(no subject)
I've always been irritated by the way DLS treats Harriet in Busman's Honeymoon, in particular in the way she is made out to be sickened at the thought of killing chickens (um, she discovered a man with his throat slit and blood all over the place, and didn't turn a hair). It's also a bit annoying that she is allegedly unaware of the fine details of bringing a case to trial once the culprit has been identified (despite having particpated in two cases herself, once as suspect, once as star witness). It's not that I mind continuity errors, it's the fact that the continuity errors all favor Peter.
Wilvercombe: The Aftermath
Harriet returned to Town to face a storm of curiosity about her appearance on the front pages of the newspapers on the arm of Lord Peter Wimsey. While Wimsey's attentions to her over the past 18 months had not entirely escaped the notice of the more acute reader of the society pages, this latest incident was something one would have had to live under a rock not to be aware of. Neither the concerned inquiries of friends nor the acidic comments of certain literary aquaintances on her remarkable luck in attracting publicity did anything to improve her temper. It was borne in upon her that the whole episode had given her additional cause to be grateful to Wimsey, and for this, she could not forgive him. Moreover, the fickle interest of the more frivolous elements in Fleet Street once having been attracted to the subject, it seemed that they were unwilling to let go. Wimsey asked her to dine with him, and though the establishments he chose were as discreet as always, these appointments afterwards featured conspicuously in the morning papers.
Feeling that if this were to go on much longer, she would be driven mad, Harriet met with her agent and her bank manager. She determined that if she were to live frugally, her finances would be sufficient to afford a year-long trip to the Continent with a friend. She made the arrangements necessary to shut up her flat, and sketched out an itinerary. All that remained to do was to wait until a date was set for the Wilvercombe trial to make the final purchase of tickets and hotel reservations. In the meantime, she settled down to work with energy on the Fountain Pen Mystery.
Harriet did not mention her European trip to Wimsey. She told herself that it was none of his business, and that he had no claim to know where she went or what she did - and in justice, she had to admit he had never asserted such a claim. But the thought that she was planning to disappear once again without telling him, this time for a prolonged period, made her feel curiously furtive. In consequence, she was more than usually bad-tempered on the occasions when they met, and let him know in no uncertain terms that if he thought their prolonged and frequent interactions at Wilvercombe had set a precedent for the future, he was bound to be disappointed. Wimsey responded with his usual imperturbable urbanity, leaving her with an unreasonable desire to hit him.
So when the summons to the Assizes at Wilvercombe arrived, Harriet was sufficiently preoccupied that she quite forgot to dwell on the fact that she would be attending a murder trial for the first time since her own unfortunate experience.
The trip down was unremarkable. She had planned to tell Wimsey that she was perfectly fine taking the train, thank you very much. But when he telephoned to invite her to join him in the Daimler, it occurred to her that sharing a railway carriage with a crowd of press men was possibly an even less attractive prospect than a prolonged tete-a-tete with Lord Peter. In the event, Peter had himself seemed somewhat abstracted during the drive down, and what conversation there was during the journey kept strictly to general subjects.
Consistent with her resolve to save as much as possible for her European trip, Harriet elected to stay in an inexpensive hotel. She soon realized that this decision had been unwise. The accommodations were dreary despite the time of year, and the damp atmosphere and a peculiar clanging noise in the pipes brought her straight back to her cell at Holloway. She tossed and turned for most of the night, and only fell into an unrefreshing sleep around dawn. When she went to dress in the morning, her spirits were not much improved by the discovery that her best silk stockings had developed a ladder. Harriet cursed herself roundly for not having thought to check before packing them. If one had to go through an unpleasant experience that was bound to remind one of a traumatic event, the least one could do was to make sure that one looked one's best while doing it.
As it happened, the detective novelist in Harriet was sufficiently distracted by the arcane details of legal procedure that she quite forgot to think either about the state of her stockings, or about the resemblance between the Wilvercombe courtroom and the courtroom at the Old Bailey. Harriet Vane was called as the opening witness for the prosecution. Professional training took over, and she responded to the questions put to her in a steady voice, methodically describing the gruesome sight that had presented itself to her that afternoon on the Flat-Iron rock.
"Miss Vane, please describe the body of Paul Alexis as it was when you found it."
