Bellona Club, finis

Peter has a talk with his friend Colonel Marchbanks, and they confront Penberthy. He admits that he killed the General by giving him some pills and advising him how to take them; they were meant to keep him going long enough to outlive his sister. However they were poisonous, and killed him. He feels that he's entitled to the money which would come to him via Ann Dorland, he could make better use of it than George or Robert Fentiman. Unfortunately, Robert's moving the body and concealing the death for a day, caused the murder to be suspected and discovered. He admits that he used Ann. He fixed on her since he knew that she was rather desperate to find a man... But he says he would have been a good husband to her if he had married her for money. Penberthy knows that he's caught. Peter suggests to him that if he would make a full confession, and clear Ann of any involvement in the murder, like a gentleman, he would let him commit suicide rather than facing trial. Penberthy agrees and writes a confession. The Colonel leaves his gun for him. Penberthy shoots himself, and the sad affair of the Bellona club is finished. Ann Dorland agrees to share the fortune with the Fentiman brothers, which leaves them all comfortably off. She and Robert become friendly. Peter's original feeling that digging into the Dormer will would only dig up a lot of trouble, has turned out to be true. However, the Fentimans will get some money and Ann may find a man who genuinely likes her.

Rough Music By Nadine Sutton on Amazon

 This is one of my works set in the American country and rock music world.  Its not a romance;  its a story about two members of a country rock band, in the 1970s and 80s.. who are trying to move from the small time to the big time.  Its about the compromises that they make along the way.. their love of their music.. and their friendships.. and the strain that touring and working hard puts on their marriages....and the ups and downs of travelling with a band, in the old days. Its based on what I know of the bands back then when I was a kid, and how they worked very hard and gave a lot to their fans... and partied hard.  

Bellona Club, next part

George disappears one night and Sheila calls Peter, who manages to calm her down and placates the owners of the house where she and George live. They think Sheila is having an affair with Peter. Peter finds that George has had access to Sheila's medicine for heart trouble, which contains digitalis, and since he has run off, he fears that the man did kill his grandfather in a maniacal fit. Then George is found. He turns himself into a police station and confesses to the murder. He collapses and it is not clear if he is making a real confession or if he is still not in his right mind. Peter meets Ann Dorland, and talks to her, and she finally confides in him. She had not been very happy in her life, as she is rather plain and does not have an easy manner. She was lonely and wanted love affairs, but in the Bloomsbury set, she did not attract many men, so she felt out of place. She was not a talented artist and so made few friends, except for Marjorie Phelps, Wimsey's friend who makes pottery figures. So she turned to other interests, and became friendly with Walter Penberthy, the Fentimans' doctor. He socialised with the Bloomsbury set and who wanted to set up a clinic for glandular treatment and rejuvenation. Ann explains that Pemberthy told her he would like to marry her and that he needed money to set up his clinic. He encouraged her to stand firm and not agree to share the Dormer legacy with George and Robert, but now that she is being whispered about as the woman who may have poisoned the old man, he has cut himself off from her. He has become engaged to another woman, Naomi Rushworth. Peter believes her but fears that if the case goes to trial, there will be just enough doubt cast on Ann, that she and he conspired to murder the general, and then fell out. He decides to go and see Pemberthy who lives at the Bellona Club.

Bellona Club Redux by Sayers

I started to blog about this some time ago, but lost track of it.. and it is one of my favourite novels by Sayers. It gives a sympathetic portrait of England in the years after the war, and the trauma that the war had inflicted on the soldiers. Peter is an ex officer who suffered a nervous breakdown after being blown up and buried in a shell hole in the last months of the War. George Fentiman, from a not very well-off military family had also suffered from war injuries and shell shock. He may resemble Dorothy's husband Mac who had stomach injuries and suffered from depression and general debility after his war. Dorothy had tried her best to support Mac and she sympathised with the soldiers who had come back to poverty and unemployment. George is prone to fugues and fits of hysteria. He is grumpy and difficult with his loyal wife. But he feels emasculated by her having to work to support him, but he gets ill and cannot work. He and Sheila are in debt and want desperately to get some money from Lady Dormer's estate, but Ann Dorland seems unwilling to compromise. Peter manages to find out that General Fentiman went to see his doctor - Pemberthy, after he saw his sister. He wanted medicines to keep him going. He wants to outlast his sister and inherit her fortune. Other than that, there does not seem to be much evidence of how the old man spent the last day of his life. Robert Fentiman has mentioned his grandfather being friendly with an old man called Oliver but they cannot find Oliver. Peter notes that there is something odd about the corpse. Fentiman was not wearing a poppy.. which is unusual for a military man. It seems likely that the old man died before Lady Dormer. He applies for an exhumation order, and when General Fentiman is autopsied, it emerges that he had been poisoned. Robert Fentiman comes clean and admits that he found his grandfather dead. He realised that now, his family would not come in for the lion's share of the fortune.. and George needed the money. So, he hid the body and put it in the chair later on, so that he would be found later. Robert feels guilty at his fraud and resigns from his army job. But he is shocked that his grandfather was poisoned. The evidence seems to point to Ann Dorland, who had a motive and who had had access to the General when he came to see Lady Dormer. The nurse who was attending Lady Dormer is questioned and she says she likes Ann - but she does admit that Ann prepared a drink for Fentiman. So she had a chance to poison it. It also emerges that Ann who had previously spent some of her time trying to paint and hang out with Bohemian arty types, has lately been taking an interest in crime and in chemical experiments.

