Wimsey: The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question

/ Alex Good

A short and silly story that has Lord Peter foiling a diamond heist. The tip-off comes as a result of his “persistent and undignified inquisitiveness,” a character trait described in the intro. Detectives, even amateurs, are just nosey people.

While in a Paris train station Lord P eavesdrops on a conversation, and this is what leads to his capture of the pair of jewel thieves. What gives them away is a grammatical error that you’d have to know French to pick up on as the conversation isn’t translated. Hint: the title of the story is a pun on “article.” Then, after they’re apprehended, they’ll slip into “a torrent of apache language which nobody, fortunately, had French enough to understand.” This is another reference, so common in Sayers, that contemporary readers might not get. Les Apaches were criminal gangs in Paris in the early twentieth century.

I call the story silly because one would have thought there was a more obvious tell for Lord Peter (and everyone else) to pick up on than the article in question. Jacques Sans-culotte dresses up well, but his ankles give him away.

Wimsey index

32 thoughts on “Wimsey: The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question”

  2. What’s that Poe story that’s written nearly all in French? These writers. I guess their editors knew French, as well, but I have to wonder about the percentage of their readers who did. There’s a fine line between education and pretension. (Says the monolingual American dullard. : -)

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    • The French returned the favour in Poe’s case, as they were the first to take him really seriously as a literary author. Being translated by Baudelaire probably helped.

      I did wonder reading this story how much French Sayers was expecting her readers to know. Sayers herself learned French, German, and Latin as a kid, and translated Dante later as an adult. Different times.

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