Strong Poison (1930) by Dorothy L. Sayers

As many of you will know Strong Poison is the first of four books starring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. It is a book I read for the first time over a decade ago and it was a pure delight revisiting it again.

SPOILER WARNING – This post mentions the name of the killer so only read ahead if you know their identity.

Synopsis

‘Can Lord Peter Wimsey prove that Harriet Vane is not guilty of murder – or find the real poisoner in time to save her from the gallows? Impossible, it seems. The Crown’s case is watertight. The police are adamant that the right person is on trial. The judge’s summing-up is also clear. Harriet Vane is guilty of the killing her lover. And Harriet Vane shall hang. But the jury disagrees.’

Overall Thoughts

When it comes to mystery novels it is more common to have a structure in which the murder takes place and then we face the subsequent investigation by a police or amateur detective. However, one variation can be to start with a trial itself and then the narrative goes back in time to fill in the gaps for the reader. We see this in mysteries such as Excellent Intentions (1938) by Richard Hull, Sad Cypress (1940) by Agatha Christie, Death has Deep Roots (1951) by Michael Gilbert, Reputation for a Song (1952) by Edward Grierson and Murder on Trial (1954) by Michael Underwood. A far fewer number of books take this a step further and have the summing up of the trial as their opening gambit. This provides a more succinct precis, quickly giving the reader the facts as to the crime and why a certain person has been standing trial. The remainder of the book is then generally dedicated to another character racing against time to prove that they are in fact innocent. This is the case here when a hung jury leads to a retrial. Another example I have come across is in The Clock in the Hat Box (1939) by Anthony Gilbert.

The famous 1922 Edith Thompson and Fredrick Bywaters murder case is often coupled with this book, as like Edith, Harriet Vane is on trial for murder, yet it is clear in the judge’s summing up and in various bystanders’ comments, that she is also being judged on her morals. In her case it because Harriet was unmarried but in a relationship with the murder victim, Philip Boyes. The social opprobrium at the time for this lifestyle choice is emphasised in the opening sentences through the description of the presiding judge:

‘The judge was an old man; so old, he seemed to have outlived time and change and death. His parrot-face and parrot-voice were dry, like his old, heavily-veined hands […] The judge creaked on.’

Features such as the old age (particularly in how that longevity is depicted) and the idea of the judge being parrot like, made me think he was being set up as a character for whom tradition is important. This in turn is important for Harriet as it colours his summing up and during those early pages it was interesting watching characters such as the reporters commenting on the difference between what the judge says and what he actually means. Interestingly, during the summing up it is mentioned that Harriet bought poison under assumed names in the run up to the murder, for the purposes of research for her writing, according to herself. Yet one of the false names she used was Edith Waters, so I wondered if this was an allusion to the earlier real-life trial.

Harriet’s buying of poisons has also been connected to another case known as the ‘Hay Poisoner’ in which Major Armstrong was tried and found guilty of murder. I read about this case in more detail earlier this year when I reviewed The Poisonous Solicitor (2022) by Stephen Bates. Circumstantial evidence was also very damning for him as he bought large quantities of arsenic for making his own weed killer. Yet his decision to store the arsenic across multiple small packets and his claim that he experimenting with his weed killer production did not do him any favours. His excuse was not really believed, and this same scepticism can be found in Harriet’s trial when she said the poisons were bought for research and then disposed of.

Another link made between this novel and real life is the suggestion that Philip and Harriet’s relationship was mirrored on Sayers’ own doomed affair with John Cournos. He like, Boyes, believed in “free love”, eventually ending their relationship because she would not consent to this belief system. He then left for America and promptly married someone else. In both cases the man spouted one set of beliefs and then betrayed them, and the woman involved. You might say, “well maybe they just changed their mind”, but the key point raised in both situations was that the “free love” position was being manipulatively used, as Martha Hailey Dubose says, as ‘a test of a woman’s willingness to submit to [the man’s] control.’ Harriet feels this keenly as the decision to consent to this position was far from easy, going against the grain for her, and during the year of living with Philip she experienced social estrangement, so I can understand why his decision to offer marriage comes like a kick in the teeth. Dubose goes on to say further in her book, Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists (2000) that Sayers included no intimate details of relationship with Cournos in the novel, unlike him who in his novel The Devil is an English Gentleman (1932) ‘lift[ed] bits of dialog from Dorothy’s letters to him.’

