Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 4, No. 1. Whole No. 8, January 1943

Greedy Night A Parody by E. C. Bentley

A parody in literature is a humorous imitation, deliberately fashioned, of a serious work. One of the best-known of modern detective novels is “Gaudy Night,” by Dorothy L. Sayers. Here is a clever — a brilliantly clever — parody of “Gaudy Night” by one of the most eminent detective-story writers of our time, E. C. Bentley, author of “Trent’s Last Case” notably, and other distinguished worlds. Readers of “Gaudy Night” will recognize with delight some of the characters and scenes in that boo\. On the other hand, those unfamiliar with the original will still find “Greedy Night” a joy, since Mr. Bentley not only uses Lord Peter Wimsey himself as the detective, but has also contrived what the editors consider the best parody-plot within their ken.

“Yow ow ow,” observed Lord Peter Wimsey, opening his eyes; then, reclosing and feebly knuckling them, “Ow wow. Yah ah ow.”

“Very good, my lord,” his servant said, as he drew the curtains of the bedroom. “It is now twelve o’clock noon, my lord. At what hour would your lordship take breakfast?”

“Zero hour,” Lord Peter snarled. “Take the nasty breakfast away, I don’t want any breakfast today. Oh, Lord! Bunter, why did I drink all that Corton Clos du Roi 1904 on the top of a quart of Archdeacon ale last night? I’m old enough to know better. Anyhow, my inside is.”

“If I may make the suggestion, my lord, it may have been what your lordship had after coming home that is at the root of the trouble.”

Wimsey sat up in bed wild-eyed. “Bunter!” he gasped. “Don’t tell me I had whisky as well.”

“No, my lord. That may possibly have been your lordship’s intention; but I fear that what your lordship actually drank, in a moment of absent-mindedness, was a mixture of furniture-polish and Vichy water. I found the empty bottles on the floor this morning, my lord.”

Wimsey sank back with a moan; then rallied himself and swallowed a little tea from the cup which Bunter had filled.

“I don’t like this tea,” he said peevishly. “I don’t believe this is my specially grown Son-of-Heaven china.”

“It is, my lord; but in some circumstances the flavour of almost anything is apt to be sensibly impaired. May I urge, my lord, that an effort should be made to eat some breakfast? It is considered to be advisable on the morning after an occasion of festivity.”

“Oh, all right.” Wimsey held out his hand for the menu which Bunter produced, like a conjuror, apparently from the air. “Well, I won’t eat avoine secoueur, anyhow. Give it to the cat.”

“The cat has already tried it, my lord, during my momentary absence from the kitchen. The intelligent animal appears to be of your lordship’s opinion. I would recommend a little pâte gonfleur sur canapé, my lord, for the present emergency.”

Wimsey groaned. “I don’t believe I could taste even that,” he said. “Very well, I’ll have a stab at it.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Bunter laid an armful of newspapers on the bed and withdrew. When he returned with the breakfast tray Wimsey was reading with absorbed interest. “Bunter,” he said eagerly, “I see that at Sotheby’s on Monday they’re auctioning a thing I simply must have — the original manuscript of the Chanson de Roland, with marginal notes by Saint Louis. If I find I can’t go myself, I shall want you to pop round and bid for me. That is, of course, if it’s the genuine article. You could make sure of that, I suppose?”

“Without difficulty, my lord. I have always taken an interest in the technical study of mediaeval calligraphy. I should be sceptical, though, about those marginal notes, my lord. It has always been understood, your lordship, that His Most Christian Majesty was unable to write. However—”

At this point there came a long-continued ringing at the door-bell of the flat; and after a brief interval Bunter, with all the appearance of acting under protest, showed the Bishop of Glastonbury into the bedroom.

“I say, Peter, there’s the dickens to pay!” exclaimed that prelate. “Topsy’s pretty well off her onion, and Bill Mixer’s in a frightful dither. Have you heard what’s happened? But, of course, you couldn’t. They’ve been trying to get you on the ’phone this morning, but that man of yours kept on saying that he feared his lordship was somewhat closely engaged at the moment. So they rang me up, and asked me to tell you.”

“Well, why not tell me?” Wimsey snapped. Topsy, the Bishop’s favourite sister, was an old friend, and her husband was a man for whom Wimsey had a deep regard that dated from his years at Balliol.

