Busman's Honeymoon

[sawyl]

Concluding my survey of Sayers, I've finally arrived at Busman's Honeymoon. Starting with a series of letters describing Peter and Harriet's wedding, including a particular fun bit where they contrive to avoid Wimsey's appallingly snobbish sister-in-law's attempts to remodel the entire event to her own liking, the mystery proper begins with the Wimseys' decision to spend their honeymoon at Tallboys, a house Harriet has loved from childhood and which Peter has now purchased from a certain Mr Noakes.

Upon arrival at Tallboys, Bunter and the Wimseys find the house locked and dark with the housekeeper unaware of the change of ownership. Extracting the spare keys from Miss Twitterton, Noakes' niece, Peter and Harriet try to make the house more hospitable, only to be stymied by unswept chimneys and failing oil stoves and a general lack of order. Leaving the details for the next morning, Peter scrubs himself under the scullery pump before heading up to bed.

The next morning starts on a farcical note with the arrival of Tom Puffett, an opinionated local builder and sweep. Despite the power Puffett puts behind his rods, he's unable to clear the chimney. The local vicar arrives and suggests a drastic solution: the use of a shotgun to clear the corroded soot. The mayhem created by the vicar's suggestion is further complicated by the arrival of Miss Twitterton, worried about her uncle's whereabouts, by grumpy gardener Frank Crutchley grousing about the whereabouts of the 40 pounds he invested in Noakes' radio shop, and by the arrival of a lawyer called MacBride with a writ to seize Noakes' assets in lieu of payment.

The mood darkens when Bunter happens to find the much sort Noakes dead at the foot of the cellar stairs, his head staved in and the cash from Peter's purchase of Tallboys in his pocket. The police, in the shape of the literary Superintendent Kirk and flat-footed Constable Sellon, arrive to try and unravel the mystery of how a man might come to be murdered in a locked house.

While not as wonderful and ambitious as Gaudy Night, Busman's Honeymoon rounds the series off nicely. Despite the murder, the atmosphere is playful. Harriet and Peter punctuate their conversations with Kirk with a quotation guessing game, Peter's attempts to be gushing and Romantic seem to constantly fall foul of someone else being in the wrong place at the wrong time — he bumps into the housekeeper while naked and his attempts to channel the spirit of Donne are ruined by the unexpected arrival of Miss Twitterton — and the eventual confiscation of the furniture by a team of bailiffs just adds to the air of farce.

The trio of principal characters are well drawn, while the epistolary opening gives Sayers a natural way to include a series of varied accounts of the Wimseys' wedding without allowing the minor players to intrude into the primary narrative. Bunter gets a good deal more stage time than usual, giving him a chance to demonstrate his genuine concerns of the changes to His Lordship's household — in the scene when Mrs Ruddle accidentally dusts all His Lordship's vintage port, his frustrations become so profound that he inadvertently drops an H!

Despite finding a dead body in their cellar and fretting about whether they should really be spending the first days of their honeymoon sending someone to the gallows, Peter and Harriet weather their first marital crisis without giving up their essential characters. And if Peter struggles with his sense of responsibility once the murderer is caught, going so far as to ask Sir Impey Biggs to defend them and doing his damnest to help them, Harriet and Bunter are there to see him through his crisis with their own particular brands of support.

A charming end to an enjoyable series of novels.