‘Lord Peter Wimsey in the witness-box—very distressin’ to feelin’s of a brother. Duke of Denver in the dock—worse still. Dear me! We’l, I suppose one must have breakfast.’

‘Wimsey would be one of the finest detectives in England if he wasn’t lazy.’
(The opinion of his friend, Detective Parker, Chapter 2)

‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘there’s no accounting for a man like Cathcart, no accounting at all. Brought up in France, you know. Not at all like a straight-forward Englishman.’
(Colonel Marchbanks on damn foreigners!)

‘If only I’d been at Riddlesdale none of this would have happened. Of course, we all know that he wasn’t doing any harm, but we can’t expect the jurymen to understand that. The lower orders are so prejudiced.’
(The Dowager Duchess’s attitude)

Lord Peter was awake, and looked rather fagged, as though he had been sleuthing in his sleep.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Parker. ‘Can’t think why I said that—rotten bad form—beg pardon, old man.’
(Comedy posh boys)

‘The Sherlock Holmes of the West End’
(Popular newspaper’s description of Wimsey)]

‘…a series of unheard-of coincidences…’
(Sir Impey aptly describes the plot)

‘In the majority of cases of this kind the evidence is confused, contradictory; here, however, the course of events is so clear, so coherent, that had we ourselves been present to see the drama unrolled before us, as before the all-seeing eye of God, we could hardly have a more vivid or a more accurate vision of that night’s adventures.’

Introduction

‘Clouds of Witness’ is the second Lord Peter Wimsey novel. It is longer than the first and even more convoluted. It has a long subtitle which reads: ‘The solution of the Riddlesdale mystery with a report of the trial of the Duke of Denver before the House of Lords for murder’ and it is just that.

Right at the start, there is a really long verbatim account of the inquest held on the death of one Captain Denis Cathcart which sets the whole story in motion. And right at the end of the narrative, the trial of Peter Wimsey’s brother, the sixteenth Duke of Denver, in the House of Lords (a duke can only be tried by a jury of his peers i.e. other lords) stretches over several chapters.

In this and other ways the Wimsey stories feel verbose and windy, littered with set pieces which are described at some length. Compare and contrast with her rival, Agatha Christie, whose works and prose style got steadily more pithy and focused.

Setup

Wimsey is 33. After the tribulations of the case described in book one, about the body in the bath, he went for a three month holiday on Corsica, living the simple life. He’s en route back to Blighty and has only just checked into a hotel in Paris, when his man servant, Bunter, reads the paper and discovers that his brother, Gerald, the 16th Duke of Denver, has been arrested for murder! Bunter books them onto the first flight leaving Paris for London.

On the flight they read a detailed account of the inquest, which allows Sayers to insert a detailed account of the events surrounding the alleged murder.

It’s a country house murder and also a closed circle murder, in the classic style. Gerald had invited half a dozen friends to a shooting lodge he’d hired for the summer (Riddlesdale Lodge). In the inquest these guests are called one by one to give their version of events but a fairly clear narrative emerges: one of the guests was a Captain Denis Cathcart who had been engaged for eight months to Gerald and Peter’s sister, Lady Mary ‘Polly’ Denver (five years younger than Peter).

All went well with the normal round of breakfast, walks, spot of shooting, big dinner etc until the night in question (Wednesday 13 October into Thursday 14 October). Late on this night the other guests overheard Gerald and Cathcart having a flaring row, Cathcart stomping off through the house’s french windows into the night and the pouring rain, while Gerald went up to his bedroom and banged his door in a fury, ignoring the couple of other chaps who’d come out into the hallway to ask him what all the fuss was about.

At the inquest Gerald explains that that evening he’d received a letter from an old chum from Oxford who’s now working out in Egypt, Tommy Freeborn. This Freeborn had only just read about Lady Mary’s engagement to Cathcart (he’s working as an engineer far up the Nile) and was writing to say that once, on holiday in Paris, he’d met this Cathcart and from others in his circle learned that he was notorious for cheating at cards. Now this might not bother you or me very much (I assume all card games are a cheat of a sort) but this accusation, in this posh class, was the greatest insult a man could receive, at this time.