"The body was lying with the knees drawn up ... Both hands and both arms as well as the front part of the body were saturated with blood ... When I shifted the body, the blood flowed freely and copiously from the severed vessels ... When I lifted the corpse, the blood gushed out ... It was quite liquid and ran freely"
In the anteroom afterwards, she tried to light a cigarette, but her hands shook so, that she had to give it up, and accept the lighted cigarette that Peter silently passed to her. Perhaps the reminder of the blood everywhere and the sight of Paul Alexis' throat cut had got to her after all.
On the second day of the trial, Lord Peter testified to his part in unmasking Mr Bright with a smooth noncholance that was thrilling to the ladies in the public gallery. He conferred afterwards with counsel for the prosecution and Superintendent Glaisher, and reported back in ebullient spirits that they were cautiously optimistic despite the outlandishness of the case being laid before the jury. That evening, Harriet refused his invitation to dine. She was half-annoyed that Peter had not attempted to dissuade her from her determination to see the thing through to the bitter end. She had been ready to reply tartly that she had a professional interest in observing the details of legal procedure, that he was not her keeper, and that if he wanted to offer a woman his protection in future, he could damn well choose someone else. Feeling rather flat, she decided she could not cope with his high spirits, and retired with the excuse of having work to do.
The next day the trial concluded. After the summing up, Lord Peter adroitly bypassed both the Press and Mrs Weldon, and and led Harriet to await the verdict in the back room of a pub off a side street. She had not been looking forward to dealing with the Press, but rather resented the fact that her acquiesence in this plan had been taken for granted. The hard and lumpy mattress of her cheap hotel and three days cooped up in a stale atmosphere had made her restless as well as irritable. She was not thinking about the last time she had waited for a verdict in a murder trial. She just wanted the thing to be done, to be sure that one way or another she would not have to testify again, and finally to be off to Europe where she hoped neither importunate suitors nor corpses with the impertinence to have had their throats slit would bother her.
Lord Peter ordered a half-pint of beer, and Harriet a pot of tea. As she sat lighting cigarette after cigarette, stubbing one out half-smoked, then lighting another, she kept her face studiously averted from that of her companion. His mood was somewhat darker than on the previous day, and she could feel his gaze heavy upon her. This only annoyed her further. If only he wouldn't always be so preternaturally calm. She suddenly wanted some proof that he was actually human, that somewhere behind the suave exterior lurked a living, breathing man who could feel disgust, humiliation, loneliness, despair. He had said that she could hurt him more than he could her - well if this were true she wanted to see it.
"You don't have to look after me, you know" she said, knowing there was no good way for him to respond. But he refused to rise to the bait this time. Instead, he took a greasy pack of cards from his coat pocket.
"I leave it to you to decide the game"
"Oh, I think Spite and Malice would be quite appropriate, don't you?"
He remained unmoved.
"In that case, I shall see if the establishment can provide us with a second deck."
The second deck was soon procured, and competitive instinct taking over, the conversational atmosphere lightened. Harriet had whiled away many an idle hour during her school days playing Spite and Malice. Luck was also on her side, and she inflicted a gratifyingly thorough defeat on her opponent.
As Peter was lamenting his misfortunes, Inspector Umpelty arrived to report a verdict of Guilty for all of the defendants. They both congratulated him heartily, and hands were shaken hands all around.
"I won't say as what I was expecting things to turn out so well. There were a few sticky moments there. But I'm right glad now that the jury believed it."
"Yes, blood will have blood," replied Peter.
"That was some very pretty medical evidence," added Harriet. "Your expert witness was a most convincing fellow."
"Why, thank you, Miss," replied the Inspector. After a pause, he added somewhat tentatively, "I do hope that you and the gentleman won't take a dislike to Wilvercombe as a result of this. The Superintentent and I will always have a welcome for you at least"
This remark was followed by a somewhat uncomfortable pause. The Inspector took his leave, and Harriet turned to Peter.
"So that is that."
"Yes, that is that. We'll start for Town right away, if you don't mind. I have some business I'd rather like to attend to tomorrow."
He could already feel the clutch on his entrails, knowing the fate of Weldon and the Morecambes, done by his hand. He hoped that he would manage to get to Town before the knot of uneasiness in the pit of his stomach turned to violent shivering.
They reached Doughty Street some time after 10 o'clock. As the car drew up beside her flat, Harriet took a deep breath.
"Peter, I've decided to go away. I'm leaving on Monday. I don't know when I will be back. Please don't write."
