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 inability to find jobs.  George is prone to fugues and fits of hysteria and 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, wanting some medicines to keep him going so that he outlasts his sister and inherits 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 miltiary man, and he becomes convinced 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, and was horrified to realise that now, his family would not come in for the lions 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 rather 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 when she prepared a drink for the old man who was upset by seeing his sister, she could have poisoned 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.