Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said: D'you like your job? The detective considered the question, and replied: Yes'yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it quite well'not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the mark and not get slack. And there's a future to it. Yes, I like it. Why? Oh, nothing, said Peter. It's a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it'up to a point. If it was all on paper I'd enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job'when one doesn't know any of the people and it's just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don't seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin' in, since I don't have to make my livin' by it. And I feel as if I oughtn't ever to find it amusin'. But I do.

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