The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Lord Peter Wimsey #5)

by Dorothy L. Sayers

“I find you refreshing, Wimsey,” said Fentiman languidly. “You’re not in the least witty, but you have a kind of obvious facetiousness which reminds me of the less exacting class of music-hall.”

IT IS DOUBTFUL WHICH occurrence was more disagreeable to the senior members of the Bellona Club—the grotesque death of General Fentiman in their midst or the indecent neurasthenia of his grandson. Only the younger men felt no sense of outrage; they knew too much.

“Well, I mean all this easy, uninquisitive way men have of makin’ casual acquaintances is very fine and admirable and all that—but look how inconvenient it is! Here you are. You admit you’ve met this bloke two or three times, and all you know about him is that he is tall and thin and retired into some unspecified suburb. A woman, with the same opportunities, would have found out his address and occupation, whether he was married, how many children he had, with their names and what they did for a living, what his favourite author was, what food he liked best, the name of his tailor, dentist and bootmaker, when he knew your grandfather and what he thought of him—screeds of useful stuff!”

“I’m rather lucky,” said Wimsey, with that apologetic air which seems forced on anybody accused of too much wealth.

I suppose she thinks if she can’t be a success as a woman she’ll be a half-baked intellectual. No wonder a man can’t get a decent job these days, with these hard-mouthed, cigarette-smoking females all over the place, pretending they’re geniuses and business women and all the rest of it.”

The servant still stood mutely by, with an air of almost violently disassociating himself from all commentary.

“A man ought to be just as courteous after marriage as he was before,” declared Robert Fentiman virtuously. “So he ought, but he never is. Possibly there’s some reason we don’t know about,” said Wimsey.

I think Ann Dorland must have a complex of some kind. Complexes explain so much, like the blessed word hippopotamus.”

Is it conceivable that, if the old man had been walking in the streets as a free agent on Armistice Day, he would have gone into the Club without his Flanders poppy?

“My dear man, if you can cure sin with an injection, I shall be only too pleased. Only be sure you don’t pump in something worse in the process. You know the parable of the swept and garnished house.”

“Quite the gentleman,” as Nellie remarked afterwards to Mrs. Mitcham, who replied, “No, Nellie—gentlemanlike I will not deny, but a policeman is a person, and I will trouble you to remember it.”

“By that time we shall, I hope, be moving in different circles. I shall be in the one devoted to murderers, and you in the much lower and hotter one devoted to those who tempt others to murder them.

H’m! Books, you know, Charles, are like lobster-shells. We surround ourselves with ’em, and then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidences of our earlier stages of development.”

Besides—did women tell things to other women? He had long doubted it.

“Do you think so?” “Yes. But your man won’t be at all the sort of person you’re expecting. You have always thought of being dominated by somebody, haven’t you?” “Well——” “But you’ll find that yours will be the leading brain of the two. He will take great pride in the fact. And you will find the man reliable and kind, and it will turn out quite well.” “I didn’t know you were a prophet.” “I am, though.”

“Ah, well,” he said, “you’ve done the best thing, to my mind. I look at these matters from a soldier’s point of view, of course. Much better to make a clean job of it all. Dear, dear! Sometimes, Lord Peter, I think that the War has had a bad effect on some of our young men.

“I say, you fellows,” he cried, “here’s another unpleasantness. Penberthy’s shot himself in the library. People ought to have more consideration for the members. Where’s Culyer?”