He replied with unexpected meekness, staring out ahead with his hands still on the wheel.
"I see. Very well. Vade in Pace. If you ever want me, you will find the Old Firm at the usual stand."
He handed her out of the car, opened the front door for her, lifted his hat, and was gone.
Wilvercombe: The Aftermath
Harriet returned to Town to face a storm of curiosity about her appearance on the front pages of the newspapers on the arm of Lord Peter Wimsey. While Wimsey's attentions to her over the past 18 months had not entirely escaped the notice of the more acute reader of the society pages, this latest incident was something one would have had to live under a rock not to be aware of. Neither the concerned inquiries of friends nor the acidic comments of certain literary aquaintances on her remarkable luck in attracting publicity did anything to improve her temper. It was borne in upon her that the whole episode had given her additional cause to be grateful to Wimsey, and for this, she could not forgive him. Moreover, the fickle interest of the more frivolous elements in Fleet Street once having been attracted to the subject, it seemed that they were unwilling to let go. Wimsey asked her to dine with him, and though the establishments he chose were as discreet as always, these appointments afterwards featured conspicuously in the morning papers.
Feeling that if this were to go on much longer, she would be driven mad, Harriet met with her agent and her bank manager. She determined that if she were to live frugally, her finances would be sufficient to afford a year-long trip to the Continent with a friend. She made the arrangements necessary to shut up her flat, and sketched out an itinerary. All that remained to do was to wait until a date was set for the Wilvercombe trial to make the final purchase of tickets and hotel reservations. In the meantime, she settled down to work with energy on the Fountain Pen Mystery.
Harriet did not mention her European trip to Wimsey. She told herself that it was none of his business, and that he had no claim to know where she went or what she did - and in justice, she had to admit he had never asserted such a claim. But the thought that she was planning to disappear once again without telling him, this time for a prolonged period, made her feel curiously furtive. In consequence, she was more than usually bad-tempered on the occasions when they met, and let him know in no uncertain terms that if he thought their prolonged and frequent interactions at Wilvercombe had set a precedent for the future, he was bound to be disappointed. Wimsey responded with his usual imperturbable urbanity, leaving her with an unreasonable desire to hit him.
So when the summons to the Assizes at Wilvercombe arrived, Harriet was sufficiently preoccupied that she quite forgot to dwell on the fact that she would be attending a murder trial for the first time since her own unfortunate experience.
The trip down was unremarkable. She had planned to tell Wimsey that she was perfectly fine taking the train, thank you very much. But when he telephoned to invite her to join him in the Daimler, it occurred to her that sharing a railway carriage with a crowd of press men was possibly an even less attractive prospect than a prolonged tete-a-tete with Lord Peter. In the event, Peter had himself seemed somewhat abstracted during the drive down, and what conversation there was during the journey kept strictly to general subjects.
Consistent with her resolve to save as much as possible for her European trip, Harriet elected to stay in an inexpensive hotel. She soon realized that this decision had been unwise. The accommodations were dreary despite the time of year, and the damp atmosphere and a peculiar clanging noise in the pipes brought her straight back to her cell at Holloway. She tossed and turned for most of the night, and only fell into an unrefreshing sleep around dawn. When she went to dress in the morning, her spirits were not much improved by the discovery that her best silk stockings had developed a ladder. Harriet cursed herself roundly for not having thought to check before packing them. If one had to go through an unpleasant experience that was bound to remind one of a traumatic event, the least one could do was to make sure that one looked one's best while doing it.
As it happened, the detective novelist in Harriet was sufficiently distracted by the arcane details of legal procedure that she quite forgot to think either about the state of her stockings, or about the resemblance between the Wilvercombe courtroom and the courtroom at the Old Bailey. Harriet Vane was called as the opening witness for the prosecution. Professional training took over, and she responded to the questions put to her in a steady voice, methodically describing the gruesome sight that had presented itself to her that afternoon on the Flat-Iron rock.
"Miss Vane, please describe the body of Paul Alexis as it was when you found it."
"The body was lying with the knees drawn up ... Both hands and both arms as well as the front part of the body were saturated with blood ... When I shifted the body, the blood flowed freely and copiously from the severed vessels ... When I lifted the corpse, the blood gushed out ... It was quite liquid and ran freely"
In the anteroom afterwards, she tried to light a cigarette, but her hands shook so, that she had to give it up, and accept the lighted cigarette that Peter silently passed to her. Perhaps the reminder of the blood everywhere and the sight of Paul Alexis' throat cut had got to her after all.
