Chapter 1
“Topping,” said Lord Peter, and decided that that wasn’t the ideal word. “Smashing.”
For this observation, which he had considered rather witty, he was rewarded with a stern look from the young woman beside him. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” she said, reproachfully.
“Beg pardon,” he replied. “I had no intention of offending you, what?” His boyish grin backed up his words.
She turned around to face him, running a hand through her red hair. “It’s just that it’s so irritating to hear you calling my stained glass window ’smashing’ especially when I’ve just had one smashed.”
Lord Peter gave such a start that his unfortunate walking stick came quite close to being flung across the lawn. “I do beg your pardon,” he repeated, sounding much more penitential and humbled. “Is it really, truly yours?”
She glared at him for a moment. “I’ll not have any of your ‘dear girlie’-ing, and I do think that you might at least introduce yourself if you’re so intent on standing on my property.”
“Peter Wimsey, don’t’cha know,” he said, extending a hand to her. “And awfully delighted and all that rot, what?”
Her expression changed to one of bewilderment and then amusement and finally she laughed. “I’m Fiona Paul. And if you’re going to stand here looking at the window, you may as well come inside and do it, and stay for dinner. That way you can see what it looks like with the sun shining in through as well.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I certainly don’t desire to be trespassin’, but that would be so awfully ripping of you. As it is, the bloody auto (oh, sincere apologies; it has a habit of just slippin’ out) broke down and Bunter sent me to stand in front of people’s houses, lookin’ pathetic until they offered me dinner. Although I admit that I forgot to beg for your scraps when first I caught sight of the luminous beauty of your gem-like glass.”
Fiona, foot on the stone steps leading up to the polished oak door, paused, turned around. “And Mr. Bunter? Is he not to have dinner?”
“Let not your heart be troubled,” replied Peter cheerily. “Bunter is quite equal to the task of finding one wayward — and hungry — lord.”
“You’re a lord?” She pushed the towering door and it swung open smoothly.
He struck himself in the forehead. “Dash it all, the tongue gave it all away again. Dear Miss Paul — it is Miss, i’n’t it? Or is it Mrs? — whenever you have children yourself (always assumin’ you do) I advise you to cut out their tongues. Save them a world of trouble, and so on.”
She shot him a glance which couldn’t decide if it was shocked or amused. “Wait here.”
Peter, abandoned, found himself inspecting the vestibule of the house. It was draped all over with paint-spattered clothes, which seemed odd as no wet paint was visible or — he sniffed. Not a whiff.
Fiona came back in. “There,” she said, “’tis accomplished and Alex has consented to set another place at the table for you.”
“I say,” said Peter apologetically, “I’m being a dreadful nuisance, aren’t I?”
“P’rhaps,” she shrugged, “but we’ve been meaning to meet our neighbors anyway. So come on in, do; I’m such a dreadful hostess. And our house is such a terrible mess.”
“Did’ja only just arrive? Paint clothes all over, I was noticin’.” He was imagining all sorts of sinister things and had quite overlooked the obvious explanation.
“Alexander just put them up; he means to paint but I told him that dinner was positively in order.” She grinned. “There has to be some sort of order, no matter what sort of barbarous country we happen to be in.”
A huge dog came following after them. “Di’rgan,” said Fiona to the dog comfortably, and he went into another room.
“We’re eating in the kitchen,” Fiona informed Peter over her shoulder. “Alex pointed out to me that we haven’t yet figured out which room is for dining.”
“Alexander is… your butler-cook?”
“No!” she laughed. “Alex is my brother.”
The kitchen door stood wide open and Lord Peter caught sight of a short young man chopping vegetables with his back to the door. He turned around at their entrance, knife upraised still — and smiled. “Wimsey, I believe? Alexander Paul.”
“My pleasure.” Peter waited cautiously for him to set the knife down before saying anything else. “I am really most awfully ashamed of myself, bargin’ in like this and — I say. You don’t happen to understand the diabolically mysterious forces which cause autos to speedily convey us from one local’ to another, do you?” His voice and aspect were so hopeful that Fiona’s own face had to disappear suddenly in the cupboard, before he could see her laughing. He had sounded exactly as Di’rgan had as a puppy, even down to cocking his head.
