Interesting that Harriet Vane gets second-billing with Lord Peter Whimsey in this book. In some of Sayers’ other books, Vane and Whimsey work in tandem, solving mysteries together. In this first one, however, Vane is on trial for murder; and she’s a rather passive participant in this mystery: she provides no insights or clews that contribute to the solution of the crime.

And it’s a Christmas book.

What?

In some stories, Christmas is up-front, dominating the plot somehow or infecting the atmosphere of the book. That is not the case in this book, but it takes place at Christmas nevertheless.

The book starts in November, when the murder trial of Harriet Vane, mystery writer, ends in a mistrial due to a hung jury: one of the jurors absolutely refuses to find Vane guilty; and she is backed up by two other jurors, one of whom – another woman – doesn’t like the condescending way that the (male) jury foreman speaks to the holdout juror; the other person who back her up is an artist who ran in the same crowds as Vane and the victim, Philip Boyes, didn’t like what he heard about Boyes, and didn’t hold Vane’s “sins” against her, as the more bourgeoisie members of the jury, the general public, and the judge overseeing the trial might, and do.

What “sins” are those? Well, Harriet, a vicar’s daughter forced by the early death of her father to establish her personal financial independence, makes her living by writing mysteries. When she met Philip Boyes – also an author – she had not experienced romantic love, and fell hard. He professed to believe in free love and, after wooing her, persuaded her to live with him without marriage. She sacrificed her belief in marriage to her love for him and supported their household financially for several years. And then he decided to reward her commitment to him by marrying her. She took offense at this – as well she might¹ – and left him, refusing to reconcile afterwards. Unable to financially support himself, he took refuge with a cousin about his own age, a lawyer who could afford his own home and a small staff.

Harriet and Philip continued to run in the same bohemian circles and couldn’t help running into each other at parties and things. They were both working on new books, so these encounters happened about once a month, and following each meeting, Philip experienced a recurrence of a childhood gastronomic upset. Finally, after several months, he persuaded Harriet to meet with him 1:1 and she agreed reluctantly. So, one evening, after a meal featuring Sherry from an unopened bottle, served by a maidservant; soup, served from a shared pot by the maidservant; chicken stew, again served by this neutral third party; and a sweet omelet, prepared by Philip himself at the table. Philip also consumed part of a new bottle of wine, which was removed to the kitchen following the meal, and left untouched for several days, at which point, Philip died and his cousin had the maidservant bring the wine to him, and seal the bottle – just in case.

Immediately after this meal, Philip left his cousin’s house, took a cab to Harriet’s nearby home, where he consumed a cup of black coffee, prepared by her in a saucepan. Following that, he collapsed in the cab back to his cousin’s home and, upon returning home, went immediately to bed. His doctor treated him for his gastric symptoms and Philip died a few days later. After a nurse gossiped to a friend of Philip’s, the friend contacted the cousin, who informed the doctor, who reached out to Scotland Yard. And it turns out that Boyes has died from arsenic poisoning and, in fact, had received doses monthly since the early spring, within a date range proximate to each of the time he ran into Harriet at parties and things.

Harriet, coincidentally, had been purchasing arsenic as research for her new book, which features a poisoning murderer. That along with the timing of Boyes’ death after meeting with Harriet, a neighbor’s testimony that they were heard arguing that evening, and the fact that no one else motive to kill Boyes, lands Harriet in the dock. And only the hung jury saves her life because the retrial will take place in January – British courts running, like the U.S. Supreme Court, on terms that start at certain points of the year – giving Peter Whimsey – who first saw her in court, fell immediately in love with her, and proposes marriage to her on their first meeting – 30 days to determine who actually committed the crime.

And, in the middle of this, Christmas falls, and Whimsey finds himself at the family seat in the country, forced to take tea with the aristocratic friends of his brother and his sister-in-law, all of whom assume that Harriet is guilty and that her mistrial is a travesty of justice, and state it frankly and wonder to Peter’s face why he has taken up her case.

This book is the first time that we learn that Peter financially supports a large firm staffed entirely by women who mainly sniff out con-men and others who take advantage of those with less power than them. Miss Climpson, the leader of the firm, and Miss Murchison, one of her employees, are the stars of this book, going undercover to discover a motive for the crime and set up the criminal for apprehension. They are creative, courageous, and inventive detectives on their own; they, and Bunter, Whimsey’s man who interviews some key witnesses, uncover the clues that eventually sets Harriet free.

A lovely Christmas present for Harriet, although slightly belated – but not for Peter himself, for Harriet is skeptical about his professed love and about marriage in general, following her experience with Philip Boyes – and having received, while imprisoned, over 100 letters from strangers professing love and proposing marriage. So she tells Peter she is not interested.

And the reader is only given hope by the last dialogue between Harriet and two of her friends who met Peter while he was hunting for clues to get her off:

“I like that young man,” said Eiluned. “You needn’t grin. I do like him. He’s not going to do the King Cophetua stunt, and I take off my hat to him. If you want him, you’ll have to send for him.”

“I won’t do that,” said Harriet.

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Sylvia. “I was right about who did the murder, and I’m going to be right about this.”

And, several books later, she is.

1. I had a friend who, while very young, lived with a man who then told her she wasn’t good enough to marry him because she had premarital sex with a man – with him, but that didn’t matter. If she wanted to marry him, she needed to repent in the church. Which she did, and they married, and then – finally – divorced, thank god. She was too good for him. ↩︎