The Old English Peep Show by Peter Dickinson

scarlet uniform was shown as a series of half-opened drawers full of corpses tumbled together like odd socks.
    â€œMany of our visitors, especially the Germans, admire it considerably, sir,” said a voice at Pibble’s elbow. Mr. Waugh had glided in, silent on the moss-thick carpet, and now stood in a beautifully calculated pose of haughty subservience.
    â€œCan I get you anything, sir?” he added, and the disguise became marginally less complete: there was that in the actor-butler’s­ intonation which made it clear that the apparently limitless possibilities of “anything” began and ended with a stiff drink.
    â€œNo, thanks,” said Pibble. “Do you know if the Doctor and Sergeant Maxwell have come?”
    â€œI believe so, sir. Mr. Singleton is talking to them in the Zoffany Room.”
    This time the faltering of tone was more marked. Pibble decided to risk a timid probe.
    â€œMr. Singleton must pay the most fantastic attention to detail,” he said.
    â€œToo sodding right he does,” said Mr. Waugh rancorously. “Rings up Dick Looby at the Spotted Lion and asks him how much I had last night. Dick’s a decent fellow, but he can’t afford not to tell him. I tell you, that’s the way to drive a man to secret drinking—I’ve seen it happen in long runs again and again—and Mr. Singleton thinks he can do it to me. Got me by the short hairs, he has; knows I’d never find another billet like this, any more than he’d find someone else to do the Beach bit—you read Wodehouse?”
    â€œYes,” said Pibble. “Ice formed on the butler’s upper slopes.”
    â€œRight,” said Mr. Waugh. “I can do that, too: worth a guinea a visitor to Mr. Bleeding Singleton, I am. But he thinks he could scrabble along without me and he knows I couldn’t do without him. He’s got me by the knackers.”
    â€œI suppose nerves are always a big frayed by the end of the season,” said Pibble cautiously.
    â€œFirst time I’ve noticed it,” said Mr. Waugh. “July, August, that’s the time for tantrums, but by now everything ought to be slack and easy. Why, you heard how sharp Miss Anty spoke up to me this morning. ’Tisn’t like her, Officer. Something’s up .”
    Mr. Waugh’s voice was now an urgent whisper. During the last short speech, layers of saloon-bar knowingness had peeled off his voice until he spoke with the direct appeal of the peasant, petitioning Authority (baffled, inadequate Pibble) to simplify the unfair mysteries of the universe. A faint bloom of sweat, a condensation of tiny globules, dewed the melon-structured tissues of his brow and jowls.
    â€œIs it something to do with Deakin’s death?” said Pibble. “I hear he was a bit of a womanizer, for instance.”
    â€œHim?” said Mr. Waugh, astonished back into the saloon bar. “Only woman old Deak would’ve taken an interest in was one made of knot-free deal, so he could’ve gone over her with his spokeshave. Anyway it started before that—everyone a bit nervy for about a fortnight, and then, whammo, something happens and we’re all biting each other’s head off, even Miss Anty, as I’ve always gotten on with particularly well. Three, four days of that and Deak hanged himself. Hanged himself because of it, if you ask me, and this, sir, is a document which many of our American visitors find most intriguing, being the then Sir Spenser Clavering’s original letter to William Penn regretting as how a previous engagement made it impossible for Sir Spenser to come and help found Pennsylvania.”
    â€œGoodness me,” said Pibble. How would a London detective behave after a history lesson from such a portentous domestic? He would tip him, with hesitation. Pibble found half a crown and said, “This has been the most interesting, dash it—” (Damn. A bit too