The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
By Dorothy L. Sayers.
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Wimsey, Peter Death Bredon, D.S.O.; born 1890, 2nd son of Mortimer Gerald Bredon Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, and of Honoria Lucasta, daughter of Francis Delagardie of Bellingham Manor, Hants.
Educated: Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford (1st class honours, Sch. of Mod. Hist. 1912); served with H.M. Forces 1914/18 (Major, Rifle Brigade).
Author of: “Notes on the Collecting of Incunabula,” “The Murderer’s Vade-Mecum,” etc.
Recreations: Criminology; bibliophily; music; cricket.
Clubs: Marlborough; Egotists’.
Residences: 110A Piccadilly, W.; Bredon Hall, Duke’s Denver, Norfolk.
Arms: Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat couched as to spring, proper; motto: As my Whimsy takes me.
I
Old Mossy-Face
“What in the world, Wimsey, are you doing in this Morgue?” demanded Captain Fentiman, flinging aside the Evening Banner with the air of a man released from an irksome duty.
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it that,” retorted Wimsey, amiably. “Funeral Parlor at the very least. Look at the marble. Look at the furnishings. Look at the palms and the chaste bronze nude in the corner.”
“Yes, and look at the corpses. Place always reminds me of that old thing in Punch, you know—‘Waiter, take away Lord Whatsisname, he’s been dead two days.’ Look at Old Ormsby there, snoring like a hippopotamus. Look at my revered grandpa—dodders in here at ten every morning, collects the Morning Post and the armchair by the fire, and becomes part of the furniture till the evening. Poor old devil. Suppose I’ll be like that one of these days. I wish to God Jerry had put me out with the rest of ’em. What’s the good of coming through for this sort of thing? What’ll you have?”
“Dry martini,” said Wimsey. “And you? Two dry martinis, Fred, please. Cheer up. All this remembrance-day business gets on your nerves, don’t it? It’s my belief most of us would be only too pleased to chuck these community hysterics if the beastly newspapers didn’t run it for all it’s worth. However, it don’t do to say so. They’d hoof me out of the Club if I raised my voice beyond a whisper.”
“They’d do that anyway, whatever you were saying,” said Fentiman, gloomily. “What are you doing here?”
“Waitin’ for Colonel Marchbanks,” said Wimsey. “Bung-ho!”
“Dining with him?”
“Yes.”
Fentiman nodded quietly. He knew that young Marchbanks had been killed at Hill 60, and that the Colonel was wont to give a small, informal dinner on Armistice night to his son’s intimate friends.
“I don’t mind old Marchbanks,” he said, after a pause. “He’s a dear old boy.”
Wimsey assented.
“And how are things going with you?” he asked.
“Oh, rotten as usual. Tummy all wrong and no money. What’s the damn good of it, Wimsey? A man goes and fights for his country, gets his inside gassed out, and loses his job, and all they give him is the privilege of marching past the Cenotaph once a year and paying four shillings in the pound income-tax. Sheila’s queer too—overwork, poor girl. It’s pretty damnable for a man to have to live on his wife’s earnings, isn’t it? I can’t help it, Wimsey. I go sick and have to chuck jobs up. Money—I never thought of money before the War, but I swear nowadays I’d commit any damned crime to get hold of a decent income.”
Fentiman’s voice had risen in nervous excitement. A shocked veteran, till then invisible in a neighboring armchair, poked out a lean head like a tortoise and said “Sh!” viperishly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” said Wimsey, lightly. “Crime’s a skilled occupation, y’know. Even a comparative imbecile like myself can play the giddy sleuth on the amateur Moriarty. If you’re thinkin’ of puttin’ on a false mustache and lammin’ a millionaire on the head, don’t do it. That disgustin’ habit you have of smoking cigarettes down to the last millimeter would betray you