“Dermot’s dead.”

“I say! What a ghastly thing!” Wimsey scrambled out of bed and into a dressing-gown. “What happened to poor old Dermot?”

“That’s just what they don’t know. There was absolutely nothing the matter with him, but he was found dead this morning — apparently uninjured, they say. Foul play is suspected, of course.”

“Of course,” Wimsey agreed, plying his hair-brushes vigorously.

“And Topsy and Bill would like you, if you can, to go down for the week-end—”

“Up,” Wimsey murmured.

“All right, up for the week-end,” said the Bishop a little testily. “And see what you can do to clear the mystery up, or down, or any dashed way you like.”

Wimsey rang the bell, and Bunter instantly appeared. “Oh, look here, Bunter, will you get the German Ambassador on the ’phone for me?” As Bunter busied himself with the instrument by the bedside, Wimsey turned to the Bishop again. “Well, Mike, I will certainly go if they want me. I shall drive there in the Fendlair, so it won’t take long.”

The Bishop repressed a shudder. “Why do you amateur detectives always drive like lunatics?” he asked plaintively. “You all do — except Trent, of course; he never does anything off-colour. Well, they’ll be glad of your help — if you get there in one piece, that is — and I’m grateful to you myself. I must push off now — got to move the second reading of the Disestablishment Bill in the Lords this afternoon, and I haven’t prepared a line of my stuff yet.”

As the Bishop disappeared, Bunter presented the telephone receiver to Wimsey on a salver. “His Excellency is now at the apparatus, my lord.”

“Hullo, is that Bodo?” Wimsey cried. “Yes, Peter speaking. Heil Hitler. I say, old man, I’m frightfully sorry, but I can’t turn up at your squash this evening. I’ve just heard some very bad news… No, Heil Hitler, it’s nobody you know… Yes, Heil Hitler, very serious. I mean, dead, and all that. I’ve got to go and see about it… That’s kind of you, Bodo. You know I value your sympathy. Thanks hunderttausendmal. Well, Heil Hitler, good-bye.”

During the progress of his toilet, Wimsey cancelled by telephone, with all apologies due, several other appointments. A Sunday luncheon of the Food and Wine Society at Tewkesbury, to test the quality — so praised by Falstaff — of the local mustard. A meeting of the Committee of the Anerithmon Gelasma Yacht Club, called for the purpose of blackballing the Duke of Cheshire. A supper for Miss Ruth Draper, who would give, it was hoped, her impersonation of the Nine Muses discussing the character of Aphrodite.

Wimsey then got into communication with the Spoopendyke Professor of Egyptology in the University of Oxford, and accepted in brief but sympathetic terms his invitation to spend the week-end. Professor Mixer was greatly relieved, he said. He feared that Wimsey must have sacrificed other engagements in order to do Topsy and himself this kindness.

Wimsey burdened his soul with the statement that he had been going to spend the next few days in bringing the catalogue of his library up to date; a thing which could be done at any time.

The Professor of Egyptology met Wimsey at the door of his grey old house of Headington stone, nearly facing the main gateway of Janus. He greeted his visitor with subdued cordiality, his left hand clutching his unkempt beard as he talked.

“It’s very good of you to come, Peter,” he said. “Topsy was anxious to have your opinion, and we are very glad to have you with us, anyhow. But whatever you may find out about the cause of death, you can’t bring back poor Dermot. I thought it better you should stay in college, if you don’t mind. This is a house of sorrow, you see; and you would really be more comfortable in Janus. I’ve got you rooms in the Fellows’ Quad — Simpson’s — he is in the Morea just now. You only want to be careful not to disturb the manuscript of his forthcoming book on the pre-Minoan cultures of the Dodecanese. He has a habit of doing all his writing on the backs of old envelopes, and leaving them all over the floor. So perhaps you’d better not use the study — you might prefer not to in any case, because of course it can’t ever be dusted on account of the envelopes — hasn’t been for years.”

“I shall love staying in Janus,” said Wimsey. “It’s a college I was very seldom in when I was up, and the only experience I had of the Fellows’ Quad was when Jinks was Proctor, and I had to go to his rooms there to see him about my chaining a gorilla to the railings of the Martyrs’ Memorial.”

