Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers Page A

pub for lunch and ate with a good appetite. Then she remembered that her cigarette-case was still in her gown. She had brought the garment in with her on her arm, and, thrusting her hand down to the bottom of the long sleeve, she extracted the case. A piece of paper came out with it—an ordinary sheet of scribbling paper folded into four. She frowned at a disagreeable memory as she unfolded it.
    There was a message pasted across it, made up of letters cut apparently from the headlines of a newspaper.
     
    YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN’T YOU
ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?
     
    “Hell!” said Harriet. “Oxford, thou too?” She sat very still for a few moments. Then she struck a match and set light to the paper. It burned briskly, till she was forced to drop it upon her plate. Even then, the letters showed grey upon the crackling blackness, until she pounded their spectral shapes to powder with the back of a spoon.

Chapter 4
    Thou canst not, Love, disgrace me half so ill,
To set a form upon desired change,
As I’ll myself disgrace: knowing thy will,
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,
Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue
My sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong
And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
    —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
    There are incidents in one’s life which, through some haphazard coincidence of time and mood, acquire a symbolic value. Harriet’s attendance at the Shrewsbury Gaudy was of this kind. In spite of minor incongruities and absurdities, it had shown itself to have one definite significance; it had opened up to her the vision of an old desire, long obscured by a forest of irrelevant fancies, but now standing up unmistakable, like a tower set on a hill. Two phrases rang in her ears: the Dean’s, “It’s the work you’re doing that really counts”; and that one melancholy lament for eternal loss: “Once, I was a scholar.”
    “Time is,” quoth the Brazen Head; “time was; time is past.” Philip Boyes was dead; and the nightmares that had haunted the ghastly midnight of his passing were gradually fading away. Clinging on, by blind instinct, to the job that had to be done, she had fought her way back to an insecure stability. Was it too late to achieve wholly the clear eye and the untroubled mind? And what, in that case, was she to do with one powerful fetter which still tied her ineluctably to the bitter past? What about Peter Wimsey?
    During the past three years, their relations had been peculiar. Immediately after the horrible business that they had investigated together at Wilvercombe, Harriet—feeling that something must be done to ease a situation which was fast becoming intolerable—had carried out a long-cherished scheme, now at last made practicable by her increasing reputation and income as a writer. Taking a woman friend with her as companion and secretary, she had left England, and travelled slowly about Europe, staying now here, now there, as fancy dictated or a good background presented itself for a story. Financially the trip had been a success. She had gathered material for two full-length novels, the scenes laid respectively in Madrid and Carcassonne, and written a series of short stories dealing with detective adventures in Hitlerite Berlin, and also a number of travel articles; thus more than replenishing the treasury. Before her departure, she had asked Wimsey not to write. He had taken the prohibition with unexpected meekness.
    “I see. Very well. Vade in pace. If you ever want me, you will find the Old Firm at the usual stand.”
    She had occasionally seen his name in the English papers, and that was all At the beginning of the following June, she had returned home, feeling that after so long a break, there should be little difficulty in bringing the relationship to a cool and friendly close. By this time he was probably feeling as much settled and relieved as she was. As soon as she got back to London, she moved to