervous chatter concealing a sharp mind, his hidden but shattering vulnerabilities, ingrained compassion warring with sense of justice and pure intellectual curiosity, and oh yeah, his persevering, total love of one independent, damaged woman (Harriet Vane, one of my favorite fictional characters) is not only a wonderful character, but a precursor to such characters as Lymond (who is, without a doubt, a more messed up ‘ancestor/descendant’ of Lord Peter) and Miles Vorkosigan (Civil Campaign is dedicated in part to Sayers).
I am not a huge mystery fan. I don’t really care whodunnit and whydunnit and anyotherdunnit, because hey, I can just peek at the end of the book, not much of a mystery. Lord Peter books are the exception: they have very good mysteries (at least I am told so by fans of the genre, I am not much of a judge) but they work for me because they are such brilliant novels, such character studies. I am a bit in love with Lord Peter myself. I especially like how Sayers develops him more and more fully from novel to novel, thus even earlier hints come into fruition later. I don’t know if she always planned it out that way, or was just good at picking up the threads, but it’s awesome either way. Even in the very first book, ‘Whose Body,’ Lord Peter comes across as not a 1930s dapper detective but someone frighteningly human (I keep remembering his episode of shell-shock. He is a WWI veteran who was invalided out because of it) but slowly, book by book, he becomes even more so and by the end, he is just unforgettable.
And I love that Sayers created a strong female counterpart, Harriet Vane. Harriet Vane is in four books: Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon. And I love her because she is strong but damaged. Vulnerable, prickly, fiercely independent and sometimes wonderful and sometimes incredibly irritating. She feels real. The romance between Lord Peter and Harriet is, in large part, about their compatible minds. Of course, it takes a while for Lord Peter to succeed because their first meeting is in SP, where Harriet, who is a mystery author, is on trial for murder of her lover (the fact that she lived with him unmarried, is a big stigma and a huge deal). Everyone but Lord Peter believes her guilty, but he decides to investigate, and he also falls in love. But Harriet is not just damaged, she is proud. It is the fact that he saved her life that makes the courtship so long: she doesn’t want to be beholden, doesn’t want to be trapped in gratitude. Yeah, they finally straighten it out.
My favorite of the LP novels are (1) ‘Murder Must Advertise,’ where Lord Peter infiltrates an advertising agency to investigate a death. It’s sharp, cynical, glittery and with a dark undertone. And (2) Busman’s Honeymoon, the last book in the series, where there is a murder for Lord Peter to solve, true, but the focus of the book is really on Lord Peter and Harriet, who have just gotten married, and are navigating intimacy, vulnerabilities, and snags. BH is probably one of the most romantic, yet least sappy books I have ever read. *swoons a bit* And has one of the very few sex scenes in books (not explicit, don’t worry) which I find both gorgeous and necessary to the story.
But I love all of them. Here they are in order of publication/story:
• Whose Body?
• Clouds of Witness
• Unnatural Death
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
• Strong Poison
• Five Red Herrings
• Have His Carcase
• Murder Must Advertise
• The Nine Tailors
• Gaudy Night
• Busman's Honeymoon
There are also some short stories
Oh, and an article I found pointed out something pretty awesome. Lord Peter’s first words in the first novel are ‘Oh, Damn!’ and so are his last words in the last novel, though the circumstances are vastly different (in the former, he is remembering he left a book catalogue behind, in the latter, he is crying into Harriet’s lap).
Oh, and Whose Body is now in public domain, so you can read the whole text here.
Some awesome quotes from that book:
His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.
****
He sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely courtesy, as though it were an acquaintance dropped in for a chat.
****
"Her Grace tells me that a respectable Battersea architect has discovered a dead man in his bath."
"Indeed, my lord? That's very gratifying."
"Very, Bunter. Your choice of words is unerring. I wish Eton and Balliol had done as much for me.
****
Can I," said Lord Peter, looking at himself in the eighteenth-century mirror over the mantelpiece, "can I have the heart to fluster the flustered Thipps further-that's very difficult to say quickly-by appearing in a top-hat and frock-coat? I think not. Ten to one he will overlook my trousers and mistake me for the undertaker. A grey suit, I fancy, neat but not gaudy, with a hat to tone, suits my other self better. Exit the amateur of first editions; new motif introduced by solo bassoon; enter Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman. There goes Bunter. Invaluable fellow-never offers to do his job when you've told him to do somethin' else. Hope he doesn't miss the 'Four Sons of Aymon.' Still, there is another copy of that-in the Vatican. -- It might become available, you never know-if the Church of Rome went to pot or Switzerland invaded Italy-whereas a strange corpse doesn't turn up in a suburban bathroom more than once in a lifetime-at least, I should think not-at any rate, the number of times it's happened, with a pince-nez, might be counted on the fingers of one hand, I imagine. Dear me! it's a dreadful mistake to ride two hobbies at once."
