Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison (1930)

Mystery and the Literary Field

Sayers in 1925 told a friend that writing a mystery is “rather like laying a mo-
saic – putting each piece apparently meaningless and detached – into its
place, until one suddenly sees the thing as a consistent picture. Like mosaic,
too, I believe it to be on the whole most effective when done in the at and on
rather broad lines.” (Cushing Strout, ‘Romance and the Literary Detective:
The Legacy of Dorothy Sayers’, The Sewanee Review, Summer 2001)

The more uniform mass culture becomes, the more violently the avant-garde
strains after idiosyncrasy, creating a situation in which the truth of an old di-
chotomy becomes daily more apparent: art is dif cult, kitsch is easy….But the
assumption of mass culture that everything is, or should be, understandable,
easily and quickly accessible, bears some further re ection. Kitsch seems to
appropriate art by robbing it of the demonic, not just its ‘aura’, as Walter Ben-
jamin has argued, but its dangers. (Michael Holquist, ‘Whodunit and Other
Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories in Post-War Fiction’, New Literary
History, Autumn 1971)

‘between you and me, Mr Boyes could not have done better for himself than
to go and get murdered like this. Every copy was old out a week after the re-
sult of the exhumation [….] Rather disgusting, really, but one can’t help that.
We have to do our best for our client, whatever the circumstances. Miss
Vane’s books have always sold reasonably well [….] but of course this busi-
ness has stimulated things enormously.’ (Strong Poison, Chapter 6)

‘Take it? She wouldn’t give it. Told him she never gave opinions on other au-
thor’s work. Other authors! The impudence of it. Of course she was out of
things among us all, but why couldn’t she realise the difference between her
mind and his?[…] Genius must be served. (Strong Poison, Ch.8)

Wimsey found himself involved in a discussion of free love,D.H. Lawrence,

the prurience of prudery, and the immoral signi cance of long skirts. (Strong
Poison, Chapter 8)

‘We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Press [….] so kind of them to pick out
all the plums for us and save us the trouble of reading the books. [….] ‘Damn
it, she writes detective stories, and in detective stories virtue is always tri-
umphant. They’re the purest literature we have.’ (Strong Poison, Ch.12)

Humanizing the detective

It is, of course, a gain for the detective novel, as Sayers pointed out, that “as
the detective ceases to be impenetrable and infallible and becomes a man
touched with the feeling of our in rmities, so the rigid technique of the art ne-
cessarily expands a little”…. What Sayers wanted to do as a novelist was “to
bring the love-problem in line with the detective-problem so that the same key
should unlock both at once” (Strout, 2001)
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 What the First World War taught—a lesson that struck at the heart of Edward-
ian manliness—was that neither a public school nor a military training in man-
liness, however rigorous, could quell fear. Willpower alone was not enough.
As the protagonist remarks in Warwick Deeping’s novel Kitty (1927), “All the
decent, honourable feelings you’ve grown up with seem to drop like water out
of a burst paper bag. You’re just a cunning, shivery creature ready to bolt into
a hole—and leave someone else to do the dirty job…..The social signs of fail-
ures of repression would have been widely observable in wartime. The sheer
numbers of men diagnosed and treated as suffering from a “nervous
disorder,” some eighty thousand during the war itself, ensured this….. The
continuing repercussions of war trauma, widely felt by civilians and veterans
alike, were captured in literature and drama of the interwar period. Alison
Light, for example, has argued that the increasing popularity of detective c-
tion in the interwar period lay in its capacity to tap into the psychic aftermath
of war, especially the memory of fear, among readers. She calls this a “con-
valescence literature”: emotionally undemanding, it concealed the signs of vi-
olence. It was, one contemporary enthusiast commented, “a sedative for the
nerves.” (Michael Roper, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity: The “War
Generation” and the Psychology of Fear in Britain , 1914-1950’, The Journal
of British Studies, April 2005)

