The Lord Peter Wimsey Short Story Collection: Lord Peter Views the Body, Hangman's Holiday, In the Teeth of the Evidence, and Striding Folly

The Lord Peter Wimsey Short Story Collection: Lord Peter Views the Body, Hangman's Holiday, In the Teeth of the Evidence, and Striding Folly

by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Lord Peter Wimsey Short Story Collection: Lord Peter Views the Body, Hangman's Holiday, In the Teeth of the Evidence, and Striding Folly

The Lord Peter Wimsey Short Story Collection: Lord Peter Views the Body, Hangman's Holiday, In the Teeth of the Evidence, and Striding Folly

by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Overview

Four volumes of short stories featuring the iconic British aristocrat and sleuth from “one of the greatest mystery story writers” (Los Angeles Times).
 
A gentleman needs hobbies. For Lord Peter Wimsey—a Great War veteran with a touch of shell shock—collecting rare books, sampling fine wines, and catching criminals are all most pleasant diversions. In these Golden Age whodunits, “Lord Peter can hardly be spared from the ranks of the great detectives of the printed page” (The New York Times).
 
Lord Peter Views the Body: In these early adventures, Lord Peter confronts a stolen stomach, a man with copper fingers, and a deadly adventure at Ali Baba’s cave, among other conundrums that tax his intellect, humor, acting talent, knowledge of metallurgy, and taste for fine wines. It’s not easy being a gentleman sleuth, but Lord Peter was born to play the part.
 
Hangman’s Holiday: Two of the genre’s most memorable detectives, Lord Peter Wimsey—noble by birth, brilliant by nature—and free-spirited traveling wine salesman Montague Egg, confront menaces from purloined pearls to poisoned port.
 
In the Teeth of the Evidence: In this volume of “truly remarkable stories,” a pair of classic Wimsey stories appear alongside five featuring Montague Egg, the eccentric purveyor of wines whose powers of deduction could give His Lordship a run for his money. A handful of other glittering puzzles round out the volume, “adding much to the already great reputation of Dorothy L. Sayers” (The New York Times).
 
Striding Folly: Lord Peter confronts land barons, killers, and the terror that comes from raising three young sons. Through it all, his clear thinking never fails him, and he tackles these puzzles with his usual aplomb. He may be a family man now, but like a good wine, a great detective only gets better with age.
 
Ruth Rendell praised Sayers for her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail,” and P. D. James said, “She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.” Those same sparkling qualities are on display in these outstanding short stories.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781504054454
Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 06/12/2018
Series: Lord Peter Wimsey Series
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 1650
Sales rank: 153,623
File size: 9 MB

About the Author

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was a British playwright, scholar, and acclaimed author of mysteries, best known for her books starring the gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. While working as an advertising copywriter, Sayers began writing Whose Body? (1923), the first Wimsey mystery, followed by ten sequels and several short stories. Sayers set the Wimsey novels between the two World Wars, giving them a realistic tone by incorporating details from contemporary issues such as advertising, women’s education, and veterans’ health. Sayers also wrote theological essays and criticism during and after World War II, and in 1949 published the first volume of a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Although she considered this translation to be her best work, it is for her elegantly constructed detective fiction that Sayers remains best remembered.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was a British playwright, scholar, and acclaimed author of mysteries, best known for her books starring the gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. While working as an advertising copywriter, Sayers began writing Whose Body? (1923), the first Wimsey mystery, followed by ten sequels and several short stories. Sayers set the Wimsey novels between the two World Wars, giving them a realistic tone by incorporating details from contemporary issues such as advertising, women’s education, and veterans’ health. Sayers also wrote theological essays and criticism during and after World War II, and in 1949 published the first volume of a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Although she considered this translation to be her best work, it is for her elegantly constructed detective fiction that Sayers remains best remembered.

Date of Birth:

June 13, 1893

Date of Death:

December 17, 1957

Place of Birth:

Oxford, England

Education:

B.A., Oxford University, 1915; M.A., B.C.L., 1920

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers

The egotists' club IS one of the most genial places in London. It is a place to which you may go when you want to tell that odd dream you had last night, or to announce what a good dentist you have discovered. You can write letters there if you like, and have the temperament of a Jane Austen, for there is no silence room, and it would be a breach of club manners to appear busy or absorbed when another member addresses you. You must not mention golf or fish, however, and, if the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot's motion is carried at the next committee meeting (and opinion so far appears very favourable), you will not be allowed to mention wireless either. As Lord Peter Wimsey said when the matter was mooted the other day in the smoking-room, those are things you can talk about anywhere. Otherwise the club is not specially exclusive. Nobody is ineligible per se, except strong, silent men. Nominees are, however, required to pass certain tests, whose nature is sufficiently indicated by the fact that a certain distinguished explorer came to grief through accepting, and smoking, a powerful Trichinopoly cigar as an accompaniment to a '63 port. On the other hand, dear old Sir Roger Bunt (the coster millionaire who won the £20,000 ballot offered by the Sunday Shriek, and used it to found his immense catering business in the Midlands) was highly commended and unanimously elected after declaring frankly that beer and a pipe were all he really cared for in that way. As Lord Peter said again: 'Nobody minds coarseness, but one must draw the line at cruelty.'