Rough Music a Story of American music

  Rough Music eBook : Sutton, Nadine: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

This is one of my works set in the American country and rock music world.  Its not a romance;  its a story about two members of a country rock band, in the 1970s and 80s.. who are trying to move from the small time to the big time.  Its about the compromises that they make along the way.. their love of their music.. and their friendships.. and the strain that touring and working hard puts on their marriages....and the ups and downs of travelling with a band, in the old days. Its based on what I know of the bands back then when I was a kid, and how they worked very hard and gave a lot to their fans... and partied hard. 

Friday's Child Part V

 Hero makes another of her social gaffes, agreeing to have a driving race with another society woman, and Sherry loses his temper with her. He tells her that she is going to have to stay with his mother and learn how to behave. She is upset and angry, because she know that Lady Sheringham does not like her and she can't bear the thought that she let Sherry down.  She runs away, and seeks advice from George and Sherry's bachelor friends.  They agree to help her and persuade her to go to Bath to stay with Lady Saltash, an elderly society lady and Ferdinand Fakenham's grandmother, who will look after her and teach her more about society. While she is away, Sherry hunts everywhere he can think of, to find her. He begins to realise that she loved him and that he himself is in love with her, and that it is time he put aside his playboy ways and settle down. He tells his mother she will have to move out of their country house and that he is going to try his best to get Hero back. However, she says that Hero has probably run off with a lover and he should find her and divorce her. Sherry has a sudden inspiration that his wife may have gone to Bath, to get a job in a school there.  So he goes escorting his mother and Isabella.  Lady Sheringham is hoping that if he does get a divorce, he will marry Isabella. But to his amazment he sees his wife, walking with George who has gone to warn her that Sherry is coming to Bath. Hero has been learning more about society and has also acquired a new admirer, an older man called Jasper Tarleton.  The Sheringhams go through a fantastic drama, where Jasper tries to elope with Hero, not knowing her to be married, and Montague Revesby tries to compromise Bella so that she will have to marry him.  However, Bella turns up at the inn where Hero is anxiously talking with Jasper. Bella has jabbed at Revesby with a hat pin and generally made his life a misery. Sherry arrives and he and Hero are reconciled. Revesby acts in a miserably cowardly way, drawing a swordstick on the unarmed Jasper. The group are disgusted with him and he is forced out of their social circle. Isabella finally gives way to her love for George, whom she has always preferred and agrees to marry him. Hero and Sherry agree to return to London and to take up their position as Lord and Lady of Sheringham Place and to have a baby. This is one of Heyer's best novels, with a convoluted plot, fantastic twists and turns and a set of funny characters who make up ridiculous stories. 

Friday's Child IV

Hero does not like Revesby. She is naive and silly at times but she instinctively knows that he is a bad influence on her husband. Sherry worries about his young wife, because she does seem to get into trouble quite often. She has noone to teach her the ways of Society. He continues to over spend and both he and Hero gamble. One evening, Hero and Sherry are with friends, including Revesby, when a young woman with a baby comes up to him. She tells him that the child is his, and she has no money. Revesby unkindly cuts her and says she is mad, but Hero takes her home. Sherry agrees to take the girl in. He begins to see a major flaw in his friend. Hero insists that they look after Ruth, and her child.. She was a servant at an inn when Revesby was visiting a relative. Sherry gives her a job at his hunting lodge. Soon after Ruth's arrival in his house, Sherry finds that his wife went to the house of a courtesan, Charlotte Gillingham. Mrs Gillingham is one of Montagu's mistresses. Hero lost a lot of money gambling. He finds out through the good nature of one of his own ex mistresses, Nancy, who saw Hero at the house, playing cards and looking very unhappy. He thanks Nancy for telling him, and Hero tells him the whole story. Sherry realises that Revesby was trying to cause trouble in his house, because it was Hero who made him look bad by taking in his mistress and child. He visits Revesby, but the older man refuses to be drawn into a row, because he is too cowardly to fight and does not want to fall out with his rich friend.

