“I agree.” Mrs. Whistler put a gentle hand on Johnny’s arm. “Let’s end this unpleasantness without a lot of fuss. I’ll drop this whole thing in exchange for two little favors. I’ve been through a shocking experience. And I hate to say it, but it’s entirely your fault, Mr. Schlag. So I expect MacTavish’s to pay me six thousand four hundred and eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Also, I met a charming woman today-in jail, of all places. Her name is Mrs. Blainey, and-”
“A shoplifter!” Schlag interrupted. “We’ve got a confession.”
“You could drop the charges,” said Mrs. Whistler. “I just couldn’t be happy knowing she was in prison.” Mrs. Whistler smiled brightly. “And when I’m unhappy, only one thing consoles me. Money-lots of it. Five hundred thousand dollars of it.”
“Relax, Dudley,” said the lawyer. “You’ve had it.”
Joyce met them at the door of the apartment. She threw her arms first around Mrs. Whistler, then around Johnny. “You were just wonderful,” she said. “Johnny, I never saw you like that before!”
Johnny blushed modestly. “Routine,” he said.
They celebrated in a small candlelit restaurant. Johnny raised his glass. “Merry Christmas for the Blainey family! Sixty-four hundred will pay off the mortgage on their house.”
Mrs. Whistler nodded. “And I’m getting back the eight eighty-five I spent for that dreadful brooch this morning.” She frowned. “Oh, dear! I forgot about the rent for the Santa costume.”
“What Santa costume?” Joyce asked. But Johnny quickly changed the subject.
THE NECKLACE OF PEARLS by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was perhaps the best English mystery writer of the 1920s. She invented a sort of crossbreed between the novel and the detective story. Lord Peter Wimsey had his debut in 1923, in Whose Body. His popularity was firmly established by Sayers’s second book (1926), Clouds of Witness.
A long list of Wimsey stories, two non-Wimsey mysteries and three excellent anthologies are evidence that Miss Sayers was an expert in the field of crime literature. She never thought much, however, of her mystery career, preferring to pursue her real interest, religious (Church-of-England) literature. In 1947 she announced that she would write no more detective stories.
Sir Septimus Shale was accustomed to assert his authority once in the year, and once only. He allowed his young and fashionable wife to fill his house with diagrammatic furniture made of steel, to collect advanced artists and antigrammatical poets, to believe in cocktails and relativity and to dress as extravagantly as she pleased; but he did insist on an old-fashioned Christmas. He was a simple-hearted man who really liked plum pudding and cracker mottoes, and he could not get it out of his head that other people, “at bottom,” enjoyed these things also. At Christmas, therefore, he firmly retired to his country house in Essex, called in the servants to hang holly and mistletoe upon the cubist electric fittings, loaded the steel sideboard with delicacies from Fortnum & Mason, hung up stockings at the heads of the polished walnut bedsteads, and even, on this occasion only, had the electric radiators removed from the modernist grates and installed wood fires and a Yule log. He then gathered his family and friends about him, filled them with as much Dickensian good fare as he could persuade them to swallow, and, after their Christmas dinner, set them down to play “Charades” and “Clumps” and “Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral” in the drawing-room, concluding these diversions by “Hide-and-Seek” in the dark all over the house. Because Sir Septimus was a very rich man, his guests fell in with this invariable program, and if they were bored, they did not tell him so.
Another charming and traditional custom which he followed was that of presenting to his daughter Margharita, a pearl on each successive birthday-this anniversary happening to coincide with Christmas Eve. The pearls now numbered twenty, and the collection was beginning to enjoy a certain celebrity and had been photographed in the Society papers. Though not sensationally large-each one being about the size of a marrow-fat pea-the pearls were of very great value. They were of exquisite color and perfect shape and matched to a hair’s-weight. On this particular Christmas Eve, the presentation of the twenty-first pearl had been the occasion of a very special ceremony. There was a dance and there were speeches. On the Christmas night, following, the more restricted family party took place, with the turkey and the Victorian games. There were eleven guests in addition to Sir Septimus and Lady Shale and their daughter, nearly all related or connected to them in some way: John Shale, a brother with his wife and their son and daughter, Henry and Betty; Betty’s fiancé, Oswald Truegood a young man with parliamentary ambitions; George Comphrey, a cousin of Lady Shale’s, aged about thirty and known as a man about town; Lavinia Prescott, asked on George’s account; Joyce Trivett, asked on Henry Shale’s account; Richard and Beryl Dennison, distant relations of Lady Shale, who lived a gay and expensive life in town on nobody precisely knew what resources; and Lord Peter Wimsey, asked, in a touching spirit of unreasonable hope, on Margharita’s account. There were also, of course, William Norgate, secretary to Sir Septimus, and Miss Tomkins, secretary to Lady Shale, who had to be there because, without their calm efficiency, the Christmas arrangements could not have been carried through.
Dinner was over-a seemingly endless succession of soup, fish, turkey, roast beef, plum pudding, mince pies, crystallized fruit, nuts, and five kinds of wine, presided over by Sir Septimus, all smiles, by Lady Shale, all mocking deprecation, and by Margharita, pretty and bored, with the necklace of twenty-one pearls gleaming softly on her slender throat. Gorged and dyspeptic and longing only for the horizontal position, the company had been shepherded into the drawing room and set to play “Musical Chairs” (Miss Tomkins at the piano), “Hunt the Slipper” (slipper provided by Miss Tomkins), and “Dumb Crambo” (costumes by Miss Tomkins and Mr. William Norgate). The back drawing room (for Sir Septimus clung to these old-fashioned names) provided an admirable dressing room, being screened by folding doors from the large drawing room, in which the audience sat on aluminum chairs, scrabbling uneasy toes on a floor of black glass under the tremendous illumination of electricity reflected from a brass ceiling.
It was William Norgate who, after taking the temperature of the meeting, suggested to Lady Shale that they should play at something less athletic. Lady Shale agreed and, as usual, suggested bridge. Sir Septimus, as usual, blew the suggestion aside.
“Bridge? Nonsense! Nonsense! Play bridge every day of your lives. This is Christmastime. Something we can all play together. How about ‘Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral’?”
This intellectual pastime was a favorite with Sir Septimus; he was rather good at putting pregnant questions. After a brief discussion, it became evident that this game was an inevitable part of the program. The party settled down to it, Sir Septimus undertaking to “go out” first and set the thing going.
Presently they had guessed, among other things, Miss Tomkin’s mother’s photograph, a gramophone record of “I want to be happy” (much scientific research into the exact composition of records, settled by William Norgate out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica), the smallest stickleback in the stream at the bottom of the garden, the new planet, Pluto, the scarf, worn by Mrs. Dennison (very confusing, because it was not silk, which would be animal, or artificial silk, which would be vegetable, but made of spun glass-mineral, a very clever choice of subject), and had failed to guess the Prime Minister’s wireless speech-which was voted not fair, since nobody could decide whether it was animal by nature or a kind of gas. It was decided that they should do one more word and then go on to “Hide-and-Seek.” Oswald Truegood had retired into the back room and shut the door behind him while the party discussed the next subject of examination, when suddenly Sir Septimus broke in on the argument by calling to ids daughter: