»In which I get no forrarder

After a few recent trips by 'plane, I have re-(re-)read much of Dorothy Sayers' oeuvre featuring the monocled 'tec Lord Peter Wimsey. Much to my chagrin, I found myself feeling much like this rabbity protagonist when I found my carefully-arranged bottles of port all upended and cleaned, just as in the scene from her stage-play Busman's Honeymoon in which the provincial charwoman Mrs Rundle does ditto damage to His Lordship's carefully-swaddled bottles. My case was perhaps less severe, but also hilarious.

"Never you mind that, Mr. Bunter. I'll soon 'ave them bottles clean." "Bottles?" said Bunter. "What bottles?" A frightful suspicion shot through his brain. "What have you got there?" "Why," said Mrs. Ruddle, "one o' them dirty old bottles you brought along with you." She displayed her booty in triumph. "Sech a state they're in. All over whitewash." Bunter's world reeled about him and he clutched at the corner of the settle. "My God!" "You couldn't put a thing like that on the table, could you now?" "Woman!" cried Bunter, and snatched the bottle from her, "that's the Cockburn '96!" "Ow, is it?" said Mrs. Ruddle, mystified. "There now! I thought it was summink to drink." ... "You have not, I trust, handled any of the other bottles?" "Only to unpack 'em and set 'em right side up," Mrs. Ruddle assured him cheerfully. "Them cases'll come in 'andy for kindling."

Dorothy Sayers novels make excellent, and riveting, reading. Interspersed with quotations from the classics, endless piffle, and quaint, feudal Old England ('though they take place Between The Wars), the mysteries rise far beyond the stereotypes of the genre while maintaining the classic whodunit form. Almost all are murder mysteries, excepting perhaps "The Nine Tailors", which is a stupendously beautiful book. And people do die, perhaps outside the scope of the narrative, but the novel is more of a study in character than a murder-mystery.