unearths some literary gems.
***
"The Northants police are calling in the Yard....Wonder who they'll put on the case."
Melrose Plant yawned. "Old Swinnerton, probably."
She sat up suddenly, her glasses perched on top of her frizzy gray head like the goggles of a racing driver. "Swinnerton? You know them?"
He was sorry he had made up the name--wasn't there always a Swinnerton?
***
Melrose held the chair of French Romantic poetry at the University of London where he taught for about four months out of the year, leaving echoes of himself to reverberate for the other eight.
***
They stood now in the low, dimly lit hall...his aunt and Simon Matchett making small talk smaller.
***
"Miss Ball?"
Miss Ball nodded as if she were ecstatic to be Miss Ball.
***
[Extra syllable inflation! Even when deliberately pronouncing the name in a literal-minded fashion, I make it only five syllables.]
"And while we're on it, you pronounce Bicester-Strachan as if it had twenty syllables. It's Bister-Strawn."
[Btw, the speaker there had begun by correcting his aunt's mispronunciation of the character surname Ruthven--a name I don't recall ever encountering before. Within twenty-four hours, however, I happened upon Ruthven as the surname of an author.]
***
"Vicars always look as if they need to be dusted daily."
***
