Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page A

right direction.... Cheer up! The night is yet young, and we may even find a goose-feather bed in the village pub—or in the last resort sleep under a haystack. I believe, if I’d had nothing but a haystack to offer you, you’d have married me years ago.’
      ‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’
      ‘Damnation! Think what I’ve missed.’
      ‘Me too. At this moment I could have been tramping at your heels with five babies and a black eye, and saying to a sympathetic bobby, “You leave ’im be—’e’s my man, ain’t ’e?—’E’ve a right to knock me abaht”.’
      ‘You seem,’ said her husband, reprovingly, ‘to regret the black eye more than the five babies.’
      ‘Naturally. You’ll never give me the black eye.’
      ‘Nothing so easily healed. I’m afraid. Harriet—I wonder what sort of shot I’m going to make at being decent to you.’
      ‘My dear Peter—’
      ‘Yes, I know. But I’ve never—now I come to think of it inflicted myself on anyone for very long together. Except Bunter, of course. Have you consulted Bunter? Do you think he would give me a good character?’
      ‘It sounds to me,’ said Harriet, ‘as though Bunter had picked up a girl friend.’
      The footsteps of two people were, in fact, approaching from behind the house. Somebody was expostulating with Bunter in high-pitched tones:
      ‘I’ll believe it w’en I sees it, and not before. Mr Noakes is at Broxford, I tell you, and has been ever since last Wednesday night as ever is, and he ain’t never said nothing to me nor nobody, not about sellin’ no ’ouse nor about no lords nor ladies neither.’
      The speaker, now emerging into the blaze of the headlights, was a hard-faced angular lady of uncertain age, dressed in a mackintosh, a knitted shawl, and a man’s cap secured rakishly to her head with knobbed and shiny hatpins. Neither the size of the car, the polish of its chromium plating nor the brilliance of its lamps appeared to impress her, for advancing with a snort to Harriet’s side she said, belligerently:
      ‘Now then, ’oo are you and wot d’you want, kicking up all this noise? Let’s ’ave a look at yer!’
      ‘By all means,’ said Peter. He switched on the dashboard light. His yellow hair and his eye-glass seemed to produce an unfortunate impression.
      ‘H’mph!’ said the lady. ‘Film-actors, by the look of yer. And’ (with a withering glance at Harriet’s furs) ‘no better than you should be, I’ll be bound.’
      ‘We are very sorry to have disturbed you,’ began Peter, ‘Mrs—er—’
      ‘Ruddle is my name,’ said the lady of the cap. ‘Mrs Ruddle, and a respectable married woman with a grown son of her own. He’s a-coming over from the cottage now with his gun, as soon as he’s put his trousis on, which he had just took ’em off to go to bed in good time, ’aving to be up early to ’is work. Now then! Mr Noakes is over at Broxford, same as I was sayin’ to this other chap of yours, and you can’t get nothing out of me, for it ain’t no business of mine, except that I obliges ’im in the cleaning way.’
      ‘Ruddle?’ said Harriet. ‘Didn’t he work at one time for Mr Vickey at Five Elms?’
      ‘Yes, ’e did,’ said Mrs Ruddle, quickly, ‘but that’s fifteen year agone. I lost Ruddle last Michaelmas five year, and a good ’usband ’e was, when he was himself, that is. ’Ow do you come to know Ruddle?’
      ‘I’m Dr Vane’s daughter, that used to live at Great Pagford. Don’t you remember him? I know your name, and I think I remember your face. But you didn’t live here then. The Batesons had the farm, and there was a woman called Sweeting at the cottage who kept pigs and had a niece who wasn’t quite right in the head.’
      ‘Lor’ now!’ cried Mrs Ruddle. ‘To think o’ that! Dr Vane’s daughter, is you, miss? Now I come to look at you, you ’ ave got a look of ’er. But it’s gettin’ on for