Having read Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael books right before the Lord Peter Wimsey books, I'm even more aware that the Fen Country in this book is almost ENTIRELY a product of artifice. From Frog's Bridge on, it's clear that the dykes and ditches are what makes the very existence of the communities, farms, etc possible. In this flattened landscape, there are a few promontories from the old days. There are old docks and warehouses at Walbeach, for example, though it hasn't been a port for centuries; since the rivers were rerouted. A fen is not an open water swamp or a forested marsh--it's closer in form to a peat bog. Draining it of the little water that's left makes it dry land--until the water comes back. But the draining was not systematic. Rivers were diverted...and then not maintained. Sayers' usual disclaimer, denying the iniquities of such imaginary groups as the Wale Conservancy Board, is not quite the same thing as denying that there was no sense or system behind "The Protecor's" plans to bring over Dutch engineers to drain the Fens. Van Leyden's Sluice was almost certainly not named after some long-ago Fleming.Lord Peter comes by accident (literally) into one of the other promontories from earlier times. Fenchurch St Paul is the name both of the church and the associated community. The church is what remains of the ancient abbey (shut down in Henry VIII's time, and partially despoiled by the Iconoclasts--though the 14th century 'Batty Thomas' got his revenge against these latter: the soldiers fled the church only partially sacked after one of them was slain (at least partly due to his own carelessness) by the Abbot's namesake bell.The oldest of the bells, though they're of varying ages (the most recent was cast in 1887), are nearly the only thing left of the post-Norman Abbey. There are fragments of other things--there are even bits of the Norman foundation remaining. The most fantastic relic is the angel roof. But the bells have the most continuity. The staircase leading to the belfry is so worn from the passage of many feet that it's quite dangerously slippery.There are dozens of such churches scattered around the Fen Country (it's plain from the text), many of which are much too large for their present congregations. Fenchurch St Paul has, in the early 1930s, fewer than 500 congregants, even for big occasions like Easter or the Harvest Festival. And this is not mostly because so many have 'gone over to Chapel'. It's just a very thinly populated area. This is a place where it really does get dark at night, and any light is noticeable.For such a sparsely populated area, there're a lot of deaths. At one point the Rector, stopping to listen to the tolling Tailor Paul, goes over the tale of who it might be for. One of the possibilities is an infant, the second an elderly man, and the third a man in his 30s. The fact that Mr Venables has a roster of three probable victims for just one day is indicative of a terribly high mortality rate for such a small community. The locals blame this on a variety of things: the high degree of inbreeding (Potty Peake being the most obvious consequence), the War, impure water, and (according to at least one) education.But by far the most obvious cause of the high mortality is another terrible outbreak of influenza less than a generation after The Plague of The Spanish Lady (1918/19). The plague around 1930 was not a pandemic, but it was the H1N1 strain (the same as that of the Plague of The Spanish Lady). The elderly Hezekiah Lavender opines that the influenza carries off the young because the old are too tough. More likely, it's because the old are immune, from an earlier exposure.Hezekiah Lavender has a lot of lines. One that I missed on the first reading was a comment about the 'Lord George pension'. I was thinking "Who was 'Lord George'?", then I realized "Oh, LLOYD George!". Sayers had mentioned this before, in passing--it was an old age pension, and also, apparently, included some provision for disabled people.Why Tailor Paul's name is spelt the way it is, I don't know. It has nothing to do with cutting; rather with tolling. It was probably originally 'Teller Paul', and when spelling was regularized, it was just unintentionally amalgamated with the clothmongers. But besides summons, farewells, and alarms. the bells are used for another purpose. I have to say it's not really possible, as some advise, to ignore the art of change-ringing. It's critical to the plot, chapter-headings, etc. It is, however, quite possible to ignore the details of how the permutations are wrung for the change-ringing. In fact, even if you've read the book before, and could devote