****
Mr. Alfred Thipps was a small, nervous man, whose flaxen hair was beginning to abandon the unequal struggle with destiny.
****
“Remember Impey Biggs defending in that Chelsea tea-shop affair? Six bloomin' medicos contradictin' each other in the box, an' old Impey elocutin' abnormal cases from Glaister and Dixon Mann till the eyes of the jury reeled in their heads! 'Are you prepared to swear, Dr. Thingumtight, that the onset of rigor mortis indicates the hour of death without the possibility of error?' 'So far as my experience goes, in the majority of cases,' says the doctor, all stiff. 'Ah!' says Biggs, 'but this is a Court of Justice, Doctor, not a Parliamentary election. We can't get on without a minority report. The law, Dr. Thingumtight, respects the rights of the minority, alive or dead.' Some ass laughs, and old Biggs sticks his chest out and gets impressive. 'Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. My client-an upright and honourable gentleman-is being tried for his life-for his life, gentlemen-and it is the business of the prosecution to show his guilt-if they can-without a shadow of doubt. Now, Dr. Thingumtight, I ask you again, can you solemnly swear, without the least shadow of doubt-probable, possible shadow of doubt-that this unhappy woman met her death neither sooner nor later than Thursday evening? A probable opinion? Gentlemen, we are not Jesuits, we are straightforward Englishmen. You cannot ask a British-born jury to convict any man on the authority of a probable opinion.' Hum of applause."
"Biggs's man was guilty all the same," said Parker.
"Of course he was. But he was acquitted all the same, an' what you've just said is libel."
****
"One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers," said Lady Swaffham. "Like dramatists, you know-so much easier in Shakespeare's time, wasn't it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I'm sure if I'd been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I'd have said: 'Ods-bodikins! There's that girl again!'"
****
"Oh, nothing," said Peter. "It's a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it-up to a point. If it was all on paper I'd enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job-when one doesn't know any of the people and it's just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don't seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin' in, since I don't have to make my livin' by it. And I feel as if I oughtn't ever to find it amusin'. But I do."
****
"Look here, Peter," said the other with some earnestness, "suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?"
"That's what I'm ashamed of, really," said Lord Peter. "It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it."
"Yes, yes, I know," said the detective, "but that's because you're thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that's childish. If you've any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That's all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn't any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent-what's that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, 'Well played-hard luck-you shall have your revenge to-morrow!' 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."
****
He sat down again and buried his face in his hands. He remembered quite suddenly how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at Denver Castle-a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth-twitched it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his hardest-he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sèvres breakfast service had crashed down in one stupendous ruin-he remembered the horrified face of the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.
****
(this is probably my fave scene in the book, because of this hint/gliding of how there is more to the Lord Peter and Bunter’s relationship, than polished young aristocrat and an extremely proper butler and also indication that Lord Peter is REALLY messed up. Of course, it all gets really explained in Busman’s Honeymoon, but it’s cool that it is this far back. I do love the bit in Busman’s Honeymoon where Duchess tells Harriet about how Bunter came and found them after the war, when Peter was so shell-shocked and Bunter basically got him through it, especially since Peter would refuse to give any sort of order at all, even for lifting blinds or anything. I love Bunter.)
Mr. Bunter, sleeping the sleep of the true and faithful servant, was aroused in the small hours by a hoarse whisper, "Bunter!"
"Yes, my lord," said Bunter, sitting up and switching on the light.
"Put that light out, damn you!" said the voice. "Listen-over there-listen-can't you hear it?"
"It's nothing, my lord," said Mr. Bunter, hastily getting out of bed and catching hold of his master; "it's all right, you get to bed quick and I'll fetch you a drop of bromide. Why, you're all shivering-you've been sitting up too late."
