Slack Your Rope, Hangman

[sonetka]

In The Beginning is now posted on AO3, for the benefit of castiron and, of course, all the Harriet/Philip shippers out there! I've cleaned it up a bit, mostly smoothing out some of the dialogue and historical references, and making sure it's as much in line with the book as possible (I'd forgotten that the Dyers lived above them, not below, and that Sylvia

Comments

[sonetka]

I don't mind the chickens (I think she's just surprised that Miss Twitterton doesn't have any qualms about it, since she seems like such a fussy, nervous person), but there really is no excuse for Harriet's not knowing her way around a real investigation by that time. (I don't think the suicide impossibility makes SP that bad, though, since if you peeled that whole subplot away the main plot would still stand, it would just be blindingly obvious from the start that the person you really should look at is the one whose house the repeatedly-dosed victim was living AND EATING in!)

Looking at my copy of The Nine Tailors, it looks like it's possible to fix an exact date to Peter's taking up the investigation -- Saturday, May 3rd. I'm basing this on the fact that Mr. Thorpe dies a week after Easter Monday (and Easter that year was on April 20th, consistent with the book's statement that "spring and Easter came late that year" so he died on April 28th), the grave is opened and the body discovered the following Thursday (May 1st), Venables writes to Peter on Friday the 2nd to inform him of the inquest being held the next day. Peter gets the letter on Saturday morning and "joyfully canceled a number of social engagements" to drive up there and hang around for the inquest and subsequent investigation. He doesn't act particularly strange during any of the following weeks but of course there's a lot going on and not much time to brood.

Since Urquhart was arrested in mid-January and the usual trajectory in those days was that there was anywhere between a three and five month span from arrest to execution, it's possible that he's already been dead for a few weeks when Peter gets the letter and that Peter has already had his meltdown/recovery. It's equally possible that the trial is over but the three-week waiting/appeal period has begun and that part of Peter's joy at cancelling the social engagements lies in the fact that he knows he soon won't be up to them anyway and would prefer to get out of town where he can keep busy and doesn't have to think about what judicial matters are currently going on in London. Granted this doesn't fit in with his later Sense of Tormented Obligation, but considering the circumstances it would be understandable!

[persephone_kore]

I could imagine there being significant variation in Peter's reactions (and, like Lopezuna, I could certainly buy Urquhart giving him fewer qualms than average). I think when I read Bunter's summary of his custom and reactions, I mostly thought back to Whose Body and... hm, maybe some of the misgivings about bringing in the murderer in a few others, and the strainedness in Gaudy Night?... and just kind of assumed he was supposed to have been in more or less distress on other occasions, but maybe not always debilitated.

I actually wonder a little what his reaction was after Murder Must Advertise -- the way he sent the murderer to his death in that one was a bit more of a shock to me, but I am not sure it would have struck Peter in nearly the same way.

[sonetka]

It's mentioned briefly in Gaudy Night -- his distress is mentioned generally but there's the half-paragraph where Harriet remembers how he had taken a job at an advertising agency one summer. Digging out the book: "He had found office life entertaining; but the thing had come to a strange and painful conclusion. There had been an evening when he had turned up to keep a previously-made dinner appointment, but had obviously been unfit either to eat or to talk. Eventually he had confessed to a splitting headache and a temperature and suffered himself to be personally conducted home." So it sounds like he took it fairly hard. (Of course, the murderer there is fairly sympathetic. He does something similar with the murderer in Bellona Club as well, and doesn't seem quite as fussed about it, but of course they didn't kill for similar reasons).

[persephone_kore]

Ah, right. I should have remembered that. Thank you.