Have His Carcase
Encyclopedia
Have His Carcase is a 1932 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...

, her seventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...

 and her second novel in which Harriet Vane
Harriet Vane
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers ....

 appears. The title is taken from William Cowper's
William Cowper
William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

 translation of Book II of Homer's
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

 Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

: "The vulture's maw / Shall have his carcase, and the dogs his bones."

Plot outline

Harriet Vane, author of crime and mystery novels, goes off on a hiking holiday. She finds a fresh corpse on a lonely beach, and although she is able to collect photos and evidence, the body is washed away before it can be recovered. The plot concerns the efforts of the local police, assisted by Harriet and Lord Peter Wimsey, to identify the dead man, recover his body, determine whether his death was suicide or murder, and if the latter, to unmask the killer. The relationship between Harriet and Wimsey, which began in difficult circumstances in Strong Poison
Strong Poison
Strong Poison is a 1929 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.-Plot introduction:It is in Strong Poison that Lord Peter first meets Harriet Vane, an author of police fiction. The immediate problem is that she is on trial for her life, charged with murdering her former...

, develops further during their collaboration.

Plot summary

During a hiking holiday after her acquittal on murder charges in Strong Poison
Strong Poison
Strong Poison is a 1929 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.-Plot introduction:It is in Strong Poison that Lord Peter first meets Harriet Vane, an author of police fiction. The immediate problem is that she is on trial for her life, charged with murdering her former...

, Harriet Vane discovers the body of a man, with his throat cut and the blood still liquid, on an isolated rock on the shore. There are no footprints in the sand other than the man's and Harriet's. She takes photos and preserves some evidence, but the corpse is washed away before she can fetch help.

Lord Peter arrives, and he and Harriet make investigations alongside the police. The dead man, Paul Alexis, a professional dancing partner at the local hotel, was of Russian extraction and engaged to a rich older widow. The death has been made to look like suicide, but Wimsey and Harriet discover that he was the victim of an ingenious and complex murder plot. The romantic Alexis believed himself a descendant of Russian royalty, and the widow's rather stupid son, appalled at the prospect of his mother's remarriage to a gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...

 and the loss of his inheritance, conspired with a clever friend and his wife to play on Alexis's fantasies. Convinced that he was being called to return to Russia in triumph as the rightful Tsar, Alexis was lured to the rock and murdered by the son, who rode a horse along the beach through the incoming tide to avoid leaving tracks, whilst his friends supplied his alibi. The death was intended to look like suicide. However, Alexis suffers from haemophilia
Haemophilia
Haemophilia is a group of hereditary genetic disorders that impair the body's ability to control blood clotting or coagulation, which is used to stop bleeding when a blood vessel is broken. Haemophilia A is the most common form of the disorder, present in about 1 in 5,000–10,000 male births...

, and his unclotted blood leads to confusion over the time of death, which eventually assist with the unmasking of the conspirators.

During the novel Harriet and Peter's relationship is awkward. He wishes to marry her; he also intends to shield her by his presence from the police and the Press, who are inclined to suspect her because of her previous history. She steadfastly rejects his proposals and his support, convinced that any relationship is impossible because of her obligation to him and her damaged emotional state after her trial. However, they work and dine together in this novel and even dance together for the first time, breaking down some of the barriers between them as they solve the case, which among other things includes a blow-by-blow account of the cracking of a Playfair cipher
Playfair cipher
The Playfair cipher or Playfair square is a manual symmetric encryption technique and was the first literal digraph substitution cipher. The scheme was invented in 1854 by Charles Wheatstone, but bears the name of Lord Playfair who promoted the use of the cipher.The technique encrypts pairs of...

. Sayers acknowledges the help she received from fellow detective novelist John Rhode with the cipher in the novels introduction, and Wimsey remarks in the text that the conspirators may have used Rhode's use of the cipher in a recent book as inspiration. The book is not mentioned by title but relates to Rhode's 1930 novel Peril at Cranbury Hall

Characters in Have His Carcase

  • Lord Peter Wimsey
    Lord Peter Wimsey
    Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...

     - protagonist, an aristocratic amateur detective
  • Miss Harriet Vane
    Harriet Vane
    Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers ....

     - protagonist, a novelist with whom Wimsey is in love, having saved her from the gallows
  • Paul Alexis (deceased) - a professional dancing partner at a hotel
  • Mrs Weldon - an elderly wealthy widow, engaged to the much younger Alexis
  • Henry Weldon - a farmer with money troubles, only son of Mrs Weldon
  • Haviland Martin - a suspicious camper who proves hard to trace
  • Bright - an itinerant hairdresser with a cloudy past who gives evidence to suggest Alexis's death was suicide
  • Inspector Umpelty - the local policeman in charge of the investigation

Allusions to actual history, geography and current science

In Chapter XXI Umpelty suggests he could detain Bright by charging him with an obscure offence: buying alcohol after closing time, for example. Wimsey replies: "First time I've heard a good word for Dora!" This is a reference to the Defence of the Realm Act 1914
Defence of the Realm Act 1914
The Defence of the Realm Act was passed in the United Kingdom on 8 August 1914, during the early weeks of World War I. It gave the government wide-ranging powers during the war period, such as the power to requisition buildings or land needed for the war effort, or to make regulations creating...

, known familiarly as DORA, which had given the government wide-ranging powers including severely restricting the hours during which alcohol could be sold
Licensing laws of the United Kingdom
Licensing laws of the United Kingdom regulate the sale and consumption of alcohol, with separate legislation for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland being passed, as necessary, by the UK parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Scottish Parliament respectively.Throughout the...

. Some of DORA's provisions were repealed after the war, but those relating to the opening hours of pubs were among a number that remained in force.

Referring to a number of gold sovereigns, Wimsey notes that they are not worth any more than banknotes, an indication that Great Britain was, at the time of the story, still using the gold standard
Gold standard
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...

.

Literary significance and criticism

"A great achievement, despite some critics' carping. The people, the motive, the cipher, and the detection are all topnotch. Here, too, is the first (and definitive) use of hemophilia as a misleading fact. And surely the son, the mother, and her self-deluded gigolo are definitive types."

All the chapter heads feature quotes from the works of dramatist and poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Thomas Lovell Beddoes was an English poet, dramatist and physician.- Biography :Born in Clifton, Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Anna, sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford...

.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Have His Carcase was adapted for television in 1987 as part of a series starring Edward Petherbridge
Edward Petherbridge
Edward Petherbridge is a British actor. Among his many roles, he portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey in several screen adaptations of Dorothy L...

 as Lord Peter and Harriet Walter
Harriet Walter
Dame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE is a British actress.-Personal life:She is the niece of renowned British actor Sir Christopher Lee, as the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side she is a great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The TimesShe was educated at...

 as Harriet Vane.

Famous quotes

  • "When I kiss you, it will be an important event — one of those things which stand out among their surroundings like the first time you tasted li-chee
    Lychee
    The lychee is the sole member of the genus Litchi in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae. It is a tropical and subtropical fruit tree native to Southern China and Southeast Asia, and now cultivated in many parts of the world...

    ." — Lord Peter Wimsey to Harriet Vane
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