Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers

Author:Dorothy L. Sayers [Sayers, Dorothy L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Classics, Fiction, Mystery, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781453258873
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-07-05T22:33:00+00:00

The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste

‘HALTE-LÀ!… ATTENTION!… F----e!’

The young man in the grey suit pushed his way through the protesting porters and leapt nimbly for the footboard of the guard’s van as the Paris-Evreux express steamed out of the Invalides. The guard, with an eye to a tip, fielded him adroitly from among the detaining hands.

‘It is happy for monsieur that he is so agile,’ he remarked. ‘Monsieur is in a hurry?’

‘Somewhat. Thank you. I can get through by the corridor?’

‘But certainly. The premières are two coaches away, beyond the luggage-van.’

The young man rewarded his rescuer, and made his way forward, mopping his face. As he passed the piled-up luggage, something caught his eye, and he stopped to investigate. It was a suit-case, nearly new, of expensive-looking leather, labelled conspicuously:

LORD PETER WIMSEY,

Hôtel Saumon d’Or,

Verneuil-sur-Eure.

and bare witness to its itinerary thus:

LONDON — PARIS

(Waterloo) (Gare St Lazare)

via Southampton-Havre.

PARIS — VERNEUIL

(Ch. de Fer de l’Ouest)

The young man whistled, and sat down on a trunk to think it out.

Somewhere there had been a leakage, and they were on his trail. Nor did they care who knew it. There were hundreds of people in London and Paris who would know the name of Wimsey, not counting the police of both countries. In addition to belonging to one of the oldest ducal families in England, Lord Peter had made himself conspicuous by his meddling with crime detection. A label like this was a gratuitous advertisement.

But the amazing thing was that the pursuers were not troubling to hide themselves from the pursued. That argued very great confidence. That he should have got into the guard’s van was, of course, an accident, but, even so, he might have seen it on the platform, or anywhere.

An accident? It occurred to him — not for the first time, but definitely now, and without doubt — that it was indeed an accident for them that he was here. The series of maddening delays that had held him up between London and the Invalides presented itself to him with an air of pre-arrangement. The preposterous accusation, for instance, of the woman who had accosted him in Piccadilly, and the slow process of extricating himself at Marlborough Street. It was easy to hold a man up on some trumped-up charge till an important plan had matured. Then there was the lavatory door at Waterloo, which had so ludicrously locked itself upon him. Being athletic, he had climbed over the partition, to find the attendant mysteriously absent. And, in Paris, was it by chance that he had had a deaf taxi-driver, who mistook the direction ‘Quai d’Orléans’ for ‘Gare de Lyon,’ and drove a mile and a half in the wrong direction before the shouts of his fare attracted his attention? They were clever, the pursuers, and circumspect. They had accurate information; they would delay him, but without taking any overt step; they knew that, if only they could keep time on their side, they needed no other ally.

Did they know he

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