Murder Must Advertise

Chapter V. Surprising Metamorphosis of Mr. Bredon

Lord Peter Wimsey had paid a call upon Chief-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, who was his brother-in-law.

He occupied a large and comfortable arm-chair in the Chief-Inspectors Bloomsbury flat. Opposite him, curled upon the chesterfield, was his sister, Lady Mary Parker, industriously knitting an infant’s vest. On the window-seat, hugging his knees and smoking a pipe, was Mr. Parker himself. On a convenient table stood a couple of decanters and a soda siphon. On the hearthrug was a large tabby cat. The scene was almost ostentatiously peaceful and domestic.

“So you have become one of the world’s workers, Peter,” said Lady Mary.

“Yes; I’m pulling down four solid quid a week. Amazin’ sensation. First time I’ve ever earned a cent. Every week when I get my pay-envelope, I glow with honest pride.”

Lady Mary smiled, and glanced at her husband, who grinned cheerfully back. The difficulties which are apt to arise when a poor man marries a rich wife had, in their case, been amicably settled by an ingenious arrangement, under which all Lady Mary’s money had been handed over to her brothers in trust for little Parkers to come, the trustee having the further duty of doling out each quarter to the wife a sum precisely equal to the earnings of the husband during that period. Thus a seemly balance was maintained between the two principals; and the trifling anomaly that Chief-Inspector Parker was actually a mere pauper in comparison with small Charles Peter and still smaller Mary Lucasta, now peacefully asleep in their cots on the floor above, disturbed nobody one whit. It pleased Mary to have the management of their moderate combined income, and incidentally did her a great deal of good. She now patronized her wealthy brother with all the superiority which the worker feels over the man who merely possesses money.

“But what is the case all about, exactly?” demanded Parker.

“Blest if I know,” admitted Wimsey, frankly. “I got hauled into it through Freddy Arbuthnot’s wife-Rachel Levy that was, you know. She knows old Pym, and he met her at dinner somewhere and told her about this letter that was worrying him, and she said, Why not get somebody in to investigate it, and he said, Who? So she said she knew somebody-not mentioning my name, you see-and he said would she ask him to buzz along, so I buzzed and there I am.”

“Your narrative style,” said Parker, “though racy, is a little elliptical. Could you not begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, and then, if you are able to, stop?”

“I’ll try,” said his lordship, “but I always find the stopping part of the business so difficult. Well, look! On a Monday afternoon-the 25th of May, to be particular, a young man, Victor Dean by name, employed as a copy-writer in the firm of Pym’s Publicity, Ltd., Advertising Agents, fell down an iron spiral staircase on their premises, situated in the upper part of Southampton Row, and died immediately of injuries received, to wit: one broken neck, one cracked skull, one broken leg and minor cuts and contusions, various. The time of this disaster was, as nearly as can be ascertained, 3.30 in the afternoon.”

“Hum!” said Parker. “Pretty extensive injuries for a fall of that kind.”

“So I thought, before I saw the staircase. To proceed. On the day after this occurrence, the sister of deceased sends to Mr. Pym a fragment of a half-finished letter which she has found on her brother’s desk. It warns him that there is something of a fishy nature going on in the office. The letter is dated about ten days previous to the death, and appears to have been laid aside as though the writer wanted to think over the wording a bit more carefully. Very good. Now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality-except, of course, as regards his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money-”

“How about truth in advertising?”

“Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There’s yeast in bread, but you can’t make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising,” announced Lord Peter sententiously, “is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Which incidentally brings me to the delicate and important distinction between the words ‘with’ and ‘from.’ Suppose you are advertising lemonade, or, not to be invidious, we will say perry. If you say ‘Our perry is made from fresh-plucked pears only,’ then it’s got to be made from pears only, or the statement is actionable; if you just say it is made ‘from pears,’ without the ‘only,’ the betting is that it is probably made chiefly of pears; but if you say, ‘made with pears,’ you generally mean that you use a peck of pears to a ton of turnips, and the law cannot touch you-such are the niceties of our English tongue.”