So Gerald goes straight up to Cathcart’s bedroom, knocks, and is struck straightaway by Cathcart’s own distracted attitude and filthy mood. Quite obviously something is bothering him as well (what the something is, we will only learn right at the end of the book). Anyway, Gerald’s accusations about cheating trigger a rant from Cathcart who says he won’t stay under this roof another minute etc etc and storms down the landing, down the stairs, across the living room, through the french windows and out into the pouring rain, with Gerald yelling after him before storming back into his own bedroom and slamming the door.

So that’s part one of the scene. Next part is that in the wee small hours, about 3am, some people hear creaking of doors and footsteps and, at the inquest, Gerald admits, with huge implausibility, that he felt like going for a bit of a stroll, in the rain, at 3am.

This is important because the next thing the guests know there’s the sound of a gunshot and when several of them go downstairs, they find Gerald bending over a body just outside the french windows, a body which turns out to be Cathcart, shot through the lungs.

When the police arrive and do a search of the grounds they find a little way away, in a clearing, the revolver which shot Cathcart, a handkerchief and lots of blood. And it is Denver’s revolver which, he tells the cops, he usually keeps lying around in his desk drawer.

But here the inquest throws up contradictory information because the Lodge’s gamekeeper, John Hardraw, explicitly says he heard a shot about 10 to midnight, 3 hours before the one Lady Mary claims woke her up.

So did Wimsey’s angry brother shoot Colonel Cathcart dead? Why did the witnesses claim to have heard two different gunshots at widely separate times? And if Gerald didn’t do it, who did? And why?

Reading the detailed account of the inquest which conveys all these facts covers the time it takes Wimsey to fly from Paris to London, catch a train to wherever in the country this posh house is (Riddlesdale, nearest station Northallerton), get a taxi, and then make a dramatic entrance! Having read it all, Wimsey sums it up to the surprised house party guests in his best honking Bertie Wooster impersonation:

‘I say, Helen, old Gerald’s been an’ gone an’ done it this time, what?’

Developments

Evidence of a mystery man Parker and Wimsey thoroughly explore the grounds of the Lodge and come across evidence that a tall man broke into the grounds, probably shot Cathcart and for reasons unknown dragged his body up to the house before running back to the wall surrounding the estate, climbing up and over spiked railings where he cut himself and left half his belt snagged on the spike. In the shrubbery where the police found the gun, Wimsey notices a little cat-shaped piece of jewellery on the ground.

Motorcycle There are the tracks of a motorcycle and sidecar and, separately, a local vicar has reported to the police that his motorcycle plates have been stolen. Parker and Wimsey nickname this unknown man Number 10 on the basis of his large footprints.

Grider’s Hole and Mr Grimethorpe So Parker and Wimsey split up: Wimsey goes exploring the surrounding villages, in the course of which he visits a place called Grider’s Hole and comes across the extremely disagreeable Mr Grimethorpe who keeps bullies and dogs to guard his land and terrorises his (beautiful) wife and child. Why? What have they got to do with anything?

Paris Meanwhile, Parker travels to Paris to check out Cathcart’s flat – interviewing his concierge and neighbour in St. Honoré – interview his bank manager and review his accounts (which tell a familiar story of pre-war affluence which gradually declines during the war, until Cathcart reports generating income from unknown sources – gambling?).

But his breakthrough comes when he signs of sleuthing and goes to do some underwear shopping for his sad spinster sister and finds himself looking in the window of a jewellers shop and recognising the spitting image of the little cat jewellery they found in the ground of Riddlesdale Lodge.

He makes detailed enquiries within – Monsieur Briquet’s in the Rue de la Paix – and establishes that only 20 were made, and makes them go through their records till he establishes the one he’s interested in was bought in February, sold to an Englishman accompanied by a dazzling blonde. Now Parker knows from their background research on Cathcart that Lady Mary was in Paris at this exact time. Surely the Englishman who bought it for his girlfriend was Cathcart, and the girlfriend Lady Mary.

Back in London Wimsey and Parker are reunited, swap notes and generate new hypotheses for what might have happened on the fatal night. Then a) Wimsey goes off to see the Head of Scotland Yard while b) Parker waits for him. Two things happen:

Lady Mary confesses Parker’s wait stretches on and on and then the doorbell rings and he’s surprised at the arrival of Lady Mary arrives. For the past week or so she had taken to her bed at the Lodge claiming to be sick with a high temperature. So he’s very surprised to see her well and vehement. She gives a full confession to Parker leading up to the stunning revelation that she shot Cathcart – which he in fact refuses to believe, although she insists on it.

