Curiosity Killed the Cat by Harriet Vane

Thanks to Grigorita Ko / Shutterstock via The Atlantic 

Title: Curiosity Killed the Cat

Author: Harriet Vane (Lady Peter Wimsey)

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey #13)

OK, I admit it. This is a bit of a cheat because we don’t know if Harriet ever writes Curiosity Killed the Cat. But she threatens to.

When you are enormously famous it’s hard to get married without the press alerting the whole world to your plans. Remember how newshounds rummaged through the dustbins of Princess Diana’s wedding dress designers? (David and Elizabeth Emmanuel in case you need reminding).

So Lord Peter Wimsey, wealthy aristocrat and celebrity private detective, and Harriet Vane, well-known detective novelist and notorious for having been tried (and acquitted) for the murder of her lover, are having a bit of a struggle with their privacy. Someone even tries to bribe Lord Peter’s wonderful manservant Bunter! With a lot of effort they manage a discreet wedding in Oxford, and for their honeymoon make tracks for a beautiful old Elizabethan house that Harriet knew and loved as a child and which Peter has just bought.

But much to their surprise no preparations have been made for their arrival, and next morning a dead body is discovered in the cellar. Naturally, the newly married couple are assailed by hoards of journalists. When Salcome Hardy (a personal friend of Lord Peter’s, but nonetheless a journalist) gets a bit too irritating Harriet tells him of course she will carry on writing, and her next book will be called Curiosity Killed the Cat, and it will be about the murder of a journalist. Hector Puncheon of The Morning Star arrives five minutes later and has a scary encounter with a bull (thoughtfully ordered by Bunter).

In the course of this book, Lord Peter produces a £10 note from his wallet (a LOT of money back in the 1930s) as a donation to the church. Harriet imagines the characters before her, transfixed by this generosity, transposed into figures on a book jacket. A book, perhaps, called Bank-Notes in the Parish. Later, Peter suggests that He Died by Candlelight would be a good book title.

Also mentioned in Busman’s Honeymoon; Peter’s cousin Matthew Wimsey is writing a history of the Wimsey family from Charlemagne (King of the Franks 768, but only crowned Emperor on Christmas Day 800) onwards. Matthew has just reached the battle of Roncevaux (778). It’s obviously slow work. Harriet thought  she saw him in the library but no. Actually she had a pleasant encounter with one of the family ghosts; Old Gregory.

Thanks to Kamal Selimovic via Bored Panda