First published 1926; this edition is 1972 by
New English Library
248 pages
Second book with Peter Wimsey
Genre: golden age mystery
Key words: English aristocracy, Peter Wimsey, village murder, London, Paris, funny, hilarious
Grade: 5/5
I will read more by this author
Peter Wimsey was introduced in” Whose Body”; his meddling in crime, murder and detecting, had been criticized by his brother, Gerald and his wife, as something unworthy of a member of the aristocracy to associate with the lower classes is unthinkable and should be left to the police. Peter’s older brother, Gerald, is the Duke of Denver, he is stiff and stuck in prober proceedings. Peter’s response: “I don’t look on this as a game, and I can’t say I will keep out of it, because I know I am doing valuable work” (p 158). To do valuable work, was not high on the Duke’s list of enterprises.
So, in the irony of things the Duke is arrested on suspicion of having killed his sister’s fiancé, captain Denis Cathcart, while spending time in a hunting lodge, Riddlesdale, Yorkshire. Gerald was wondering the moor at the time of the murder; he is absolutely convinced that his word as a duke must be taken at face value and not be questioned by the lower classes.
A Duke cannot be tried in an ordinary court, but only by his peers in the House of Lords.
This plot is about giddy aristocrats and immoral Frenchman; Cathcart was brought up in France meaning he not at all like a straightforward Englishman; his moral outlook is continental.
The detecting team is as in “Whose Body” Lord Peter and his faithful friends, Bunter, his much more than a butler and Charles Parker, police detective.
Lady Mary, the younger sister of Peter and Gerald, is a modern woman, during the war she was nursing in London, enjoying the freedom away from the limitations of her family. But a reality check came because her inheritance from her father was to be administered by Gerald until she marries someone the Duke approves of; he did not approve of the communist revolutionary she had met in London and had to come home to do nothing. Mary’s friend thinks, this is a rotten plan, monstrous, barbarous, and absurd, old-fashioned tyranny of parents; Peter does not disagree! (p122).
Gerald and Mary did not get along, and Mary only wants to get married to get away from home. So she agreed to marry Cathcart, to live together but separately in Paris.
Peter cannot get to interview Mary because she is “sick”, but when their mother arrives, she took possession of Mary and discovered she took ipecacuanha to be sick: “in my days we call this kind of thing hysterics or naughtiness. We didn’t let girls pull the wool over our eyes like that. I suppose you call it neurosis, or suppressed desire, or a reflex (p104). That reminds me of Amanda Cross’s first novel, ‘In the Last Analysis’ (1964) where she also describes Freud’ teaching as hating women.
As nobody tells the truth there are a lot of detecting which is a waste of time.
Peter had quite an adventure in this book: he got chased by murderous dogs, shot and wounded, fell into quick sand and almost died, flew over the Atlantic Ocean in an air plane (this was 1923, before Lindbergh’s solo-crossing 1927; but had been done by the military since 1919), in the end another shooting which missed. Peter persists and is of course successful.
Quite a few crimes are committed in this plot: murder first of all, but the Duke considered cheating at cards almost as severe, married man having an affair with married woman, domestic violence between man and wife, to marry to get enough money to keep the mistress happy on wife’s money (that was the plan), eloping being engaged to another man, being a coward and fool planning to elope but finding a dead body he ran away to let his girlfriend manage on her own (only lower classes would do that according to Mary: I didn’t mind thinking you were a murderer, but I mind you being such an ass (p147)), lying under oath, refusing to testify,
Peter cries out there is an extra allowance of fools in his family. (p111)
Too many clues.
There are many really funny remarks in the book, I found myself often laughing out loudly to my Dear’s surprise: for instance, the lawyer has to ‘defend Truth’ (p148).
Or Bunter’s mother claiming “facts are like cows. If you look at them long enough, they generally run away. She is a very courageous woman.” (p74)
Helen who “disciplined her hair and her children “(p30)
Parker when in Paris went to buy lace underwear for his unmarried sister, hilarious!
To look at the evidence in the face however ugly, some of it positively gargoyle. (p103)
Mr. Murbles, the lawyer: “I am old-fashioned enough not to have adapted the modern practice of cocktail drinking. Peter answers: quite right, ruins to palate and spoils the digestion. Not an English custom. Came from America - result, prohibition.” (p149)
And many more.
I imagine how the author must have sat at her desk and think up how to make it funny, or perhaps it just came naturally for her.
I absolutely love Peter’s rambling on anything and everything, often I have to look up the references because it is things I have never learned.
This is a plot of “two series of events, wholly unconnected between themselves, converging upon the same point in time, and causing endless confusion “ (p238); I believe in real life many things are more like this than what we usually are presented in books..
My comments: Loved the plot, loved the writing, a logical solution which I had not figured out, good entertainment. I have read this book 48 years ago and but did not remember it. I might read it again.
English is not my first language; in this book I learned a new word: tarradiddle: a petty lie (p141); but just to say it, is a funny sound and makes my tongue to tie into a knot.
From a recent tour of the Lake District; I thought of these photos, when I read the book.
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