Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers Page B

better be moving if we’re going to the Pallambra?’
        ‘I never go to music halls,’ said Miss Marryat ungraciously.
        ‘Oh, but you must come tonight,’ said his lordship persuasively. ‘It’s so frivolous. Just think how it would please Uncle Meleager.’
     
    Accordingly, the next day found the party, including the indispensable Mr Bunter, assembled at Uncle Meleager’s house. Pending the settlement of the will question, there had seemed every reason why Mr Finch’s executrix and next-of-kin should live in the house, thus providing every facility for what Lord Peter called the ‘Treasure-hunt’. After being introduced to Mrs Marryat, who was an invalid and remained in her room, Lady Mary and her brother were shown over the house by Miss Marryat, who explained to them how carefully the search had been conducted. Every paper had been examined, every book in the library scrutinised page by page, the walls and chimneys tapped for hiding-places, the boards taken up, and so forth, but with no result.
        ‘Y’know,’ said his lordship, ‘I’m sure you’ve been going the wrong way to work. My idea is, old Uncle Meleager was a man of his word. If he said frivolous, he meant really frivolous. Something beastly silly. I wonder what it was.’
        He was still wondering when he went up to dress. Bunter was putting studs in his shirt. Lord Peter gazed thoughtfully at him, and then enquired:
        ‘Are any of Mr Finch’s old staff still here?’
        ‘Yes, my lord. The cook and the housekeeper. Wonderful old gentleman they say he was, too. Eighty-three, but as up-to-date as you please. Had his wireless in his bedroom, and enjoyed the Savoy bands every night of his life. Followed his politics, and was always ready with the details of the latest big law-cases. If a young lady came to see him, he’d like to see she had her hair shingled and the latest style in fashions. They say he took up cross-words as soon as they came in, and was remarkably quick at solving them, my lord, and inventing them. Took a £10 prize in the Daily Yell for one, and was wonderfully pleased to get it, they say, my lord, rich as he was.’
        ‘Indeed.’
        ‘Yes, my lord. He was a great man for acrostics before that, I understood them to say, but, when cross-words came in, he threw away his acrostics and said he liked the new game better. Wonderfully adaptable, if I may say so, he seems to have been for an old gentleman.’
        ‘Was he, by Jove?’ said his lordship absently, and then, with sudden energy:
        ‘Bunter, I’d like to double your salary, but I suppose you’d take it as an insult.’
        The conversation bore fruit at dinner.
        ‘What,’ enquired his lordship, ‘happened to Uncle Meleager’s cross-words?’
        ‘Cross-words?’ said Hannah Marryat, knitting her heavy brows. ‘Oh, those puzzle things! Poor old man, he went mad over them. He had every newspaper sent him, and in his last illness he’d be trying to fill the wretched things in. It was worse than his acrostics and his jig-saw puzzles. Poor old creature, he must have been senile, I’m afraid. Of course, we looked through them, but there wasn’t anything there. We put them all in the attic.’
        ‘The attic for me,’ said Lord Peter.
        ‘And for me,’ said Mary. ‘I don’t believe there was anything senile about Uncle Meleager.’
        The evening was warm, and they had dined in the little viridarium at the back of the house, with its tall vases and hanging baskets of flowers and little marble statues.
        ‘Is there an attic here?’ said Peter. ‘It seems such a – well, such an un-attic thing to have in a house like this.’
        ‘It’s just a horrid, poky little hole over the porch,’ said Miss Marryat, rising and leading the way. ‘Don’t tumble into the pond, will you? It’s a great nuisance having it there, especially at night. I always tell them to leave a light