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. Dorothy was not very experienced in relationships with men. The women undergraduates at Somerville were chaperoned, almost like Victorian girls. Dorothy 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. They 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. 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 relationship with Whelpton would be completely proper, as they would be living in a provincial, old fashioned part of France. She kept in touch with her parents by letter, telling them of her ongoing friendship with Eric. 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. There was also a tiresome cousin who kept pestering her to join in Christian social work 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. 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. She feared that teaching would "make her brain go rusty". She still wrote and had some poetry published. 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. But she may have then 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. 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. He has another occupation, however. He had inherited a slice of property in London which he 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, it's 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 tells them he wants to buy Mr Noakes' collection of cactuses, when his belongings are sold off. Mrs Goodacre tells Harriet 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. Then their love scene is interrupted 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 now, she can see that 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. He was also seeing one of the village girls on the sly. Harriet is sympathetic - but when she tells Peter what she's been told, he is appalled. He tells her that this casts doubt on Miss Twitterton. She had keys, she was in and out of the farmhouse, 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. He would drop his girlfriend if he could marry a woman with a bit of money. Harriet is very upset. She feels bad that she had been given Miss Twitterton's trust and now Peter is saying that they will have to tell the police. He tells her that they must tell the truth and find out who did the crime. Otherwise, the crime 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 on 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. He stole it. Noakes found out and started to blackmail him.. 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.