“Sadly, no,” responded Alex. “No experience and precious little skill with mechanical things at all. But I do have some with cooking, and dinner is ready, if you’d be so good as to have a seat.”
“Extremely informal,” added his sister, sliding into a chair. She rested her elbows on the red and white checkered tablecloth.
Alex shook his head at her. “What she means is that not only are we eating in the kitchen, our manners — or lack thereof — are certain to be appalling. We haven’t been in England much at all.”
Fiona stabbed a piece of lettuce. “We’ve not even been in civilized countries most of our lives.”
Wimsey looked up from his half-emptied plate. “Really? How absolutely fascinatin’. I have a frightf’lly boring habit of sticking to the road more travelled myself. From what exotic places d’you hail?”
They laughed, pleased to have someone else to talk to, pleased at not being alone in what was, to them, a very strange and foreign country.
“Well,” said Alex, and looked at Fiona.
She kicked him dispassionately. “Go on,” she urged, around a mouthful of food. “You were born first.”
“True enough,” conceded Alex. “Let me see. I was born in Africa. Fiona wasn’t born until we were living in India, were you, Na? And then of course we were in Scotland for a year, about. And then the American States.”
“Mm,” said Fiona pensively. “I believe you covered it. Lord Wimsey — is that the proper mode of address? — are you sure your friend will show up?”
“Mr. Bunter? Ah, he’s sure to appear.” Peter wiped his mouth and rocked his chair back. “Bunter is my man — valet, to be proper. Which calls something else to mind; aren’t you a bit servant-less? Quite the rambly old type of house for a brother and sister to be all alone in.”
Alexander shrugged and stood up, stacking the dishes in the sink. “Na, it’s your turn to was up as I did the cooking. We’ve been with and without servants,” he added in response to Peter’s question, “depending on where we lived and other… factors. Most likely we’ll have some here again, after the rest of our party arrives. But for now, there’re just the two of us. And Di’rgan, who is –” He stopped at the almost imperceptible sound of someone coming up the stairs leading to the house.
“I’ll answer the door,” Fiona said. “Get Mr. Bunter’s dinner ready please, Alex.”
Peter watched her thoughtfully as she disappeared down the hallway. “I’m most drea’fully curious,” he said, conspiratorially. “Whatever are you doing in Merrie Olde England afta’ living all over the world?”
Alex gave another half shrug, noncommittal to an extreme. “Perhaps our father thought we could use a bit of polish after all? So you really are a lord? Must be exciting.”
The lord to whom such an exciting life had just been ascribed sighed dramatically. “Alas, I am indeed a lord. Frightfully dull business, to be strictly truthful.” He stood up with his legendary grace. “Do let me start on the dishes, dear chap. After I invited myself to dine with you, the least I can do is lend a hand with the cleanin’ up process.”
“You’ll spoil Fiona,” warned Alexander, stepping back all the same to allow Peter at the dishes.
“Who is spoiling me?” Fiona inquired, leading Bunter into the kitchen. Bunter suffered a deep pang at seeing his lordship occupying himself with the washing of dishes, but he resigned himself to it with a barely audible sigh.
“Hallo, there,” bubbled Lord Peter, enthusiastically swiping at the dishes. “Did you meet with success in finding someone to repair the automated chariot? I cannot make out why they feel so often compelled to go awry,” he added to himself, rather mournfully.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Bunter, you really are invaluable,” Peter proclaimed, narrowly rescuing a plate from smashing on the floor.
“Thank you, my lord. And if I may be so audacious as to suggest it, perhaps the automotives would not break down quite so regularly if your lordship did not feel compelled to venture constantly so close to calamities as that plate just came.” The stoic manservant returned to his methodical cutting of his mutton.
Hands deep in the soapy water, Peter stood motionless as he contemplated this. “Perhaps that’s so,” he admitted, coming back to life and rinsing off the dishes. “But I am rather more inclined to the belief that machinery simply bears an irrational and eternal grudge against me. No, no, Bunter. Your explanation is far too plausible for me to accept it.”
Fiona, drying the last of the dishes, cast a questioning glance at her brother. He nodded, somewhat absently.
“If you want to propose an explanation, plausible or not, we’d be more than delighted to hear it. We always enjoy an after-dinner story.”
