I wrote that I’d post this last Thursday, but life got away from me, as it is so wont to do.
Clouds of Witness is the second of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers. She began writing it before the first book, Whose Body?, had been sold. Near the end of that book, Gerald, the Duke of Denver, says to his younger brother Peter that his sleuthing in embarrassing, and he wishes his little brother would cut it out. Peter retorts that it might come in useful sometime. Readers didn’t have long to wait for that to happen.
Sayers opens the book with a sensational summary/subtitle: “The Solution to The Riddlesdale Mystery with a report of the trial of the Duke of Denver before the House of Lords for murder.” and follows with an excerpt from The Wallet of Kal-Lung, which I’m not sure I care enough whether its fictional to look up if it is. Having fun with her creation, Sayers invents an entry for Debrett’s (I think) for Peter, further showcasing her playful, clever style, as well as the escapist fantasy that these books represented. Sayers was not wealthy or aristocratic.
Chapter 1 opens with Peter in the kind of luxury a reader might have enjoyed imagining in the post WWI scarcity. It quickly segues into an info-dump on a crime back in England, where Gerald has been accused of murdering Lady Mary’s fiance, Denis Cathcart. We are given an all-too thorough transcript of the inquest, in which Sayers sets out the pieces of the puzzle. As with many of her detail-laden passages, I think it can be read lightly. She’s setting herself an authorial challenge to put all the pieces in place, but wasn’t enough of a skilled author to take into account how reading and trying to digest all those details might weigh one down at the start of a book. This kind of opening would never stand in a modern mystery. What I took away: both Gerald and Mary are lying.
Chapter 2 has much more of the Sayers wit, charm, and skilled writing. She sets the scene with the remaining guests of the country hunting house at breakfast, quietly roasting them while sketching the characters and their foibles, and bringing back the inspector from Scotland Yard, Charles Parker, whose friendship with Peter began in the last book.
“The only member of it who seemed neither angry nor embarrassed was the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, and he was silent, engaged in trying to take the whole skeleton out of a bloater at once. the very presence of that undistinguished fish upon the Duchess’s breakfast-table indicated a disorganized household.” Freddy puts his foot in it by saying aloud that Peter will be the head of family is Gerald is hanged for murder, at least “till little Pickled Gherkins comes of age.” Pickled Gherkins, aka Gerald’s son, will feature prominently in future books.
Then Peter shows up to partner with Parker to continue the investigation. Parker, interestingly, seems very willing to help the family keep things hush hush, such as the imprint of what might have been a suitcase in the shrubbery.
Things bog down again in the narrative as the two discuss what is already brewing in the head of any reader. I find the section with Bunter skillfully drawing intel from the house staff much more entertaining.
Impey Biggs, the solicitor shows up. I think he’s coded as gay, for it’s noted that he was incommunicado, then shows up: “the handsomest man in England,” but one that no woman would care for, who breeds canaries and likes not classical music but revues, so, musicals.
We get conflicting info on Cathcart, including that he seemed an advocate of free love, plus had books with what Parker discreetly refers to as “curious” plates. No one seems very unhappy that he’s dead. Thus we end the first quarter of the book.
Like Whose Body? this book is easier for me on a re-read, as I am able to pick out what’s significant and ignore what’s not. Still, the conventions of the time to lay the mystery out can seem draggingly dull by modern standards, a century later. These 70 something pages did not fly by for me.
I’ll try to be on time and post on Thursday about chapters 4 and 5. What did you notice? What did you like? What irked or confused you?
K.J. Boldon 