Clouds of Witness ch 4-7

Hello! Am I talking to myself? Is anyone reading this or listening? Does anyone care? No matter. I’m reading. And I care deeply.

My experience of the Sayers mysteries, having read them all once, is that as a writer, Dorothy set herself a challenge, and then wrote the book to meet the challenge.

In Whose Body? the challenge was she had an idea of a nude guy in a strange bathtub, so how did he get there and who on earth would do such a thing. And by the end, both those questions had been answered.

In Clouds of Witness, she set out to frame Gerald, Duke of Denver, having foreshadowed such a thing with a brief conversation between the brothers at the end of the first book. She also wanted to explore the idea of a murder that took place with too many witnesses, rather than none or not enough. So her challenge was two-fold, one aspect was character and the other the puzzle. One of my theories about why her mysteries are still read and loved today (more in England than in the US, I think) is because she wanted to bring a quality of prose styling to the mystery genre, as well as a depth of psychological characterizations. In these aspects, she reminds me of Tana French and her Dublin Murder Squad mysteries.

As we cruise into the middle of the book, though, it’s not just Peter’s brother Gerald who is implicated, but his sister Mary. And even while everyone continues to bend over backwards to help the Wimsey family save face and possibly escape murder charges (which in those days meant the murderer would hang), Peter is having to work hard to maintain his cheerful nonchalance.

In Chapter 4, Peter is doing the escapist fantasy rich boy thing and lolling in bed chatting with Bunter, who mentions his mother, that he was one of seven children, and then this interesting passage:

“Lord Peter stretched out his hand impulsively but Mr Bunter was too well-trained to see it.” Bunter strips a razor and Peter leaps out of bed and into a cold bath (is there perhaps a hint of homoeroticism, here?) And then bursts into the hall where he bangs into the chest and makes Mary quite afraid.

In chatting with my spouse, he contends that Peter would have known about Bunter’s mother and that this is a gaffe on Dorothy’s part. I think it stands. That was what the class gap was, and part of the story as we go through these books is the decaying of those class partitions, in Peter and in English society between the wars.

Then, Peter takes off to the nearest neighbor, and finds a rustic farmhand, a jealous and irascible owner, a lovely woman, and a child. This is really such a close mirror to Wuthering Heights that it made me wonder, what would have happened to Heathcliff and Catherine if they’d gotten together? Would he have become a jealous husband? We know he was angry and physically abusive.

Chapter 5, Parker in Paris, accidentally finds the jeweler for the cat charm. Ch 6 we learn Parker has a crush on Mary. Peter and Charles go through one of their stultifying reviews of the evidence thus far. Ch 7, Peter goes to hang out with socialists, in search of the number 20 shoe. Dude pulls a runner and the chapter ends with a literal bang!

What did you think of this section? What did you enjoy? What irritated you?