“Make a note, Mary, next time you go shopping, and buy nothing that is not ‘from, only.’ Proceed, Peter-and let us have a little less of your English tongue.”

“Yes. Well, here is a young man who starts to write a warning letter. Before he can complete it, he falls downstairs and is killed. Is that, or is it not, a darned suspicious circumstance?”

“So suspicious that it is probably the purest coincidence. But since you have a fancy for melodrama, we will allow it to be suspicious. Who saw him die?”

“I, said the fly. Meaning one Mr. Atkins and one Mrs. Crump, who saw the fall from below, and one Mr. Prout who saw it from above. All their evidence is interesting. Mr. Prout says that the staircase was well-lit, and that deceased was not going extra fast, while the others say that he fell all of a heap, forwards, clutching The Times Atlas in so fierce a grip that it could afterwards hardly be prised from his fingers. What does that suggest to you?”

“Only that the death was instantaneous, which it would be if one broke one’s neck.”

“I know. But look here! You are going downstairs and your foot slips. What happens? Do you crumple forwards and dive down head first? Or do you sit down suddenly on your tail and do the rest of the journey that way?”

“It depends. If it was actually a slip, I should probably come down on my tail. But if I tripped, I should very likely dive forwards. You can’t tell, without knowing just how it happened.”

“All right. You always have an answer. Well, now-do you clutch what you’re carrying with a deathly grip-or do you chuck it, and try to save yourself by grabbing hold of the banisters?”

Mr. Parker paused. “I should probably grab,” he said, slowly, “unless I was carrying a tray full of crockery, or anything. And even then… I don’t know. Perhaps it’s an instinct to hold on to what one’s got. But equally it’s an instinct to try and save one’s self. I don’t know. All this arguing about what you and I would do and what the reasonable man would do is very unsatisfactory.”

Wimsey groaned. “Put it this way, doubting Thomas. If the death-grip was due to instantaneous rigor, he must have been dead so quickly that he couldn’t think of saving himself. Now, there are two possible causes of death-the broken neck, which he must have got when he pitched on his head at the bottom, and the crack on the temple, which is attributed to his hitting his skull on one of the knobs on the banisters. Now, falling down a staircase isn’t like falling off a roof-you do it in instalments, and have time to think about it. If he killed himself by hitting the banisters, he must have fallen first and hit himself afterwards. The same thing applies, with still more force, to his breaking his neck. Why, when he felt himself going, didn’t he drop everything and break his fall?”

“I know what you want me to say,” said Parker. “That he was sandbagged first and dead before he fell. But I don’t see it. I say he would have caught his toe in something and tripped forwards and struck his head straight away and died of that. There’s nothing impossible about it.”

“Then I’ll try again. How’s this? That same evening, Mrs. Crump, the head charwoman, picked up this onyx scarab in the passage, just beneath the iron staircase. It is, as you see, rounded and smooth and heavy for its size, which is much about that of the iron knobs on the staircase. It has, as you also see, a slight chip on one side. It belonged to the dead man, who was accustomed to carry it in his waistcoat pocket or keep it sitting on the desk beside him while he worked. What about it?”

“I should say it fell from his pocket when he fell.”

“And the chip?”

“If it wasn’t there before-”

“It wasn’t; his sister says she’s sure it wasn’t.”

“Then it got chipped in falling.”

“You think that?”

“I do.”

“I think you were meant to think that. To continue: some few days earlier, Mrs. Crump found a smooth pebble of much the same size as the scarab lying in the same passage at the foot of the iron staircase.”

“Did she?” said Parker. He uncurled himself from the window-seat and made for the decanters. “What does she say about it?”

“Says that you’d scarcely believe the queer odds and ends she finds when she’s cleaning out the office. Attributes the stone to Mr. Atkins, he having taken his seaside holiday early on account of ill-health.”

“Well,” said Parker, releasing the lever of the soda-siphon, “and why not?”

“Why not, indeed? This other pebble, which I here produce, was found by me on the roof to the lavatory. I had to shin down a pipe to get it, and ruined a pair of flannel bags.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Okay, captain. That’s where I found it. I also found a place where the paint had been chipped off the skylight.”

“What skylight?”

