In their review of Crime novels (revised edn 1989), the US writers Barzun and Taylor comment that the novel is "Not near the top of her form, but remarkable as a treatment of the newly wedded and bedded pair of eccentrics. By analogy, anyone who spends a holiday doing their normal job is taking a "busman's holiday".
#Radio echoes lord peter wimsey driver#
The Reverend Simon Goodacre – Vicar of PagglehamĪ " busman's holiday" is a holiday spent by a bus driver travelling on a bus: it is no break from the usual routine.Chief Superintendent Kirk – Hertfordshire CID.Mrs Martha Ruddle – neighbour of Noakes and his cleaning lady.
Frank Crutchley – motor mechanic and gardener. Miss Agnes Twitterton – spinster niece of the murdered man. William Noakes – previous owner of Talboys and the murder victim. Honoria Lucasta, Dowager Duchess of Denver – Lord Peter's mother. Mervyn Bunter – Lord Peter's manservant. Harriet Vane, Lady Peter Wimsey – protagonist, a mystery writer, wife of Lord Peter. Lord Peter Wimsey – protagonist, an aristocratic amateur detective. The 1942 short story Talboys, the very last Wimsey fiction published by Sayers, is both a sequel to the present book, in having the same location and some of the same village characters, and an antithesis in being lighthearted and having no crime worse than the theft of some peaches from a neighbour's garden. Sayers completed no further Wimsey novels after Busman's Honeymoon, though she did begin work on a story titled Thrones, Dominations, which would be completed years after her death by Jill Paton Walsh. His deep remorse and guilt at having caused Crutchley to be executed leave doubt as to whether he would undertake further murder investigations. It is mentioned that Wimsey had previously also suffered similar pangs of conscience when other murderers had been sent to the gallows. Wimsey's reaction to the case – his arrangement for the defendant to be represented by top defence counsel his guilt at condemning a man to be hanged the return of his shell-shock – dominates the final chapters of the book. He had set a booby trap with a weighted plant pot on a chain, which was triggered by the victim opening the radio cabinet after locking up for the night. He had planned to marry Noakes' somewhat elderly niece and get his hands on the money he had left her in his will. In a final scene, in which almost the entire cast of characters is gathered in the front room of Talboys, the killer turns out to be Crutchley. Peter's and Harriet's relationship is resolved during the process of catching the murderer and bringing him to justice. The suspects include Noakes' niece Aggie Mrs Ruddle, his neighbour and cleaning lady Frank Crutchley, a local garage mechanic who also tended Noakes' garden and the local police constable, who was his blackmail victim. The house had been locked and bolted when the newly-weds arrived, and medical evidence seems to rule out an accident, so it seems he was attacked in the house and died later, having somehow locked up after his attacker. He was assumed to be well off, but it transpires that he was bankrupt, owed large amounts of money, and was planning to flee his creditors with the cash he had received for Talboys. Noakes was an unpopular man, a miser and (it turns out) a blackmailer. The quiet honeymoon is ruined as a murder investigation begins and the house fills with policemen, reporters, and brokers' men distraining Noakes' hideous furniture. They gain access and spend their wedding night there, but next morning the former owner, Noakes, is found dead in the cellar with head injuries. They plan to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Harriet's native Hertfordshire which Wimsey has bought for her, and they abscond from the wedding reception, evading the assembled reporters.Īrriving late at night, they are surprised to find the house locked up and not prepared for them. The honeymoon is intended as a break from his usual routine of solving crimes, and hers of writing about them, but it turns into a murder investigation when the seller of the house is found dead at the bottom of the cellar steps with severe head injuries.Īfter an engagement of some months following the events at the end of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry. Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry and go to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Hertfordshire which he has bought her as a present. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane. Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L.
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