As it happened, I had no birthday party for Lord Peter this month as I so sanguinely hoped.  Hopes are high for next June, which gives all of us plenty of time to find suitable monocles and the rest of our costumery.  Instead, just so he knows I haven’t forgotten about him, here is Dorothy Sayers’s dedication of her first book about Lord Peter.

To M. J.

Dear Jim:

This book is your fault.  If it had not been for your brutal insistence, Lord Peter would never have staggered through to the end of this enquiry.  Pray consider that he thanks you with his accumstomed suavity.

Yours ever,

D. L. S.

Dedication from Whose Body?, by Dorothy L. Sayers.  First published 1923 by Harper and Row Publishers, Inc.