Wimsey is shot After his meeting with the Scotland Yard boss concludes, Peter is accosted by old friend Miss Tarrant, a loud Socialist, who hauls him off to the Soviet Club in Soho where, she says, there’s going to be a speech by Mr Coke, the Labour party leader, about converting the forces to communism. Over dinner there, there’s some light satire on contemporary literature, which namedrops Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, before Mary tells him all about a Mr Goyles, one of their leading young speakers, and goes on to make the revelation that this was the man Lady Mary was in a relationship with and all their friends expected them to get married. Wimsey is able to explain his side, which is he’d vaguely heard about all this while he was off at the war, but his family stepped in and broke up the match as completely unsuitable, which is why she became engaged to posh bounder Cathcart on the rebound.

At that moment Mr Goyles enters the club, Miss Tarrant spots him and goes over to introduce him. Wimsey notes that Goyles is tall and wearing a glove, maybe to hide an injured hand, so maybe he’s Number 10, the man whose traces in the grounds of Riddlesdale Lodge he and Parker detected.

As if to confirm his suspicions, Goyle takes a look in Wimsey’s direction, panics and bolts for the door of the club. Wimsey chases him out, and it turns into a chase through Soho alleyways, until Goyle turns and shoots Wimsey (in the shoulder). Wimsey is knocked sideways onto a nearby disused bedstead that’s outside a rag and bone shop and passes out.

Wimsey bounces back Next morning Wimsey is back in his Piccadilly apartment having spent the night in hospital (the Charing Cross Hospital) and been bandaged up and sedated. He’s feeling right as rain and holds court to Bunter, Parker, the Duchess (his rambling mother) and Lady Mary who now, finally, spills the beans. Mary (or Polly as Wimsey calls her) explains that 1) she had come to dislike Cathcart and had broken off the engagement; 2) on the night in question, she had made an arrangement to rendezvous with Goyle, elope and get married to him, she’d packed a bag and everything, which is why she was first on the scene of Gerald kneeling down over Cathcart’s body.

The gunshot she claimed she heard at 3am was pure fiction, made up on the spot to explain what she was doing out of bed, which was contradicted by everyone else at the inquest, her confusion and distress all explaining why she went back to bed and pretended to be ill (putting the thermometer in her hot water bottle when no-one was looking in order to fool the local doctor that she had a dangerous temperature, that kind of thing…)

Grimethorpe A big breakthrough in the story relates to the horrible domestic tyrant Grimethorpe. Wimsey had been puzzled why his wife emerged from the shadows of his dark kitchen when Grimethorpe went off to call his men and get his dogs set on Wimsey; his wife emerged terribly flustered and telling him to leave quickly, then changed her tune when she saw Wimsey in the lamplight, as if she initially mistook him for someone else. Now Wimsey speculates that Cathcart was having an affair with this lower class woman, that Grimethorpe had got wind of it – and broke into the grounds of Riddlesdale Lodge in order to kill Cathcart in revenge!!

This fits some of the facts: it renders both Goyle and Lady Mary (and Gerald, still languishing in prison awaiting trial) innocent of Cathcart’s murder. But can you see how contrived and awkward it is? Why would a man like Grimethorpe break in anywhere, why not confront Cathcart in full daylight somewhere, in one of the local villages, or make an official visit to the Lodge and humiliate him in front of all the other guests?

George Goyle’s story After the police put out an alert, Goyles was captured at Folkestone trying to leave the country and brought back to London. Wimsey, Parker and Mary go to interview him. His story is simple: he and Mary planned to elope, he told her to be ready at 3am in the grounds with a suitcase; it had to be that time because he was making a speech at a local Labour club and it would take a few hours to drive over. He broke into the Lodge grounds and was tiptoeing towards the house when he tripped over a body, feeling it, realised it was cold and dead. This panicked him, he turned and ran through the undergrowth and hoisted himself over the palings, cutting his hand and leaving his belt caught in the spikes, as Parker and Wimsey found.

So that is a believable version of events, although it puts Mary off Goyle for being such a coward (and for being so sullen and aggressive towards Wimsey who has graciously agreed not to pursue an action against him for shooting him), so that she formally returns his engagement ring.

