This is one of the later novels by Sayers featuring her aristocratic detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, and was published in 1932. Detective novelist Harriet Vane is on a walking holiday in the west country when she discovers a dead body lying on a large rock on the beach. The corpse’s throat has been cut. She takes photographs and recovers some of the man’s possessions, but this remote spot is some distance from the nearest village. By the time the police have been summoned, the body has been washed out to sea.
Lord Peter arrives from London, where he has read about the case in the papers, and he and Harriet investigate the mystery together. They are able to find out the dead man’s identity and piece together the details of his life as a professional hotel dancer in the coastal resort of Wilvercombe. It appears that he had no reason to commit suicide; there is someone who had a reason for wanting him dead and so the case becomes a murder mystery. The two men encountered by Harriet on the shore, a hiker and a camper, become suspects and when the fatal razor is found it becomes a key piece of the puzzle.
There is something very appealing about stories of a man and woman investigating a crime together and this one brings to mind other detective duos such as Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence, Francis Durbridge’s Paul Temple and Steve, or Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles.
I listened to a very good 1981 dramatization of this on BBC Radio 4 extra. Wimsey is played by Ian Carmichael and Harriet by Maria Aitken. In some ways, this has dated less than a TV adaptation from the same era might have done. On radio, there is none of that contrast between filmed exteriors and interior scenes shot on videotape that used to be the sign of a BBC TV drama series, for example.
Nonetheless, I don’t think a radio version made nowadays would come out quite like this. Ian Carmichael gives Wimsey a no-holds-barred, upper-class, huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ accent and Maria Aitken gives Harriet a clipped, rather Noel Coward way of speaking. This is all to the good as it suits the characters and the story perfectly.
Ian Carmichael had played Wimsey on television in the 1970s and perfectly captures the feeling that his mannerisms are all an act. In the earlier stories one felt this was a defence against his memories of the great war. Here, as he confesses at one point, it is to hide his true feelings about Harriet. He is in love with her, but she wants to retain her independence and repeatedly turns down his proposals of marriage. This is all complicated by the fact that they only met when Harriet was on trial for the murder of her lover. Wimsey solved the case, found the real killer and secured her acquittal. She hates feeling obliged to be grateful to him.
The relationship between Harriet and Lord Peter extends over four novels in the series, but it isn’t really necessary to know that to enjoy Have his Carcase as a standalone mystery. Yes, there is the slight irritation of the constant deference shown by everyone to Wimsey, the constant “my lording” by all and sundry. You just have to accept that as a sign that the book was published in a different era.
The part that really matters, the well-constructed mystery, retains its freshness. It isn’t easy to guess the outcome, even today, and the solution is highly ingenious. It’s basically an “impossible crime” mystery with a small circle of suspects, but something about the seaside setting gives it a very different feel to a mystery set in a country house. This is clearly the North Devon coast, with Wilvercombe standing in for Ilfracombe. Both the setting and the various characters are rendered with greater realism than was usual for this sort of story in 1932.
Then there is Wimsey himself. Under the “silly ass” act, he is a very shrewd individual indeed with a great knowledge of people. He is a little like a serious version of Bertie Wooster. Ian Carmichael really did make the role his own, both on radio and television. After all, he had already played Wooster by the time he came to play Wimsey.
The Good Reader 