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nineveh_ukLine of the week, from Growing Up by Angela Thirkell, 1943:
“I do adore cocks,” said Lydia, “but I’m married now.”
Another Sayers-didn’t-writes, lines from the original text obviously not my own, mild spoiler warnings apply, although not who/what/howdunnit. This is not a project I ought to have started just before moving, with work becoming horribly hectic, especially when I had ideas, even text, for the ones at the end, but not for the ones in the middle.
Unnatural Death
‘All the same,’ urged the nondescript young man, dubiously extracting a bubbling-hot Helix Pomatia from its shell, and eyeing it nervously before putting it in his mouth, ‘if he thought the young woman was being murdered, surely it’s a clear case of public duty to voice one’s suspicions?’
‘Of your duty, Charles – yes’ said the young man with the monocle. ‘By the way, it’s not a public duty to eat snails if you don’t like ‘em.’
‘It’s not the taste –’ Charles began, before putting his hand to his mouth with an unpleasant coughing sound and knocking over his chair in his hasty retreat to the lavatory door, concealed behind a Chinese-painted screen. The young man with the monocle fixed the snails with an inquisitorial eye, murmured to the waiter, who also followed the screened route, and leapt into the kitchen.
Hearing the row erupting behind the swing doors, an early crash and splash followed by the sound of swearing in a continental tongue, the thin-faced young doctor at the next table, who had been eavesdropping with quiet interest, mentally totted up his bill, shoved some coins on the table and slipped out of the door.
‘Don’t want to get caught in a dubious case,’ he muttered to himself. ‘After the Dawson affair, another one’d be the end of me.’
*
‘I’ve been wondering,’ said Charles, lying quietly in the hospital bed in which he had been induced to remain by the prospect of a visit on the morrow from Lady Mary Wimsey, ‘how you knew so quickly that it was the chef who had poisoned the snails, and not the waiter. He had the better opportunity, after all.’
‘Undoubtedly, but it’s not so hard for a chef in a crowded kitchen to find a moment to slip a few drops of the Noxious Substance into the chosen molluscs, and besides, the waiter had no motive for poisoning me, whereas it seems that M. Dubois far from letting bygones be bygones and learnin’ from experience, has not forgiven me for those six months in stir over the Red Lion, but been nourishin’ most unsavoury feelin’s of vengeance in an unexpectedly fiery bosom.’
‘You knew that Dubois was in the kitchen, then?’
‘Of course – no other man could have induced me to venture on the tripe. But even so, it had to be the chef, because even were the waiter not an elderly Cockney of - these days - irreproachable virtue, he took the order and had he meant to do the deed best done quickly, would have popped the poison in the proper platter, and not on the unhappy Helix. Whereas the chef, having only the orders to work from, naturally assumed that the officer of the law was the chap on the plain diet, and the decadent aristocrat intending to chomp on the beast that crawls on the ground.’
‘You are still assuming,’ said Charles in somewhat peevish tones, ‘that the poison was intended for you. I suppose a mere policeman who will never touch snails again shouldn’t presume to more than a cosh in a dark alley?’
‘Nonsense, Charles acushla. I have no doubt that the length and breadth of the dark jungle of criminal London is stuffed to the gills with ingenious types just itching to put you away by foul and unnatural means. But in a restaurant staffed entirely by ex-criminals, some not insubstantial number of whom yours truly has been shall we say instrumental in roughly wooing from their former way of life, I regret to say that I am the obvious target. Oh, didn’t I tell you? It’s my other defence against the lampposts of the revolution.’
“I do adore cocks,” said Lydia, “but I’m married now.”
Another Sayers-didn’t-writes, lines from the original text obviously not my own, mild spoiler warnings apply, although not who/what/howdunnit. This is not a project I ought to have started just before moving, with work becoming horribly hectic, especially when I had ideas, even text, for the ones at the end, but not for the ones in the middle.
Unnatural Death
‘All the same,’ urged the nondescript young man, dubiously extracting a bubbling-hot Helix Pomatia from its shell, and eyeing it nervously before putting it in his mouth, ‘if he thought the young woman was being murdered, surely it’s a clear case of public duty to voice one’s suspicions?’
‘Of your duty, Charles – yes’ said the young man with the monocle. ‘By the way, it’s not a public duty to eat snails if you don’t like ‘em.’
‘It’s not the taste –’ Charles began, before putting his hand to his mouth with an unpleasant coughing sound and knocking over his chair in his hasty retreat to the lavatory door, concealed behind a Chinese-painted screen. The young man with the monocle fixed the snails with an inquisitorial eye, murmured to the waiter, who also followed the screened route, and leapt into the kitchen.
Hearing the row erupting behind the swing doors, an early crash and splash followed by the sound of swearing in a continental tongue, the thin-faced young doctor at the next table, who had been eavesdropping with quiet interest, mentally totted up his bill, shoved some coins on the table and slipped out of the door.
‘Don’t want to get caught in a dubious case,’ he muttered to himself. ‘After the Dawson affair, another one’d be the end of me.’
*
‘I’ve been wondering,’ said Charles, lying quietly in the hospital bed in which he had been induced to remain by the prospect of a visit on the morrow from Lady Mary Wimsey, ‘how you knew so quickly that it was the chef who had poisoned the snails, and not the waiter. He had the better opportunity, after all.’
‘Undoubtedly, but it’s not so hard for a chef in a crowded kitchen to find a moment to slip a few drops of the Noxious Substance into the chosen molluscs, and besides, the waiter had no motive for poisoning me, whereas it seems that M. Dubois far from letting bygones be bygones and learnin’ from experience, has not forgiven me for those six months in stir over the Red Lion, but been nourishin’ most unsavoury feelin’s of vengeance in an unexpectedly fiery bosom.’
‘You knew that Dubois was in the kitchen, then?’
‘Of course – no other man could have induced me to venture on the tripe. But even so, it had to be the chef, because even were the waiter not an elderly Cockney of - these days - irreproachable virtue, he took the order and had he meant to do the deed best done quickly, would have popped the poison in the proper platter, and not on the unhappy Helix. Whereas the chef, having only the orders to work from, naturally assumed that the officer of the law was the chap on the plain diet, and the decadent aristocrat intending to chomp on the beast that crawls on the ground.’
‘You are still assuming,’ said Charles in somewhat peevish tones, ‘that the poison was intended for you. I suppose a mere policeman who will never touch snails again shouldn’t presume to more than a cosh in a dark alley?’
‘Nonsense, Charles acushla. I have no doubt that the length and breadth of the dark jungle of criminal London is stuffed to the gills with ingenious types just itching to put you away by foul and unnatural means. But in a restaurant staffed entirely by ex-criminals, some not insubstantial number of whom yours truly has been shall we say instrumental in roughly wooing from their former way of life, I regret to say that I am the obvious target. Oh, didn’t I tell you? It’s my other defence against the lampposts of the revolution.’