Parker, Mary and Wimsey go on to lunch at the solicitor, Mr Murbles, where we have an extended description of the clever and successful barrister, Sir Impey Biggs in action. But the next step is for Wimsey to return to Yorkshire and do some more investigating of the horrible man Grimethrope, who they are all now suspecting of murdering Cathcart. They need a full confession in order to get Gerald off the hook…

In Yorkshire Wimsey and Bunter trawl the pubs of the market town nearest to Riddlesdale Lodge, namely Stapley. This takes a while, and includes comic portraits of various local yokel characters. Their aim is to build up an account of the movements of the horrible Mr Grimethorpe on the night of the murder, and it certainly becomes suspicious with Grimethorpe coming into town to do some business but then disappearing from his pub late at night, only to reappear in the early hours covered in mud, compatible with him having travelled to Riddlesdale, broken in, killed Cathcart in a struggle, and straggled back to his Strapley pub.

Groot They also learn of a man named Groot who claimed to see a man wandering over the fell late that night, so they decide to go an interview him and get a carter to give them a lift out to the track leading to Groot’s cottage.

The fog and the bog Basically they don’t get much out of this Groot, and decide to walk the not great distance to Grider’s Hole to confront Grimethorpe himself. What they hadn’t counted on is that they are no longer in Piccadilly – they are on a high fell in Yorkshire late on a November day. A thick fog suddenly descends, they get hopelessly lost and blunder into a bog where Wimsey gets trapped and starts to be sucked down. Bunter manager to carefully slide forward on solid tufts of grass and hold Wimsey arms as they both yell for help. Eventually out of the fog emerge three men who rescue them.

At Grimethorpe’s They turn out to Be Grimethorpe’s men who take him to the angry man’s house, who tries to turn them away, but his men point out the cops will clobber him if the men (Bunter and Wimsey) come a cropper, so they’re forced to take them in, clean and feed and give them a bed for the night, in fact Grimethorpe’s own bed in the marital bedroom.

The letter In the morning, while Bunter gets hot water to shave in from the kitchen, Wimsey idly takes a wad of paper stuffed in the sash of the window to stop it rattling, and is astonished to discover it is the missing letter from Tommy Freeborn. It can only possibly have gotten here if Gerald himself brought it here and used it as a window stopper.

Gerald has been there himself!! Hang on. Suddenly Wimsey sees the light. His brother Gerald was having an affair with Grimethorpe’s beautiful wife!!! That’s where he slipped out to on the night of the murder, that’s why he was coming back to the Lodge at 3am very suspiciously, that’s why he refuses to account for his movements: he is chivalrously protecting Mrs Grimethorpe (whose husband would murder her if he found out) as well as his own and his family’s reputation (Gerald is married, to Lady Helen (who no-one seems to like)).

Wimsey feverishly tries to persuade Mrs Grimethorpe to give evidence in Gerald’s trial but she is absolutely terrified for her life and at that moment Grimethorpe comes into the room, angry and suspicious as always.

So I think the reader now knows what happened: on the night in question:

1. Gerald slipped out of the Lodge and across the moors to Gride’s Hole (two and a half miles away) where he had sex with Grimethorpe’s wife (!) taking advantage of the fact that Grimethorpe is away from home, staying the night in Stapley. When he tries to slip quietly into the Lodge he is astonished to trip over a corpse.
2. Grimethorpe, strongly suspecting Gerald was sleeping with his wife, leaves the pub in Stapley and travels cross country to Riddesdale Lodge, breaks in and somehow confronts Cathcart, presumably mistaking him for Wimsey, and shoots him, panics and foots it back across country.
3. Meanwhile, in a completely different storyline, young Goyles has arranged to elope with Lady Mary and she indeed comes down to the french windows with her suitcase packed but instead finds her brother kneeling over a dead body and, for a moment, thinks Gerald has killed Goyles – before she recovers and realises the body is Cathcart’s.

OK, but there are still holes, like: how did a revolver belonging to Gerald end up being used to shoot Cathcart? Grimethorpe had no access to it. So, how?

Gerald’s trial Bunter and Wimsey return to London and we are treated to an extended account of Gerald’s trial in the House of Lords (during which we learn it is set in the year 1920). In fact before that kicks off Wimsey has a revelation based on some old blotting paper he found in Gerald’s room which makes him race off to Paris, obviously something to do with Cathcart, who lived there – before returning breathlessly, hassling the American ambassador for an emergency visa to the States, and then, with mad implausibility, takes ship from Liverpool to America!