That was the second time Wimsey had been asked not to alter himself; the
rst time, the request had exalted him; this time, it terri ed him. As the taxi
lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the rst time the dull and an-
gry helplessness which is the rst warning stroke of the triumph of mutability
[….] For the rst time, too, he doubted his own power to carry through what he
had undertaken. His personal feelings had been involved before this in his in-
vestigations, but they had never clouded his mind. (Strong Poison, Chapter 8)
Silly! one could not do that. The inherited inhibitions of twenty civilised cen-
turies tied one hand and foot in bonds of ridicule. What if he did smash the
mirror? Nothing would happen. (Strong Poison, Chapter 15)
Partnering Detection
Instead of linking it [the crime in Gaudy Nights] to “intellect starved of
emotion,” Sayers traces the malice to “emotion uncontrolled by intellect”. She
had to imagine what harm intellectual women could do to an emotional wo-
man…the widow takes “revenge upon the intellect for the injury wrought by
the intellect upon the emotions.” (Strout 2001)

‘Have you seen the cousin yet - the Urquhart creature?’

‘Got an appointment with him for tomorrow. Why?’

‘Sylvia’ theory is that he did it [….] Female intuition […] She doesn’t like the
way he does his hair.’ (Strong Poison, Chapter 8)

Miss Murchison felt a touch of excitement in her well-regulated heart as she

rang the bell of Lord Peter’s at. It was not caused by the consideration of his
title or his wealth or his bachelorhood, for Miss Murchison had been a busi-
ness woman all her life, and was accustomed to visiting bachelors of all des-
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 criptions without giving a second thought to the matter. (Strong Poison, Chap-
ter 13)

The male detective, particularly when dressed as a workman, an errand-boy,

or a telegraph-messenger, is favourably placed for ‘shadowing.’ He can loaf
without attracting attention. The female detective must not loaf. (Strong Poi-
son, ch.16)

Playing the System

‘Biggy - well done! You’ve got another chance. let me in on this and we’ll pull it
off [….] star me in as a clerk or something. I want to interview her [….] You’re
absolutely right. She didn’t do it, and thank god you stood up to them and
gave her another chance.’ (Strong Poison, Chapter 3)

He was sitting in Miss Katharine Climpson’s private of ce [….] All the employ-
ees were women - mostly elderly, but a few still young and attractive - and if
the private register in the steel safe had been consulted, it would have been
seen that all these women were of the class unkindly known as
‘super uous’ [….] but it is a fact that Miss Climpson’s of ce boasted a private
telephone line to the Scotland Yard, and that few of her ladies were quite so
unprotected as they appeared. (Strong Poison, Chapter 5)

Miss Climpson made no further ado, and they went upstairs. It was a queer
business - practically robbing a helpless woman in the interests of someone
she had never seen. Queer. But the motive must be a good one, if it was Lord
Peter’s. (Strong Poison, Chapter 18)

‘Well now, miss, the dif culty is, you see, that when the lock’s in place, you
can’t use your eyes. But you ‘as your ‘earin’ and you ‘as the feelin’, in your
ngers, giv’you by Providence [….] ‘I’m afraid I’m very clumsy,’ said Miss
Murchison, at the fth or sixth attempt. (Strong Poison, Chapter 13)

‘I’ve been sleuthing like stink on the tracks of your man,’ said Mr Arbuthnot.
‘Really, don’t you know, I shall soon be quali ed to set upon your line of busi-
ness [….] because I’ve got an idea, through this other fellow that my bloke
knows, that the chappie is rather up against it, as you might say, through be-
ing caught short on some Airways stock, and if I was to put him in touch with
Goldberg, don’t you see, it might get him out of a hole and so on. (Strong Poi-
son, Chapter 12)

Selected Reading

Michael Holquist, ‘Whodunit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective

Stories in Post-War Fiction’, New Literary History, Autumn 1971

Margot Peters and Agata Krouse, ‘Women and Crime: Sexism in Allingham,
Sayers and Christie’, SouthWest Review 59.2, Spring 1974
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William Reynolds, ‘The Patriarchy Restored: BBC Television’s Adaptation of
Dorothy L Sayer’s Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, and Gaudy Night’ in
William Reynold’s et al, It’s a Print (1994)

Cushing Strout, ‘Romance and the Literary Detective: The Legacy of Dorothy
Sayers’, The Sewanee Review, Summer 2001

Gail Wald, ‘Strong Poison: Love and the Novelistic in Dorothy Sayers’ in
Ronald Walker et al. eds, The Cunning Craft (1990)