Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page A

and steaming mess. “But Mr. Hankin says, will you please taste these samples of porridge and report upon them?”
    “My dear girl, look at the time!”
    “Yes, I know, it's awful, isn't it? They're numbered A, B and C, and here's the questionnaire paper, and if you'll let me have the spoons back I'll get them washed for Mr. Copley.”
    “I shall be sick,” moaned Ingleby. “Who's this? Peabody's?”
    “Yes–they're putting out a tinned porridge, 'Piper Parritch.' No boiling, no stirring–only heat the tin. Look for the Piper on the label.”
    “Look here,” said Ingleby, “run away and try it on Mr. McAllister.”
    “I did, but his report isn't printable. There's sugar and salt and a jug of milk.”
    “What we suffer in the service of the public!” Ingleby attacked the mess with a disgusted sniff and a languid spoon. Bredon solemnly rolled the portions upon his tongue, and detained Miss Parton.
    “Here, taken this down while it's fresh in my mind. Vintage A: Fine, full-bodied, sweet nutty flavour, fully matured; a grand masculine porridge. Vintage B: extra-sec, refined, delicate character, requiring only–”
    Miss Parton emitted a delighted giggle, and Ingleby, who hated gigglers, fled.
    “Tell me, timeless houri,” demanded Mr. Bredon, “what was wrong with my lamented predecessor? Why did Miss Meteyard hate him and why does Ingleby praise him with faint damns?”
    This was no problem to Miss Parton.
    “Why, because he didn't play fair. He was always snooping [Pg 40] round other people's rooms, picking up their ideas and showing them up as his own. And if anybody gave him a headline and Mr. Armstrong or Mr. Hankin liked it, he never said whose it was.”
    This explanation seemed to interest Bredon. He trotted down the passage and thrust his head round Garrett's door. Garrett was stolidly making out his porridge report, and looked up with a grunt.
    “I hope I'm not interrupting you at one of those moments of ecstasy,” bleated Bredon, “but I just wanted to ask you something. I mean to say, it's just a question of etiquette, don't you know, and what's done, so to speak. I mean, look here! You see, Hankie-pankie told me to get out a list of names for a shilling tea and I got out some awful rotten ones, and then Ingleby came in and I said, 'What would you call this tea?' just like that, and he said, 'Call it Domestic Blend,' and I said, 'What-ho! that absolutely whangs the nail over the crumpet.' Because it struck me, really, as being the caterpillar's boots.”
    “Well, what about it?”
    “Well, just now I was chatting to Miss Parton about that fellow Dean, the one who fell downstairs you know, and why one or two people here didn't seem to be fearfully keen on him, and she said, it was because he got ideas out of other people and showed them up with his own stuff. And what I wanted to know was, isn't it done to ask people? Ingleby didn't say anything, but of course, if I've made a floater–”
    “Well, it's like this,” said Garrett. “There's a sort of unwritten law–at our end of the corridor, anyway. You take any help you can get and show it up with your initials on it, but if Armstrong or whoever it is simply goes all out on it and starts throwing bouquets about, you're rather expected to murmur that it was the other bird's suggestion really, and you thought rather well of it yourself.”
    “Oh, I see. Oh, thanks frightfully. And if, on the other hand, he goes right up in the air and says it's the damn-silliest thing he's seen since 1919, you stand the racket, I suppose.” [Pg 41]
    “Naturally. If it's as silly as that you ought to have known better than to put it up to him anyway.”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “The trouble with Dean was that he first of all snitched people's ideas without telling them, and then didn't give them the credit for it with Hankin. But, I say, I wouldn't go asking Copley or Willis for too much assistance if I were you. They weren't brought up to the idea of lending