"That's a fact," said Miss Twitterton. "I've often said, if I could have a few frank words with Mr. Crichton, I could tell him a thing or two. There are wheels within wheels beneath the surface of a place like this that these brass-hats have no idea of."
Lord Peter said he felt sure of it.
"The way Mr. Plant treated people he thought were beneath him," went on Miss Twitterton, "I'm sure it was enough to make your blood boil. I'm sure, if Mr. Ormerod sent me with a message to him, I was glad to get out of the room again. Humiliating, it was, the way he'd speak to you. I don't care if he's dead or not; being dead doesn't make a person's past behaviour any better, Lord Peter. It wasn't so much the rude things he said. There's Mr. Birkett, for example; he's rude enough, but nobody minds him. He's just like a big, blundering puppy—rather a lamb, really. It was Mr. Plant's nasty sneering way we all hated so. And he was always running people down."
"How about this portrait?" asked Wimsey. "Was it like him at all?"
"It was a lot too like him," said Miss Twitterton emphatically. "That's why he hated it so. He didn't like Crowder, either. But, of course, he knew he could paint, and he made him do it, because he thought he'd be getting a valuable thing cheap. And Crowder couldn't very well refuse, or Plant would have got him sacked."
"I shouldn't have thought that would have mattered much to a man of Crowder's ability."
"Poor Mr. Crowder! I don't think he's ever had much luck. Good artists don't always seem able to sell their pictures. And I know he wanted to get married—otherwise he'd never have taken up this commercial work. He's told me a good bit about himself. I don't know why—but I'm one of the people men seem to tell things to."
Lord Peter filled Miss Twitterton's glass.
"Oh, please! No, really! Not a drop more! I'm talking a lot too much as it is. I don't know what Mr. Ormerod will say when I go in to take his letters. I shall be writing down all kinds of funny things. Ooh! I really must be getting back. Just look at the time!"
"It's not really late. Have a black coffee—just as a corrective." Wimsey smiled. "You haven't been talking at all too much. I've enjoyed your picture of office life enormously. You have a very vivid way of putting things, you know. I see now why Mr. Plant was not altogether a popular character."