The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers

The next news I had about the Harrisons was about the middle of October, 1929, when I got a note from Lathom, written, rather unexpectedly, from "The Shack, Manaton, Devon. " He said that he was staying with Harrison, who was having his annual "camp" among the watercolour "bits" and the natural foodstuffs. Harrison, it appeared, had been so pressing that he really had not known how to refuse, especially as he was really feeling rather played-out after several months' strenuous work in Paris. After the unbearably hot and prolonged summer, the prospect of pottering about a bit among the lush grass and deep lanes of Devon had seemed attractive, even when coupled with the boredom of Harrison's company. "As a matter of fact," he added, "the old boy is not so bad when you get him in the country by himself. This is the kind of life that really suits him. As a family man he is a failure, but he quite comes out and blossoms doing the odd bits of work about the shack. And he certainly is a first-class cook, though up to the present I have successfully avoided his nettle-broth and stewed toadstools, not wishing to be cut off in my youth. This is a pretty place -- miles away from everywhere, of course, stuck down on a circumbendible lane which runs down from Manaton (half a dozen houses and a pub) to the deep valley which separates the Manaton Ridge and Becky Falls from Lustleigh Cleave. The only neighbours are the sheep and cows -- an old ram walked into the kitchen the other day. Harrison was grunting over the stove and didn't see him at first. ‘Be-hey-hey,' says the ram; ‘Eh-heh-heh,' bleats Harrison, looking up; and damn it, he was so exactly like the old fellow that he wanted nothing but a pair of horns to complete the resemblance! We wash the crockery, and then Harrison takes his newest superfine painting-box, with the collapsible legs and all the rest of it, and trundles away into the valley, where he sits all day in a gorse-bush, trying to put the tumbling of the stream on paper. The drought has dried it up a good bit, but never was anything so desiccated as the arid little plan of it he produces with pride for me to see, painted with a brush with three hairs in it -- peck, peck, scratch and dab -- like a canary scrabbling for seed. Why don't I take the opportunity to do some work in this glorious place? No, thanks; I'm a figure and portrait wallah -- besides, I've come here for a rest. It is not mine to sing the stately grace -- I smoke my pipe in the doorway, drive the cattle out of the back garden, and see that the stewpot doesn't boil too fast.

"So here I am, in comfortable exile with Menelaus, while Helen sits at home and sews shirts. And it's a better way, too. One mustn't take these things too seriously. Damned if Harrison hasn't got the right idea after all. Look after the grub and leave women to their own fool devices. They give a man no peace. You, being married, have perhaps got your house in order. Do you find it as easy to do your work, now that you're hooked up to a whirlwind? But, of course, your whirlwind works too, and helps to turn the mill-wheel, which no doubt makes all the difference."