On this particular evening, Masterman (the cubist poet) had brought a guest with him, a man named Varden. Varden had started life as a professional athlete, but a strained heart had obliged him to cut short a brilliant career, and turn his handsome face and remarkably beautiful body to account in the service of the cinema screen. He had come to London from Los Angeles to stimulate publicity for his great new film, Marathon, and turned out to be quite a pleasant, unspoiled person — greatly to the relief of the club, since Masterman's guests were apt to be something of a toss-up.

There were only eight men, including Varden, in the brown room that evening. This, with its panelled walls, shaded lamps, and heavy blue curtains was perhaps the cosiest and pleasantest of the small smoking- rooms, of which the club possessed half a dozen or so. The conversation had begun quite casually by Armstrong's relating a curious little incident which he had witnessed that afternoon at the Temple Station, and Bayes had gone on to say that that was nothing to the really very odd thing which had happened to him, personally, in a thick fog one night in the Euston Road.

Masterman said that the more secluded London squares teemed with subjects for a writer, and instanced his own singular encounter with a weeping woman and a dead monkey, and then Judson took up the tale and narrated how, in a lonely suburb, late at night, he had come upon the dead body of a woman stretched on the pavement with a knife in her side and a policeman standing motionless near by. He had asked if he could do anything, but the policeman had only said, 'I wouldn't interfere if I was you, sir; she deserved what she got.' Judson said he had not been able to get the incident out of his mind, and then Pettifer told them of a queer case in his own medical practice, when a totally unknown man had led him to a house in Bloomsbury where there was a woman suffering from strychnine poisoning. This man had helped him in the most intelligent manner all night, and, when the patient was out of danger, had walked straight out of the house and never reappeared; the odd thing being that, when he (Pettifer) questioned the woman, she answered in great surprise that she had never seen the man in her life and had taken him to be Pettifer's assistant.

'That reminds me,' said Varden, 'of something still stranger that happened to me once in New York — I've never been able to make out whether it was a madman or a practical joke, or whether I really had a very narrow shave.'

This sounded promising, and the guest was urged to go on with his story.

'Well, it really started ages ago,' said the actor, 'seven years it must have been — just before America came into the war. I was twenty-five at the time, and had been in the film business a little over two years. There was a man called Eric P. Loder, pretty well known in New York at that period, who would have been a very fine sculptor if he hadn't had more money than was good for him, or so I understood from the people who go in for that kind of thing. He used to exhibit a good deal and had a lot of one-man shows of his stuff to which the highbrow people went — he did a good many bronzes, I believe. Perhaps you know about him, Masterman?'

'I've never seen any of his things,' said the poet, 'but I remember some photographs in The Art of Tomorrow. Clever, but rather over-ripe. Didn't he go in for a lot of that chryselephantine stuff? Just to show he could afford to pay for the materials, I suppose.'

'Yes, that sounds very like him.'

'Of course — and he did a very slick and very ugly realistic group called Lucina, and had the impudence to have it cast in solid gold and stood in his front hall.'

'Oh, that thing! Yes — simply beastly I thought it, but then I never could see anything artistic in the idea. Realism, I suppose you'd call it. I like a picture or a statue to make you feel good, or what's it there for? Still, there was something very attractive about Loder.'

'How did you come across him?'

'Oh, yes. Well, he saw me in that little picture of mine, Apollo comes to New York — perhaps you remember it. It was my first star part. About a statue that's brought to life — one of the old gods, you know — and how he gets on in a modern city. Dear old Reubenssohn produced it. Now, there was a man who could put a thing through with consummate artistry. You couldn't find an atom of offence from beginning to end, it was all so tasteful, though in the first part one didn't have anything to wear except a sort of scarf — taken from the classical statue, you know.'

'The Belvedere?'

'I dare say. Well, Loder wrote to me, and said as a sculptor he was interested in me, because I was a good shape and so on, and would I come and pay him a visit in New York when I was free. So I found out about Loder, and decided it would be good publicity, and when my contract was up, and I had a bit of time to fill in, I went up east and called on him. He was very decent to me, and asked me to stay a few weeks with him while I was looking around.

