"Poor kid," he said. This, then, was at the back of Marjorie's mysterious hints, and those scratchat sneers of Naomi Rushworth's. The girl had wanted love affairs, that was certain; imagined them perhaps. There had been Ambrose Ledbury. Between the normal and the abnormal, the gulf is deep, but so narrow that misrepresentation is made easy.
(From The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Can you imagine what a "scratchcat sneer" would look like?)
"Some things are so beastly."
"Oh, yet - quite a lot of things. Birth is beastly - and death - and digestion, if it comes to that. Sometimes when I think of what's happening inside me to a beautiful supreme de sole, with the caviare in boat, and the croutons and the jolly little twists of potato and all the gadgets - I could cry. But there it is, don't you know."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I wash my hands of this case, Charles. There's nothing for me to do now you have come into it. It bores and annoys me. Let's talk about something else."
Wimsey might wash his hands, but, like Pontius Pilate, he found society irrationally determined to connect him with an irritating and unsatisfactory case. At midnight the telephone bell rang. He had just gon to bed, and cursed it.
"Tell them I'm out," he shouted to Bunter, and cursed again on hearing the man assure the unknown caller that he would see whether his lordship had returned. Disobedience in Bunter spelt urgent neessity.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
You might not know that Dog, the canine star of Petticoat Junction and of the movie Benji were played by a pooch named Higgins. After Higgins died, his daughter Benjean took over the role in the movie For the Love of Benji. Also, Higgins' son, named Mac, played the dog Tramp on the My Three Sons television series.
Dave Odom was a successful college basketball coach. His teams won 406 games during his tenures at the head of the East Carolina, Wake Forest and South Carolina programs. He took teams to the NCAA tournament nine times, including a run to the Elite Eight at Wake in 1996.
And while he might not consider it a compliment, Odom was one of the most successful coaches in history in the NIT. The NIT in the early years of college basketball was considered THE tournament, but eventually surrendered the spotlight to the NCAA, and became the "also ran" tournament for teams that did not make the Big Dance.
When you consider that teams do not "aim" to make the NIT, and that it is virtually impossible to predict who will be there, since they did not get to issue their invitations until the NCAA got through, having consistent success in the NIT is a very "iffy" proposition. Most major conference programs would consider it a let-down to have to go to the NIT when they were hoping for the NCAA, so it is difficult to get the team motivated for the secondary tournament.
However, Odom seemed to have had that knack for getting teams up for the NIT. He won the championship once at Wake Forest and twice at South Carolina, plus an additional runner-up spot at SC. Not many coaches, if any, can point to more success in the NIT.
Apparently Ann Dorland had not the knack of inspiring passionate devotion. "Not a very lively house, is it, for a young girl like yourself?"
"Dull as ditchwater," agreed Nellie, frankly. "Miss Dorland would have what they call studio parties sometimse, but not at all smart and nearly all young ladies - artists and such-like."
(From The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Needless to say, the quote above raises the important question for discussion: Just how dull is ditchwater?)
At one point in the novel Rupert of Hentzau, a dead boarhound plays a key role. Any of us who watched Hogan's Heroes knows that "schweinhund" is an insult to Germans, being translated "pig dog." I wonder if the boarhound of the novel is the same as the schweinhund? Among the historical uses of Great Danes was boar hunting.
Wimsey said that he thought both parties were heartily to be congratulated. And indeed, from what he had seen of Naomi Rushworth, he felt that she at least deserved congratulation, for she was a singularly plain girl, with a face like a weasel.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
The "ceremony" took place, as such ceremonies do, under the discreet cover of darkness. George Fentiman, who in Robert's absence, attended to represent the family was nervous and depressed. It is trying enough to go to the funeral of one's friends and relations, amid the grotesque pomps of glass hearses and black horses, and wreaths, and appropriate hymns "beautifully" rendered by well-paid choristers, but, as George irritably remarked, the people who grumble over funerals don't realize their luck. However depressing the thud of earth on the coffin-lid may be, it is music compared to the rattle of gravel and thump of spades which herald a pre-mature and unreverend resurrection, enveloped in clouds of formalin and without benefit of clergy.
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"I am now free to devote my invaluable attention to your concerns. What is the news? And who is in love and with whom?
"Oh, life is a perfect desert. Nobody is in love with me, and the Schlitzers have had a worse row than usual and separated."
"No!"
"Yes. Only, owing to financial considerations, they've got to go on sharing the same studio = you know, that big room over the mews. It must be very awkward having to eat and sleep and work in the same room with somebody you're being separated from. They don't even speak, and it's very awkward when you cann on one of them and th other has to pretend not to be able to see or hear you."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
"Not very helpful," said Wimsey. "D'you know, occasionally I think there's quite a lot to be said for women."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Well, I mean, all this crazy, 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 favorite 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!"
