#whose body
“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi, driver!”
The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 ‘bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.
“I’ve left the catalogue behind,” said Lord Peter deprecatingly, “uncommonly careless of me. D'you mind puttin’ back to where we came from?”
“To the Savile Club, sir?”
“No–110 Piccadilly–just beyond–thank you.”
“Thought you was in a hurry,” said the man, overcome with a sense of injury.
“I’m afraid it’s an awkward place to turn in,” said Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the words. His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.
–Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? (1923), Chapter 1.
Two items of interest from “General Information”:
“Note.–It is not possible to insert in this Guide all short workings of routes which traffic requirements necessitate. The omnibuses when working on these short routes, bear the same number as the main route upon which they work with the addition of a letter.”
“Country services shown in red.”
Images: Cover and details from “Map of the General Omnibus routes. No. 4, 1928” issued by London General Omnibus Co., Ltd.