more attention to the details, I don't think it's POSSIBLE to fathom the complexities of change-ringing from this source alone. A vague idea, maybe. No more.The intertwining plots are confusing, even on a second (or later) reading. Most participants are in serious doubt as to the identity of the deceased buried in Lady Thorpe's grave through nearly the whole book. Any number of people are believed to be dead when they aren't, and still alive when they aren't. And the fate of the Wilbraham Emeralds remains in doubt for many years. I should say that one point I found more than a little odd was that a man who was quite censorious of anybody with nontraditional aspirations was NOT regarded as a snob, but a housekeeper was.I quite liked the character of Nobby Cranton, gentleman burglar. I agree with the Superintendent that these nonviolent burglars are much preferable to mere violent robbers. But although many people combine to smear the reputation of the butler Deacon, I frankly didn't see that he was such a bad person. He kills people, but in self-defense, from what I can tell. He seems to have been generally a good and considerate husband and father. And in the case of the theft of the emeralds, he might have argued that he didn't think it was a crime to give false coin to a counterfeiter. I don't suppose that there was any real malice in Sayers' mockery of poor people's diets. I find it a bit odd that 'tinned salmon' was considered a starvation food in the period, but it was one that Sayers herself probably often had to resort to. And there was one point I found distinctly odd. Why would farm women lose their FRONT teeth?Probably the key to this book is not in the 'subtitle' found on a flyleaf: 'Changes rung on an old theme in two short touches and two full peals'. That's quite adequately developed in the text. The true key might be the comments on the side effects of the New Cut: "Dig up one thing and you've got to dig up another."Nobody really meant to dig up the unlicensed dead man in Lady Thorpe's grave, of course. It was mostly just bad luck that Sir Henry followed his wife to death so quickly. They hadn't been married long enough, after all, for the too common effect of a wife dying on the survival of the widower to kick in--if he hadn't already been terribly impacted by the old family troubles and his injuries in the War.The question is rather whether there should have been quite such a relentless search for a 'murderer', after the corpse's premature resurrection. With no real evidence as to cause of death, there's no real reason to suspect a murder--yet very nearly everybody jumps to that conclusion.Lord Peter has always had a bad conscience about his own tendencies to meddle in matters perhaps best left alone. In response to his apology to Miss Meteyard in Murder Must Advertise, she argues that things must be made to happen, and that his sort is morally superior because they step in to make things happen, whereas her sort are just too cowardly and lazy to meddle. Not a particularly plausible argument, and she makes no pledge to change her own ways.This conflict is more thoroughly addressed in the next book (Gaudy Night), and I'll discuss it more there. But I should point out that in this book, Lord Peter, though he seems to provisionally accept the idea of deserved suffering, begins moving the markers to argue more forcefully that the victim 'had it coming'; at least partially to assuage his own guilt. Thus he states (and nobody corrects him) that the victim was a 'convicted murder'. In fact he wasn't. He was never tried for murder. He might have been so tried, if he had ever been recaptured, and, based on Cranton's version of his story, he might very well have been acquitted, if he'd been allowed to present his own case; since he apparently argued that he didn't mean to kill in either case, and that he was acting in self-defense.But even if he had been convicted of murder, Lord Peter's argument that he would have been killed by the state to 'cheers all around' is patently untrue. There have always been people who would NOT cheer such state-sponsored murder. And there have always been people who didn't accept the concept of 'just deserts'. To use the terms from The Dispossessed: "...what men deserve. For we each of us deserve everything, every treasure piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, and you will be able to begin to think."The sufferings of ALL those who suffer are 'undeserved', in the world as in this book. The plan to create a foundation funded in part by the Wilbraham Emeralds might, for example, consider starting with the 'Le Gros' family in France. Which is not even mentioned, I might note.
