 First edition | |
| Author | Dorothy L. Sayers |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lord Peter Wimsey |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Ernest Benn [1] |
Publication date | 1927 [1] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 285 [1] |
| Preceded by | Clouds of Witness |
| Followed by | The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club |
Unnatural Death is a 1927 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her third featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It was published under the title The Dawson Pedigree in the United States in 1928. [2]
Lord Peter Wimsey and his friend Chief Inspector Parker are told about the death, in late 1925, of an elderly woman named Agatha Dawson who had been suffering from terminal cancer. She was being cared for by Mary Whittaker, her great-niece and a trained nurse. Miss Dawson had an extreme aversion to making a will, believing that Miss Whittaker, her only known relative, would naturally inherit everything. Wimsey is intrigued in spite of the fact that there is no evidence of any crime (a post-mortem found no sign of foul play), nor any apparent motive (on Miss Dawson's death her estate did indeed pass, as she had expected and wished, to her great-niece).
Wimsey sends his private investigator, Miss Katharine Climpson, to the village of Leahampton to investigate. She discovers that shortly before her death Miss Dawson had dismissed her maids, the sisters Bertha and Evelyn Gotobed. Wimsey places advertisements in the press asking them to get in touch. A few days later, Bertha is found dead in Epping Forest. On the body is a £5 banknote, originally issued to a Mrs Muriel Forrest who lives in an elegant flat in South Audley Street, Mayfair. Wimsey and Parker visit her. She claims not to remember the banknote, but thinks she may have put it on a horse. Wimsey tricks her into providing her fingerprints on a wineglass. In a drawer he finds a hypodermic syringe with a doctor's prescription "to be injected when the pain is very severe".
Evelyn Gotobed tells Wimsey of an episode shortly before the sisters were dismissed in which Miss Whittaker had tried to get them to witness Miss Dawson's will, without the latter's knowledge. A mysterious West Indian clergyman named Hallelujah Dawson had also turned up, claiming to be an impecunious distant relative.
Mrs Forrest asks Wimsey to visit her at her flat in London where she clumsily makes advances to him. Wimsey suspects blackmail. He kisses her and realises that she is physically revolted by his caress.
Wimsey discovers a motive for Miss Dawson to be killed before the end of 1925: a new 'Property Act' coming into force on 1 January 1926 will change the law of inheritance, resulting in an intestate's property no longer passing to a closest-relative great-niece but being forfeit to the Crown. Much play is made of a fictionalised uncertainty in the meaning of the word "issue".
Mary Whittaker – who Miss Climpson has concluded "is not of the marrying sort" – disappears from Leahampton along with Vera Findlater, an impressionable young woman who is besotted with her. Several days later Miss Findlater's body is found on the downs, apparently killed by a blow to the head. Mary Whittaker has it seems been kidnapped. There are indications that the culprit is a black man, and a distinctive cap found nearby is linked to Hallelujah Dawson. However, a post-mortem finds that Vera Findlater was already dead when she was struck, and Wimsey realises that the whole scene has been faked in order to frame the entirely innocent clergyman. Tyre tracks from Mrs Forrest's car are found nearby, and Wimsey suspects her and Mary Whittaker of acting in collusion.
Wimsey's manservant, Bunter, realises that the fingerprints on Mrs Forrest's wineglass are identical to those on a cheque written by Miss Whittaker. Wimsey at last understands that Muriel Forrest and Mary Whittaker are one and the same person, and that she carried out the murders by injecting air into her victims' bloodstream with a hypodermic syringe, causing blockage and immediate death through heart failure. Meanwhile Miss Climpson, unable to contact Wimsey, heads to South Audley Street where she is attacked by Mary Whittaker. Wimsey and Parker arrive just in time to save Miss Climpson from becoming the final victim. Whittaker is arrested, and commits suicide in prison.
Wimsey is jarred by the evil of this killer. Coming outdoors on a sunny day with Parker, he finds a darkened world. The novel ends on the day of a total eclipse.