“Ha! H’m! Just so,” said the Professor. “Perhaps you would like to see the body at once. It is still there, lying just as it was found — in the library.”

“Well, naturally,” Wimsey said with impatience. “Where did you think I thought it was? — in the scullery? Yes, I should like to see it now.”

The Professor led the way to the library, a large, light room on the ground floor, walled with crowded shelves, and smelling slightly of mummified cats. Before the central window was a large writing-table covered with piles of papers in orderly array. On the blotter, Wimsey noted with interest, a very modern book lay open with a part of one of its leaves torn away — a detective story which had murdered sleep for countless readers.

The body lay on the carpet beside the table. Wimsey, mastering the emotion that seized him, knelt down and looked closely at the stocky, well-knit figure, still carefully neat in appearance as Dermot always was in life, and in a natural posture, but that the feet were somewhat drawn up. Those keen eyes were closed now, the mouth too was shut, and there was not a trace of expression on the small, aquiline features. No blood was to be seen, and there was, as Wimsey soon ascertained, no sign of any wound on the body.

Dermot had been in perfect health and excellent spirits up to the time of his death, Professor Mixer said. He himself had been the last to see him alive — at about half-past nine o’clock that morning, when they had exchanged a few words in this same room before the Professor went out to Blackwell’s in quest of a book. Shortly after that his wife, passing the door of the library, had heard Dermot swearing violently within, but she had thought nothing of that.

“You remember, Peter,” the Professor said, “how rough his language often was. He picked up the habit during his time in the mercantile marine, and he seemed quite unable to break himself of it. Topsy, you know, rather admired it really, and I never paid any attention to it; but it cost us the services of an excellent cook, a strict Wesleyan, and sometimes I felt rather uncomfortable about it when I was seeing pupils here.”

“Do you think he could have taught them anything?” Wimsey asked.

“I fear so — yes. I mean, I hope so,” said the Professor with a melancholy shake of the head. “Only last week Lord Torquilstone brought me an essay, and as soon as he entered the room Dermot called out — well, I cannot bring myself to repeat what he said. It was as essentially meaningless as it was deplorably coarse, and Torquilstone was quite taken aback. Then there was another time, when the Vice-Chancellor came to tea with us. We were in the drawing-room upstairs, but I am afraid that he distinctly heard Dermot, who was in this room, blaspheming in the most dreadful terms. In fact, Hoggarty must have heard, because he dropped a piece of muffin into his tea, and then remarked upon the lovely weather that we were having — which was not the case, for it was pouring with rain and very cold for the time of year. I fear I shall be getting quite a bad name in the Hebdomadal Council.”

“And was that — I mean what Topsy heard — the last evidence of his being alive?”

“Yes. It is painful,” the Professor said, “to think that those were in all probability his last words; for I came in about half an hour later, and found him as you see.”

Dinner with Professor Mixer and his wife that evening was not a cheerful affair. Topsy, pale and red-eyed, strangled a sob from time to time, and made hardly a pretence of eating. Her husband, too, could do no more than peck feebly at a half-raw cutlet, while his talk (about the funerary customs which grew up under the Kyksos dynasty) had little of its customary sparkle.

Wimsey, on the other hand, urged on by some impulse which he could neither understand nor control, ate enough of the repulsive meal for all three, while yet he shuddered to think of the probable consequences. He sketched in fancy a lyrical dialogue between himself and his digestion.

At length he took himself away, and retired to his sitting-room in college to think over all that he had learned from the Professor before dinner-time, and from his interrogation of Topsy and the servants. The case baffled him.

He sat at his window on the first floor, looking out, in the gathering gloom, upon the velvet lawn and the stately background of fifteenth-century architecture, pierced just opposite his place of observation by a broad, low-pointed archway through which a section of the Front Quad could be faintly discerned. The Aquinas Club, he had been told, were holding their annual dinner that night, by invitation of the Fellows, in the Senior Common Room, and for some time past their proceedings, which were fully choral, had claimed his attention. He heard the tremendous burden of “On Ilkley Moor Baat ’At,” the stirring swing of “Auprès de la Blonde,” the complex cadences of “Green Grow the Rashes Oh!” the noble organ-music of “Slattery’s Mounted Foot,” the crashing staccato of “Still His Whiskers Grew,” the solemn keening of “The Typist’s Farewell.” Once there were indications that a Rhodes Scholar was trying, with as little success as usually waits on his countrymen’s efforts in that direction, to remember the words of his own national anthem.

