"She is my ears and tongue," said Lord Peter, dramatically, "and especially my nose. She asks questions which a young man could not put without a blush. She is the angel that rushes in where fools get a clump on the head. She can smell a rat in the dark. In fact, she is the cat's whiskers."
"Not a bad idea," said Parker.
"Naturally - it was mine, therefore brilliant. Just think. People want questions asked. Whom do they send? A man with large flat feet and a notebook - the sort of man whose private life is conducted in a series of inarticulate grunts. I send a lady with a long, woolly jumper on knitting-needles and jingly things round her neck. Of course she asks questions - everyone expects it. Nobody is surprised. Nobody is alarmed. And so-called superfluity is agreeable and usefully disposed of. One of these days they will put up a statue to me, with an inscription: 'To the man who made thousands of superfluous women happy without injury to their modesty or exertion to himself.'"
(from Unnatural Death, by Dorothy L. Sayers)
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