Lord Peter Wimsey Solves the Case!

And the culprit is… Annie Wilson! (I was wrong…it wasn’t Ms. Hillyard and nobody died!) I’ve never mentioned her before have I? The reason being she is not by any means a major character in the novel. In fact, Annie is a scout, a member of the servant/maid service at Oxford—not a member of the Senior Common Room as the novel (especially Harriet) led the reader to believe from the start. This just goes to show that in an academic setting, one must always consider all possible suspects because even though one may eliminate a certain group or certain people, there are so many people involved in the academic setting that there’s a chance it could be anyone. I suppose it makes sense now that I know who it is, since a scout would have great knowledge of the buildings and teachers’ movements, as well as access to various places, due to his/her job. But at the same time, although Annie popped up in the story every now and then, she never posed a real threat, especially since she played the widow mother who desperately needed a job to support her two children. By portraying Annie this way, Sayers was able to cast suspicion off of her, thus making it very difficult for the reader to suspect her.

Then again, it would be difficult to suspect her anyway because there is absolutely no way the reader could have pieced together all of the information and discovered Annie’s initial reason for joining the Shrewsbury staff and causing all the mayhem in the first place. Most of the information surrounding Annie was presented at the very end by Lord Wimsey, as he reported his findings to the members of the Senior Common Room (SCR). It was done in a professional way with Wimsey articulating himself very well, after scholarly analyzing all of the evidence of course. (Elements of academic mystery?)

It’s at this time that Wimsey shares with the teachers (AKA dons) that he discovered that the first and even second notes that started the entire mess at the Gaudy, were both meant for Miss De Vine as opposed to Miss Vane based on the closeness of their names (How he jumped to this conclusion is still fuzzy to me…). Then, based on the graphic pictures that the book never went into great detail about (the reader is supposed to understand that they are extremely indecent and inappropriate, some mutilating naked scholarly women), Wimsey surmised that the woman behind the mischief was either engaged or married. Then he concluded that this woman must somehow be connected to Miss De Vine in the past based on his nephew’s testimony and a note from the perpetrator stating that Miss De Vine had killed in the past. Indeed the widow Annie Wilson fit the description. In the past, Miss De Vine had turned Arthur Robinson in for covering something up (the story is not exactly made clear to the reader), which ruins his reputation and career. Unfortunately, he was never able to recover and suffered for the rest of his life—along with his children and wife Charlotte Ann Clarke. (They changed their last name to Wilson as Arthur was trying to rebuild his reputation.) After Arthur “blew his brains out” Annie made it her mission to find and kill Miss De Vine to avenge her husband’s death, which she truly believes is the fault of Miss De Vine.

When confronted, Annie doesn’t even try to clear her name but instead unleashes an outburst in which she confesses, letting out a rage of pent of feelings against the SCR. She proceeds to ramble about how she loved her husband—sticking by him through thick and thin—and about how they won’t marry and let men “make an honest woman” of them. She was appalled at their stance on the issue and this is the reason why her hatred of the intellectual Miss De Vine spread to the rest of the college, including the innocent and studious students. She believed their learning was causing them to believe they were better than others and were in fact taking away jobs from honest hard working men like her husband. She reveals that she desperately wanted to expose the school’s scandal so they would suffer like she did and still does, even claiming that she wanted to burn the place down. In the end, she points out that as smart as they all think they are, they still had to get a man to solve the case for them (her haha moment).

It’s interesting how Annie was motivated to cause havoc and bring down the college because she didn’t approve of women obtaining an education, thus taking jobs away from hardworking men. The book is most likely exposing the widespread beliefs of the 1920s. At the same time, perhaps it reveals that novels in the academic mystery genre are also academic because the perpetrator’s motivation for killing/making a disturbance (whatever causes the mystery), is rooted in academic belief or pertains to academia. I’ll just have to see with the next book.