I know Harriet is not everyone’s cup of tea, but from the first time I encountered her, I found her an enjoyable character I could side with. So it was nice in this re-read to be reminded of various details about her life and background. Quite a few of these details are mentioned in the judge’s summing up who says:

‘through no fault of her own, was left, at the age of twenty-three, to make her own way in the world. Since that time – and she is now twenty-nine years old – she has worked industriously to keep herself, and it is very much to her credit that she has, by her own exertions, made herself independent in a legitimate way, owing nothing to anybody and accepting help from no one.’

I think this encapsulates well Harriet’s grit and it makes her statement “I didn’t like having matrimony offered as a bad conduct prize” all the more admirable and braver, given that the society she was in, held few safety nets for her, especially since her decision to cohabit would have burnt some bridges and created a degree of prejudice towards her. Moreover, when Wimsey does charge in to rescue her, she does not throw herself upon him in stereotypical heroine fashion. That’s something I liked when I first read the book and it is something I still like now.

One of the things which struck me in this re-read was the way in which the opening introduces Harriet. The circumstantial evidence piles up quickly and since she is in the dock, she has no voice in the summing up and instead all the information we have is second or third hand. I wondered how readers of the time would have responded to this initial depiction vs people reading the book now. In particular I was curious about the fact that nowadays people are likely going to know this is the first book of four (so therefore Harriet cannot be guilty), whereas when the book first came out, readers would not have that cue. Would it have taken them longer to warm up to her? Furthermore, the scenes in this book featuring Harriet are few and can be quite short, so until book two (Have His Carcase) the reader has little to base their opinion on concerning her. Nevertheless, I think Sayers makes every Harriet scene count.

Miss Climpson is a series character I have always been fond of, and Strong Poison is possibly her best book to shine in (though she gets some dramatic moments in Unnatural Death (1927)). Miss Climpson is part of Wimsey’s “cattery”, yet despite the slightly derogatory name, she and many others are essentially part of a crime fighting team, tackling things such as showing up con artists who write dodgy advertisements:

‘These women seemed to spend most of their time in answering advertisements. Unmarried gentlemen who desired to meet ladies possessed of competences with a view to matrimony; sprightly sexagenarians, who wanted housekeepers for remote country districts; ingenious gentlemen with financial schemes on the look-out for capital; literary gentlemen, anxious for female collaborators; plausible gentlemen about to engage talent for production in the provinces: benevolent gentlemen, who could tell people how to make money in their spare time – gentlemen such as these were very liable to receive applications from members of Miss Climpson’s staff. It may have been coincidence that these gentlemen so very often had the misfortune to appear shortly afterwards before the magistrate on charges of fraud, blackmail, or attempted procuration, but it is a fact that Miss Climpson’s office boasted a private telephone line to Scotland Yard, and that few of her ladies were quite so unprotected as they appeared.’

I hadn’t really thought much about what this group did until my re-read, but after reading this, I wished Sayers had written more about this side of Wimsey’s life and maybe even just had a series of short stories or some novels focused on them and the sleuthing they did. Whilst having a female group of crime fighters might seem quite normal or apt in crime fiction these days, back then I think Sayers’ creation of this group meant something more, given the context of the 1920s in which there were “surplus women” after the losses of WW1. Again, we come back to the point of there being fewer support services to fall back on in those days, and it is telling, although not perhaps surprising, that in the above passage the perpetrators are mainly men and the victims predominately women. So, in some ways Wimsey’s “cattery” is equipped and ran by “surplus women” who in turn are providing a level of protection to other vulnerable people in society. This is why I think it is a shame that Sayers did not explore this part of her fictional universe further.

So far, I have focused quite a bit on Harriet, but Strong Poison is also a significant case for Wimsey, as from the get-go this mystery affects him emotionally in ways other cases had not. In the first chapter Wimsey is very much in the background, with an early mention saying nothing more than that he ‘appeared to be a prey to gloom.’ It is only as the first chapter concludes that he explodes verbally, when he speaks to his friend:

“You ought to be on the jury,” retorted Wimsey, with unusual acidity. “I bet that’s what they’re all saying at this moment. I’m convinced that that foreman is a teetotaller – I saw ginger-beer going into the juryroom, and I only hope it explodes and blows his inside through the top of his skull.”

This kind of outburst is not something we so readily associate with earlier appearances of Wimsey, and I don’t think it is a bad thing. The verbal explosions continue when he says: “I hope he will fry in hell and be served up with cayenne pepper on a red-hot dish!” He even snaps at his friend Inspector Parker:

“Anybody would think you’d gone goopy over the girl.”