'He had a magnificent great house about five miles out of the city, crammed full of pictures and antiques and so on. He was somewhere between thirty-five and forty, I should think, dark and smooth, and very quick and lively in his movements. He talked very well; seemed to have been everywhere and have seen everything and not to have any too good opinion of anybody. You could sit and listen to him for hours; he'd got anecdotes about everybody, from the Pope to old Phineas E. Groot of the Chicago Ring. The only kind of story I didn't care about hearing from him was the improper sort. Not that I don't enjoy an after-dinner story — no sir, I wouldn't like you to think I was a prig — but he'd tell it with his eye upon you as if he suspected you of having something to do with it. I've known women do that, and I've seen men do it to women and seen the women squirm, but he was the only man that's ever given me that feeling. Still, apart from that, Loder was the most fascinating fellow I've ever known. And, as I say, his house surely was beautiful, and he kept a first-class table.

'He liked to have everything of the best. There was his mistress, Maria Morano. I don't think I've ever seen anything to touch her, and when you work for the screen you're apt to have a pretty exacting standard of female beauty. She was one of those big, slow, beautifully moving creatures, very placid, with a slow, wide smile. We don't grow them in the States. She'd come from the South — had been a cabaret dancer he said, and she didn't contradict him. He was very proud of her, and she seemed to be devoted to him in her own fashion. He'd show her off in the studio with nothing on but a fig-leaf or so — stand her up beside one of the figures he was always doing of her, and compare them point by point. There was literally only one half inch of her, it seemed, that wasn't absolutely perfect from the sculptor's point of view — the second toe of her left foot was shorter than the big toe. He used to correct it, of course, in the statues. She'd listen to it all with a good-natured smile, sort of vaguely flattered, you know. Though I think the poor girl sometimes got tired of being gloated over that way. She'd sometimes hunt me out and confide to me that what she had always hoped for was to run a restaurant of her own, with a cabaret show and a great many cooks with white aprons, and lots of polished electric cookers. 'And then I would marry,' she'd say, 'and have four sons and one daughter,' and she told me all the names she had chosen for the family. I thought it was rather pathetic. Loder came in at the end of one of these conversations. He had a sort of a grin on, so I dare say he'd overheard. I don't suppose he attached much importance to it, which shows that he never really understood the girl. I don't think he ever imagined any woman would chuck up the sort of life he'd accustomed her to, and if he was a bit possessive in his manner, at least he never gave her a rival. For all his talk and his ugly statues, she'd got him, and she knew it.

'I stayed there getting on for a month altogether, having a thundering good time. On two occasions Loder had an art spasm, and shut himself up in his studio to work and wouldn't let anybody in for several days on end. He was rather given to that sort of stunt, and when it was over we would have a party, and all Loder's friends and hangers-on would come to have a look at the work of art. He was doing a figure of some nymph or goddess, I fancy, to be cast in silver, and Maria used to go along and sit for him. Apart from those times, he went about everywhere, and we saw all there was to be seen.

'I was fairly annoyed, I admit, when it came to an end. War was declared, and I'd made up my mind to join up when that happened. My heart put me out of the running for trench service, but I counted on getting some sort of a job, with perseverance, so I packed up and went off.

'I wouldn't have believed Loder would have been so genuinely sorry to say good-bye to me. He said over and over again that we'd meet again soon. However, I did get a job with the hospital people, and was sent over to Europe, and it wasn't until 1920 that I saw Loder again.

'He'd written to me before, but I'd had two big pictures to make in '19, and it couldn't be done. However, in '20 I found myself back in New York, doing publicity for The Passion Streak, and got a note from Loder begging me to stay with him, and saying he wanted me to sit for him. Well, that was advertisement that he'd pay for himself, you know, so I agreed. I had accepted an engagement to go out with Mystofilms Ltd in Jake of Dead Man's Bush — the dwarfmen picture, you know, taken on the spot among the Australian bushmen. I wired them that I would join them at Sydney the third week in April, and took my bags to Loder's.

'Loder greeted me very cordially, though I thought he looked older than when I last saw him. He had certainly grown more nervous in his manner. He was — how shall I describe it? — more intense — more real, in a way. He brought out his pet cynicisms as if he thoroughly meant them, and more and more with that air of getting at you personally. I used to think his disbelief in everything was a kind of artistic pose, but I began to feel I had done him an injustice. He was really unhappy, I could see that quite well, and soon I discovered the reason. As we were driving out in the car I asked after Maria.

'"She has left me,"' he said.