Then there fell a hush; and it was not until half an hour later that Wimsey’s wrestling with his problem was disturbed by new sounds of academic liveliness in the Front Quad. He gazed expectantly towards the great archway, and presently a slight, pyjamaed figure fled across the darksome frame of vision, pursued by a loose group of obscurer shapes, dimly seen to be white-shirted, and quite plainly heard to yell. Wimsey sighed. The luxurious, self-conscious melancholy of those no longer ridiculously young, but having — with any luck — half a lifetime still before them, possessed him. Elbows on sill, chin in hands, he gazed into the now untenanted gloom, recalling lost binges of old years.

A little later the moon peered out from her curtains of cloud, and Wimsey, finding that his mood demanded some further recapturing of the spirit of a college by night, descended into the Quad and set out on a voyage of discovery. In the wall to his left hand an opening that looked like the doorway to a staircase of rooms, such as he had just quitted, turned out to be the archway of a vaulted passage leading into a tiny square of stone, whose small grated windows and peaked turret recalled one of Dore’s visions of the Paris of Rabelais. From this another entry led to another Quad, of normal size, and thence again he passed to one yet larger, which he could recognize by the battlements on the farther wall as Pateshull Quad.

As Wimsey stood at gaze, imagining what study, what talk, or possibly what chemin-de-fer, might be in progress behind the few windows that still showed lights within, a young man emerged from one of the staircase entries. He was white-shirted, his hair was somewhat disordered, and he carried under one arm an enormous book. This he took to the centre of the gravelled space, then placed it carefully on the ground, and sat upon it. Soon his wandering eye caught sight of Wimsey in the moonlight, and the two inspected one another in silence for some moments. Then the keen instinct of youth told the sitter that the figure before him, slender though it was, must be that of someone of thirty at least, and with instant deference to age and infirmity he rose and waved a hand towards the obese volume on the gravel.

“Won’t you sit down, sir?” he said. “Not enough room for two, I’m afraid, even on Liddell and Scott.”

“Thanks, I’d rather not,” Wimsey said. “I’m staying in your Fellows’ Quad, and I just came out for a stroll before turning in. You have been at the Aquinas dinner, perhaps?”

“Yes,” said the young man. “It was rather progressive, as a dinner — sort of thing makes you feel a trifle listless afterwards — so, if you’re sure you won’t—” He subsided upon his lexicon, then went on: “Young Warlock got it up his nose rather, you see, and went to sleep on the sofa, so we carried him to his rooms and put him to bed. Then the little devil woke up suddenly and got loose, and we had to chase him all over the college before we could get him bedded down again. Now I’m just sitting here for rest and meditation. D’you ever meditate?”

“Oh, often,” said Wimsey. “What were you thinking of meditating upon this time?”

“Housman’s edition of Manilius,” the young man answered, abstractedly removing his collar and tie. “Wonderful chap — Housman, I mean; Manilius was rather a blister. The way Housman pastes the other commentators in the slats does your heart good. I was just concentrating on the way he kicks the stuffing out of Elias Stöber — lovely!”

“Well, I won’t interrupt you,” Wimsey said. “I’m thinking something over myself, as a matter of fact.”

“All right, go to it,” the young man said amiably; then, lifting up his voice in an agreeable baritone, “I never envy a-a-anyone when I’m thinking… thinking… thinking… I say,” he added, “who are you? I’m Mitchell, named Bryan Farrant by my innocent parents; so of course I’m never called anything but B.F.”

“Hard luck! My name’s Wimsey.”

“Not Lord Peter?”

“Yes.”

“Sinful Solomon!” exclaimed the young man. “Here, you simply must confer distinction on my lexicon. I’ll have the cover you sat on framed.”

“No, really,” Wimsey laughed, “I must go. But do you and your friends really read the chronicles of my misspent life, then?”

“I should say we do read them!” cried Mr. Mitchell. “We eat them!”

“How jolly for you — I mean for me — that is to say, for her… oh well, you know what I mean,” Wimsey said distractedly.