“That’s a damned friendly way to talk,” said Wimsey bitterly. “When you went off the deep end about my sister, I may have been unsympathetic – I daresay I was – but I swear I didn’t dance on your tenderest feelings, and call your manly devotion ‘going goopy over a girl’.” […]

“Good Lord,” exclaimed Parker, “you don’t seriously say –”

“Oh, no!” retorted Wimsey, bitterly. “I’m not expected to be serious. A buffoon, that’s what I am.”

This outburst is a little more revealing, as Wimsey expresses frustration at the limitations other people’s expectations have on him and arguably this could be stretched to the expectations readers have of him as well, since we can all be guilty of wanting a series character to always act a certain way or be a certain way. Effecting change within a longstanding and much-loved character is a tricky business and I imagine there are different ways of going about it. Strong Poison is the first Wimsey novel of the 1930s and I think in this book Sayers goes for the sledgehammer/wrecking ball approach as Wimsey’s feelings hit him hard. This will not work for everyone, but I find Wimsey’s transformation engaging.

Strong Poison as a whole, though, is excellent when it comes to characterisation and scenes such as the one in which the court are waiting for the jury’s decision at the start of the book, provide good examples of how Sayers shows rather than tells you things about her characters. I was pleased to see that Wimsey’s mother makes an appearance. Whilst in attendance at the trial, she mentions that she has read one of Harriet’s books and she thinks it is “really quite good and so well-written”. She further comments that she “didn’t guess the murderer till page 200” which is slow for her as she usually does by “about page 15.” This shows that the Dowager is far from foolish even if she does get linguistically in a muddle at times. Her canniness and sleuthing potential are definitely evident in Clouds of Witness (1926) for example. The above quote also amused me as I decided to look at page 15 in my copy of Strong Poison and on that page the reader is given their first strong nod towards the killer’s guilt, Norman Urquhart, when he is reported to have said to the victim during their shared meal: “You’re a real dab at omelettes, Philip – I’ll leave this to you.’ Was this intentional on Sayers part? Or just a fun coincidence? This line by Norman is an early clue as it shows the killer self-consciously ensuring that there is evidence to show he could not have poisoned the omelette. Wimsey comments on this near the denouement when he asks: “Did you ever hear of a meal hedged round with such precautions?” In Wimsey’s eyes and the readers, he is just a little bit too prepared for Philip’s death and the reveal that it was murder, as even before the m word is mentioned he has collected evidence to prove that the meal could not have been poisoned.

Wimsey starts off his investigation to find the real murderer of Philip by discussing with Miss Climpson the reasons someone might want to kill him. This gives his case some preliminary structure. He begins with a lot of typical Wimsey confidence, but I think this is sorely tried before the end of the book. His vulnerability is made highly visible to the reader:

‘For the first time, too, he doubted his own power to carry through what he had undertaken. His personal feelings had been involved before this in his investigations, but they had never before clouded his mind. He was fumbling – grasping uncertainly here and there at fugitive and mocking possibilities. He asked questions at random, doubtful of his object, and the shortness of the time, which would once have stimulated, now frightened and confused him.’

I think occasions like this help to move the detective figure away from being unmovable and invincible. As a reader it’s not wrong for us to want our detective to solve the case (highly infallible sleuths are hard to write well repeatedly), but it can be interesting to see them really push themselves to find the answer. It makes them more human, I guess.

Nevertheless, one of the strengths of this book is that quite a bit of the sleuthing is delegated to other people, including Miss Murchison, Miss Climpson, Inspector Parker, and Bunter. Miss Climpson’s solo investigating gets a good chunk of the book which I really enjoyed and when reading this part of the novel I was again reminded of how I would have quite liked to have had a series where she played more of a lead role.

I love how the book ends. The first time I read it, it was so refreshing to not have the man and woman getting engaged or already getting married on the final page (despite the fact they only met for the first time earlier in the book). Whilst I have read books which do this and still really enjoyed them, it can make things too predictable or perfunctory at times – an issue Sayers raised in her 1928 introduction to an omnibus of crime fiction. Love/romance is complicated and difficult at times and Strong Poison reflects that. Since the 1930s it has become more commonplace to pace and complicate the romantic thread of a mystery series (with Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham following in Sayers’ wake) and I wonder if this is, in part, because of the Vane and Wimsey novels. My final rating reflects how much I enjoyed this re-read. It was so good that I was sorely tempted to instantly pick up the next novel in the series, which in my book is always a sign of a good read.

Rating: 4.5/5