Harriet has been living with Philip Boyes a Bohemian writer
for a year or so; she is not really an unconventional woman; she hoped for marriage
but when he told her that he didn’t believe in marriage, she accepted his
proposal of living together. She is not entirely happy with the situation. She refuses
to meet his family so as not to embarrass them. However in their circle of
writers and artists love affairs and living together weren’t uncommon and were acceptable.
We learn during the trial that Harriet however broke with
Philip.. And her reason for doing so was that he had - after a year -offered to
marry her legally. She was angry, because
she felt that he had been lying to her, testing her devotion by getting her to
go against her own wishes and live with him.
She left him and he kept pursuing her, not understating that his behaviour
had killed her affection for him. She
refuses to consider his repeated proposals. Philip visits her to again discuss the issue.. And soon after this, he
becomes very ill with gastritis and dies. Eventually
the death is investigated as suspicious and it
is proved that he was poisoned by arsenic. Because of the quarrels between them, and because
Harriet as a detective story writer had been researching a book on arsenic poisoning, she was suspected and arrested.
During the trial, the judge seems hostile to Harriet, probably
largely because of her having lived with Philip.
Peter however is a worldly young man who has had several
relationships himself and comes from the aristocratic world. so he is tolerant
of Harriet’s past affair….
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