'Well, now you know, that really surprised me. Honestly, I hadn't thought the girl had that much initiative. "Why," I said, "has she gone and set up in that restaurant of her own she wanted so much?"

'"Oh! She talked to you about restaurants, did she?" said Loder. "I suppose you are one of the men that women tell things to. No. She made a fool of herself. She's gone."

'I didn't quite know what to say. He was so obviously hurt in his vanity, you know, as well as in his feelings. I muttered the usual things, and added that it must be a great loss to his work as well as in other ways. He said it was.

'I asked him when it had happened and whether he'd finished the nymph he was working on before I left. He said, "Oh, yes, he'd finished that and done another — something pretty original, which I should like."

'Well, we got to the house and dined, and Loder told me he was going to Europe shortly, a few days after I left myself, in fact. The nymph stood in the dining-room, in a special niche let into the wall. It really was a beautiful thing, not so showy as most of Loder's work, and a wonderful likeness of Maria. Loder put me opposite it, so that I could see it during dinner, and, really, I could hardly take my eyes off it. He seemed very proud of it, and kept on telling me over and over again how glad he was that I liked it. It struck me that he was falling into a trick of repeating himself.

'We went into the smoking-room after dinner. He'd had it rearranged, and the first thing that caught one's eye was a big settee drawn before the fire. It stood about a couple of feet from the ground, and consisted of a base made like a Roman couch, with cushions and a highish back, all made of oak with a silver inlay, and on top of this, forming the actual seat one sat on, if you follow me, there was a great silver figure of a nude woman, fully life-size, lying with her head back and her arms extended along the sides of the couch. A few big loose cushions made it possible to use the thing as an actual settee, though I must say it never was really comfortable to sit on respectably. As a stage prop, for registering dissipation it would have been excellent, but to see Loder sprawling over it by his own fireside gave me a kind of shock. He seemed very much attached to it, though.

'"I told you," he said, "that it was something original."

'Then I looked more closely at it, and saw that the figure actually was Maria's, though the face was rather sketchily done, if you understand what I mean. I suppose he thought a bolder treatment more suited to a piece of furniture.

'But I did begin to think Loder a trifle degenerate when I saw that couch. And in the fortnight that followed I grew more and more uncomfortable with him. That personal manner of his grew more marked every day, and sometimes, while I was giving him sittings, he would sit there and tell one the most beastly things, with his eyes fixed on one in the nastiest way, just to see how one would take it. Upon my word, though he certainly did me uncommonly well, I began to feel I'd be more at ease among the bushmen.

'Well, now I come to the odd thing.'

Everybody sat up and listened a little more eagerly.

'It was the evening before I had to leave New York,' went on Varden. 'I was sitting —'

Here somebody opened the door of the brown room, to be greeted by a warning sign from Bayes. The intruder sank obscurely into a large chair and mixed himself a whisky with extreme care not to disturb the speaker.

'I was sitting in the smoking-room,' continued Varden, 'waiting for Loder to come in. I had the house to myself, for Loder had given the servants leave to go to some show or lecture or other, and he himself was getting his things together for his European trip and had had to keep an appointment with his man of business. I must have been very nearly asleep, because it was dusk when I came to with a start and saw a young man quite close to me.

'He wasn't at all like a housebreaker, and still less like a ghost. He was, I might almost say, exceptionally ordinary-looking. He was dressed in a grey English suit, with a fawn overcoat on his arm, and his soft hat and stick in his hand. He had sleek, pale hair, and one of those rather stupid faces, with a long nose and a monocle. I stared at him, for I knew the front door was locked, but before I could get my wits together he spoke. He had a curious, hesitating, husky voice and a strong English accent. He said, surprisingly:

'Are you Mr Varden?'

'You have the advantage of me,' I said.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "The Lord Peter Wimsey Short Story Collection"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