So we get a day of trial proceedings with various witnesses being cross-examined them, on I think the third day, the defence barrister, Sir Impey, asks for an adjournment because Wimsey has cabled to say he is flying back across the Atlantic with vital evidence! The press was already covering the trial of a duke, a great rarity, but now they go bananas about the mercy dash across the Atlantic with headlines like ‘Peer’s Son Flies Atlantic’, ‘Brother’s Devotion’, ‘Will Wimsey Be in Time?’

What evidence? What took him to Paris, then to America?

But while Wimsey is off gallivanting in New York, there’s a radical new development when Grimethorpe’s wife turns up, arriving at midnight at the London apartment of Mr Murbles, the defence solicitor, and when being admitted, saying she is ready to testify to save Gerald’s life, that he was with her for the crucial early hours of the fateful October night – even though she knows her husband may track her down and kill her for it.

A conference of Murbles, Parker and Lady Mary are torn because they want her evidence but are horrified at the danger she’s placed herself in. In the event, the next day she is kept in a separate room at the court (which is being held in the old hall in Parliament) to be held in reserve in case needed.

Later that morning Wimsey makes a dramatic entrance into the great hall, before the serried ranks of British aristocracy, marches up to the bar and presents his Big Piece of Evidence. This is a love letter Cathcart wrote to the Great Love of His Life bidding her adieu and saying that, since she dumped him for an American millionaire, life has no meaning and so he is going to commit suicide!

(This lover was the woman Wimsey realised was the statuesque blonde who the Paris jewellers sold the little cat mascot which Lady Mary swore she’d never seen before, the blonde accompanying Cathcart when he bought it. In Paris he managed to establish her name – Mademoiselle Simone Vonderaa – and then discovered that she had taken up with American millionaire – a Mr Cornelius Van Humperdinck – and that they’d both returned to New York. Which is where Wimsey tracked her down and, after much pleading, persuaded her to surrender Cathcart’s last letter, in effect a suicide note, which is now read out with dramatic impact to the audience of assembled peers of the realm.

Now you might have thought (or hoped) that this would be the end of the trial and the story, but you would be very much mistaken indeed. There are three more chunky chapters still to go and the trial itself barely falters.

I’m quite shagged out writing this much, so I won’t give away the end of the story and the final revelations. The whole thing is available online (see link below).

Cast

• Lord Peter Wimsey
  • Bunter – his valet
• Gerald ‘Jerry’ Denver, 16th Duke of Denver
  • James Fleming – his man
• Helen, Duchess of Denver – wife of Gerald Wimsey, and so Lady Mary Wimsey’s sister-in-law and Lord Peter Wimsey’s sister-in-law – ‘whose misfortune it was to become disagreeable when she was unhappy’
• Lady Mary Wimsey – sister of the Duke, ‘a very objectionable specimen of the modern independent young woman’
  • Ellen – her maid
• The Dowager Duchess of Denver – ‘She was a long-necked, long-backed woman, who disciplined her hair and her children. She was never embarrassed, and her anger, though never permitted to be visible, made itself felt the more’
• Captain Denis Cathcart – fiancé of Lady Mary, found shot dead after a furious row with Gerald
• Miss Lydia Cathcart – the captain’s aunt, disapproved of him and his Parisian ways
• Colonel Marchbanks
• Mrs Marchbanks
• Mr Theodore Pettigrew-Robinson – a county magistrate
• Mrs Pettigrew-Robinson
• Riddlesdale Lodge – a roomy, two-storied house, built in a plain style, and leased to Lord Denver for the season by its owner, Mr Montague, who has gone to the States
  • Ellen – the housemaid
• The Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot – posh and dim
• John Hardraw – the gamekeeper
• Dr Thorpe
• Inspector Craikes from Stapley
• Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, lives in a flat in Great Ormond Street
• Mr Murbles – the solicitor
  • Simpson – his man-servant
• Mr Foulis – local parson
• Sir Impey Biggs – barrister, ‘the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him’ – 38 and a bachelor
• Dr Lubbock – the ‘analytical gentleman’ i.e. forensics
• Monsieur Briquet – owner of jewellers shop in Paris
• His shop assistant who sold the jewelled cat
• Sir Andrew Mackenzie – the Chief of Scotland Yard who Wimsey goes to visit about his brother, before bumping into…
• Miss Tarrant – ‘a good Socialist’ – ‘a cheerful young woman with bobbed red hair, dressed in a short checked skirt, brilliant jumper, corduroy jacket, and a rakish green velvet tam-o’-shanter’ – takes Wimsey to the Soviet Club
• George Goyles – tall fair revolutionary who Wimsey chases through Soho before he turns and shoots him – turns out to have planned to elope with Lady Mary
• Wilkes – under-gardener at Riddlesdown
• Grimethorpe – surly, angry, violent owner of Grider’s Hole farmhouse
• Mrs Grimethorpe – his stunningly beautiful wife who, it turns out, was having an affair with Gerald Denver
• Greg Smith – landlord of the Bridge and Bottle
• Mr Timothy Watchett – landlord of the Rose and Crown – ‘a small, spare, sharp-eyed man of about fifty-five, with so twinkling and humorous an eye and so alert a cock of the head that Lord Peter summed up his origin the moment he set eyes on him’ i.e. he’s a Londoner
• Bet – barmaid at the Rose and Crown
• Jem – ostler at the Rose and Crown
• Sir Wigmore Wrinching – the Attorney-General
• the Lord High Steward
• Mr. Glibbery – assistant lawyer to Sir Impey Biggs
• Grant – the pilot who flies Wimsey across the Atlantic
• Mr Cornelius van Humperdinck – very rich and stout and suspicious
• Mademoiselle Simone Vonderaa
  • Adèle – her maid, ‘thin-lipped and wary-eyed, denying everything’