According to James Brabazon in his Dorothy L Sayers: a biography (1981), Sayers drew her ingenious (and medically doubtful) murder method from her familiarity with motor engines, gained from her affair with a car mechanic and motor-bike enthusiast. [3]
In their review of Crime novels (revised edition 1989), the US writers Barzun and Taylor stated that "The tale is perhaps a little forced in conception and remote in tone. That is the trouble with all the great masters – they accustom us to such dazzling performances that when they give us what would seem wonderful coming from other hands, we sniff and act choosy. The mode of compassing death has been carped at, but no one could do anything but rejoice at Miss Climpson and her subterfuges." [4]
HRF Keating, writing in 1989, noted that Sayers had "invented a murder method that is appropriately dramatic and cunningly ingenious, the injection of an air-bubble with a hypodermic". However, "not only would it require the use of an instrument so large as to be farcical, but Miss Sayers has her bubble put into an artery not a vein. No wonder afterwards she pledged herself 'strictly in future to seeing I never write a book which I know to be careless'." [5]
In Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction before Stonewall (2017), Noah Stewart described Mary Whittaker as being "to my knowledge the most clearly delineated homosexual character in Golden Age detective fiction, despite the word 'lesbian' never being used, and she's depicted as enticing a young girl into a life of homosexuality". The episode in which Mary Whittaker is kissed by Wimsey is "the closest that a writer in 1927 would be able to come to saying that a character was a lesbian and that kissing a man made her want to vomit." [6] Laura Vorachek argued that, in the novel, "Sayers attempts to challenge the prevalent cultural associations of blackness and criminality." [7]
On 1 January 1926, the date specified by Sayers, two important property statutes came into force in England: the Law of Property Act 1925 and the Administration of Estates Act 1925. The latter, corresponding most closely with the ‘Property Act’ of the novel, swept away the old rules on intestacy [8] and specified by way of a six-point list the persons who would inherit if the intestate left neither issue nor parents. If the deceased had no surviving relatives of the classes mentioned (which did not include great-niece), the estate would go to the Crown. [9]
In May 1975, an adaptation was made for BBC Radio 4, produced by Simon Brett and starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey. [10]
Gaudy Night (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.
Murder Must Advertise is a 1933 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the eighth in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Most of the action of the novel takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was familiar as she had herself worked as an advertising copywriter until 1931.
Clouds of Witness is a 1926 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the second in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In the United States the novel was first published in 1927 under the title Clouds of Witnesses.
Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears.
Have His Carcase is a 1932 locked-room mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the second in which Harriet Vane appears. It is also included in the 1987 BBC TV series. The book marks a stage in the long drawn out courting of Harriet Vane by Wimsey. Though working closely with him on solving the book's mystery, she still refuses to marry him.
The Nine Tailors is a 1934 mystery novel by the British writer Dorothy L. Sayers, her ninth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The story is set in the Lincolnshire Fens, and revolves around a group of bell-ringers at the local parish church. The book has been described as Sayers' finest literary achievement, although not all critics were convinced by the mode of death, nor by the amount of technical campanology detail included.
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane.
Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998. The title is a quotation from John Milton's Paradise Lost and refers to two categories of angel in the Christian angelic hierarchy.
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957).
A Presumption of Death is a 2002 Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers. The novel is Walsh's first original Lord Peter Wimsey novel, following Thrones, Dominations, which Sayers left as an unfinished manuscript, and was completed by Walsh. A Presumption of Death is written by Walsh, except for excerpts from The Wimsey Papers.
Mervyn Bunter is a fictional character in Dorothy L. Sayers's novels and short stories. He serves as Lord Peter Wimsey's valet, and served as Wimsey's batman during the First World War. Bunter was partially based on the fictional butler Jeeves, created by P. G. Wodehouse.
The Documents in the Case is a 1930 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace. It is the only one of Sayers's twelve major crime novels not to feature Lord Peter Wimsey, her most famous detective character. However, the forensic analyst Sir James Lubbock, who appears or is mentioned in several of the Wimsey novels, also appears in The Documents in the Case.
Peter Haddon was an English actor.
Sergeant/Inspector/Chief Inspector Charles Parker is a fictional police detective who appears in several Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, and later becomes Lord Peter's brother-in-law.
The gentleman detective, less commonly lady detective, is a type of fictional character. He has long been a staple of crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories set in the United Kingdom in the Golden Age. The heroes of these adventures are typically both gentlemen by conduct and often also members of the British gentry. The literary heroes being in opposition to professional police force detectives from the working classes.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic.
Climpson is a surname of English origin. Notable people with the surname include:
Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson is a minor character in the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. She appears in two novels: Unnatural Death (1927) and Strong Poison (1930), and is mentioned in Gaudy Night (1935) and Busman's Honeymoon (1937).
Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of full cast BBC Radio drama adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1973 and 1983, with a further adaptation of Gaudy Night mounted for BBC Audiobooks in 2005 to complete the full sequence of Sayers' novels, all starring Ian Carmichael in the title role.