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A review by diana_skelton
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
4.0
'How many of the jury saw it in that light?'
'The woman I know stuck out for it that Miss Vane wasn't that sort of person. Fortunately, she is a tough, thin, elderly woman with a sound digestion and a militant High-Church conscience of remarkable staying power, and her wind is excellent. She let ' em all gallop themselves dead and then said she still didn't believe it and wasn't going to say she did.'
'Very useful,' said Sir Impey. 'A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence. But we can never hope for a whole jury-box full of ecclesiastical diehards.'
'Miss Climpson's establishment was ostensibly a typing bureau. All the employees were women of the class unkindly known as "superfluous". There were spinsters with small fixed incomes, widows without family, women deserted by peripatetic husbands, retired and disappointed school-teachers. These women seemed to spend most of their time in answering advertisements. Unmarried gentlemen who desired to meet ladies possessed of competences with a view to matrimony; sprightly sexagenarians who wanted housekeepers for remote country distracts; ingenious gentlemen with financial schemes; literary gentlemen, anxious for female collaborators; plausible gentlemen about to engage talent for production in the provinces; benevolent gentlemen who could tell people how to make money in their spare time--gentlemen such as these were very liable to receive applications from members of Miss Climpson's staff. It may have been coincidence that these gentlemen so very often had the misfortune to appear shortly afterwards before the magistrate on charge of fraud, blackmail or attempted procuration, but it is a fact that Miss Climpson's office boasted a private telephone line to Scotland Yard, and that few of her ladies were quite as unprotected as they appeared.'
'Bah! Bourgeois music!'
Wimsey replied soothingly: 'Well, what can you do with the wretched and antiquated instruments of our orchestra? A diatonic scale, bah! Thirteen miserable bourgeois semi-tones, pooh! To express the infinite complexity of modern emotion, you need a scale of thirty-two notes to the octave.'
'But why cling to the octave?' said the fat man. 'Till you can cast away the octave and its sentimental associations, you walk in fetters of convention.'
'That's the spirit!' said Wimsey. 'I would dispense with all definite notes. After all, the cat does not need them for his midnight melodies, powerful and expressive as they are. The love-hunger of the stallion takes no account of octave or interval in giving forth the cry of passion. It is only man, trammelled by a stultifying convention - oh, hullo, Marjorie, sorry, what is it?'
'It began inauspiciously at the tea-table, when Mrs. "Freak" Dimsworthy fluted out in her high overriding voice: "And is it true, Lord Peter, that you are defending that frightful poisoning woman?" The question acted like the drawing of a champagne cork. The whole party's bottled up curiosity about the Vane case creamed over in one windy gust of stinging froth.'
'The woman I know stuck out for it that Miss Vane wasn't that sort of person. Fortunately, she is a tough, thin, elderly woman with a sound digestion and a militant High-Church conscience of remarkable staying power, and her wind is excellent. She let ' em all gallop themselves dead and then said she still didn't believe it and wasn't going to say she did.'
'Very useful,' said Sir Impey. 'A person who can believe all the articles of the Christian faith is not going to boggle over a trifle of adverse evidence. But we can never hope for a whole jury-box full of ecclesiastical diehards.'
'Miss Climpson's establishment was ostensibly a typing bureau. All the employees were women of the class unkindly known as "superfluous". There were spinsters with small fixed incomes, widows without family, women deserted by peripatetic husbands, retired and disappointed school-teachers. These women seemed to spend most of their time in answering advertisements. Unmarried gentlemen who desired to meet ladies possessed of competences with a view to matrimony; sprightly sexagenarians who wanted housekeepers for remote country distracts; ingenious gentlemen with financial schemes; literary gentlemen, anxious for female collaborators; plausible gentlemen about to engage talent for production in the provinces; benevolent gentlemen who could tell people how to make money in their spare time--gentlemen such as these were very liable to receive applications from members of Miss Climpson's staff. It may have been coincidence that these gentlemen so very often had the misfortune to appear shortly afterwards before the magistrate on charge of fraud, blackmail or attempted procuration, but it is a fact that Miss Climpson's office boasted a private telephone line to Scotland Yard, and that few of her ladies were quite as unprotected as they appeared.'
'Bah! Bourgeois music!'
Wimsey replied soothingly: 'Well, what can you do with the wretched and antiquated instruments of our orchestra? A diatonic scale, bah! Thirteen miserable bourgeois semi-tones, pooh! To express the infinite complexity of modern emotion, you need a scale of thirty-two notes to the octave.'
'But why cling to the octave?' said the fat man. 'Till you can cast away the octave and its sentimental associations, you walk in fetters of convention.'
'That's the spirit!' said Wimsey. 'I would dispense with all definite notes. After all, the cat does not need them for his midnight melodies, powerful and expressive as they are. The love-hunger of the stallion takes no account of octave or interval in giving forth the cry of passion. It is only man, trammelled by a stultifying convention - oh, hullo, Marjorie, sorry, what is it?'
'It began inauspiciously at the tea-table, when Mrs. "Freak" Dimsworthy fluted out in her high overriding voice: "And is it true, Lord Peter, that you are defending that frightful poisoning woman?" The question acted like the drawing of a champagne cork. The whole party's bottled up curiosity about the Vane case creamed over in one windy gust of stinging froth.'