Light On Dark Water

I made a mistake in the way I read this book, with the result that I am a little vague about the details of the plot. Well, more than a little, really–I'm usually a little vague about the plot of a detective story. This is part indifference, as long as the story keeps me interested, to the pieces of the puzzle, and part constitutional laziness tending against any substantial effort to figure it out by pure reasoning based on clues. I sometimes wonder, in fact, if such pure deduction is even possible with some mysteries: has the author really given us facts which would suffice for that process?

Sayers was a member of the Detection Club, whose members were obliged to follow (Ronald) Knox's Decalogue.  Do modern writers follow those commandments? The first of the ten says that the murderer must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader is allowed to know. I read one not long ago that flagrantly violated that rule–the reader was taken into the consciousness of the murderer, but that he had done the deed was not revealed. This doesn't seem at all fair. Surely one who has recently committed murder would think about it very often. 

I digress, maybe because that's easier than saying anything definite about the book. Back to it, and to the mistake I made, which was to read it at bedtime. I'm in the habit of reading a few pages of something or other before falling asleep, but it's not usually a novel; usually it's a relatively undemanding magazine article, which I can either finish in one night, or, if not, easily resume for another night or two without losing the thread. Or perhaps poetry of a style in which the poems rarely occupy more than a single page. But as relatively light reading, this novel seemed suitable: I could relax and escape into that relatively light world, read a few pages, turn out the light, and pick it up again the next night. I didn't reckon on the way drowsiness would leave me only half-understanding the last few paragraphs I read, so that on the next night I was a bit vague about what was happening. I could, obviously, on the next night back up and re-read a little, and I did. But somehow these bits of vagueness seemed to accumulate. Or maybe it was just that the length of a book and the very slow progress dragged the process out for too long. At any rate, by the time I was halfway through the book I was having trouble remembering things which had occurred fifty or more pages back. I was left with a sense of confusion about the book which is undoubtedly a defect in me and not the book. 

Well, the basic story is clear enough. This is the second of Sayers's Peter Wimsey novels, and whether deliberately or not it's quite different in situation from the first. In Whose Body? the identity of the dead man is not known, nor does he appear to have any connection to the place where he was found or to any person who lives nearby. Wimsey comes into the situation half-accidentally, because the person who found the body is known to Peter's mother, the Dowager Duchess.

Clouds of Witness, on the other hand, is very much bound up with the Wimsey family: the murder occurs at Riddlesdale, a village where the Wimseys have a hunting lodge ("shooting-box"!); the dead man is the fiancé of Peter's sister, Lady Mary Wimsey; Peter's brother Gerald, the Duke of Denver, is charged with the murder. (You'll recall no doubt that Peter is the younger son, so although he is a Lord he is not the Duke.)

I was and remain a little puzzled by the title. It refers, of course, to Paul's epistle to the Hebrews 12:1–"We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses"–and it isn't obvious to me exactly how that is connected to the story. I think it does reflect the difference I mentioned between this and Whose Body? In that case there was a complete absence of witnesses and of information in general. In this case there is a superfluity of witnesses, and quite a bit of information, much of it inconsistent, contradictory, and untrustworthy. In addition to the Wimsey family, there are several guests at the lodge, who all have a version of the events. The cloud is not the supporting company described by St. Paul, but an obscuring fog. (The title of the original English edition was Clouds of Witnesses. I don't know why it was changed for the U.S.) I'm not at all sure my interpretation is correct. The verse also includes an admonition to "run with patience the race that is set before us," and that more or less fits the effort made by Lord Peter and Chief Inspector Parker (who, by the way, appears to be falling in love with Lady Mary) to solve the mystery.