The bells led me to this Dorothy Sayers classic.A couple of weeks ago I was standing in the ringing chamber of an Anglican church tower in Quebec City, listening to a fascinating demonstration of English change ringing. It was total serendipity that we stumbled upon this event, but I have this huge soft spot for people who have specialist or obscure interests. With one person per bell, change ringing requires as much concentration as diamond cutting and as much teamwork as soccer, and it offers as good a demonstration of permutations as any math teacher could hope for. (How many combinations can eight bells ring? And how long will it take?)So, being a reader, I learned pretty quickly that there is this great old 1934 mystery in which change ringing is central to the plot, and I came to The Nine Tailors predisposed to like the village folk with the arcane hobby. The tiny village of Fenchurch St. Paul (in the county of Norfolk) has a splendid set of eight bells in its church tower. The bells peal out an alarm, they call to worship, and they toll for the dead. The bells themselves have odd names, and the sequences of the peals even odder ones. When a man dies, the simple and doleful ring is called Nine Tailors.Lord Peter Wimsey is Sayers' detective. He has tenuous connections to the area, and if he has turned up on the scene, there are bound to be mysterious bodies needing Nine Tailors rung for them. The bodies also need to be identified, and their murderers found. About all that, the less said the better. No spoilers. Be assured that Lord Peter will get it done.If the bells are worthy to be called a character in this book, the other great “character” is the fens of East Anglia. Sayers has masterfully conveyed the wild and gloomy weather, and that, too, has a narrative role. Both the bells and the fens came alive for me more than Lord Peter himself. I understand that Sayers thought of him as part Fred Astaire, part Bertie Wooster, and I totally get that description. He’s almost comically upper class. With many contemporary mysteries, the complex characterization of the detective is the real point of the novel. Not so with Sayers' Lord Peter. He is finely drawn, but a two-dimensional line drawing. The real and wonderful story is the village, the vicar, his parishioners, the setting, and — mon Dieu! — the bells.
Do You like book The Nine Tailors (1989)?
Well, I'm never going to look at bells the same way again. :) This is, without doubt, the best detective story I've ever read. Not only was it a brilliant mystery with lots of surprises, it was also a fascinating piece of literature in other ways. I think the setting and characters added a lot to the story. It was very well-written overall; and the detective actually seemed human! :) There were also some interesting allusions to the author's Christianity (which I might not have picked up if it weren't for the introduction in my history/literature textbook - but still). I highly recommend The Nine Tailors to all mystery lovers. Caution: some swearing.
—The Gatekeeper
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, in its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to make this book one of two Dorothy Sayers mysteries that you absolutely have to read or you are illiterate. I still say that Strong Poison should have made the list, but the good people at The List Inc. haven't ever listened to my suggestions and certainly aren't going to start now. That being said, The Nine Tailors is still a delightful addition to Lord Peter Wimsey's collection of exploits. The thing I love about Dorothy Sayers, and the reason I now like her more than Agatha Christie, is because I always learn something from her novels. In this book, the lesson of the day is the art of bellringing. (in fact the title doesn't refer to literal tailors at all; "nine tailors" are the nine bell strokes rung to announce a death) If you think bellringing is a simple act, you will find out exactly how wrong you are by the third chapter. If you acknowledge that bellringing is probably more interesting than it sounds, you will still learn what an understatement that is. It needs to be admitted here that, having finished the book, I still don't really understand all the bellringer shop-talk that goes on in the novel. The problem is that Lord Peter is actually a practiced bellringer already (because there is nothing Lord Peter cannot do), so there's never a need for any of the characters to really explain things. So conversations about bellringing go more like, "Okay, we're going to do this this and this, got that?" "Of course I do, and are we going to whatsit the thingamabob with the whangdoodle?" and I'm sitting there reading all of this and feeling like I missed something important. But luckily, a deep understanding of bells isn't vital to understanding the greater mystery - which is awesome, by the way, and involves stolen emeralds. Also this is the first Sayers mystery I've read where the murder occurs after the book starts, which was cool.
—Madeline
This is arguably one of the most original mysteries ever written, and a treat to reread, with its ingenious plot that involves the obscure English art of ringing church bells, a missing necklace, a mysterious corpse and the austerely beautiful fen country of east England. This has always been my favorite Sayers novel but I haven't read it in years and I was happy to find that it has held up extremely well. Things don't always when you come back to them later. I was surprised to find how useful Lord Peter is in this book. He's capable and remarkably efficient during a serious crisis, he's a sympathetic, intelligent and patient listener, and he never gives what a character in another book describes as his "perfect imitation of a silly-ass-around-town." This is a darker and more sober book than some of the earlier Lord Peter novels, but it's not without humor, and it tackles some interesting philosophical and ethical concepts. There's even a faint hint of the supernatural. The author takes her time setting the stage before the plot really gets moving, but readers who pay attention to act one will find they have the pieces needed to solve the mystery ahead of the story's intrepid sleuth.Highly recommended. And thanks to YouTube, it's now easy to find video (and audio) of change ringing, for those of us who previously had to rely on our imaginations!
—Telyn
