Bodies from the Library 2, page 37
part #2 of Bodies from the Library Series
‘But where did Uncle Arthur’s shot go to?’
‘It went here.’
Wimsey took up the big volume of S. Thomas Aquinas. In the middle of the back was a bullet hole. Opening the book, he displayed the bullet, buried deep in a discursive on the Holy Trinity.
‘When I tumbled to what might have happened, I looked along the bookshelves, and just bagged the book. I didn’t see quite why—well, I mean—damn it all—men in love do rotten silly things, and the poor blighter had been damnably worked up. But I nearly made a ghastly floater even then. I’d clean forgotten about the cartridge till I saw it on the floor, just where those bally policemen were rooting about. Lord! I thought we were all done in then, an’ me with this bally old doctor of the Church in my hand giving the whole blame show away.’
‘Oh, Peter—how did you manage?’
‘Shoved my foot down and said my prayers.’ Peter opened a drawer in his desk and brought out a pill-box containing the missing cartridge. ‘Then picked the bally thing up under their eyes. Lord! It was a squeak, though. There, m’lud, the evidence is complete.’
‘Except the door.’
‘Oh yes. I forgot.’ He rummaged once again in the drawer, bringing out a small pair of long, flat-nosed pliers, such as are used by jewellers. ‘I sneaked this later out of Severin’s workshop. If you’d examined the keypad of the study door, you’d have seen that the barrel projected nearly through the keyhole—as this one does.’
He walked across to the door, which had the key on the outside, and inserting the pliers into the lock, nipped the barrel from the inside. A turn of the wrist shot the bolt across.
‘Those blamed policemen,’ he said sadly, ‘never even saw the little bright scratch each side of the key where the pliers had gripped it. I’m glad they didn’t.’
‘You’re some detective’, said Betty.
‘I happened to get the right line on the thing from the start,’ said Peter. ‘But the real criminal is out of reach of the law. She knew, of course. What happened, by the way, between her and Anthony?’
‘They had a fearful row and he went abroad. I never knew which—’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘I say, Peter—poor old John is going to have a thick time. He has all Anthony’s superstitions.’
‘You can do nothing then. He must dree his weird, Betty.’
‘I wish I’d never guessed,’ said Betty, and burst into tears.
‘It don’t pay, really,’ said Peter, ‘to be so darn clear-sighted. Have a cocktail.’
DOROTHY L. SAYERS
Other than Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers is the single most important figure in the history of British classic crime in the 1920s and ’30s.
As well as creating one of the greatest of the ‘great detectives’ of the Golden Age, she edited three important anthologies that demonstrate the genre’s heritage and breadth. Through her insightful reviews in the Sunday Times, which were recently collected in Taking Detective Stories Seriously (2017), Sayers highlighted the best and worst of the genre and, with her colleagues in the Detection Club, she worked to raise standards and build public appreciation of good detective fiction. She was also in the vanguard of the pseudo-scholarship surrounding Sherlock Holmes, and she showed through her own studies that the experience and intelligence of detective story writers made them uniquely well placed to analyse notorious real-life crimes.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born on 13 June 1893 in Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, where her father was chaplain. A phenomenally gifted child, Sayers was educated at the Godolphin School and won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where she read modern languages and medieval literature, achieving first class honours in 1915 and completing her Master’s degree in 1920. Sayers’ first appearance in print was with a poem, ‘Lay’, in the 1915 edition of the annual Oxford Poetry anthology. This was followed swiftly by two collections of her poetry, Op. I (1916) and Catholic Tales and Christian Songs (1918), and poems also appeared in the Oxford Magazine as well as in other anthologies such as The New Decameron (1919).
After graduating, Sayers worked as a teacher before, in 1922, becoming a copywriter with S. H. Benson Ltd, a London advertising agency where she remained until 1931, working on contracts with the Guinness Brewery among others and coining arguably the best known phrase about the value of publicity: ‘It pays to advertise!’ Her first detective novel, Whose Body? (1923), introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, a wealthy collector of rare books with a nose for murder, owing as much to Wodehouse’s Wooster as to Conan Doyle’s Holmes, and Wimsey’s foil and friend, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, who eventually marries Wimsey’s sister. Whose Body? was followed by eleven other crime books including her only non-series mystery, an epistolary novel, The Documents in the Case, co-written with Robert Eustace, as well as Murder Must Advertise (1933), inspired by her time with Benson’s, and Busman’s Honeymoon (1937), adapted from the script of a play co-written by Sayers and Muriel St Clare Byrne, who had been an English tutor at Somerville.