Beds and Blue Jeans a story on Amazon

 A story set in recent years in Nashville Tennessee- the home of country music.  It's the story of Sam, a young man, who has a small band that play in the bars for tips and makes a modest living.  He has a lot of women flirting with him and  he takes advantage of the fact.  But he also has a girlfriend and a baby.  Patti is a young woman who has no ambitions, and was drifting along, till she had her baby.   Now she is trying to find a new way of life.....

Beds and Blue Jeans: An everyday story of music and mayhem eBook : Sutton, Nadine, Waldock, Sarah: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Friday's Child Part III

Sherry takes Hero to London with him and puts her up, in an hotel, so that he can arrange a marriage. He has to ask his friends about how to get a licence for the marriage, and some of them are not very bright, but they are good at coming up with stories to cover the elopement. Hero meets his little group of friends, and they all get on well. As soon as they have the licence, she and Sherry marry. He writes to Mrs. Bagshot, Hero's cousin. He knows that as she has three rather plain daughters, she will be furious at her orphaned impoverished ward having caught a very wealthy man. He buys clothes and presents for his bride, who is so happy as she has never had such luxury before. But she is reluctant to take on the family's London house, as it is dreary and intimidating and she is unused to that sort of life. Sherry decides to rent a smaller cosy house that she can manage. Hero's marriage is happy at first, though she makes social mistakes, due to her youth and lack of knowing about Society's ways. Sherry is happy too, but he still spends a lot of time with his male friends and spends even more money than he used to. He makes no attempt to take on his responsibilities in regard to his estates. He and Hero both lose money gambling, and his lawyer warns him that while he is very rich, he needs to be more careful. Isabella is a little peeved that Sherry married so quickly after she turned him down. However she is fond of Hero. She has several suitors, including the hot-tempered Byronic George Wrotham, who is passionately in love with her and very jealous. She loves him, but she won't admit it. He is not that well off and she is unsure whether to commit to him. Her mother pressures her to consider richer suitors, and she does. She starts to flirt with Sir Montagu Revesby, who is one of Sherry's friends. Sherry's other friends do not like him and think that he encourages their friend to gamble. She also encourages the wealthy Duke of Severn.

Friday's Child Part II

Isabella is rather a spoilt young beauty and one of the most popular girls in Society. But she is fond of Sherry and has known him since she was a child. However she refuses him, because she does not love him and she says that she knows he does not really love her; he has just proposed because she is the fashion at present and he's too selfish to love anyone but himself. Sherry is annoyed with her for turning him down and being so unladylike as to refer to his having mistresses, but he leaves her house and drives off back home. His mother and uncle are annoyed that Isabella has refused him. They would like him to marry her, because she is an heiress. She is the only child of her parents, and her estate is close by Sherry's home.. so the 2 estates could be merged. He gets more and more angry with his selfish relatives. He storms out, saying that in order to get hold of his estate, he will marry the first woman he sees. He sets out to drive back to London. On the way, he meets the 17 year old Hero Wantage, who is also a neighbor. She lives with her cousins, and is a poor relation. She looks unhappy so he stops to talk to her. She says that her cousin Jane has said that she should start earning her living and she's being sent to Bath to become a governess. Sherry laughs at the idea, as she is not all that well educated and she is so young. She tells him that her cousin has said that the local curate also has proposed to her, and that she must either marry him, or get a job as a governess...Sherry has always in his careless way felt sorry for Hero. He tells her how Isabella refused him, and that he had said that he would marry the first woman he saw. Hero laughs and says that that is her. He thinks about it and feels that marriage to him would be better for Hero than a job as a governess. He would then be able to gain control of his fortune. Hero has always had a crush on him, and she decides to marry him.

Friday's Child I

Friday's Child is a great favourite among fans of Georgette Heyer. It has a complicated plot and several funny characters. Antony, Lord Sheringham, is a young man of 23, who has inherited a large estate and fortune. However, he has 2 trustees, one of whom he dislikes and distrusts, and his father's will specifies that he won't inherit before he is 25, unless he marries before that date. The other trustee is his paternal Uncle, Prosper, who is decent enough but fat and lazy. Sherry does not get on with his mother, who is a weepy complaining woman. Even less does he like her brother, his trustee, Horace Paulet, whom he feels is rather less than honest. Sherry is himself a thoughtless young man who does not really want responsibility. So he has let things ride for a time but he is infatuated with Isabella Milborne, a lovely young heiress, who lives near him. So he decides to marry her, and secure his estate.