Biographical trivia

Peter Wimsey was a Major in the army and had a breakdown before the end of the Great War. He has occasional flashbacks, PTSD.

Wimsey is five foot nine tall, Parker is 6 foot. Parker attended Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School (quite a contrast from Eton).

• ‘Narrow grey eyes’
• ‘Wimsey’s long, flexible mouth and nervous hands…’

Wimsey’s motivation:

Although he had taken to detecting as he might, with another conscience or constitution, have taken to Indian hemp—for its exhilarating properties—at a moment when life seemed dust and ashes, he had not primarily the detective temperament. (Chapter 4)

Achievements:

He was a respectable scholar in five or six languages, a musician of some skill and more understanding, something of an expert in toxicology, a collector of rare editions, an entertaining man-about-town, and a common sensationalist. (Chapter 4)

Cane:

His favourite stick—a handsome malacca, marked off in inches for detective convenience, and concealing a sword in its belly and a compass in its head. (Chapter 11)

Sir Impey

Charismatic leading barrister, Sayers gives him some satirical observation about lawyers.

‘I am doing my very best to persuade him, Duchess,’ said Sir Impey, ‘but you must have patience. Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.’ (Chapter 3)

‘Damn it all, we want to get at the truth!’
‘Do you?’ said Sir Impey drily. ‘I don’t. I don’t care twopence about the truth. I want a case.’ (Chapter 10)

Or the object of jokes:

‘I fear we may have to wait a few moments for Sir Impey,’ said Mr. Murbles, consulting his watch. ‘He is engaged in Quangle & Hamper v. Truth, but they expect to be through this morning—in fact, Sir Impey fancied that midday would see the end of it. Brilliant man, Sir Impey. He is defending Truth.’
‘Astonishin’ position for a lawyer, what?’ said Peter.
‘The newspaper,’ said Mr. Murbles… (Chapter 10)

Oscar

Sayers has a few pokes at the aristocracy. To my mind, these kinds of deprecating jokes made by aristocratic types about their own class always sound like Oscar Wilde.

‘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 persons of limited—’
Be careful, Bunter!’
‘Limited imagination, my lord.’
‘Well-bred English people never have imagination, Bunter.’
‘Certainly not, my lord. I meant nothing disparaging.’

Bookish connoisseur

The loving descriptions of books, attributed to bookish characters, are obviously by a connoisseur i.e. Sayers herself.

Cathcart’s books here consist of a few modern French novels of the usual kind, and another copy of Manon with what the catalogues call ‘curious’ plates.

Opposite the fireplace stood a tall mahogany bookcase with glass doors, containing a number of English and French classics, a large collection of books on history and international politics, various French novels, a number of works on military and sporting subjects, and a famous French edition of the Decameron with the additional plates.