On the second day of the trial, Lord Peter testified to his part in unmasking Mr Bright with a smooth noncholance that was thrilling to the ladies in the public gallery. He conferred afterwards with counsel for the prosecution and Superintendent Glaisher, and reported back in ebullient spirits that they were cautiously optimistic despite the outlandishness of the case being laid before the jury. That evening, Harriet refused his invitation to dine. She was half-annoyed that Peter had not attempted to dissuade her from her determination to see the thing through to the bitter end. She had been ready to reply tartly that she had a professional interest in observing the details of legal procedure, that he was not her keeper, and that if he wanted to offer a woman his protection in future, he could damn well choose someone else. Feeling rather flat, she decided she could not cope with his high spirits, and retired with the excuse of having work to do.
The next day the trial concluded. After the summing up, Lord Peter adroitly bypassed both the Press and Mrs Weldon, and and led Harriet to await the verdict in the back room of a pub off a side street. She had not been looking forward to dealing with the Press, but rather resented the fact that her acquiesence in this plan had been taken for granted. The hard and lumpy mattress of her cheap hotel and three days cooped up in a stale atmosphere had made her restless as well as irritable. She was not thinking about the last time she had waited for a verdict in a murder trial. She just wanted the thing to be done, to be sure that one way or another she would not have to testify again, and finally to be off to Europe where she hoped neither importunate suitors nor corpses with the impertinence to have had their throats slit would bother her.
Lord Peter ordered a half-pint of beer, and Harriet a pot of tea. As she sat lighting cigarette after cigarette, stubbing one out half-smoked, then lighting another, she kept her face studiously averted from that of her companion. His mood was somewhat darker than on the previous day, and she could feel his gaze heavy upon her. This only annoyed her further. If only he wouldn't always be so preternaturally calm. She suddenly wanted some proof that he was actually human, that somewhere behind the suave exterior lurked a living, breathing man who could feel disgust, humiliation, loneliness, despair. He had said that she could hurt him more than he could her - well if this were true she wanted to see it.
"You don't have to look after me, you know" she said, knowing there was no good way for him to respond. But he refused to rise to the bait this time. Instead, he took a greasy pack of cards from his coat pocket.
"I leave it to you to decide the game"
"Oh, I think Spite and Malice would be quite appropriate, don't you?"
He remained unmoved.
"In that case, I shall see if the establishment can provide us with a second deck."
The second deck was soon procured, and competitive instinct taking over, the conversational atmosphere lightened. Harriet had whiled away many an idle hour during her school days playing Spite and Malice. Luck was also on her side, and she inflicted a gratifyingly thorough defeat on her opponent.
As Peter was lamenting his misfortunes, Inspector Umpelty arrived to report a verdict of Guilty for all of the defendants. They both congratulated him heartily, and hands were shaken hands all around.
"I won't say as what I was expecting things to turn out so well. There were a few sticky moments there. But I'm right glad now that the jury believed it."
"Yes, blood will have blood," replied Peter.
"That was some very pretty medical evidence," added Harriet. "Your expert witness was a most convincing fellow."
"Why, thank you, Miss," replied the Inspector. After a pause, he added somewhat tentatively, "I do hope that you and the gentleman won't take a dislike to Wilvercombe as a result of this. The Superintentent and I will always have a welcome for you at least"
This remark was followed by a somewhat uncomfortable pause. The Inspector took his leave, and Harriet turned to Peter.
"So that is that."
"Yes, that is that. We'll start for Town right away, if you don't mind. I have some business I'd rather like to attend to tomorrow."
He could already feel the clutch on his entrails, knowing the fate of Weldon and the Morecambes, done by his hand. He hoped that he would manage to get to Town before the knot of uneasiness in the pit of his stomach turned to violent shivering.
They reached Doughty Street some time after 10 o'clock. As the car drew up beside her flat, Harriet took a deep breath.
"Peter, I've decided to go away. I'm leaving on Monday. I don't know when I will be back. Please don't write."
He replied with unexpected meekness, staring out ahead with his hands still on the wheel.
"I see. Very well. Vade in Pace. If you ever want me, you will find the Old Firm at the usual stand."
He handed her out of the car, opened the front door for her, lifted his hat, and was gone.