Sayers' Letters 4

Sayers wrote home about how she and Eric had rescued a girl who had become pregnant, and they helped her with making arrangements to have her baby and get a job afterwards. However, she was getting tired of the job in France and her unfulfilling relationship with Whelpton and he also wanted to leave the job  and move to Florence. He was considering marriage and Dorothy realised that the relationship was going nowhere. For the next few years, her letters were mostly about London, trying to find a new steady job, and moving from flat to flat.She got a job in Bensons Advertising Agency and at first enjoyed it, writing to her parents about her hopes that the job would provide her with a steady income, while she continued to write. She began writing her first Lord Peter book and told her family and friends about how it was going, and how she researched crimes in the British Library at weekends. She visited friends and family in London, and then began to write to her parents about her new boyfriend, John Cournous. She was plainly very much in love with him.

Sayers' letters 3

Dorothy met Eric Whelpton, who had served in the War, during her time working at Blackwell's, and fell in love with him. He was fond of her but did not return her feelings. He was a sophisticated young man who had a busy romantic life and he was not attracted to Dorothy. And although she was witty and clever, she was not very experienced in relationships with men. The women undergraduates at Somerville were chaperoned, almost like Victorian girls, and she admitted that she did not know much about men and had noone in the college to advise her. Older women dons were usually spinsters who had dedicated their lives to learning and did not know how to help younger women who had difficulties in mingling with men. Dorothy liked to flirt, but she did not meet many congenial men, and when she fell in love, she was at sea. Then, Blackwell's changed over to publishing academic books and she decided to leave as it wasn't the kind of publishing she wanted to do. Whelpton had taken a job in France and set up an agency for exchange students, bringing boys from England to France and vice versa. He invited Dorothy to work as his secretary. She told her parents that she would like a complete change. She assured them that her relations with Whelpton would be completely proper, as they would be living in a provincial and old fashioned part of France. She kept in touch with her parents by letter, telling them of her ongoing but proper friendship with Eric, and she read a lot of detective stories, as her work was not all that busy.

Sayers' Letters 2

Dorothy went up to Oxford. She was highly intelligent, particularly good at languages, and was eager to study. She loved Oxford, and her letters from there are lively and fun, giving a picture of the University and the life of the young women undergraduates. She did well at her studies, made a lot of friends and engaged in extracurricular activities. She often claimed that she did not study much but she did very well, and still took part in rowing, theatricals, playing music and writing. She and a few friends formed a group called the Mutual Admiration Society. They met to read their writings to each other.. and remained friends after they left college. I enjoy her college and working years letters more than anything else she wrote. She has a talent for describing ordinary life or telling a funny story. She was so enthusiastic that it is a pleasure to read her on life at college. She is even funny when trying to find a job or a flat in London. She had several elderly relatives who lived in Oxford and had a tiresome cousin who kept pestering her to join in Christian social activities. She did not pay much attention to the war, though she had cousins who were in the army. This was pretty common during World War One. People in the UK did not know much about what was happening in France and did not talk about it much. Dorothy knew about shell shock, but it was not until later that she married a man who suffered from it, badly, and who had other war induced illnesses. When she finished college, she tried to get a job teaching, though she did not really like the idea, but most women graduates went into schoolteaching. She took jobs in various schools, but found them boring, as the children were not as keen on learning as she herself had been. It was difficult for her to get down to their level, but she did her best to find permanent work though she soon realised that teaching would "make her brain go rusty". She still wrote and had some poetry published but she became nostalgic for Oxford and decided to take on an apprenticeship with Basil Blackwell, the Oxford publisher. She enjoyed this more, and told amusing anecdotes about office life, about Basil, and a young clergyman who paid court to her and proposed. She refused him.

Sayers' letters Part I

Dorothy Sayers was a novelist, playwright and poet, who was also very musical. From an early age, she was keen on writing and like most middle class people of her day, she kept in touch with friends and family by writing letters. As a girl, she was sent away to school and wrote to friends and her parents on a regular basis. Her letters were lively, full of news about the activities she enjoyed, the teachers and other girls. She was very keen on acting. She loved going to the theatre and taking part in school plays and a lot of her letters home are about getting costumes. At home, she and her family acted out scenes from the Three Musketeers which was one of her favourite novels. She wasn't all that keen on games, but and was an excellent student. A few times during her schooldays, she had serious illnesses. In her last year, she got ill and had to go home to recover. She was tutored at home by letter and then got into Oxford.

