Clouds of Witness

[sawyl]

And so to the second of this weekend's Dorothy L Sayers novels, in the form of Clouds of Witness, a book that introduces some new members of the Wimsey clan and develops the characters of some the pre-existing cast members.

The action begins with Lord Peter making his leisurely way home from Corsica, after a break of some months following the events of Whose Body. But his stopover in Paris is abruptly curtailed when Bunter spots a newspaper report announcing the arrest of Wimsey's brother, Gerald, Duke of Denver, on a charge of murder. Skimming through the evidence, Lord Peter quickly learns that Jerry has been arrested after being found, at three in the morning, standing over the dead body of their sister's fiancé, Denis Cathcart, a man with whom he was known to have quarrelled early in the evening. The arrest seems to have thrown the Wimsey clan into turmoil: Lady Mary has suffered a nervous collapse and Gerald, after providing a pathetic alibi, has refused to do anything other than assert his innocence.

Returning to England posthaste, Lord Peter and Inspector Parker set about questioning witnesses and tracking footprints only to discover, to their surprise, a great sufficiency of clues. They discover that Lady Mary Wimsey, after being woken by a shot, discovered her brother standing over the body and went on to wake the rest of the household — Freddy Arbuthnot, Colonel and Mrs Marchbanks, Mr and Mrs Pettigrew-Robinson — all of whom provide slightly contradictory accounts of the evening. They discover a number of different footprints, scraps of Burberrys, motorcycle tracks, blood stains, drag marks, and an expensive diamond charm. But none of this seems to get them any closer to the murderer: each suspicion seems to lead to a dead end.

The mystery at the centre of the book is extremely satisfactory, as is the neat way that Wimsey and Parker gradually clear up all the lies and misunderstandings without really getting a great deal closer to the truth. The legal details of Denver's trial — a peer he can only be tried by the Lord High Steward in the House of Lords — are fascinatingly archaic and skillfully blended with the murder mystery plot line. The final pay-off, when it comes seems well deserved — maybe the Duke isn't quite such a berk as he seems — and the final cameo from Inspector Suggs, who made such a mess of his case in Whose Body, is a nice touch.