Lady Mary Wimsey, who had arrived late on Christmas Eve, took another view of the matter. She marched into her younger brother’s bedroom at 2 o’clock on the morning of Boxing Day. There had been dinner and dancing and charades of the most exhausting kind. Wimsey was sitting thoughtfully over the fire in his dressing gown.
“I say, old Peter,” said Lady Mary, “you’re being a bit fevered, aren’t you? Anything up?”
“Too much plum-pudding,” said Wimsey, “and too much county. I’m a martyr, that’s what I am – burning in brandy to make a family holiday.”
“Yes, it’s ghastly, isn’t it? But how’s life? I haven’t seen you for an age. You’ve been away such a long time.”
“Yes – and you seem very much taken up with this house-decorating job you’re running.”
“One must do something. I get rather sick of being aimless, you know.”
“Yes. I say, Mary, do you ever see anything of old Parker these days?1
Lady Mary stared into the fire.
“I’ve had dinner with him once or twice, when I was in town.”
“Have you? He’s a very decent sort. Reliable, homespun – that sort of thing. Not amusing, exactly.”
”A little solid.”
“As you say – a little solid.” Wimsey lit a cigarette. “I should hate anything upsettin’ to happen to Parker. He’d take it hard. I mean to say, it wouldn’t be fair to muck about with his feelin’s and so on.”
Mary laughed. “Worried, Peter?”
“N-no. But I’d rather like him to have fair play.”
“Well, Peter – I can’t very well say yes or no till he asks me, can I?”
“Can’t you?”
“Well, not to him. It would upset his ideas of decorum, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it would. But it would probably upset them just as much if he did ask you. He would feel that the mere idea of hearing a butler announce ‘Chief Detective-Inspector and Lady Mary Parker’ would have something shocking about it.”
“It’s stalemate, then, isn’t it?”
“You could stop dining with him.”
“I could do that, of course.”
“And the mere fact that you don’t – I see. Would it be any good if I demanded to know his intentions in the true Victorian manner?”
“Why this sudden thirst for getting your family off your hands, old man? Peter – nobody’s being horrible to you, are they?”
“No, no. I’m just feeling rather like a benevolent uncle, that’s all. Old age creeping on. That passion for being useful which attacks the best of us when we’re getting past our prime.”
“Like me with the house-decorating. I designed these pajamas, by the way. Don’t you think they’re rather entertaining? But I expect Chief-Inspector Parker prefers the old-fashioned night-gown, like Dr. Spooner or whoever it was.”
“That would be a wrench,” said Wimsey.
“Never mind. I’ll be brave and devoted. Here and now I cast off my pajamas for ever!”
“No, no,” said Wimsey, “not here and now. Respect a brother’s feelings. Very well. I am to tell my friend Charles Parker, that if he will abandon his natural modesty and propose, you will abandon your pajamas and say yes.”
“It will be a great shock for Helen, Peter.”
“Blast Helen. I daresay it won’t be the worst shock she’ll get.”
“Peter, you’re plotting something devilish. All right. If you want me to administer the first shock and let her down by degrees – I’ll do it.”
“Right-ho!” said Wimsey, casually.
Lady Mary twisted one arm about his neck and bestowed on him one of her rare sisterly caresses.
“You’re a decent old idiot,” she said, “and you look played-out. Go to bed.”
“Go to blazes,” said Lord Peter amiably.
CHAPTER XIII
Miss Murchison felt a touch of excitement in her well-regulated heart, as she rang the bell of Lord Peter’s flat. It was not caused by the consideration of his title or his wealth or his bachelorhood, for Miss Murchison had been a business woman all her life, and was accustomed to visiting bachelors of all descriptions without giving a second thought to the matter. But his note had been rather exciting.
Miss Murchison was thirty-eight, and plain. She had worked in the same financier’s office for twelve years. They had been good years on the whole, and it was not until the last two that she had even begun to realise that the brilliant financier who juggled with so many spectacular undertakings was juggling for his life under circumstances of increasing difficulty. As the pace grew faster, he added egg after egg to those which were already spinning in the air. There is a limit to the number of eggs which can be spun by human hands. One day an egg slipped and smashed – then another – then a whole omelette of eggs. The juggler fled from the stage and escaped abroad, his chief assistant blew out his brains, the audience booed, the curtain came down, and Miss Murchison, at 37, was out of a job.
She had put an advertisement in the papers and had answered many others. Most people appeared to want their secretaries young and cheap. It was discouraging.
Then her own advertisement had brought an answer, from a Miss Climpson, who kept a typing bureau.
It was not what she wanted, but she went. And she found that it was not quite a typing bureau after all, but something more interesting.
Lord Peter Wimsey, mysteriously at the back of it all, had been abroad when Miss Murchison entered the “Cattery,” and she had never seen him till a few weeks ago. This would be the first time she had actually spoken to him. An odd-looking person, she thought, but people said he had brains. Anyhow -
The door was opened by Bunter, who seemed to expect her and showed her at once into a sitting-room lined with bookshelves. There were some fine prints on the walls, an Aubusson carpet, a grand piano, a vast Chesterfield and a number of deep and cosy chairs, upholstered in brown leather. The curtains were drawn, a wood-fire blazed on the hearth, and before it stood a table, with a silver tea-service whose lovely lines were delightful to the eye.
As she entered, her employer uncoiled himself from the depths of an armchair, put down a black-letter folio which he had been studying and greeted her in the cool, husky and rather languid tones which she had already heard in Mr. Urquhart’s office.
“Frightfully good of you to come round, Miss Murchison. Beastly day, isn’t it? I’m sure you want your tea. Can you eat crumpets? Or would you prefer something more up-to-date?”
“Thanks,” said Miss Murchison, as Bunter hovered obsequiously at her elbow, “I like crumpets very much.”
“Oh, good! Well, Bunter, we’ll struggle with the teapot ourselves. Give Miss Murchison another cushion and then you can toddle off. Back at work, I suppose? How’s our Mr. Urquhart?”
“He’s all right.” Miss Murchison had never been a chatty girl. “There’s one thing I wanted to tell you -”
“Plenty of time,” said Wimsey. “Don’t spoil your tea.” He waited on her with a kind of anxious courtesy which pleased her. She expressed admiration of the big bronze chrysanthemums heaped here and there about the room.
“Oh! I’m glad you like them. My friends say they give a feminine touch to the place, but Bunter sees to it, as a matter of fact. They make a splash of colour and all that, don’t you think?”
“The books look masculine enough.”
“Oh, yes – they’re my hobby, you know. Books – and crime, of course. But crime’s not very decorative, is it? I don’t care about collecting hangmen’s ropes and murderers’ overcoats. What are you to do with ’em? Is the tea all right? I ought to have asked you to pour out, but it always seems to me rather unfair to invite a person and then make her do all the work. What do you do when you’re not working, by the way? Do you keep a secret passion for anything?”
“I go to concerts,” said Miss Murchison. “And when there isn’t a concert I put something on the gramophone.”