Such is Wimsey’s enduring popularity that he was revived in 1998 by Jill Paton Walsh, who completed Thrones, Dominations, a novel that Sayers had left unfinished, and has since written three original Wimsey mysteries. ‘Lord Peter’ also appeared in short stories—21 of them—as did the preternaturally cheerful wine salesman and rhymester, Montague Egg. There are also several superb non-series short stories and an excellent late radio mystery, Where Do We Go from Here?
A proto-feminist in some (but not all) ways, Sayers also created Harriet Vane, a detective novelist who was perhaps an idealised version of herself. Vane first appears in Strong Poison (1930) where she is on trial for murder, and while their romance is not without its complications she and Wimsey eventually marry.
In many of her novels, Sayers went beyond the conventions of detective fiction at that time by using the form to explore contemporary issues, such as the ethics of advertising or the mental illness that would now be termed post-traumatic stress disorder in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928).
Outside the field of crime fiction, Sayers is also recognised for her scholarship and for her theological and religious works, in particular her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, which was completed by her god-daughter and biographer Barbara Reynolds. It is perhaps the most accessible version of the work, and is noted for the ingenious way she preserved the rhyme of the original as well as its sense. She also wrote a number of religious studies including the popular radio serial The Man Born to Be King (1941), which re-told the life of Christ, and The Zeal of Thy House, about the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral, where it received its premiere.
Dorothy L. Sayers died in 1957 at her home in Witham, Essex, where in 1994 the flourishing Dorothy L. Sayers Society erected a statue to commemorate the centenary of the author’s birth.
‘The Locked Room’ by Dorothy L. Sayers is a previously unpublished short story held in the collection of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, IL, USA. The manuscript remains in the collection of an anonymous donor; hence, the Wade Center’s copy is the only publicly available version of this work. A Lord Peter Wimsey detective story, the original manuscript is 38 pages, typed, signed with revisions by Sayers; the Wade Center manuscript number is DLS/MS-104.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
‘NO FACE’ by Christianna Brand copyright © Christianna Brand 2019. Printed by permission of A M Heath & Co. Ltd Authors’ Agents.
‘Before and After’ by Peter Antony © the estates of Anthony and Peter Shaffer.
‘Exit Before Midnight’ by Q Patrick copyright © the estate of Hugh Wheeler.
‘Room to Let’ by Margery Allingham printed by permission of Rights Limited.
‘A Joke’s a Joke’ by Jonathan Latimer copyright © the estate of Jonathan Latimer 1938.
‘The Man Who Knew’ by Agatha Christie copyright © Christie Archive Trust 2011. All rights reserved. Agatha Christie® is a registered trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere.
‘The Hours of Darkness’ by Edmund Crispin printed by permission of Rights Limited.
‘Chance is a Great Thing’ by E. C. R. Lorac copyright © the estate of E. C. R. Lorac 1950.
‘The Mental Broadcast’ by Clayton Rawson copyright © James G. Thompson Jr. 1945.
‘Sixpennyworth’ by John Rhode copyright © Estate of John Rhode 2019.
‘The Adventure of the Dorset Squire’ by C. A. Alington copyright © the estate of C. A. Alington 1937.
‘The Locked Room’ by Dorothy L. Sayers copyright © 2019 The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased).
Every effort has been made to trace all owners of copyright. The editor and publishers apologise for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections.
Also available
BODIES FROM THE LIBRARY
featuring
J.J. Connington • Before Insulin
Leo Bruce • The Inverness Cape
Freeman Wills Crofts • Dark Waters
Georgette Heyer • Linckes’ Great Case
Nicholas Blake • Calling James Braithwaite
John Rhode • The Elusive Bullet
Cyril Hare • The Euthanasia of Hilary’s Aunt
Vincent Cornier • The Girdle of Dreams
Arthur Upfield • The Fool and the Perfect Murder
A.A. Milne • Bread Upon the Waters
Anthony Berkeley • The Man with the Twisted Thumb
Christianna Brand • The Rum Punch
Ernest Bramah • Blind Man’s Bluff
H.C. Bailey • Victoria Pumphrey
Roy Vickers • The Starting-Handle Murder
Agatha Christie • The Wife of the Kenite
Selected and introduced by Tony Medawar
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Tony Medawar (ed), Bodies from the Library 2
