Strong Poison: Chapter 21 - A Manicurist Joins the Plot

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Chapter 21 Then you won't marry me, said Lord Peter. The prisoner shook her head.

Harriet Vane (0:06)

No, it wouldn't be fair to you. And besides...

Lord Peter Wimsey (0:10)

Well?

Harriet Vane (0:11)

I'm frightened of it. One couldn't get away.

I'll live with you if you like, but I won't marry you.

SPEAKER_1 (0:19)

Her tone was so unutterably dreary that Wimsey could feel no enthusiasm for this handsome offer.

Lord Peter Wimsey (0:24)

But that sort of thing doesn't always work, he expostulated.

Dash it all, you ought to know. Forgive my alluding to it and all that, but it's frightfully inconvenient, and one has just as many roses if one was married.

Harriet Vane (0:37)

I know that. But you could cut loose any time you wanted to.

Lord Peter Wimsey (0:41)

But I shouldn't want to.

Harriet Vane (0:43)

Oh, yes, you would. You've got a family and traditions, you know, Caesar's wife and that sort of thing.

Lord Peter Wimsey (0:49)

Blast Caesar's wife. And as for the family traditions, they're on my side for what they're worth.

Anything a Wimsey does is right, and heaven help the person who gets in the way. We've even got a damned old family motto about it, I hold by my Wimsey. Quite right, too.

I can't say that when I look in the glass, I exactly suggest to myself the original Gerald de Wimsey, who bucked about on a cart horse at the siege of Acre. But I do jolly well intend to do what I like about marrying. Who's to stop me? They can't eat me. They can't even cut me, if it comes to that. Joke. Unintentional officers. For the use of...

SPEAKER_1 (1:30)

Harriet laughed.

Harriet Vane (1:31)

No, I suppose they can't cut you. You wouldn't have to slink abroad with your impossible wife and live at obscure continental watering places like people in Victorian novels.

Lord Peter Wimsey (1:43)

Certainly not.

Harriet Vane (1:44)

People would forget I'd had a lover.

Lord Peter Wimsey (1:47)

My dear child, they're forgetting that kind of thing every day. They're experts at it.

Harriet Vane (1:53)

And were supposed to have murdered him?

Lord Peter Wimsey (1:55)

And were triumphantly acquitted of having murdered him, however greatly provoked.

Harriet Vane (2:00)

Well, I won't marry you. If people can forget all that, they can forget we're not married.

Lord Peter Wimsey (2:06)

Oh, yes, they could. I couldn't. That's all. We don't seem to be progressing very fast with this conversation.

I take it the general idea of living with me does not hopelessly repel you.

Harriet Vane (2:18)

But this is all so preposterous!

SPEAKER_1 (2:21)

protested the girl.

Harriet Vane (2:22)

How can I say what I should or shouldn't do if I were free and certain of surviving?

Lord Peter Wimsey (2:27)

Why not? I can imagine what I should do even in the most unlikely circumstances, whereas this really is a dead cert, straight from the stables.

SPEAKER_1 (2:37)

I can't, said Harriet, beginning to wilt.

Harriet Vane (2:40)

Do please stop asking me. I don't know. I can't think. I can't see beyond the, beyond the, beyond the next few weeks.

I only want to get out of this and be left alone.

Lord Peter Wimsey (2:51)

All right, said Wimsey, I won't worry you. Not fair. Abusing my privilege and so on. You can't say pig and sweep out under the serks, so I won't offend again.

As a matter of fact, I'll sweep out myself, having an appointment with a manicurist. Nice little girl, but a trifle refaned in her vowels. Cheerio!

SPEAKER_1 (3:13)

The manicurist, who had been discovered by the help of Chief Inspector Parker and his sleuths, was a kitten-faced child with an inviting manner and a shrewd eye. She made no bones about accepting her client's invitation to dine and showed no surprise when he confidentially murmured that he had a little proposition to put before her. She put her plump elbows on the table, cocked her head at a coy angle, and prepared to sell her on a deer.

As the proposition unfolded itself, her manner underwent an alteration that was almost comical. Her eyes lost their round innocence, her very hair seemed to grow less fluffy, and her eyebrows puckered in genuine astonishment. Why, of course I could, she said finally, but whatever do you want them for? Seems funny to me.

Lord Peter Wimsey (3:55)

Call it just a joke, said Wimsey.

SPEAKER_1 (3:57)

No, her mouth hardened. I wouldn't like it. It doesn't make sense if you see what I mean.

What I mean is it sounds a queer sort of joke, and that kind of thing might get a girl into trouble. I say it's not one of those. What do they call them? There was a bit about it in Madam Crystal's column last week in Susie's snippets. Spells, you know, witchcraft. The occult, that sort of thing. I wouldn't like it if it was to do any harm to anybody.