Busman's Honeymoon note

This isn't my favourite novel. Peter and Harriet have become rather more snobbish than they were in earlier works. Peter used to have a lively friendly manner to his social inferiors, and Bunter was someone who was close to him. Now Bunter has retreated into more of a servant role, does not do any detecting, and Harriet is Peter's confidante. They both are rather more condescending to the lower orders of the village, very much the upper class couple patronising the various tradesmen and the police... and servants like the Ruddles. Peter does show compassion for Crutchley, and agonises over his part in the man's death. But I think that after showing how upset Peter gets when one of his cases results in someone being hanged, Sayers perhaps did not want to write any more murder mysteries. She does not usually show the business of detecting going all the way to the trial and the gallows and having done so, possibly she felt it would be too painful to keep on showing this part. She did start to write another Peter novel but never got very far with it.. She felt also that detective fiction encouraged people to feel that there was a simple solution to all kinds of complex problems in life.. that all one had to do was to set a detective in place to work out who committed the crime and then all would be well. Having written a play version of Busman's Honeymoon, she then began to write plays on religious subjects.. during the war, she wrote a famous and well received cycle of plays on the life of Christ, and though she always loved her Wimsey character and wrote bits about his family history in letters to friends, she never managed to complete a detective novel again.

Busman's Honeymoon Part V

Peter passes on the information about the secret love affair between Frank and Miss Twitterton, to Kirk. The inspector does feel that this makes it likely that she is the murderer. She was the only one who had keys to the house or who was accustomed to going in there. She has no alibi, and she was also Noakes' heir. Harriet is depressed because she can feel Peter's depression at not solving the crime. The 2 companies who lent Noakes money are coming to remove the furniture for sale against the debt. She and Peter feel that the best thing is perhaps to leave the house and return later. But she wonders if Peter will always feel unhappy in the house now that he has failed to do his job there. On the day of the funeral, the men come to remove furniture while Peter and Harriet invite a few people in for a drink. Mr Goodacre notes that the cactus has been over watered. This alerts Peter that something is wrong, and he realises how the murder was done. The chain has been changed for a longer one, and is now hanging lower than it used to. A thin wire had been fixed to the radio cabinet so that when the lid was lifted to listen to the news, as Noakes did every night, the heavy pot would come smashing down on his head. Frank was the one who watered the cactus. Peter sets up the same situation. Frank comes in to move furniture, he moves the radio and the cactus comes down, missing him by inches. Startled, he makes a wild confession and Kirk arrests him. Peter is relieved that he has solved his case, but the whole business depresses him. He does not like Crutchley but he had a grievance against Noakes, and he is a poor man, who resents those who are better off than him. He and Harriet go back to London, and Peter hires Sir Impey Biggs who is a very famous and skilful lawyer, to defend Crutchley. Frank insists on going into the box, himself, and makes a poor impression on the jury. So the verdict goes against him. Peter tries to see if there is anything he can do to help the man, but Frank refuses to see him or to appeal. They learn that he has made his girlfriend Polly pregnant, and Peter tries to see him to ask if he wants to get permission to marry her but Crutchley angrily refuses to do anything to help himself or the girl. Harriet suggests they ask Miss Climpson for help in assisting Polly, and he goes along with the suggestion.. But she realises that Peter is emotionally withdrawn from her. The night of the execution, Peter manages to see Crutchley who is still angry and unrepentant, and he comes back to Harriet, turning to her at last. She feels some relief that he has finally shown that he needs her. Peter usually asks the condemned man for his forgiveness but Crutchley is just angry and does not seem to care about anything. He tells Peter that he was a fool to bother about Polly and the baby. Harriet tells him that if he hadn't interfered in her murder case, it might have been her who was facing execution. The two of them wait for the 8 o'clock strike which will mean that it's all over, and they can go on with their marriage.