"Hush! no, no-it's the water," said Lord Peter with chattering teeth, "it's up to their waists down there, poor devils. But listen! can't you hear it? Tap, tap, tap-they're mining us-but I don't know where-I can't hear-I can't. Listen, you! There it is again-we must find it-we must stop it . . . Listen! Oh, my God! I can't hear-I can't hear anything for the noise of the guns. Can't they stop the guns?"
"Oh, dear!" said Mr. Bunter to himself. "No, no-it's all right, Major-don't you worry."
"But I hear it," protested Peter.
"So do I," said Mr. Bunter stoutly; "very good hearing, too, my lord. That's our own sappers at work in the communication trench. Don't you fret about that, sir."
Lord Peter grasped his wrist with a feverish hand.
"Our own sappers," he said; "sure of that?"
"Certain of it," said Mr. Bunter, cheerfully.
"They'll bring down the tower," said Lord Peter.
"To be sure they will," said Mr. Bunter, "and very nice, too. You just come and lay down a bit, sir-they've come to take over this section."
"You're sure it's safe to leave it?" said Lord Peter.
"Safe as houses, sir," said Mr. Bunter, tucking his master's arm under his and walking him off to his bedroom.
Lord Peter allowed himself to be dosed and put to bed without further resistance. Mr. Bunter, looking singularly un-Bunterlike in striped pyjamas, with his stiff black hair ruffled about his head, sat grimly watching the younger man's sharp cheekbones and the purple stains under his eyes.
"Thought we'd had the last of these attacks," he said. "Been overdoin' of himself. Asleep?" He peered at him anxiously. An affectionate note crept into his voice. "Bloody little fool!" said Sergeant Bunter.
****
Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public-school education. 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.
****
As the door of the consulting-room closed behind him, he remembered having once gone, disguised, into the staff-room of a German officer. He experienced the same feeling-the feeling of being caught in a trap, and a mingling of bravado and shame.
****
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.
The feel of Parker's old trench-coat beneath your fingers was comforting. You had felt it in worse places. You clung on now for fear you should get separated. The dim people moving in front of you were like Brocken spectres.
****
For those who don’t know, Dorothy Sayers was a British novelist who wrote a series of novels, set (and written) during the 1920s and 1930s in England, about Lord Peter Wimsey, a blond, monocled, seemingly scatterbrained member of nobility (brother of a Duke) who is a brilliant detective.
If you think this sounds facile, silly, or cliché, think again. Lord Peter, with his gift for intellectualism and quotations, his nervous chatter concealing a sharp mind, his hidden but shattering vulnerabilities, ingrained compassion warring with sense of justice and pure intellectual curiosity, and oh yeah, his persevering, total love of one independent, damaged woman (Harriet Vane, one of my favorite fictional characters) is not only a wonderful character, but a precursor to such characters as Lymond (who is, without a doubt, a more messed up ‘ancestor/descendant’ of Lord Peter) and Miles Vorkosigan (Civil Campaign is dedicated in part to Sayers).
I am not a huge mystery fan. I don’t really care whodunnit and whydunnit and anyotherdunnit, because hey, I can just peek at the end of the book, not much of a mystery. Lord Peter books are the exception: they have very good mysteries (at least I am told so by fans of the genre, I am not much of a judge) but they work for me because they are such brilliant novels, such character studies. I am a bit in love with Lord Peter myself. I especially like how Sayers develops him more and more fully from novel to novel, thus even earlier hints come into fruition later. I don’t know if she always planned it out that way, or was just good at picking up the threads, but it’s awesome either way. Even in the very first book, ‘Whose Body,’ Lord Peter comes across as not a 1930s dapper detective but someone frighteningly human (I keep remembering his episode of shell-shock. He is a WWI veteran who was invalided out because of it) but slowly, book by book, he becomes even more so and by the end, he is just unforgettable.
And I love that Sayers created a strong female counterpart, Harriet Vane. Harriet Vane is in four books: Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon. And I love her because she is strong but damaged. Vulnerable, prickly, fiercely independent and sometimes wonderful and sometimes incredibly irritating. She feels real. The romance between Lord Peter and Harriet is, in large part, about their compatible minds. Of course, it takes a while for Lord Peter to succeed because their first meeting is in SP, where Harriet, who is a mystery author, is on trial for murder of her lover (the fact that she lived with him unmarried, is a big stigma and a huge deal). Everyone but Lord Peter believes her guilty, but he decides to investigate, and he also falls in love. But Harriet is not just damaged, she is proud. It is the fact that he saved her life that makes the courtship so long: she doesn’t want to be beholden, doesn’t want to be trapped in gratitude. Yeah, they finally straighten it out.