“The skylight that is directly over the iron staircase. It’s one of those pointed things, like a young greenhouse, and it has windows that open all around-you know the kind I mean-which are kept open in hot weather. It was hot weather when young Dean departed this life.”

“The idea being that somebody heaved a stone at him through the skylight?”

“You said it, chief. Or, to be exact, not a stone, but the stone. Meaning the scarab.”

“And how about the other stones?”

“Practice shots. I’ve ascertained that the office is always practically empty during the lunch-hour. Nobody much ever goes on the roof, except the office-boys for their P.J.’s at 8.30 ack emma.”

“People who live in glass skylights shouldn’t throw stones. Do you mean to suggest that by chucking a small stone like this at a fellow, you’re going to crack his skull open and break his neck for him?”

“Not if you just throw it, of course. But how about a sling or a catapult?”

“Oh, in that case, you’ve only got to ask the people in the neighbouring offices if they’ve seen anybody enjoying a spot of David and Goliath exercise on Pym’s roof, and you’ve got him.”

“It’s not as simple as that. The roof’s quite a good bit higher than the roofs of the surrounding buildings, and it has a solid stone parapet all round about three feet high-to give an air of still greater magnificence, I suppose. To sling a stone through on to the iron staircase you’d have to kneel down in a special position between that skylight and the next, and you can’t be seen from anywhere-unless somebody happened to be on the staircase looking up-which nobody obviously was, except Victor Dean, poor lad. It’s safe as houses.”

“Very well, then. Find out if any member of the staff has frequently stayed in at lunch-time.”

Wimsey shook his head.

“No bon. The staff clock in every morning, but there are no special tabs kept on them at 1 o’clock. The reception clerk goes out to his lunch, and one of the elder boys takes his place at the desk, just in case any message or parcel comes in, but he’s not there necessarily every moment of the time. Then there’s the lad who hops round with Jeyes’ Fluid in a squirt, but he doesn’t go on to the roof. There’s nothing to prevent anybody from going up, say at half past twelve, and staying there till he’s done his bit of work and then simply walking out down the staircase. The lift-man, or his locum tenens, would be on duty, but you’ve only to keep on the blind side of the lift as you pass and he couldn’t possibly see you. Besides, the lift might quite well have gone down to the basement. All the bloke would have to do would just be to bide his time and walk out. There’s nothing in it. Similarly, on the day of the death. He goes through towards the lavatory, which is reached from the stairs. When the coast is clear, he ascends to the roof. He lurks there, till he sees his victim start down the iron staircase, which everybody does, fifty times a day. He whangs off his bolt and departs. Everybody is picking up the body and exclaiming over it, when in walks our friend, innocently, from the lav. It’s as simple as pie.”

“Wouldn’t it be noticed, if he was out of his own room all that time?”

“My dear old man, if you knew Pym’s! Everybody is always out of his room; if he isn’t chatting with the copy-department, or fooling round the typists, he’s in the studio, clamouring for a lay-out, or in the printing, complaining about a folder, or in the press-department, inquiring about an appropriation, or in the vouchers, demanding back numbers of something, or if he isn’t in any of those places, he’s somewhere else-slipping out for surreptitious coffee or haircuts. The word ‘alibi’ has no meaning in a place like Pym’s.”

“You’re going to have a lovely time with it all, I can see that,” said Parker. “But what sort of irregularity could possibly be going on in a place like that, which would lead to murder?”

“Now we’re coming to it. Young Dean used to tag round with the de Momerie crowd-”

Parker whistled.

“Sinning above his station in life?”

“Very much so. But you know Dian de Momerie. She gets more kick out of corrupting the bourgeois-she enjoys the wrestle with their little consciences. She’s a bad lot, that girl. I took her home last night, so I ought to know.”

“Peter!” said Lady Mary. “Quite apart from your morals, which alarm me, how did you get into that gang? I should have thought they’d as soon have taken up with Charles, here, or the Chief Commissioner.”

“Oh, I went incog. A comedy of masks. And you needn’t worry about my morals. The young woman became incapably drunk on the way home, so I pushed her inside her dinky little maisonette in Garlic Mews and tucked her up on a divan in the sitting-room to astonish her maid in the morning. Though she’s probably past being astonished. But the point is that I found out a good bit about Victor Dean.”