Busman's Honeymoon Part IV

Peter and Harriet are depressed by their inability to solve the crime, but their personal relationship is going well. After 5 years of waiting, they are a happy couple. But Harriet does worry that Peter is upset by not being able to solve the crime. However, he has some property in London which he has inherited, and has developed over the past 20 years, as he prefers London life to country life. He has built houses and tried to help his tenants. But it seems he cannot help Joe Sellon who has this shadow hanging over him. He has always disliked the fact that his job as a detective sometimes entails getting people hanged, but he believes that whatever happens, its better that the right person suffers for the crime. He and Harriet go to visit Mr Simon Goodacre, the vicar and his wife who have invited them to a small party. Mr Goodacre likes plants, and wants to buy Mr Noakes' collection of cactuses. They learn that Mrs Sellon, Joe's wife, who is pregnant again, was taken ill. When they return to Talboys, after their visit, they talk emotionally about how much they love each other, and are startled by the sudden appearance of Miss Twitterton. She had been visiting the house, where she had a quarrel with Frank Crutchley, who was there, and she hid when the Wimseys came back, feeling embarrassed. She cries on Harriet's shoulder and tells her that she and Frank were engaged, but that now she realises he didn't love her and was only courting her because he thought that she had a little money and would inherit more from Noakes. She realises that he was seeing a young village girl as well... Harriet is sympathetic - but when she tells Peter what she's been told, he is appalled. He tells her that this casts a lot of doubt on Miss Twitterton. She had keys, she was in and out of the House, and she is a middle aged woman, in love with a younger selfish man. She might have been tempted to kill her uncle in order to have the money to marry Frank, as he would drop his girlfriend if he could marry a woman with a bit of money. Harriet is very upset, feeling that she had been given Miss Twitterton's trust and now Peter is saying that they will have to tell the police. Peter realises how she feels but says again that they must tell the truth and find out who did the crime, or the whole thing will hang over all the village or the wrong person will be hanged for it.

Busman's Honeymoon Part III

When the police are questioning people, some startling information emerges which widens the pool of suspects. Mrs Ruddle, who is a spiteful stupid woman, tells Inspector Kirk that Joe Sellon, the local bobby was at the house the night of Noakes' death. He was shouting aggressively through the window at the old man. It comes out that Joe had found some money in a wallet, which Noakes had dropped and had given way to the impulse to steal it. Noakes found out and started to blackmail him.. and Sellon who has a young wife and a baby - which was why he stole the money - was still paying him and getting desperate. Joe tells Kirk that he was at the house at a certain time, but Peter tells Kirk that he would like to believe that the young man is telling the truth, but he is not. If he was at the window, he could not have seen Noakes' clock, as there is a large cactus plant in a hanging basket, in the way. Therefore, it seems more likely that Joe managed to get inside the house and attacked Noakes. Peter points out that it seems unlikely that Noakes would have let Joe in, as he was a timid man and Joe was angry with him..But it might be the case that Sellon had agreed to pay him more money and he let him in to do so. Peter feels sorry for Joe, who is poor and desperate - but it seems that all the suspects are more likable than Noakes himself. Miss Twitterton might have done it, as she was someone that Noakes trusted, so he might well turn his back on her and she could have then struck him with a poker. It seems unlikely, as she is a fussy little woman, but it's possible that she felt angry and worried enough about the loss of her money to attack her uncle, knowing that she would inherit whatever he had. Frank Crutchley has a grievance also but he never had keys or access to the house and has an alibi for the night when Noakes was killed.

Busman's Honeymoon Part II

Harriet is badly shaken, and does not want her honeymoon to become the scene of a crime investigation. She wants to ask Peter not to get involved in it, and to go away, but knows that Peter would feel it was his duty to investigate a murder. He says that he hates violence and quarrelling and while Noakes is not a very likable old man, he should not have been killed. They learn that Noakes was a dubious character, who lent money, pressured simple people into dodgy deals and who was clearly borrowing more than he could afford. Peter owns the house, but there are 2 companies which lent him money and they want to take away the furniture and other possessions against the debt. Frank Crutchley, the young gardener, is upset and angry, because he had put some money into Noakes' business and now, won't be able to get it back and he was saving up to set up his own garage business. Peter makes friends with Sam Kirke the local police inspector, and Bunter befriends Tom Puffett, who is in the building trade and has come to Talboys to sweep the chimneys. Harriet feels sorry for Miss Twitterton, Noakes' niece, who has also put her small savings into Noakes' business and now finds that her money is gone and that she wont inherit anything but debts from her uncle. To her dismay, Harriet realises that Miss Twitterton might be considered a suspect, since she was his heir.

