You may notice that I sometimes post book after book by the same author or on the same subject – that’s because that’s the way that I read. I read one book by an author or on a topic and it reminds me of another and then I read that one which leads me to another.

The last Dorothy L. Sayers book that I wrote about was the one in which Peter Whimsey meets the love of his life, Harriet Vane. Whimsey and Vane don’t get together in that book but Peter finally spurs his friend, the Scotland Yard detective, Parker, to propose to Mary Whimsey, Peter’s sister. But then I felt like I needed to read the book where Parker first fell in love with Mary, which is this book.

When the book starts, Peter is recuperating from his last case (Whose Body), rusticating in Corsica, where he has been for the last three months. In the first chapter, he travels to Paris, for a little cosmopolitan fun before returning back to London. Before he even finishes rinsing off his travel, however, the faithful Bunter has re-packed all of his trunks and booked the two of them air tickets that will whisk them back to London that very day! Bunter, you see, has read in the London Times – unavailable when rusticating in Corsica – that Peter’s sister, Mary’s, fiancé has been killed and Peter’s brother Gerald has been arrested for the murder!

As it turns out, Gerald, Mary, Cathcart (the victim), and a bunch of other people – importantly, not including Gerald’s wife – are enjoying a little shooting at a remote¹ hunting lodge. Everything seems hotsy-totsy, Cathcart telling Gerald over their nightcaps that he plans to press Mary to name the date of their wedding the next day². The men all laugh about how late the mail is delivered and head up to their bedrooms. But then Gerald opens a letter from an old friend who’s living in Egypt and just³ noticed an article announcing the engagement of Mary and Cathcart and he is sorry to have to reveal to Gerald that Cathcart had been caught cheating at cards!

Gerald huffs off to confront Cathcart whose mood has sharply changed: he is morose and curt, replies with something along the lines of “so what if I did!” and, when Gerald quite rightly blusters that he is forbidding the marriage and throwing Cathcart out of the house the next morning, Cathcart basically replies, “who cares” and storms out of the house into a blustery October rain. Gerald throws open the window and demands that Cathcart come in out of the rain then, standing at the top of the main staircase, calls down to his servant to leave the conservatory door open for the idiot. All of this – the fight and the aftermath – is completely audible to the houseguests.

Then Gerald goes for a 3-hour walk in the rain – refusing to state what he was doing – and returns home to find Cathcart’s bloodied body on the threshold of the conservatory. He is examining it to see if life remains, when Mary emerges, shrieks, “Oh god, you shot him!” then “Oh. It’s Cathcart. What happened?”⁴ When asked, at the inquest, what Mary was doing in the conservatory in shoes, hat, and coat at that hour of the night, she says she thought she heard a shot and was investigating, nailing down the time of the murder – and making Gerald’s lack of alibi very suspicious. So he is arrested and thrown in jail. Mary takes to her bed with a mysterious illness, and it’s a good thing that Peter arrives to save the day.

Working in tandem with Parker, Peter discovers a mysterious set of footprints that lead out of the garden, through a wood, and over a field to a climbable wall, on the other side of which are indications that a motorbike with sidecar had sat there for some time the night of the murder. They trace the footprints and discover that the man who made them is a – gasp – Socialist! And not just any Socialist – the Socialist that Mary had gotten engaged to during the war a couple of years previously, shocking and dismaying Gerald, who forbid her to see the man ever again.

So what was Mary doing in the conservatory at 3 a.m., dressed for the outdoors? When she cried out, “Oh god, you shot him!”, who did she think had been shot? Why is she so sick now? How did the murder weapon move from the locked drawer of Gerald’s desk in the study to the murderer’s hand in the garden? Where was Gerald? And why is the farmer next door so angry when Peter drops by to ask if he saw a motorcyclist the night of the murder? And why is the farmer’s wife so frightened? And what did Gerald do with the letter he said that he had received, accusing Cathcart of cheating at cards? Whose little diamante cat did Peter find in the garden and where did it come from? Where did the dead man’s inheritance go?

And why is Parker so cranky when Peter asks questions about Mary? (Well, that one is a given.)

Read it and see…

1. Not as remote as Corsica, but far enough away from the nearest village that it takes the doctor and a policeman almost an hour to get there. And the evening post is delayed until almost 10 pm. ↩︎
2. Mary has been procrastinating about the date, for reasons that become apparent later in the book. ↩︎
3. Nine months late, the Times taking a little longer to arrive in Cairo than Paris. ↩︎
4. I paraphrase but you get the point. ↩︎