Good morning! You are reading this on Thursday but I’m writing it the previous Monday, having raced through this section after chapter 7 ended with a bang and a brass bedstead. In this section, I feel Sayers took a leap ahead in her storytelling abilities compared with Whose Body? Here she cranks up the tension to drive the plot forward.
I also want to take a close look at that final paragraph of chapter 7:
“Excuse me,” said Peter. He dashed out, in time to perceive a dark figure retreating across the street. He gave chase. The man took to his heels, and seemed to plunge into the dark little alley which leads to the Charing Cross Road. Hurrying in pursuit, Wimsey was almost blinded by a sudden flash and smoke nearly in his face. A crashing blow on the left shoulder and a deafening report whirled his surroundings away. He staggered violently and collapsed on to a second-hand brass bedstead.
Clouds of Witness, Bourbon Street Books 2014, p. 138 (end of chapter VII)
First, Peter excuses himself to Miss Tarrant before (or perhaps as) he runs after the suspect. A small moment, but very in character. The sentences vary in length which mimics the stop/start nature of a pursuit as well as keeps the readers interest. There are plenty of robust verbs and one well chosen adverb (violently) that does double duty describing both what happened and how he staggers. A quibble: they’re diluted a tad by today’s standards with so many “ing” endings. Nevertheless, the writing conveys the pace of the chase and its abrupt ending, as well as what happened without ever saying directly: Peter got shot. And a lovely, precise detail: secondhand brass bedstead, which has both alliteration, and the rhyme in bedstead. An excellent paragraph and ending to a chapter that ensured I would keep barreling ahead, which I did.
With the beginning of chapter 8 we’re shifted back to another important scene, the immediate aftermath of when Mary bravely declared to Parker, “I shot Denis Cathcart myself.” A bit of narrative whiplash, but one I was willing to undergo, because both endings were such good cliffhanger moments.
We have another good Parker paragraph: “Parker’s first instinct was to doubt his own sanity; his next, to doubt Lady Mary’s. Then, as the clouds rolled away from his brain, he decided that she was merely not speaking the truth. (139) The short chapter ends with another rollicking paragraph:
Gathering up Mr. Bunter as they hurried through the hall, detective and self-accused rushed hurriedly out into Pall Mall, and, picking up a belated taxi at Hyde Park Corner, drove madly away through the deserted streets.
143
Oh, dear, I’m tempted to just string wonderful paragraphs together, like a patchwork quilt of delightful prose. Chapter 9 opens with Peter, Parker, and Mary at Peter’s flat, with a fourth who is
composedly eating a mixed grill and sharing the [claret] decanter with Parker.
This was a rather short, rather plump, very brisk elderly lady, with bright black eyes like a bird’s, and very handsome white hair exquisitely dressed. Far from looking as though she had just taken a long night journey, she was easily the most composed and trim of the four. She was, however, annoyed, and said so at considerable length. This was the Dowager Duchess of Denver.
“It it not so much, Mary, that you went off so abruptly last night–just before dinner, too–inconveniencing and alarming us very much–indeed, poor Helen was totally unable to eat her dinner, which was extremely distressing to her feelings, because, you know, she always makes such a point of never being upset about anything…”
145
It’s this heady combination of humor, skilled writing, excellent characterization, zippy dialogue, plus the mystery that endeared me to Sayers’ mysteries in the first place, and it may be around this point of this book that I began to fall in love with them. So when Peter blithely asks Mary if she’d confessed, followed by this:
Few things are more irritating than to discover, after you have been at great pains to spare a person some painful intelligence, that he has known it all along and is not nearly so much affected by it as he properly should be.
147
I was amused, impressed, and kept reading. We know the socialist ex-boyfriend is a cad, not only by his behaviour, but can anyone named “George Goyles” be any good? As Mary is encouraged to recant her false confession, this other amusing passage delighted me, when Peter says, “when I hear people movin’ about the house at night, I’m much too delicate-minded to think anything at all.” (155) and the Dowager Duchess compliments him on his “continental” ethics: “as soon as you took to doing it in silence and not mentioning it, as you so intelligently did as a child. You were really a very observant little boy, dear.” (156)
Chapter 10 is the Goyles interrogation. Mary gets one of the best lines, “I didn’t mind thinking you were a murderer…but I do mind your being such an ass.” (165) and gets to respond to Peter summing up the book thus far, “Does it occur to you that what’s the matter with this case is that there are too many clues? Dozens of people with secrets and elopments bargin’ about all over the place–” with Mary’s typical little sister rejoinder, “I hate you, Peter.” (175)
In chapter 11, we finally hear from Gerald himself again, and he again accuses Peter of being a nuisance. This prompts Peter, in a rare moment of self doubt, to ask Bunter,
“is my manner really offensive, when I don’t mean it to be?”
“It is possible, my lord, if your lordship will excuse my saying so, that the liveliness of your lordship’s manner may be misleading to person’s of limited–“
“Be careful, Bunter.”
“Limited imaginations, my lord”
179
When the two men repair to Stapley to investigate Grimethorpe’s alibi, Peter christens a new local monument that doesn’t impress either veteran of the Great War “Meribah” and Bunter clarifies “the waters of strife.” This refers to the passage in Exodus where the freed slaves are hungry and cranky, Moses strikes a rock to get water, and for some reason this action later excludes him from Canaan. (I have a strong impression from childhood that Moses was supposed to ask the rock, and not hit it, and so he basically bullied the rock and showed off, and no Canaan was the punishment. Apparently, this part isn’t in the Bible, so why I remember this interpretation of this story so vividly, is a mystery.)
Chapter could also be titled “Peter and Bunter’s Bad Decision, and ends thrillingly with
“For God’s sake stop, my lord–the bog!”
A sharp shout in the utter darkness.
“Keep away from there–don’t move–it’s got me!”
And a dreadful sucking noise.
194
Thankfully, we know that in chapter 11 they’ll be rescued because there are more books in the series to read. They spend a not unpleasant night at the Grimethorpe’s, Peter finds out where Gerald’s lost letter went to, poor Mrs. Grimethorpe begs him for her life and admits to a terrible existence of domestic abuse, which Peter rather callously disregards, and once again he is ejected from the farm, this time not pursued by dogs.
A quibble. Sayers, by plying us with one dramatic setpiece so soon after the shooting, seems to conveniently forget that Peter’s shoulder is injured and would have been a dramatic liability in the “Bunter holding onto his arms” scenario which ensued. Also, he would absolutely have gotten a nasty infection of the wound from that bog. I feel like a modern editor would have caught this gaffe, but perhaps I’m being too critical.
I hope these recaps and analyses are helpful. I do enjoy writing them, and reviewing what we’ve read thus far. Certainly this quarter of the book hooked me in as firmly as the walking stick Bunter planted in the bog, compelling me to write this early so I can continue reading to the end.
One of my new-to-Sayers readers gave up in the first quarter, so I’m interested to see how new and familiar readers of the series react to this book, and one thing I’m attending to is how best to introduce readers to this series, since Whose Body? overall and the beginning of this book aren’t Sayers at her best.
What delighted you? What irritated you? What did you notice?
K.J. Boldon 