All this stuff about the ‘plates’ – specialist knowledge.

Elsewhere Sayers mocks her own bookishness in the random stream-of-consciousness of the Dowager Duchess, where you can play Spot the Literary Reference.

‘What oft was thought and frequently much better expressed, as Pope says—or was it somebody else? But the worse you express yourself these days the more profound people think you—though that’s nothing new. Like Browning and those quaint metaphysical people, when you never know whether they really mean their mistress or the Established Church, so bridegroomy and biblical—to say nothing of dear S. Augustine—the Hippo man, I mean, not the one who missionized over here, though I daresay he was delightful too, and in those days I suppose they didn’t have annual sales of work and tea in the parish room, so it doesn’t seem quite like what we mean nowadays by missionaries—he knew all about it—you remember about that mandrake—or is that the thing you had to get a big black dog for? Manichee, that’s the word. What was his name? Was it Faustus? Or am I mixing him up with the old man in the opera?’ (Chapter 9)

Literariness

Wimsey is given to making literary references but then so is Charles Parker. The latter has an amateur interest in theology, so both men might make Biblical or scholarly references. This gives them a distinctive flavour, a bit off-putting for the general reader, you’d have thought.

‘There are many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation,’ said Parker placidly. (Chapter 3)

After which he went to bed, and read himself to sleep with a commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. (Chapter 5)

Wimsey quotes ‘The Merchant of Venice’:

From such a ditch as this,
When the soft wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, from such a ditch
Our friend, methinks, mounted the Troyan walls,
And wiped his soles upon the greasy mud.

Refers to Sir Walter Scott’s ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ and quotes lots of other songs and folk poems. He quotes a clerihew in its entirety.

‘What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive—
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.’

And music

As in the first book, Wimsey is depicted as knowledgeable about classical music.

He leaned on the wall and began whistling softly, but with great accuracy, that elaborate passage of Bach which begins ‘Let Zion’s children’. (Chapter 3)

Here he revived sufficiently to lift up his voice in ‘Come unto these Yellow Sands‘. Thence, feeling in a Purcellish mood, he passed to ‘I Attempt from Love’s Fever to Fly.’

The self-consciousness of detective fiction

‘Hitherto,’ said Lord Peter, as they picked their painful way through the little wood on the trail of Gent’s No. 10’s, ‘I have always maintained that those obliging criminals who strew their tracks with little articles of personal adornment—here he is, on a squashed fungus—were an invention of detective fiction for the benefit of the author. I see that I have still something to learn about my job.’ (Chapter 3)

‘Trouble?’ she said. ‘Why, you silly old Peter, of course I’m in trouble. Don’t you know they’ve killed my man and put my brother in prison? Isn’t that enough to be in trouble about?’ She laughed, and Peter suddenly thought, ‘She’s talking like somebody in a blood-and-thunder novel.’

I’m amazed that, just like Agatha Christie, Sayers apparently feels compelled to namecheck Sherlock Hlmles in every novel. He is like a ghost that every detective story has to raise in order to exorcise it – not once, but five times! Here’s Wimsey’s mother, the Dowager Duchess:

‘I think my mother’s talents deserve a little acknowledgment. I said so to her, as a matter of fact, and she replied in these memorable words: ‘My dear child, you can give it a long name if you like, but I’m an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it’s so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.’ (Chapter 6)

Here’s Parker waiting for Wimsey when he hears the door open and:

His first thought was that Wimsey must have left his latchkey behind, and he was preparing a facetious greeting when the door opened—exactly as in the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story—to admit a tall and beautiful young woman, in an extreme state of nervous agitation… (Chapter 7)

Here’s Wimsey arguing with his brother:

‘I wish you’d jolly well keep out of it,’ grunted the Duke. ‘Isn’t it all damnable enough for Helen, poor girl, and mother, and everyone, without you makin’ it an opportunity to play Sherlock Holmes?’ (Chapter 11)

And the garrulous landlord of the xxx pub:

He smacked open a Daily Mirror of a fortnight or so ago. The front page bore a heavy block headline: THE RIDDLESDALE MYSTERY. And beneath was a lifelike snapshot entitled, ‘Lord Peter Wimsey, the Sherlock Holmes of the West End, who is devoting all his time and energies to proving the innocence of his brother, the Duke of Denver.’

