Have His Carcase: Chps 10 - 12
So Harriet and Peter have picnicked (and very sensibly not eaten until after swimming, as our parents always advised), sized one another up in their respective bathing suits, and decided that the mysterious hiker and the mysterious hairdresser dunnit. It's time for another chat with the police.
Chapter 10
Enter Inspector Umplety, or rather enter Peter and Harriet to the Inspector's suburban villa. I'm always greatful to the televisation for combining Umplety and Glaisher in one person. They're talking murder again. Or maybe suicide. Before he went out on the Fateful Day, Alexis paid his landlady, burnt his papers, and generally sorted things out, though not his library of books in Russian. Suicide! thinks the inspector. He also cleared his bank account of £300 (which would be more than his annual wages). Mystery! Here enters another Suspicious Foreigner, the orchestra leader da Soto, who Alexis allegedly lost his girlfriend to. Umplety is inclined to push the line that marrying Mrs Weldo is enough to make a man kill himself, and that losing Alexis would make Mrs Weldon kill him. Harriet gets suitably angry as Umplety goes off on a spiel about the ladies and feminine intuition - of course, Harriet is right, not because of the ladies but because she's actually talked to Mrs Weldon (as Wimsey did to Vaughan in SP, and likewise made the same decision he couldn't have killed Boyes). There is a phenomenal amount of conversation in this chapter, interrupted only by a lengthy spiel as to how every single person who went along the road was checked due to a traffic survey. At such times I can understand why this isn't some people's favourite book. Mr Havilland Martin, the mysterious camper with the dodgy car-hire story, also comes into the equation. In sum, a lot of things look a bit funny, but they can't pin anything down. Frustration all round.
Chapter 11
Inspector Umpelty: Hello, Wimsey! Remember that £300? Turns out that Alexis bought 300 gold sovereigns with it.
Wimsey: Boggles.
Cue discussion of why on earth. Blackmail? Diamonds and rajahs? Foreign Parts? Then follows an interview with the fisherman, Mr Pollock, in DLS's Peasant Dialect, this time Zomerzet. Pollock may have been up to skulduggery on a boat, but isn't saying anything. Afterwards, Wimsey pops off to see Sally Hardy, who accurately surmises that Peter is there to hang around Harriet Vane (though interestingly Peter doesn't deny it, just tells him to back off). They cook up a highly colourful story with a reward for the ID of the mysterious razor - I love this bit, all the over-egging of Wimsey's "artistic hands" and "foully and brutally murdered". Poor Peter claims he's "never satisfied" - he'll have to wait another couple of books for that.
Chapter 12
It's still only 1:15pm on the same day, Peter certainly can get a move on at times. More wondering about Mr Martin, door-to-door enquiries, inspection on knees to ruination of trousers at the campsite, and I am being fast to get to the really good bit in this chapter, Peter and Harriet dancing.
Peter, on phone: Hi, how about dinner *flirts*
Harriet: Sorry, can't, Mr Weldon's turned up and he's listening in. *flirts*
Peter: *flirts some more* Death to your pets!
Henry Weldon: *is not sexy*
Peter: *is relieved*
Henry: Thank God that bloke is dead before he could grap Mother's money. You'd better stop investigating whether anyone might have wanted to murder him, don't you think?
Harriet: *dances in wine-coloured frock*
Peter: *iz jealous* Let's dance.
Peter and Harriet: *dance*
Everyone else: *perves*
Harriet: Why aren't you overcome by dancing with my gorgeous sexiness?
Inferiority complex: *strikes*
Peter: Sorry. You are very hot in that frock.
Antoine: Ah, mademoiselle, you are dancing wiz zat Eenglishman in a verr' sexy way, n'est pas? I think you make beautiful music together.
Harriet:Now that we have achieved romantic detente, do you think that Henry Weldon is the murderer?
Peter: Sadly not. He's too obvious and too thick.
I like HHC, but blimy, sometimes the talking goes on a bit. And then you get a lovely bit like the dancing, which brings home how much if this book were being written - or televised - today, this would be the one in which fandom went wild for all the flirting and suggestion and wine-coloured evening dresses and tetchiness and wrote huge AUs in which Harriet and Peter ended up in bed together, because it's pretty obvious that if Peter actually did stop asking her to marry him and just concentrated on the flirting and holding her in his arms he might get somewhere (even if this were a bad idea for the long run).
It seems as if the mystery is all over the place at the moment. There's Alexis, who is pigeon-holed by the police as a funny foreigner, and yet all these slightly odd foreign connections do keep coming up and can't be explained away. There's Pollock with his unsatisfactory explanation, and no less than three entirely absent suspects, Bright, Perkins, and Martin, two of whom appear and disappear at suspicious times, and one of whom only Harriet can actually say exists. All in all, it perhaps isn't surprising that the next chapter is about to be involve a terrific row.
