Busman's Honeymoon Part II

Harriet is badly shaken, and does not want her honeymoon house 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. He had invested a little money in 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. She wrote a novelised version of the play, and intended to go on writing Peter novels. But she 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. Peter and Harriet get fed up and decide to make their own arrangements. They organise a small wedding at Oxford, with their own close friends, and only tell Helen and Gerald at the last moment. They choose to have a quiet honeymoon in the country. Peter has bought a farmhouse, 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, are surprised to see them. Mrs Ruddle and her son don't know anything about Mr Noakes, the miserly owner, selling the house. She is a grumpy middle aged widow, who 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. He 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. They also meet Frank Crutchley, the 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 full length detective story which was not a Lord Peter work. She produced a work called Documents in the Case. It 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. Sayers wanted 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. It is occupied by Mr George Harrison who lives with his young second wife. Harrison is an engineer, rather a bore, but a decent enough man. 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 shown them friendship. A row erupts when Mr Harrison thinks that it is Munting who is trying to seduce his wife. Munting is annoyed and embarrassed and he leaves the house. 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 says 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 to the cottage, 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. He is sure that old Harrison 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, which he mixed in with the man's food. He provided 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. 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 and Margaret is seen as an evil woman. 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 her 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. Sayers often took holidays there in an "artists' village" with her husband, Mac Fleming. Mac 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. The doctor'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, a man 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. Freke then invited Sir Reuben to come to his house one night to discuss an investment. He asked him not to tell anyone where he was going. Levy comes along, and Freke kills him. He 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 Thipps, nor the maid is capable of murder. He can see that with Suggs in charge, the enquiry is not going to go well. 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 flat, and tries to get one of the neighbours in the block 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. She says that she used to be 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. He was an up-and-coming young surgeon of good family. But Christine 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. 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 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. He 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 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.