“Just a moment,” interrupted Parker, “did he dope?”

“Apparently not, though I’ll swear it wasn’t Dian’s fault if he didn’t. According to his sister, he was too strong-minded. Possibly he tried it once and felt so rotten that he didn’t try it again… Yes-I know what you’re thinking. If he was dopey, he might have fallen downstairs on his own account. But I don’t think that’ll work. These things have a way of coming out at post-mortems. The question was raised… no; it wasn’t that.”

“Did Dian have any opinion on the subject?”

“She said he wasn’t a sport. All the same, she seems to have kept him in tow from about the end of November to the end of April-nearly six months, and that’s a long time for Dian. I wonder what the attraction was. I suppose the whelp must have had something engaging about him.”

“Is that the sister’s story?”

“Yes; but she says that Victor ‘had great ambitions.’ I don’t quite know what she thinks he meant by that.”

“I suppose she realized that Dian was his mistress. Or wasn’t she?”

“Must have been. But I rather gather his sister thought he was contemplating matrimony.”

Parker laughed.

“After all,” said Lady Mary, “he probably didn’t tell his sister everything.”

“Damned little, I should imagine. She was quite honestly upset by last night’s show. Apparently the party Dean took her to wasn’t quite so hot. Why did he take her? That’s another problem. He said he wanted her to meet Dian, and no doubt the kid imagined she was being introduced to a future-in-law. But Dean-you’d think he’d want to keep his sister out of it. He couldn’t, surely, really have wanted to corrupt her, as Willis said.”

“Who is Willis?”

“Willis is a young man who foams at the mouth if you mention Victor Dean, who was once Victor Dean’s dearest friend, who is in love with Victor Dean’s sister, is furiously jealous of me, thinks I’m tarred with the same brush as Victor Dean, and dogs my footsteps with the incompetent zeal of fifty Watsons. He writes copy about face-cream and corsets, is the son of a provincial draper, was educated at a grammar school and wears, I deeply regret to say, a double-breasted waistcoat. That is the most sinister thing about him-except that he admits to having been in the lavatory when Victor Dean fell downstairs, and the lavatory, as I said before, is the next step to the roof.”

“Who else was in the lavatory?”

“I haven’t asked him yet. How can I? It’s horribly hampering to one’s detective work when one isn’t supposed to be detecting, because one daren’t ask any questions, much. But if whoever it was knew I was detecting, then whatsoever questions I asked, I shouldn’t get any answers. It wouldn’t matter if only I had the foggiest notion whom or what I was detecting, but looking among about a hundred people for the perpetrator of an unidentified crime is rather difficult.”

“I thought you were looking for a murderer.”

“So I am-but I don’t think I shall ever get the murderer till I know why the murder was done. Besides, what Pym engaged me to do was to look for the irregularity in the office. Of course, murder is an irregularity, but it’s not the one I’m commissioned to hunt for. And the only person I can fix a motive for the murder on to is Willis-and it’s not the sort of motive I’m looking for.”

“What was Willis’s row with Dean?”

“Damn silliest thing in the world. Willis used to go home with Dean at week-ends. Dean lived in a flat with his sister, by the way-no parents or anything. Willis fell in love with sister. Sister wasn’t sure about him. Dean took sister to one of Dian’s hot parties. Willis found out. Willis, being a boob, talked to sister like a Dutch uncle. Sister called Willis a disgusting, stuck-up, idiotic, officious prig. Willis rebuked Dean. Dean told Willis to go to hell. Loud row. Sister joined in. Dean family united in telling Willis to go and bury himself. Willis told Dean that if he (Dean) persisted in corrupting his (Dean’s) sister he (Willis) would shoot him like a dog. His very words, or so I am told.”

“Willis,” said Mary, “appears to think in clichés.”