Random note: Contrary to the LPW Companion, the "hope your rabbit dies" line can't involve a cheeky reference to the 'rabbit test' for pregnancy - it was only in an experimental stage then.
Chapter 10
Enter Inspector Umplety, or rather enter Peter and Harriet to the Inspector's suburban villa. I'm always greatful to the televisation for combining Umplety and Glaisher in one person. They're talking murder again. Or maybe suicide. Before he went out on the Fateful Day, Alexis paid his landlady, burnt his papers, and generally sorted things out, though not his library of books in Russian. Suicide! thinks the inspector. He also cleared his bank account of £300 (which would be more than his annual wages). Mystery! Here enters another Suspicious Foreigner, the orchestra leader da Soto, who Alexis allegedly lost his girlfriend to. Umplety is inclined to push the line that marrying Mrs Weldo is enough to make a man kill himself, and that losing Alexis would make Mrs Weldon kill him. Harriet gets suitably angry as Umplety goes off on a spiel about the ladies and feminine intuition - of course, Harriet is right, not because of the ladies but because she's actually talked to Mrs Weldon (as Wimsey did to Vaughan in SP, and likewise made the same decision he couldn't have killed Boyes). There is a phenomenal amount of conversation in this chapter, interrupted only by a lengthy spiel as to how every single person who went along the road was checked due to a traffic survey. At such times I can understand why this isn't some people's favourite book. Mr Havilland Martin, the mysterious camper with the dodgy car-hire story, also comes into the equation. In sum, a lot of things look a bit funny, but they can't pin anything down. Frustration all round.
Chapter 11
Inspector Umpelty: Hello, Wimsey! Remember that £300? Turns out that Alexis bought 300 gold sovereigns with it.
Wimsey: Boggles.
Cue discussion of why on earth. Blackmail? Diamonds and rajahs? Foreign Parts? Then follows an interview with the fisherman, Mr Pollock, in DLS's Peasant Dialect, this time Zomerzet. Pollock may have been up to skulduggery on a boat, but isn't saying anything. Afterwards, Wimsey pops off to see Sally Hardy, who accurately surmises that Peter is there to hang around Harriet Vane (though interestingly Peter doesn't deny it, just tells him to back off). They cook up a highly colourful story with a reward for the ID of the mysterious razor - I love this bit, all the over-egging of Wimsey's "artistic hands" and "foully and brutally murdered". Poor Peter claims he's "never satisfied" - he'll have to wait another couple of books for that.
Chapter 12
It's still only 1:15pm on the same day, Peter certainly can get a move on at times. More wondering about Mr Martin, door-to-door enquiries, inspection on knees to ruination of trousers at the campsite, and I am being fast to get to the really good bit in this chapter, Peter and Harriet dancing.
Peter, on phone: Hi, how about dinner *flirts*
Harriet: Sorry, can't, Mr Weldon's turned up and he's listening in. *flirts*
Peter: *flirts some more* Death to your pets!
Henry Weldon: *is not sexy*
Peter: *is relieved*
Henry: Thank God that bloke is dead before he could grap Mother's money. You'd better stop investigating whether anyone might have wanted to murder him, don't you think?
Harriet: *dances in wine-coloured frock*
Peter: *iz jealous* Let's dance.
Peter and Harriet: *dance*
Everyone else: *perves*
Harriet: Why aren't you overcome by dancing with my gorgeous sexiness?
Inferiority complex: *strikes*
Peter: Sorry. You are very hot in that frock.
Antoine: Ah, mademoiselle, you are dancing wiz zat Eenglishman in a verr' sexy way, n'est pas? I think you make beautiful music together.
Harriet:Now that we have achieved romantic detente, do you think that Henry Weldon is the murderer?
Peter: Sadly not. He's too obvious and too thick.
I like HHC, but blimy, sometimes the talking goes on a bit. And then you get a lovely bit like the dancing, which brings home how much if this book were being written - or televised - today, this would be the one in which fandom went wild for all the flirting and suggestion and wine-coloured evening dresses and tetchiness and wrote huge AUs in which Harriet and Peter ended up in bed together, because it's pretty obvious that if Peter actually did stop asking her to marry him and just concentrated on the flirting and holding her in his arms he might get somewhere (even if this were a bad idea for the long run).
It seems as if the mystery is all over the place at the moment. There's Alexis, who is pigeon-holed by the police as a funny foreigner, and yet all these slightly odd foreign connections do keep coming up and can't be explained away. There's Pollock with his unsatisfactory explanation, and no less than three entirely absent suspects, Bright, Perkins, and Martin, two of whom appear and disappear at suspicious times, and one of whom only Harriet can actually say exists. All in all, it perhaps isn't surprising that the next chapter is about to be involve a terrific row.
Random note: Contrary to the LPW Companion, the "hope your rabbit dies" line can't involve a cheeky reference to the 'rabbit test' for pregnancy - it was only in an experimental stage then.