Peter looked a bit bewildered. “Well, o’ course I’d be dee-ligh-ted to make up a story for you, but I shall need some sort of problem to start with, a sort o’ guiding star, so to speak.”
“Oh, yes,” she laughed. “Well, it was like this (Skandar, correct anything I’m forgetting or misstating). We first arrived here six days ago, in the late afternoon. The sun was sinking in the sky behind the house, but it wasn’t very low yet –”
“–the sun sets in front of the house, but we were approaching from behind the house,” inserted Alex, from where he sat comfortably perched on a crate.
Fiona nodded. “Anyway, it was just late afternoon, still golden and warm. Skandar and I decided to race to see who could touch the house first; we had sent the people with our things around to the front, but Skan’ wanted me to see the back of the house first. He’d been here before. But he won the race, and then we wandered about outside for a bit, trying to guess what the view out the windows would be from inside, which one we’d want. I saw that, although most of the windows had regular glass, two of them had stained glass windows. Those rooms were on the third floor — looking east, obviously. I said I’d want an east view, and Skan’ said he wouldn’t fight me for it — I could have ALL the east facing windows, as far as he cared; he wanted west.” Fiona smiled to herself. “And then — to condense things — we came inside and I chose one of the rooms with a stained glass window. But this morning it was smashed when I woke up, as I was telling you outside earlier.”
“When you woke up?” Peter leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “But not when you went to sleep?”
“Of course not then. I would have noticed. Especially as I had been looking out of it right before I fell asleep.”
“Ah.” He sat back in his chair with a sigh. “But it didn’t wake you up?”
Fiona laughed suddenly. “No. But I am a very sound sleeper.”
“I would have thought shattering glass would wake even you up,” Alex teased.
“Was it broken from the inside?”
The Pauls stared at him.
“That is, is there a chance that you were sleepwalkin’ or something of such sort and accidentally threw a paperweight, etc, through the window?”
“Oh, no,” answered Alexander. “The glass was inside, not outside. And Fiona’s not especially given to sleepwalking – she’s never done it, as far as I know. But I do see your point.”
“Thank you,” said Peter gravely. “Tryin’ to fabricate an explanation requires accurate knowledge of details, what?”
“Well,” Fiona said, “I haven’t got to the interesting details yet.” She held up three fingers to tick them off on. “First of all, whatever came through my window so violently wasn’t lying on the floor of my bedroom. Secondly, I didn’t wake up – yes, that bothers me; and finally, the glass wasn’t shattered all over my floor.”
“I’ll have to call this The Case of the Disappearin’ Window,” said Lord Peter jovially. He paused and frowned. “But I thought you – Alexander – Alex –Skandar – sirrah – said that the glass WAS inside. Have you been givin’ me an inconsistent – and rather mystifyin’, I admit – after-dinner tale?”
The red-heads looked solemnly at him and shook their heads.
“It WAS inside,” explained Fiona earnestly. “But it wasn’t all over my floor as it should have been.”
The lord’s eyebrows rose. “Innnndeed,” he breathed. “Go on, I beg. I’m utterly entranced. I s’ppose it spelled out the name of the said destroyer of your window, ’though not of your peaceful slumber?”
Fiona bit her lower lip and looked questioningly at Alex, who nodded at her again. “Well,” she said, slowly, “That’s it.”
Peter, who had come to consider himself as rather immune to surprises by his advanced stage in life, looked up sharply, his distant, bored attitude of a dandy slipping away. “What’s it? You sound like Parker, only hinting at the most interesting aspects and leaving me groping around in the dark for clues.”
“Who’s Parker? …And I meant ‘that’s it’ – it was a name.”
A curiously dream-like feeling enveloped Lord Peter. “Go on,” he pleaded. “What was the name?”
“Dante.”
Finis Chapter One
Comments»
next installment, please!!
ditto ^
very good! (i got a peter wimsey book out of the library. it was the only one they had. it was ’strong poison’. what do you recomend about it???)
I just noticed a typo that I thought you might like to fix up:
“Your explanation is far TO plausible for me to accept it.”
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I really enjoyed it. You have a real gift for being un-ostentatiously- or [i]smoothly[/i] funny.