The Five Red Herrings (Lord Peter Wimsey, #7)

by Dorothy L. Sayers

To boast loudly in public of one’s own country seemed to him indecent – like enlarging on the physical perfections of one’s own wife in a smoking room. He listened with that tolerant, petrified smile which the foreigner takes, and indeed quite correctly takes, to indicate a self-satisfaction so impervious that it will not even trouble to justify itself.

The road from Kirkcudbright to Newton-Stewart is of a varied loveliness hard to surpass, and with a sky full of bright sun and rolling cloud-banks, hedges filled with flowers, a well-made road, a lively engine and the prospect of a good corpse at the end of it, Lord Peter’s cup of happiness was full. He was a man who loved simple pleasures.

He noticed that Campbell used a simple palette of few colours, and this pleased him, for he liked to see economy of means allied with richness of result.

Call this a Socialist Government. Things were harder than ever for a working man, and as for Jimmy Thomas, he had sold himself, lock, stock and barrel, to the capitalists.

‘Really, Bunter,’ said Wimsey, ‘your narrative style would do credit to the Castle of Otranto.’ ‘Thank you, my lord. I am only acquainted by repute with the work you mention, but I understand that it enjoyed a considerable vogue in its day.

‘Bunter,’ said Wimsey, ‘this case resembles the plot of a Wilkie Collins novel, in which everything happens just too late to prevent the story from coming to a premature happy ending.’

‘I know,’ said Graham. ‘It reminds me of what the good lady said about Hamlet – that it was all quotations.’ ‘G. K. Chesterton says,’ put in Wimsey, ‘that most people with a very well-defined style write at times what looks like bad parodies of themselves.