* * * *
Looking back upon her visit to Oxford, Harriet found that it had had an unsettling effect. She had begun to take Wimsey for granted, as one might take dynamite for granted in a munitions factory. But the discovery that the mere sound of his name still had the power to provoke such explosions in herself—that she could so passionately resent, at one and the same time, either praise or blame of him on other people’s lips—awakened a misgiving that dynamite was perhaps still dynamite, however harmless it might come to look through long custom.
On the mantelpiece of her sitting-room stood a note, in Peter’s small and rather difficult writing. It informed her that he had been called away by Chief-Inspector Parker, who was in difficulties over a murder in the north of England. He must th
