A Presumption of Death by Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh Page A

did see that dentist woman – Mrs Spright. She never went down any shelter that night; she was wandering around all over the place. You should try asking her what she was up to.’
    ‘I will do that.’
    ‘It got very cold up there, Lady Peter,’ he said lugubriously. ‘And I didn’t see the murder and I didn’t see any enemy action.’
    ‘It’s awfully frustrating, isn’t it?’ she said sympathetically. ‘All these preparations going on, and everyone’s life disrupted, and all this extra work like ARP precautions, and fire-watching and blackout—’
    ‘And for all that we can tell,’ he completed the sentence for her, ‘there’s nothing in the way of enemy action at all.’
    ‘There seem to have been a couple of spies arrested in Largo,’ she said. ‘It was in the paper.’
    ‘That’s a long way from here,’ he said. ‘The only thing different around here apart from upheavals which we have organised ourselves without help from the enemy is this murder; and that can’t have anything to do it with it, as far as I can see.’
    ‘It’s murder just the same,’ said Harriet, ‘and nobody seems very upset. I can find hardly a good word spoken on behalf of the victim.’
    ‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘The most I shall ever know about her is her size for a coffin. You can’t care about strangers the way you would for somebody you’ve known all your life, can you?’
    ‘Didn’t Archie know her a bit?’ asked Harriet. ‘Why did you think it might be Archie I was wanting to talk to?’
    ‘I supposed you might need some more shelves, my lady,’ he said.
    ‘As a matter of fact, Mr Lugg, I do,’ said Harriet.
    Four
     
     
     
     
     
    Oh, come and live with me my love
    And share my war-time dinner
    Who eats the least at this our feast
    Shall make John Bull the winner
    Here is a plate of cabbage soup
    With caterpillars in.
    How good they taste! (Avoid all waste
    If you the war would win.)
    We’ve no unpatriotic joint
    No sugar and no bread
    Eat nothing sweet, no rolls, no meat
    The Food Controller said.
    Aelfrida Tillyard, The Garden and the Fire , 1916
    In spite of Mrs Trapp’s severity with her over borrowing sugar, Mrs Ruddle was sitting comfortably in the kitchen of Talboys when Harriet got back with the shopping. She put the string bag down on the deal table, and said, ‘Is there any more tea in the pot, Mrs Trapp?’
    ‘I’ll make some fresh, my lady, and bring it up to you,’ said Mrs Trapp.
    ‘No need,’ said Harriet, sitting down in the big Windsor chair at one end of the table. ‘I’ll have what’s there. What’s the news?’
    ‘Such a carry on!’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘But I don’t blame you, Mrs Ruddle!’
    ‘It’s one of them new families from London, Lady Peter,’ said Mrs Ruddle, launching joyfully into the account, ‘what the billeting officer has put in the flat above the greengrocer’s shop.’
    ‘Mrs Marbleham, you mean?’ said Harriet.
    ‘That’s her. Asked if she could join the pig club. Well, Joan Wagget more or less runs that, so she asks how can you join the pig club when you haven’t got anywhere to keep a pig? Oh, says she, do you have to have a pig? I would of thought I could pay my share. Well, you can’t, says Joan, the pig club is for them as keeps pigs. Well, says this Mrs Marbleham, I heard as how you need a licence to slaughter a pig, and if I can’t join you’d better watch out, she says. Because I’m living right in the middle of this horrible village, she says, and I keeps my eyes skinned. Now what do you make of that?’
    ‘Fascinating,’ said Harriet. ‘I didn’t know there was a pig club. Should we join it, Mrs Trapp?’
    ‘We have done, my lady, and been promised a piglet to fatten as soon as Mr Bateson’s sow has her litter.’
    ‘How does it work, Mrs Trapp?’
    ‘Well, it wouldn’t make sense in a place this size if everyone who was rearing a pig happened to be killing them in the same week or fortnight. There’s