“Of course he does-that’s why he writes such good corset-copy. Anyhow, there it was. Dean and Willis at daggers drawn for three months. Then Dean fell downstairs. Now Willis has started on me. I told off Pamela Dean to take him home last night, but I don’t know what came of it. I’ve explained to her that those hot-stuff parties are genuinely dangerous, and that Willis has some method in his madness, though a prize juggins as regards tact and knowledge of the sex. It was frightfully comic to see old Willis sneaking in after us in a sort of Ku Klux Klan outfit-incredibly stealthy, and wearing the same shoes he wears in the office and a seal-ring on his little finger that one could identify from here to the Monument.”

“Poor lad! I suppose it wasn’t Willis who tipped friend Dean down the stairs?”

“I don’t think so, Polly-but you never know. He’s such a melodramatic ass. He might consider it a splendid sin. But I don’t think he’d have had the brains to work out the details. And if he had done it, I fancy he’d have gone straight round to the police-station, smitten the double-breasted waistcoat a resounding blow and proclaimed ‘I did it, in the cause of purity.’ But against that, there’s the undoubted fact that Dean’s connection with Dian and Co. definitely came to an end in April-so why should he wait till the end of May to strike the blow? The row with Dean took place in March.”

“Possibly, Peter, the sister has been leading you up the garden. The connection may not have stopped when she said it did. She may have kept it up on her own. She may even be a drug-taker or something herself. You never know.”

“No; but generally one can make a shrewd guess. No; I don’t think there’s anything like that wrong with Pamela Dean. I’ll swear her disgust last night was genuine. It was pretty foul, I must say. By the way, Charles, where the devil do these people get their stuff from? There was enough dope floating about that house to poison a city.”

“If I knew that,” said Mr. Parker, sourly, “I should be on velvet. All I can tell you is, that it’s coming in by the boatload from somewhere or other, and is being distributed broadcast from somewhere or other. The question is, where? Of course, we could lay hands tomorrow on half a hundred of the small distributors, but where would be the good of that? They don’t know themselves where it comes from, or who handles it. They all tell the same tale. It’s handed to them in the street by men they’ve never seen before and couldn’t identify again. Or it’s put in their pockets in omnibuses. It isn’t always that they won’t tell; they honestly don’t know. And if you did catch the man immediately above them in the scale, he would know nothing either. It’s heartbreaking. Somebody must be making millions out of it.”

“Yes. Well, to go back to Victor Dean. Here’s another problem. He was pulling down six pounds a week at Pym’s. How does one manage to run with the de Momerie crowd on £300 a year? Even if he wasn’t much of a sport, it couldn’t possibly be done for nothing.”

“Probably he lived on Dian.”

“Possibly he did, the little tick. On the other hand, I’ve got an idea. Suppose he really did think he had a chance of marrying into the aristocracy-or what he imagines to be the aristocracy. After all, Dian is a de Momerie, though her people have shown her the door, and you can’t blame them. Put it that he was spending far more than he could afford in trying to keep up the running. Put it that it took longer than he thought and that he had got heavily dipped. And then see what that half-finished letter to Pym looks like in the light of that theory.”

“Well,” began Parker.

“Oh, do step on the gas!” broke in Mary. “How you two darlings do love going round and round a subject, don’t you? Blackmail, of course. It’s perfectly obvious. I’ve seen it coming for the last hour. This Dean creature is looking round for a spot of extra income and he discovers somebody at Pym’s doing something he shouldn’t-the head-cashier cooking the accounts, or the office-boy pilfering from the petty cash, or something. So he says, ‘If you don’t square me, I’ll tell Pym,’ and starts to write a letter. Probably, you know, he never meant that letter to get to Mr. Pym, at all; it was just a threat. The other man stops him for the moment by paying up something on account. Then he thinks: This is hopeless, I’d better slug the little beast.’ So he slugs him. And there you are.”

“Just as simple as that,” said Wimsey.

“Of course it’s simple, only men love to make mysteries.”

“And women love to jump to conclusions.”

“Never mind the generalizations,” said Parker, “they always lead to bad reasoning. Where do I come into all this?”

“You give me your advice, and stand by ready to rally round with your myrmidons in case there’s any roughhousing. By the way, I can give you the address of that house we went to last night. Dope and gambling to be had for the asking, to say nothing of nameless orgies.”

