#smallbone deceased

"A friend in the enemy's camp," said the Assistant Commissioner. "It's quite a good idea. Only for heaven's sake don't be like that mug in the detective story who confides all his best ideas to a friendly sort of character who turns out to be the murderer in Chapter Sixteen."

John had, by now, reached that well-defined stage in intoxication when every topic becomes the subject of exposition and generalisation, when sequences of thought range themselves in the speaker's mind, strewn about with flowery metaphor and garlanded in chains of pellucid logic; airborne flights of oratory to which the only obstacle is a certain difficulty with the palatal consonants. "Horniman, Birley and Craine," said John, "is not one firm but four firms. It is a quadernity. It is the Gordon Selfridge of solicitors, different departments to suit all tastes and purses. For the humble but well-meaning citizens of Streatham or Brixton, Mr. Brown and Mr. Baxter labour unceasingly, resting not day nor night. For the hard-faced, stern-browed moguls of commerce and industry our City offices are ever open, and the warm hearts and subtle brains of Mr. Bourlass, Mr. Bridewell and Mr. Burt beat in a mighty diapason, and their cunning fingers are never still - here underwriting a charter party, there endorsing a Bill of Exchange sans recours; and if all else palls, why, bless me, they can always fill in the time between lunch and tea by forming a limited company. In Piccadilly, those gilded darlings of fortune, Osric Rasmussen and Emmanuel Oakshott, pin carnations to the palpitating bosoms of a horde of comely divorcees and spend their time, or such time as they can spare from race meetings and first nights, in drawing fantastic leases of flats in Half Moon Street and shops in the Burlington Arcade--" "Two more whiskies," said Henry. "What do we do in Lincoln's Inn?" "I've never really found out," said John, "but it's all most terribly gentlemanly."

Books of the month: Feb 2026

Sometimes, indeed, he went so far as to visualise himself as an archangel, a rotund St. Michael, armed with the sword of Dymond and defended by the shield of Green, protecting the helpless from the assault of the massed powers of Darkness, those arch-fiends, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.

This was typical of Inspector Colley who was elderly, soured by lack of promotion, and extremely methodical. He knew the necessary moves to a hair, and made them all. His reports were models of conciseness and monuments to a staggering lack of imagination.

Smallbone Deceased

"And this was where the Horniman office system signally justified its founder. In no other office - in no other solicitors' office in London, I think - would the disposal of a bundle of papers and files and account books have caused the murderer any embarrassment."

"I say, what's it all about? Are we supposed to have murdered the old boy on a Saturday morning?" "Well--I--" "Not a bad idea at that," said John. "The office would be nice and quiet. Supplies a motive too. I mean, any client who comes to see you on a Saturday morning is really asking for trouble, isn't he?"