Whose Body?

Book excerpt: Whose Body? is a 1923 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, which introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey. CHAPTER I "Oh, damn!" said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. "Hi, driver!" The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 'bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear. "I've left the catalogue behind," said Lord Peter deprecatingly, "uncommonly careless of me. D'you mind puttin' back to where we came from?" "To the Savile Club, sir?" "No—110 Piccadilly—just beyond—thank you." "Thought you was in a hurry," said the man, overcome with a sense of injury. "I'm afraid it's an awkward place to turn in," said Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the words. His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola. The taxi, under the severe eye of a policeman, revolved by slow jerks, with a noise like the grinding of teeth. The block of new, perfect and expensive flats in which Lord Peter dwelt upon the second floor, stood directly opposite the Green Park, in a spot for many years occupied by the skeleton of a frustrate commercial enterprise. As Lord Peter let himself in he heard his man's voice in the library, uplifted in that throttled stridency peculiar to well-trained persons using the telephone. "I believe that's his lordship just coming in again—if your Grace would kindly hold the line a moment."