He mentioned the address and the Chief-Inspector made a note of it. “Though we can’t do much,” he admitted. “It’s a private house, belonging to a Major Milligan. We’ve had our eye on it for some time. And even if we could get in on it, it probably wouldn’t help us to what we want. I don’t suppose there’s a soul in that gang who knows where the dope comes from. Still, it’s something to have definite evidence that that’s where it goes. By the way, we got the goods on that couple you helped us to arrest the other night. They’ll probably get seven years.”

“Good. I was pretty nearly had that time, though. Two of Pym’s typists were fooling round and recognized me. I gave them a fishy stare and explained next morning that I had a cousin who closely resembled me. That notorious fellow Wimsey, of course. It’s a mistake to be too well known.”

“If the de Momerie crowd get wise to you, you’ll find yourself in Queer Street,” said Parker. “How did you get so pally with Dian?”

“Dived off a fountain into a fish-pond. It pays to advertise. She thinks I’m the world’s eighth wonder. Absolutely the lobster’s dress-shirt.”

“Well, don’t kill yourself,” said Mary, gently. “We rather like you, and small Peter couldn’t spare his best uncle.”

“It will do you no end of good,” remarked his brother-in-law, callously, “to have a really difficult case for once. When you’ve struggled for a bit with a death that might have been caused by anybody for any imaginable motive, you may be less sniffy and superior about the stray murders all over the country that the police so notoriously fail to avenge. I hope it will be a lesson to you. Have another spot?”

‘Thanks; I’ll try to profit by it. In the meantime, I’ll go on gulling the public and being Mr. Bredon, to be heard of at your address. And let me know of any developments with the Momerie-Milligan lot.”

“I will. Should you care to make one in our next dope-raid?”

“Sure thing. When do you expect it?”

“We’ve had information about cocaine-smuggling on the Essex coast. Worst thing the Government ever did was to abolish the coast-guard service. It doubles our trouble, especially with all these privately-owned motor-boats about. If you’re out for an evening’s fun any time, you could come along-and you might bring that car of yours. It’s faster than anything we’ve got.”

“I see. Two for yourselves and one for me. Right you are. I’m on. Send me a line any time. I cease work at 5.30.”

In the meantime, three hearts were being wrung on Mr. Death Bredon’s account.

Miss Pamela Dean was washing a pair of silk stockings in her solitary flat.

“Last night was rather marvellous… I suppose I oughtn’t to have enjoyed it, with poor old Victor only just buried, the darling… but, of course, I really went for Victor’s sake… I wonder if that detective man will find out anything about it… he didn’t say much, but I believe he thinks there was something funny about Victor being killed like that… anyhow, Victor suspected there was something wrong, and he’d want me to do everything I could to ferret it out… I didn’t know private detectives were like that… I thought they were nasty, furtive little men… vulgar… I like his voice… and his hands… oh, dear! there’s a hole… I’ll have to catch it together before it runs up the instep… and beautiful manners, only I’m afraid he was cross with me for coming to Pym’s… he must be fearfully athletic to climb up that fountain… he swims like a fish… my new bathing-dress… sun-bathing… thank goodness I’ve got decent legs… I’ll really have to get some more stockings, these won’t go on much longer… I wish I didn’t look so washed-out in black… Poor Victor!… I wonder what I can possibly do with Alec Willis… if only he wasn’t such a prig… I don’t mind Mr. Bredon… he’s quite right about that crowd being no good, but then he really knows what he’s talking about, and it isn’t just prejudice… Why will Alec be so jealous and tiresome?… And looking so silly in that black thing… following people about… Incompetent-I do like people to be competent,… Mr. Bredon looks terribly competent… no, he doesn’t exactly look it, but he is… he looks as though he never did anything but go to dinner-parties… I suppose high-class detectives have to look like that… Alec would make a rotten detective… I don’t like ill-tempered men… I wonder what happened when Mr. Bredon went off with Dian de Momerie… she is beautiful… damn her, she’s lovely,… she does drink an awful lot… they say it makes you look old before your time… you get coarse… my complexion’s all right, but I’m not the fashionable type… Dian de Momerie is perfectly crazy about people who do mad things… I don’t like aluminium blondes… I wonder if I could get an aluminium bleach…”