Busman's Honeymoon Short post

This is the final Lord Peter novel, which started out as a stage play, written by Sayers and one of her friends. She had met a chimney sweep who was very amusing, and she said she'd like to put him in a play. She had always been interested in drama, and had been a keen actress in school and college, so after writing Busman's, she moved from writing novels to writing plays, mostly on a religious theme. She wrote a novelised version of the play, and intended to go on writing Peter novels but became dissatisfied with the detective story format, and more and more interested in play writing on serious themes. The novel takes place straight after the action of Gaudy Night, where Peter and Harriet finally become engaged. He has to go away on diplomatic business, and Harriet visits the Dowager Duchess and gets to know Peter's family. Helen, Gerald's wife, keeps interfering in their wedding plans so Peter and Harriet decide to take matters into their own hands and to arrange a small wedding at Oxford, with their own close friends, and to go for a quiet honeymoon in the country. Peter has bought a farmhouse in the country, near to where Harriet was brought up, a house which she had always liked...and they plan to sneak off there, avoiding the press. The wedding takes place, and taking Bunter, they go off to Talboys, the farmhouse. When they arrive, however, noone is there to let them in, and the Ruddles, who live next door, in a cottage, don't know anything about Mr Noakes, the miserly owner, selling the house. Mrs Ruddle, a grumpy middle aged widow, does some cleaning for Mr Noakes, and she agrees to work for the Wimseys. They manage to get keys from Miss Twitterton, Noakes' niece, a middle-aged spinster who is very fussy and silly but good natured. The house is not very comfortable and clearly is not well looked after by Noakes, who spent a lot of his time at another business in a nearby town. But they manage to settle in and Peter and Harriet have a romantic night, and plan to improve the place during their honeymoon. The following morning, the Vicar calls and a young man who looks after the garden. But there is no sign of Mr Noakes. Peter wonders if the old man had money troubles as he accepted a relatively low offer for the house... Then, a man appears from London, whose firm lent money to Noakes, and who has come to pressure him into paying up. Peter feels more suspicious, then Bunter goes down to the cellar to fetch some drinks and finds Noakes' body. It seems like he has been killed. 

Documents in the Case by Sayers And Eustace

Sayers wrote only one detective story which was not a Lord Peter work. She produced a work called Documents in the Case, which was based on the murder case of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywater, in the 1920's. Quite a few detective writers of the time wrote fictionalised versions of the story, but Sayers chose to write a more complicated work which involved a lot of scientific input for the murder method. She worked in collaboration with a doctor, Dr Eustace who supplied her with information on mushrooms and poisons. The story is set in Bayswater, in a suburban maisonette, where a Mr Harrison and his young second wife Margaret live. Harrison is an engineer, rather a bore, but a decent enough man, but he nags his wife, who is getting fed up with him. Two young men move into the flat in the top of the house, a writer and a painter, (Munting and Harwood Lathom). Margaret Harrison is increasingly bored with her husband, and she starts an affair with Lathom. Munting disapproves of his friend seducing a married woman whose husband has been friendly to Lathom. A row erupts when Harrison thinks that Munting is trying to seduce his wife. He decides to get out. He leaves the flat and gets married. Some time later, he meets Lathom again, who has picked up his friendship with Harrison. Margaret thinks she is pregnant and is scared. Lathom resolves to free her from her marriage. He goes off on a painting holiday with Mr Harrison, in a cottage in the West country. Then he has to go up to London on business. He meets Munting and invites him to come down for a couple of days. When they get there, they find Harrison has died horribly from poisoning, apparently from cooking and eating some poisonous mushrooms that he has foraged locally. Paul, Harrison's son by his first marriage, does not believe that his father would make a mistake like that over food, and thinks that he has committed suicide to free his wife from their marriage, as he knows of the affair. He reads up the letters he has had from his father and other documents and finds that it is not suicide or accident, but murder. Lathom used artificially made poison to kill Harrison, while providing himself with an alibi. He was in London when Harrison died. Paul gets hold of the love letters written by Margaret to Lathom, by bribing Lathom's charlady. He finds that she thought she was pregnant and was urging her lover to "do something" to help her. He puts together a case, and the police investigate it. Margaret (unlike Edith Thompson) is considered innocent, in spite of her compromising letters but Lathom is found guilty of murder and hanged. The book is not one of Sayers' best. It starts with a fairly sympathetic portrayal of Margaret, as a lonely wife whose husband nags at her, is suspicious of her and is not a sympathetic character. Then the sympathy switches abruptly to Harrison. There is another story about the Edith Thompson case, written by another writer of that era... F Tennyson Jesse. It's called "A Pin to see the Peepshow" and the sympathy is very much on the side of the wife and lover.

Sayers and Five Red Herrings

I've been writing short blogs on Sayers' detective stories lately. One that I haven't done is Five Red Herrings. I like the book, but it is not nearly my favorite as it is mainly a plot driven novel, without much development of characters. I've only read it a couple of times. It is set in Scotland, in a village where a lot of artists live and paint and Sayers often took holidays there with her husband, Mac Fleming who was Scottish and an amateur painter. So she knew the area and the lives of artists up there, pretty well. She said that she wanted to try her hand at a novel which was all plot, rather than the more discursive works she had done before. The novel has a lot about railways timetables and alibis and rather lacks human interest. The novel is about an artist who is notoriously quarrelsome and bad tempered and it emerges that it was an accidental death. Wimsey investigates it, because he is holidaying there with Bunter. I will write a bit more about Sayers' other novels and possibly her religious dramas.