My favorite of the LP novels are (1) ‘Murder Must Advertise,’ where Lord Peter infiltrates an advertising agency to investigate a death. It’s sharp, cynical, glittery and with a dark undertone. And (2) Busman’s Honeymoon, the last book in the series, where there is a murder for Lord Peter to solve, true, but the focus of the book is really on Lord Peter and Harriet, who have just gotten married, and are navigating intimacy, vulnerabilities, and snags. BH is probably one of the most romantic, yet least sappy books I have ever read. *swoons a bit* And has one of the very few sex scenes in books (not explicit, don’t worry) which I find both gorgeous and necessary to the story.
But I love all of them. Here they are in order of publication/story:
• Whose Body?
• Clouds of Witness
• Unnatural Death
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
• Strong Poison
• Five Red Herrings
• Have His Carcase
• Murder Must Advertise
• The Nine Tailors
• Gaudy Night
• Busman's Honeymoon
There are also some short stories
Oh, and an article I found pointed out something pretty awesome. Lord Peter’s first words in the first novel are ‘Oh, Damn!’ and so are his last words in the last novel, though the circumstances are vastly different (in the former, he is remembering he left a book catalogue behind, in the latter, he is crying into Harriet’s lap).
Oh, and Whose Body is now in public domain, so you can read the whole text here.
Some awesome quotes from that book:
His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.
****
He sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely courtesy, as though it were an acquaintance dropped in for a chat.
****
"Her Grace tells me that a respectable Battersea architect has discovered a dead man in his bath."
"Indeed, my lord? That's very gratifying."
"Very, Bunter. Your choice of words is unerring. I wish Eton and Balliol had done as much for me.
****
Can I," said Lord Peter, looking at himself in the eighteenth-century mirror over the mantelpiece, "can I have the heart to fluster the flustered Thipps further-that's very difficult to say quickly-by appearing in a top-hat and frock-coat? I think not. Ten to one he will overlook my trousers and mistake me for the undertaker. A grey suit, I fancy, neat but not gaudy, with a hat to tone, suits my other self better. Exit the amateur of first editions; new motif introduced by solo bassoon; enter Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman. There goes Bunter. Invaluable fellow-never offers to do his job when you've told him to do somethin' else. Hope he doesn't miss the 'Four Sons of Aymon.' Still, there is another copy of that-in the Vatican. -- It might become available, you never know-if the Church of Rome went to pot or Switzerland invaded Italy-whereas a strange corpse doesn't turn up in a suburban bathroom more than once in a lifetime-at least, I should think not-at any rate, the number of times it's happened, with a pince-nez, might be counted on the fingers of one hand, I imagine. Dear me! it's a dreadful mistake to ride two hobbies at once."
****
Mr. Alfred Thipps was a small, nervous man, whose flaxen hair was beginning to abandon the unequal struggle with destiny.
****
“Remember Impey Biggs defending in that Chelsea tea-shop affair? Six bloomin' medicos contradictin' each other in the box, an' old Impey elocutin' abnormal cases from Glaister and Dixon Mann till the eyes of the jury reeled in their heads! 'Are you prepared to swear, Dr. Thingumtight, that the onset of rigor mortis indicates the hour of death without the possibility of error?' 'So far as my experience goes, in the majority of cases,' says the doctor, all stiff. 'Ah!' says Biggs, 'but this is a Court of Justice, Doctor, not a Parliamentary election. We can't get on without a minority report. The law, Dr. Thingumtight, respects the rights of the minority, alive or dead.' Some ass laughs, and old Biggs sticks his chest out and gets impressive. 'Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. My client-an upright and honourable gentleman-is being tried for his life-for his life, gentlemen-and it is the business of the prosecution to show his guilt-if they can-without a shadow of doubt. Now, Dr. Thingumtight, I ask you again, can you solemnly swear, without the least shadow of doubt-probable, possible shadow of doubt-that this unhappy woman met her death neither sooner nor later than Thursday evening? A probable opinion? Gentlemen, we are not Jesuits, we are straightforward Englishmen. You cannot ask a British-born jury to convict any man on the authority of a probable opinion.' Hum of applause."
"Biggs's man was guilty all the same," said Parker.
"Of course he was. But he was acquitted all the same, an' what you've just said is libel."