"So she would," said Fentiman, with a grin. "That's why I've never married."
(From The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. By the way, that word "screeds" above is correct. Look it up.)
"A new notebook, please, Bunter. Head it "Fentiman" and be ready to come round with me to the Bellona Club tomorrow, complete with camera and the rest of your outfit."
"Very good, my lord. I take it your lordship has a new inquiry in hand?"
"Yes Bunter - quite new."
"May I venture to ask if it is a promising case, my lord?"
"It has its points. So has a porcupine. No matter. Begone, dull care! Be at great pains, Bunter, to cultivate a detached outlook on life. Take example by the bloodhound, who will follow up with equal and impartial zest the trail of a parricide or of a bottle of aniseed."
"I will bear it in mind, my lord."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club," by Dorothy L. Sayers)
British readers of this time (1894) liked their heroes to be proper gentlemen. A proper gentleman was not a paid professional. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, for example, is not a professional detective, but an amateur. Professionalism implied vularity to Conan Doyle's and Anthony Hope's audiences. The amateur hero was above the pedestrian middle-class concerns of income. The amateur hero was of the noble class, not the laboring class. And the amateur hero, such as Rudolf Rassendyll, worked more for the mere thrill of adventure, or for the love of accomplishment, or for the requirements of city, or for protecting a higher understanding of justice and righteousness.
(From Gary Hoppenstand's introduction to The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope)
"Twelve thousand pounds were to go to Miss Ann Dorland. The whole of the remainder was to pass to her brother, General Fentiman, if he was still living at her death. If, on the other hand, he should pre-decease her, the conditions were reversed. In that case, the bulk of the money came to Miss Dorland, and fifteen thousand pounds were to be equally divided between Major Robert Fentiman and his brother George."
Wimsey whistled softly.
"I quite agree with you," said Mr. Murbles. "It is a most awkward situation. Lady Dormer died at precisely 10:37 A.M. on November 11th. General Fentiman died that same morning at some time, presumably after 10 o'clock, which was his usual hour for arriving at the Club, and certainly beore 7 P.M. when his death was discovered. If he died immediately on his arrival, or at any time up to 10:36, then Miss Dorland is an important heiress., and my clients the Fentimans get only seven thousand pounds or so apiece. If, on the other hand, his death occurred even a few seconds after 10:37, Miss Dorland receives only twelve thousand pounds, George Fentiman is left with the small pittance bequeathed to him under his father's will - while Robert Fentiman, the residuary legatee, inherits a very consideraable fortune of well over half a million."
(from The Unpleasantness At the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers) The situation is a tight one. A fortune rests upon a matter of minutes, or even seconds. Surely a thorny problem for any sleuth. Is Lord Peter Wimsey up to it? Surely you jest!
A man who is by nature a light baritone cannot conduct a conversation for any length of time in deep bass without acquiring a parched and burning throat. Monty came out of the booth eeling as if his had been roughly sandpapered, and the thought of that two anda half mile walk back to the Castle and its little brother, the two and a half mile walk back, intimidated him. The more he thought of it, the less worth while did it seem to him to go to all that fearful sweat simply in order to see the scruff of Lord Tilbury's neck grasped by a pig-man. Far better, he felt to toddle along to the bar-parlour and there, over a soothing tankard, follow the scene with the eye of imagination.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There was a pause. The heavy breathing that came through the window could only be that of a parsimonious man occupied in writing a checque for a thousand pounds. It is a type of breathing which it is impossible to mistake, though in some respects it closely resembles the sound of a strong man's death agony.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Lord Tilbury was feeling dismally that he might have expected this. He saw now how foolish he had been to place so delicate a commission in the hands of a popinjay. Of all classes of the community, popinjays, when it comes to carryout out delicate commissions, are the most inept. Search History's pages from end to end, reflected Lord Tilbury, and you will not find one instance of a popinjay doing anything successfully except eat, sleep, and master the new dance steps.
(From Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, in his fifty-seventh year, was a dapper little gentleman on whose grey but still thickly covered head the weight of a consistently misspent life rested lightly. His flannel suit sat jauntily upon his wiry frame, a black-rimmed monocle gleamed jauntily in his eye. Everything about this Musketeer of the nineties was jaunty. It was a standing mystery to all who knew him that one who had had such an extraordinarily good time all his life should, in the evening of that life, be so superbly robust. Wan contemporaries who had once painted a gas-lit London red in his company and were now doomed to an existence of dry toast, Vichy water, and German cure resorts felt very strongly on this point. A man of his antecedents, they considered, ought by rights to be rounding off his career in a bath-chair instead of flitting about the place, still chaffing head waiters as of old and calling for the wine list without a tremor.
(from Heavy Weather, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