Whose Body Part III

Peter finally manages to crack the case through knowing of the connection between the Levys and Freke. Freke's house is close to the block of flats where Thipps lives and close to the Battersea Hospital. He gets Bunter to befriend Freke's butler/servant, who says that the surgeon is up late at night often, dissecting bodies for his research. Peter finds that Freke killed a workhouse inhabitant, who had been injured, who had a superficial resemblance to Levy. He shaved him and tidied him up to look like Levy, and then put his body in Thipps' bathroom. He then invited Sir Reuben to come to his house one night to discuss an investment and asked him not to tell anyone where he was going. Levy comes along, and Freke kills him and brings his body to the hospital for dissection by medical students. He is buried in a pauper's grave. Peter has to arrange an exhumation and Lady Levy identifies the "pauper's" body, as her husband. Freke, knowing that he has been caught, writes a confession, before he is arrested. Peter decides to arrange a dinner party for the Thippses.

Whose Body Part II

Peter is dismayed when Thipps and his maid, Gladys are both arrested by Suggs. He is quite sure the body is not Sir Reuben and that neither of them is capable of murder. Old Mrs Thipps who is very deaf, has noone to look after her and is very upset. She calls Peter for help. He goes to her, and tries to get one of the neighbours in their flats to take her in but noone will.. Peter takes her to Denver to his mother's house and the Duchess welcomes her. He discusses the case with the Duchess, and she tells him that she actually used to be quite good friends with Sir Reuben's wife, Christine. They were girls together in Hampshire, and there was quite a fuss when Christine fell in love with a Jewish businessman who was not that well off at the time. The Duchess tells him that the family had hoped that she would marry Julian Freke who was an up-and-coming young surgeon of good family, but she was in love with Levy and insisted on marrying him. She tells Peter that Levy became very rich and successful and it seemed to be a happy marriage. Her own husband, the Duke of Denver, didn't like business people and so she didn't see much of Lady Levy over the years. Peter wonders if there is any connexion between the Levy case and the body, but cannot quite see how it would work out. At the inquest, Mr Thipps, scared by the hints about murder, tells the truth about where he was. He had gone with an old school friend to a nightclub, which was raided by the police. Thipps is a shy nervy man and had never been to a night club.. However, this clears him as there was a record of the raid by the police. It emerges, through the evidence of a young prostitute, that Levy was seen in Battersea, the night that he disappeared. Peter learns that he has another link with the Levy family via his friend Freddy Arbuthnot, an amiable society idiot who dabbles on the Stock exchange. Freddy knows the Levys through the investments angle, and is in love with Rachel, Levy's only daughter. He tells Peter that Sir Reuben is Jewish and self made but he's a good husband and father and a decent soul. Sir Reuben is not keen on Freddy as a son in law however because he's not Jewish and he is something of an upper-class twit.

Whose Body?

Whose Body was Dorothy Sayers' first novel.. which she referred to as Lord Peter. It is shorter than most of her other works, and a little clumsy, but her main characters do not change that much, as the series goes on. It starts with Peter going to a book sale. We learn that he is the second son of a duke, very wealthy, who lives in a flat in Piccadilly with his manservant, Bunter. One of his hobbies is collecting old books and manuscripts and he likes art and music. He is very unlike his older brother the Duke who is happy to live the country and farm his land, and whose amusements are hunting and shooting. We learn that Peter prefers London and claims to hate the country but does enjoy an occasional visit. He is thirtyish, and has served in World War One, and is now a gentleman of leisure who also has a hobby of helping the police with detective inquiries. He has to go back to the flat to collect something, and finds that his mother, Honoria, the Dowager Duchess is on the phone. She has called to tell him something. The architect who was working on the church on the family estate has had a bad shock. He found a naked body in his bath, in his London flat, and the police have become involved. Peter agrees to go to Battersea, where Mr Thipps, the architect lives with his aged deaf mother, and to try and advise him. When he gets to the more modest block of flats, he finds that Inspector Sugg is there; they know each other of old. Sugg is a very stupid policeman who resents Peter getting involved in detection. He believes that the body is that of Sir Reuben Levy, a Jewish financier, who has disappeared from his house. Parker, Peter's detective friend, who knows about both cases, says that he's sure that the body is not Levy. Still, Suggs is an idiot and Thipps has been behaving strangely, so the case needs investigating. Peter inspects the body and can see that it is not circumcised, so it seems unlikely to be Levy.