Harriet stays In Wilvercombe to help the police with their
enquiries. She learns that the dead man
(whose body has been washed off by the tides) is Paul Alexis, a professional
dancing partner who works at one of the big hotels. To her amazement, she meets an older woman,
Mrs Weldon, who turns out to be engaged to Paul. She is in her late 50s and he
was only 22. At first the case looks
like suicide. Peter Wimsey arrives in
Wilvercombe and he and Harriet work together.
The mystery is a very complicated one and rather
melodramatic, which is one reason I don’t think it is one of Sayers’ best.
They learn that Mrs Weldon was a lonely widow with one son,
and had fallen in love with Paul, and they had become engaged. However Henry Weldon, Mrs Weldon’s son who is a rather crude and stupid individual, was not
happy at the idea of his mother making a fool of herself by marrying a man 30
years her junior who was penniless. Harriet tries to befriend Mrs Weldon, though
she thinks of her as foolish and wrong minded in her desire to find a man to
love, rather than making a life for herself.
But Harriet herself because of her past is also considered a
suspect when it begins to look like Paul Alexis might have been murdered. She and Wimsey argue and their friendship comes under strain, because she feels that she has to be grateful to him all the time.
The plot thickens, when Harriet and Peter learn that Alexis had a girlfriend,
a silly girl called Leila, and she reveals that he was fond of reading “Ruritanian
romances” and that he got letters in code, sent from abroad.
Eventually, it begins to look like Alexis was lured to his death by
one of these letters but other evidence seems to point to Henry Weldon being involved.
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