Alec Willis, hammering a rather hard pillow into a more comfortable shape in his boarding-house bedroom, sought slumber in vain:

“Gosh! what a head I had this morning… that damned, sleek brute!… there’s something up between Pamela and him… helping her with some business of Victor’s my foot!… He’s out to make trouble… and going off with that white-headed bitch… it’s a damned insult… of course Pamela would lick his boots… women… put up with anything… wish I hadn’t had all those drinks… damn this bed! damn this foul place… I’ll have to chuck Pym’s… it isn’t safe… Murder?… anybody interfering with Pamela… Pamela… She wouldn’t let me kiss her… that swine Bredon… down the iron staircase… get my hands on his throat… What a hope! damned posturing acrobat… Pamela… I’d like to show her… money, money, money… if I wasn’t so damned hard up… Dean was a little squirt anyway… I only told her the truth… blast all women!… They like rotters… I haven’t paid for that last suit… oh, hell! I wish I hadn’t had those drinks… I forgot to get any bicarbonate… I haven’t paid for those boots… all those naked women in the swimming-pool… black and silver… he spotted me, damn his eyes!… ‘Hullo, Willis!’ this morning, as cool as a fish… dives like a fish… fish don’t dive… fish don’t sleep… or do they?… I can’t sleep… ‘Macbeth hath murdered sleep.’… Murder… down the iron staircase… get my hands on his throat… oh, damn! damn! damn!…”

Dian de Momerie was dancing:

“My God! I’m bored… Get off my feet, you clumsy cow… Money, tons of money… but I’m bored… Can’t we do something else?… I’m sick of that tune… I’m sick of everything… he’s working up to get all mushy… suppose I’d better go through with it… I was sozzled last night… wonder where the Harlequin man went to… wonder who he was… that little idiot Pamela Dean… these women… I’ll have to make up to her, I suppose, if I’m ever to get his address… I got him away from her, any old how… wish I hadn’t been so squiffy… I can’t remember… climbing up the fountain… black and silver… he’s got a lovely body… I think he could give me a thrill… my God! how bored I am… he’s exciting… rather mysterious… I’ll have to write to Pamela Dean… silly little fool… expect she hates me… rather a pity I chucked little Victor… fell downstairs and broke his silly neck… damn good riddance… ring her up… she’s not on the ’phone… so suburban not to be on the ’phone… if this tune goes on, I shall scream… Milligan’s drinks are rotten… why does one go there?… Must do something… Harlequin… don’t even know his name… Weedon… Leader… something or other… oh, hell! perhaps Milligan knows… I can’t stand this any longer… black and silver… thank God! That’s over!”

All over London the lights flickered in and out, calling on the public to save its body and purse: SOPO SAVES SCRUBBING-NUTRAX FOR NERVES-CRUNCHLETS ARE CRISPER-EAT PIPER PARRITCH-DRINK POMPAYNE-ONE WHOOSH AND IT’S CLEAN-OH, BOY! IT’S TOMBOY TOFFEE-NOURISH NERVES WITH NUTRAX-PARLEY’S FOOTWEAR TAKES YOU FURTHER-IT ISNT DEAR, IT’S DARLING-DARLING’S FOR HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES-MAKE ALL SAFE WITH SANFECT-WHIFFLETS FASCINATE. The presses, thundering and growling, ground out the same appeals by the millions: ASK YOUR GROCER-ASK YOUR DOCTOR-ASK THE MAN WHO’S TRIED IT-MOTHERS! GIVE IT TO YOUR CHILDREN-HOUSEWIVES! SAVE MONEY-HUSBANDS! INSURE YOUR LIVES-WOMEN! DO YOU REALIZE?-DON’T SAY SOAP, SAY SOPO! Whatever you’re doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you’re buying, pause and buy something different! Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up! Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied. If once you are satisfied, all our wheels will run down. Keep going-and if you can’t, try Nutrax for Nerves!

Lord Peter Wimsey went home and slept.