Uncle Meleager’s will is a “fascinating problem” because he sets it up as a treasure hunt for his champagne-socialist niece Hannah to figure out. If she doesn’t, all his money will be left to some Tory charity. Luckily for Hannah, the one clue that he leaves her is that she needs to be frivolous, and if anyone knows about being frivolous it’s Lord Peter Wimsey, who is soon on the case.
Things kick off with Bunter drawing Lord P’s bath and making his breakfast, one of those scenes that make you shake your head at how the upper class lived just a hundred years ago. Then Peter’s sister Mary shows up and puts him on the case of the will. What follows feels like a riff on “The Musgrave Ritual,” with the ritual taking the form here of a crossword puzzle. This puzzle is, in turn, what I think Sayers was really interested in. It’s probably something she always wanted to do. I didn’t play along though, as I can’t stand crossword puzzles. I don’t know why. The riddling clues just strike me as annoying.
If you like those sorts of games, and everyone in the story apparently does as even the resistant Hannah and the reserved Bunter get into the spirit of things, then you’ll probably enjoy this. It’s more fun than I was expecting, which was something more along the lines of the dry discussion of estate law in Unnatural Death (original U.S. title The Dawson Pedigree). You may also expand your vocabulary. I had to look up “ambsace” (the lowest throw of dice, or anything worthless or unlucky), “inspissated” (thickened or congealed), and “viridarium” (an arboretum or ornamental garden). I’ll note in passing that my Word program doesn’t recognize any of these as being proper words. I also didn’t recognize “shingling” or “shingled” as a hairstyle. Apparently this was a short cut or bob cut that was very popular in the 1920s and ‘30s. Shingling was (I believe) a reference to the way the hair looked on the nape of the neck. Anyway, there must have been a lot of it going on, as Sayers refers to it a number of times.
Alex Good 