****
"One demands a little originality in these days, even from murderers," said Lady Swaffham. "Like dramatists, you know-so much easier in Shakespeare's time, wasn't it? Always the same girl dressed up as a man, and even that borrowed from Boccaccio or Dante or somebody. I'm sure if I'd been a Shakespeare hero, the very minute I saw a slim-legged young page-boy I'd have said: 'Ods-bodikins! There's that girl again!'"
****
"Oh, nothing," said Peter. "It's a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it-up to a point. If it was all on paper I'd enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job-when one doesn't know any of the people and it's just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don't seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin' in, since I don't have to make my livin' by it. And I feel as if I oughtn't ever to find it amusin'. But I do."
****
"Look here, Peter," said the other with some earnestness, "suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?"
"That's what I'm ashamed of, really," said Lord Peter. "It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it."
"Yes, yes, I know," said the detective, "but that's because you're thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that's childish. If you've any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That's all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn't any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent-what's that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, 'Well played-hard luck-you shall have your revenge to-morrow!' 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."
****
He sat down again and buried his face in his hands. He remembered quite suddenly how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at Denver Castle-a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth-twitched it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his hardest-he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sèvres breakfast service had crashed down in one stupendous ruin-he remembered the horrified face of the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.
****
(this is probably my fave scene in the book, because of this hint/gliding of how there is more to the Lord Peter and Bunter’s relationship, than polished young aristocrat and an extremely proper butler and also indication that Lord Peter is REALLY messed up. Of course, it all gets really explained in Busman’s Honeymoon, but it’s cool that it is this far back. I do love the bit in Busman’s Honeymoon where Duchess tells Harriet about how Bunter came and found them after the war, when Peter was so shell-shocked and Bunter basically got him through it, especially since Peter would refuse to give any sort of order at all, even for lifting blinds or anything. I love Bunter.)
Mr. Bunter, sleeping the sleep of the true and faithful servant, was aroused in the small hours by a hoarse whisper, "Bunter!"
"Yes, my lord," said Bunter, sitting up and switching on the light.
"Put that light out, damn you!" said the voice. "Listen-over there-listen-can't you hear it?"
"It's nothing, my lord," said Mr. Bunter, hastily getting out of bed and catching hold of his master; "it's all right, you get to bed quick and I'll fetch you a drop of bromide. Why, you're all shivering-you've been sitting up too late."
"Hush! no, no-it's the water," said Lord Peter with chattering teeth, "it's up to their waists down there, poor devils. But listen! can't you hear it? Tap, tap, tap-they're mining us-but I don't know where-I can't hear-I can't. Listen, you! There it is again-we must find it-we must stop it . . . Listen! Oh, my God! I can't hear-I can't hear anything for the noise of the guns. Can't they stop the guns?"
"Oh, dear!" said Mr. Bunter to himself. "No, no-it's all right, Major-don't you worry."
"But I hear it," protested Peter.
"So do I," said Mr. Bunter stoutly; "very good hearing, too, my lord. That's our own sappers at work in the communication trench. Don't you fret about that, sir."
Lord Peter grasped his wrist with a feverish hand.
"Our own sappers," he said; "sure of that?"
"Certain of it," said Mr. Bunter, cheerfully.
"They'll bring down the tower," said Lord Peter.
"To be sure they will," said Mr. Bunter, "and very nice, too. You just come and lay down a bit, sir-they've come to take over this section."
"You're sure it's safe to leave it?" said Lord Peter.
"Safe as houses, sir," said Mr. Bunter, tucking his master's arm under his and walking him off to his bedroom.
Lord Peter allowed himself to be dosed and put to bed without further resistance. Mr. Bunter, looking singularly un-Bunterlike in striped pyjamas, with his stiff black hair ruffled about his head, sat grimly watching the younger man's sharp cheekbones and the purple stains under his eyes.
"Thought we'd had the last of these attacks," he said. "Been overdoin' of himself. Asleep?" He peered at him anxiously. An affectionate note crept into his voice. "Bloody little fool!" said Sergeant Bunter.
****
Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public-school education. 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.
****
As the door of the consulting-room closed behind him, he remembered having once gone, disguised, into the staff-room of a German officer. He experienced the same feeling-the feeling of being caught in a trap, and a mingling of bravado and shame.
****
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.
The feel of Parker's old trench-coat beneath your fingers was comforting. You had felt it in worse places. You clung on now for fear you should get separated. The dim people moving in front of you were like Brocken spectres.
****