  • Cover Page
  • The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
    • Title Page
    • CHAPTER I - OLD MOSSY-FACE
    • CHAPTER II - THE QUEEN IS OUT
    • CHAPTER III - HEARTS COUNT MORE THAN DIAMONDS
    • CHAPTER IV - LORD PETER LEADS A CLUB
    • CHAPTER V - --ANDS FINDS THE CLUB SUIT BLOCKED
    • CHAPTER VI - A CARD OF RE-ENTRY
    • CHAPTER VII - THE CURSE OF SCOTLAND
    • CHAPTER VIII - LORD PETER LEADS THROUGH STRENGTH
    • CHAPTER IX - KNAVE HIGH
    • CHAPTER X - LORD PETER FORCES A CARD
    • CHAPTER XI - LORD PETER CLEARS TRUMPS
    • CHAPTER XII - LORD PETER TURNS A TRICK
    • CHAPTER XIII - SPADES ARE TRUMPS
    • CHAPTER XIV - GRAND SLAM IN SPADES
    • CHAPTER XV - SHUFFLE THE CARDS AND DEAL AGAIN
    • CHAPTER XVI - QUADRILLE
    • CHAPTER XVII - PARKER PLAYS A HAND
    • CHAPTER XVIII - PICTURE CARDS
    • CHAPTER XIX - LORD PETER PLAYS DUMMY
    • CHAPTER XX - ANN DORLAND GOES MISERE
    • CHAPTER XXI - LORD PETER CALLS A BLUFF
    • CHAPTER XXII - THE CARDS ON THE TABLE
    • POST-MORTEM
    • A BIOGRAPHY OF LORD PETER WIMSEY
  • Strong Poison
    • Title Page
    • CHAPTER I
    • CHAPTER II
    • CHAPTER III
    • CHAPTER IV
    • CHAPTER V
    • CHAPTER VI
    • CHAPTER VII
    • CHAPTER VIII
    • CHAPTER IX
    • CHAPTER X
    • CHAPTER XI
    • CHAPTER XII
    • CHAPTER XIII
    • CHAPTER XIV
    • CHAPTER XV
    • CHAPTER XVI
    • CHAPTER XVII
    • CHAPTER XVIII
    • CHAPTER XIX
    • CHAPTER XX
    • CHAPTER XXI
    • CHAPTER XXII
    • CHAPTER XXIII
  • The Five Red Herrings
    • Title Page
    • FOREWORD
    • CAMPBELL QUICK
    • CAMPBELL DEAD
    • FERGUSON
    • STRACHAN
    • WATERS
    • FARREN
    • GRAHAM
    • GOWAN
    • MRS. MACLEOD
    • SERGEANT DALZIEL
    • INSPECTOR MACPHERSON
    • FERGUSON’S STORY
    • LORD PETER WIMSEY
    • CONSTABLE ROSS
    • BUNTER
    • CHIEF INSPECTOR PARKER
    • LORD PETER WIMSEY
    • MRS. SMITH-LEMESURIER
    • WATERS’ STORY
    • FARREN’S STORY
    • STRACHAN’S STORY
    • GRAHAM’S STORY
    • GOWAN’S STORY
    • FARREN : FERGUSON : STRACHAN
    • GRAHAM : GOWAN : WATERS
    • THE MURDERER
    • LORD PETER WIMSEY
    • LORD PETER WIMSEY
    • LORD PETER WIMSEY
  • Have His Carcase
    • Title Page
    • Note
    • I. THE EVIDENCE OF THE CORPSE
    • II. THE EVIDENCE OF THE ROAD
    • III. THE EVIDENCE OF THE HOTEL
    • IV. THE EVIDENCE OF THE RAZOR
    • V. THE EVIDENCE OF THE BETROTHED
    • VI. THE EVIDENCE OF THE FIRST BARBER
    • VII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE GIGOLOS
    • VIII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE SECOND BARBER
    • IX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE FLAT-IRON
    • X. THE EVIDENCE OF THE POLICE-INSPECTOR
    • XI. THE EVIDENCE OF THE FISHERMAN
    • XII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE BRIDE’S SON
    • XIII. EVIDENCE OF TROUBLE SOMEWHERE
    • IX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE THIRD BARBER
    • XV. THE EVIDENCE OF THE LADYLOVE AND THE LANDLADY
    • XVI. THE EVIDENCE OF THE SANDS
    • XVII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE MONEY
    • XVI. THE EVIDENCE OF THE SNAKE
    • XIX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE DISGUISED MOTORIST
    • XX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE LADY IN THE CAR
    • XXI. THE EVIDENCE AT THE INQUEST
    • XXII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE MANNEQUIN
    • XXIII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE THEATRICAL AGENT
    • XXIV. THE EVIDENCE OF THE L.C.C. TEACHER
    • XXV. THE EVIDENCE OF THE DICTIONARY
    • XXVI. THE EVIDENCE OF THE BAY MARE
    • XXVII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE FISHERMAN’S GRANDSON
    • XXVIII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE CIPHER
    • XXIX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE LETTER
    • XXX. THE EVIDENCE OF THE GENTLEMAN’S GENTLEMAN
    • XXXI. THE EVIDENCE OF THE HABERDASHER’S ASSISTANT
    • XXXII. THE EVIDENCE OF THE FAMILY TREE
    • XXXIII. EVIDENCE OF WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED
    • XXXIV. EVIDENCE OF WHAT DID HAPPEN
  • A Biography of Dorothy L. Sayers
  • Copyright Page
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