“I suppose I do, if you say so,” said Mr. Mitchell without conviction. “You know the lyric there is about you?

“No, I hadn’t heard it,” Wimsey said. “It’s nice to be sublime, anyhow. Well, here I go. Good night.”

“Sweet dreams!” said Mr. Mitchell.

On the Sunday morning Wimsey awoke with that indescribable feeling that something has happened, but one does not know quite what. Mr. Mitchell’s parting wish had been not too exactly fulfilled. Wimsey had dreamed of having his head bitten off by a crocodile, after which he had attended a Yorkshire farmers’ market-day ordinary, and then, in the character of a missionary, had been chased by a cassowary over the plains of Timbuctoo.

He arose unrefreshed. From his bedroom window he perceived a College servant approaching the entrance to his staircase. The hour being no later than seven o’clock, the scout, who was in his shirtsleeves, had a broom over his left shoulder, a teapot in his right hand, an old cap on back to front, and a cigarette behind one of his ears. He was eating.

“What would Bunter say? Perish Bunter!” mused Wimsey ungratefully. “I am in the arms of Alma Mater once more, and this — this is one of the conditions of her kindness. I wonder what that scout is eating. I never saw Bunter eat. Perhaps he never does — it’s a low habit, eating.”

Eating! The term recurred again and again to Wimsey’s mind as he prepared himself for the facing of another day. What was it that was trying to force itself into the realm of consciousness?

An hour later, the scout, looking now much less like a hangman’s assistant, set out for him that Oxford breakfast whose origin is not to be descried through the mists of ages — coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon, toast, butter, marmalade. “And a jolly good breakfast too!” Wimsey reflected. “What was good enough for Duns Scotus and St. Edmund, Roger Bacon and More, Erasmus and Bodley, is good enough for me. And in this holy city I seem always to be hungry. How I always eat at Oxford!”

There again! Back came his mind to eating, though all the year round he would breakfast without a moment’s thought for the alimentary process.

Suddenly Wimsey thrust back his chair from the table. “My dream!” he cried hoarsely, striking his forehead with his hand, which at the moment was holding a spoon filled with marmalade. “Eating! That was the concept which the Unknown I was pushing at the Conscious Me! What did young B.F. say? They eat them!”

Wimsey dashed impetuously from the room.

Scene: The library at the Spoopendyke Professor’s house. Present: Topsy, her husband, Lord Peter Wimsey and the corpse. Armed with a letter-opener taken from the writing-table, Wimsey knelt beside all that was mortal of Dermot, and gently pried apart the firm-set jaws. From the open mouth he drew forth a piece of printed paper, and smoothed it out upon the table-top beside the novel that still lay there, open at a page of which a part had been torn away. In silence he fitted the scrap into its place in the mutilated page, then pointed to the title at its head.

“Strong poison!” he said in a low voice. “Too strong indeed for poor Dermot. Such is the magic of that incisive, compelling style that even the very printed word is saturated with the essence of what it imparts. Others eat her works in a figurative sense only; Dermot began to eat this one in truth and in fact, and so rushed, all unknowingly, to his doom.”

Topsy burst into tears. “Uh! Uh! Uh!” she said. “Why did you leave the bub-bub-book about, Bill? You knew he never could resist an open book.”

“But how was I to know the story was such a powerful one?” the Professor groaned. “I am no judge of any literature later than 1300 b.c.”

Wimsey stood with bowed head. “You have one small consolation,” he said, laying a hand on Topsy’s shoulder. “Death must have been instantaneous. Dear old Dermot!” he mused. “He was a priceless old bird.”

“Well, not exactly priceless,” the Professor said with academic care for the niceties of expression. “Topsy bought him in Caledonian Market for three pounds, including the cage.”

“You ought to have put him bub-bub-back in it when you went out,” Topsy sobbed.

“I know. I shall never forgive myself,” said the Professor dismally. “I did think of it, in fact, but when I suggested it Dermot cursed me so frightfully that I left him at liberty.”

“He was chu-chu-cheap at the money,” Topsy howled. “When once I had heard him sus-sus-swear I would have gone to a fuf-fuf-fiver. I had never heard anything lul-lul-like it.”

“No! Hadn’t you though?” Wimsey was interested. “And you were at Somerville, too.”