Lord Peter Wimsey [01] Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver–all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited. Look at Sugg."
     
    "I beg your pardon," said Parker, "I wasn't attending. Argentines are steadying a little, I see."
     
    "Milligan," said Lord Peter.
     
    "Oil's in a bad way. Levy's made a difference there. That funny little boom in Peruvians that came on just before he disappeared has died away again. I wonder if he was concerned in it. D'you know at all?"
     
    "I'll find out," said Lord Peter, "what was it?"
     
    "Oh, an absolutely dud enterprise that hadn't been heard of for years. It suddenly took a little lease of life last week. I happened to notice it because my mother got let in for a couple of hundred shares a long time ago. It never paid a dividend. Now it's petered out again."
     
    Wimsey pushed his plate aside and lit a pipe.
     
    "Having finished, I don't mind doing some work," he said. "How did you get on yesterday?"
     
    "I didn't," replied Parker. "I sleuthed up and down those flats in my own bodily shape and two different disguises. I was a gas-meter man and a collector for a Home for Lost Doggies, and I didn't get a thing to go on, except a servant in the top flat at the Battersea Bridge Road end of the row who said she thought she'd heard a bump on the roof one night. Asked which night, she couldn't rightly say. Asked if it was Monday night, she thought it very likely. Asked if it mightn't have been in that high wind on Saturday night that blew my chimney-pot off, she couldn't say but what it might have been. Asked if she was sure it was on the roof and not inside the flat, said to be sure they did find a picture tumbled down next morning. Very suggestible girl. I saw your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Appledore, who received me coldly, but could make no definite complaint about Thipps except that his mother dropped her h's, and that he once called on them uninvited, armed with a pamphlet about anti-vivisection. The Indian Colonel on the first floor was loud, but unexpectedly friendly. He gave me Indian curry for supper and some very good whisky, but he's a sort of hermit, and all he could tell me was that he couldn't stand Mrs. Appledore."
     
    "Did you get nothing at the house?"
     
    "Only Levy's private diary. I brought it away with me. Here it is. It doesn't tell one much, though. It's full of entries like: 'Tom and Annie to dinner'; and 'My dear wife's birthday; gave her an old opal ring'; 'Mr. Arbuthnot dropped in to tea; he wants to marry Rachel, but I should like someone steadier for my treasure.' Still, I thought it would show who came to the house and so on. He evidently wrote it up at night. There's no entry for Monday."
     
    "I expect it'll be useful," said Lord Peter, turning over the pages. "Poor old buffer. I say, I m not so certain now he was done away with."
     
    He detailed to Mr. Parker his day's work.
     
    "Arbuthnot?" said Parker, "is that the Arbuthnot of the diary?"
     
    "I suppose so. I hunted him up because I knew he was fond of fooling round the Stock Exchange. As for Milligan, he looks all right, but I believe he's pretty ruthless in business and you never can tell. Then there's the red-haired secretary–lightnin' calculator man with a face like a fish, keeps on sayin' nuthin'–got the Tar-baby in his family tree, I should think. Milligan's got a jolly good motive for, at any rate, suspendin' Levy for a few days. Then there's the new man."
     
    "What new man?"
     
    "Ah, that's the letter I mentioned to you. Where did I put it? here we are. Good parchment paper, printed address of solicitor's office in Salisbury, and postmark to correspond. Very precisely written with a fine nib by an elderly business man of old-fashioned habits."
     
    Parker took the letter and read:
     
    Salisbury
     
    Solicitors
     
    MILFORD HILL, SALISBURY
     
    17 November, 192–.
     
    Sir:
     
    With