Wimsey versus Poirot

Poirot is head and shoulders above Wimsey. I quite enjoyed reading some of the Wimsey novels but have two big objections:

1. Wimsey’s caricature poshboy speech becomes really irksome really quickly. And I don’t really believe in it either, don’t believe someone relatively clever could come across as such an upper-class twit.

2. Somehow this, and Wimsey’s general verbosity, feel like they get in the way of the story. In the two Wimsey novels I’ve read, I felt I didn’t follow the logic of numerous developments, something you rarely experience with Christie whose exposition is often clarity itself. For example, I didn’t follow why Wimsey went to visit Grimethorpe. It feels like numerous clues and elements in the plot are forced and contrived, while at the same time you’re trying to penetrate the fog of Wimsy’s silly manner. Here, for example, is the first time he comes to Gride’s Hole and finds one of Grimethorpe’s men blocking the big gate to the house. This is how Wimsey addresses him when he confirms that Grimethorpe lives in this house:

‘No, does he now?’ said Lord Peter. ‘To think of that. Just the fellow I want to see. Model farmer, what? Wherever I go throughout the length and breadth of the North Riding I hear of Mr. Grimethorpe. ‘Grimethorpe’s butter is the best’; ‘Grimethorpe’s fleeces Never go to pieces’; ‘Grimethorpe’s pork Melts on the fork’; ‘For Irish stews Take Grimethorpe’s ewes’; ‘A tummy lined with Grimethorpe’s beef, Never, never comes to grief.’ It has been my life’s ambition to see Mr. Grimethorpe in the flesh. And you no doubt are his sturdy henchman and right-hand man. You leap from bed before the breaking-day, To milk the kine amid the scented hay. You, when the shades of evening gather deep, Home from the mountain lead the mild-eyed sheep. You, by the ingle’s red and welcoming blaze, Tell your sweet infants tales of olden days! A wonderful life, though a trifle monotonous p’raps in the winter. Allow me to clasp your honest hand.’

Surely the gritty Yorkshire farm hand he’s addressing would be fully justified in punching Wimsey in the face, the patronising toff.

By contrast with all this, Christie is wonderfully crisp and clear in the presentation of her cases. More, Poirot feels like a kind of walking expression of the detecting principle; somehow, he epitomises the stories themselves. The stereotypical scenes where he brings all the suspects together in one room and goes through their stories one by one are not only fictionally effective, but feel like they penetrate to the essence of the detective story as a genre. They feel like X-rays through the body of the murder mystery genre. In this way Poirot is a profound figure, something approaching an archetype.

Wimsey is not. He is often an irritating pillock. The stories are OK, but the clutter of detail is not clarified by Wimsey in the same way that Poirot so acutely picks out details to help the reader. Instead it feels like quite hard work trying to pierce through Wimsey’s silly mannerisms and posh bluster to find out what’s going on.

I’ve mentioned Wimsey’s bookishness, his expertise in old editions and his endless dropping of literary and poetic quotes and tags and references. On the one hand you could say this is a cause of readerly enjoyment i.e. it adds to the multitextual feel, and it certainly gives him an Oxford literary vibe. But in a different mood, you could see it as more of the verbiage and clutter which obscures the stories.

Adventure

On the plus side, I suppose you can put the visceral thrills of some parts of the narrative. The scene where Wimsey and Bunter stumble into the swamp and Wimsey starts to get sucked down into it is, despite being corny as hell, thrilling and exciting. And you can see how the vivid description of Wimsey’s flight in a single-propellor plane across the Atlantic in a storm (broken into two parts by a chapter of the trial coming in the middle; piloted by a world-famous aviator named simply ‘Grant’) is also intended to be as thrilling as possible.

In other words, Sayers threw into her stories a good dollop of Bulldog Drummond / Sexton Blake thrills and spills that Poirot, fastidiously brushing an invisible speck of dust off his shiny spats, couldn’t be further from. I wonder if there’ll be similar thrills and spills episodes in the subsequent books…

Credit

‘Clouds of Witness’ by Dorothy L. Sayers was published in 1926 by T. Fisher Unwin.

Related links

• Clouds of Witness on Planet Gutenberg
• Annotations to Clouds of Witness

Related reviews

• 1920s reviews
• Detective novels
• Dorothy L Sayers