The story, as usual with Sayers, is quite complex, and involves quite a bit of gadding about on the part of Peter and Inspector Parker. The prose is elegant and sharply observant, as one expects with Sayers. Along the way there are a number of entertaining scenes, some with the satirical touch that is also one of the pleasures of reading Sayers. Lady Mary has been a dilettante socialist, and Sayers certainly has the number of a certain type of affluent would-be revolutionary. Here is Peter having dinner with one of Mary's friends at the Soviet Club; the friend is angry about the fact that the Duke would have control of Mary's money until she married:

"Monstrous!" said Miss Tarrant, shaking her head so angrily that she looked like shock-headed Peter. "Barbarous! Simply feudal, you know. But, after all, what's money?"

"Nothing, of course," said Peter. "But if you've been brought up to havin' it it's a bit awkward to drop it suddenly. Like baths, you know."

"I can't understand how it could have made any difference to Mary," persisted Miss Tarrant mournfully. "She liked being a worker. We once tried living in a workman's cottage for eight weeks, five of us, on eighteen shillings a week. It was a marvellous experience—on the very edge of the New Forest."

"In the winter?"

"Well, no—we thought we'd better not begin with winter. But we had nine wet days, and the kitchen chimney smoked all the time. You see, the wood came out of the forest, so it was all damp."

"I see. It must have been uncommonly interestin'."

"It was an experience I shall never forget," said Miss Tarrant. "One felt so close to the earth and the primitive things. If only we could abolish industrialism. I'm afraid, though, we shall never get it put right without a 'bloody revolution,' you know. It's very terrible, of course, but salutary and inevitable. Shall we have coffee? We shall have to carry it upstairs ourselves, if you don't mind. The maids don't bring it up after dinner."

And she's no less amusingly shrewd about the upper class, including the Wimsey family in general. The Duke is indignant that the legal system will not simply take his word as a gentleman that he did not commit the murder, and stop asking him questions which he must, as a gentleman, refuse to answer. His wife, the Duchess, puts in only a brief appearance, but we do get a sense of what she's like:

The Duchess of Denver was pouring out coffee. This was one of her uncomfortable habits. Persons arriving late for breakfast were thereby made painfully aware of their sloth. She was a long-necked, long-backed woman, who disciplined her hair and her children. She was never embarrassed, and her anger, though never permitted to be visible, made itself felt the more.

From long-ago readings of the Wimsey books I don't remember the Duke and Duchess being very much present. The Dowager Duchess, on the other hand, appears frequently and most engagingly. The relationship between the Duchess and her mother-in-law is apparently not close. Here is a glimpse into the mind of the Duchess:

Peter took after his mother. How that eccentric strain had got into the family her grace could not imagine, for the Dowager came of a good Hampshire family; there must have been some foreign blood somewhere.

That insular arrogance of the British aristocracy is amusing in fiction, but would be annoying, at least, to meet, and infuriating to live under. Sayers was not of the true upper class, but she certainly seems to have had some direct experience of it. How, I've wondered, did she know what the furnishings and customs of Lord Peter's residence might be? Did she just invent it all? I doubt that. In an introduction to Whose Body? she said

…at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. … I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes.

(quotation from Wikipedia, but note that the article at that link contains spoilers for Whose Body?)

So she must have had some idea of what those furnishings might actually have been, and of the way a manservant would have done his job. Peter himself is obviously a great deal larger than life, and as some critics have noted, Sayers was in love with him and idealized him. But surely something of his speech and manners must have come from observation of real persons. That he owns an excellent piano and has a pretty refined taste, as well as skill, in music, may seem a bit much. But I note with some satisfaction that he not only loves Scarlatti but asserts that his music is really best heard on the harpsichord. I would have agreed with that opinion once, and though I no longer do, I salute him for it.

I don't think I have a preference for one of these three novels that I've recently read, the other two being Strong Poison and Whose Body?, though the presence of Harriet Vane in the former gives it, and Lord Peter himself, a dimension not present in the others. Sayers wrote Clouds of Witness when she was pregnant with her out-of-wedlock son, which must surely have been a difficult and stress-filled time for her. So perhaps it's not her best. I'll leave that judgment to others.