Wimsey discovers that the patient's great-niece-popular locally-had nursed her through her illness and was the intended heiress.

Wimsey's friend, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, conclusively disproves this notion, but Wimsey has planted a spy, Miss Joan Murchison, in Urquhart ’ s office and discovers the real culprit is Urquhart.

The episode of the bum in the bathtub, the character ( and the name ) of Sir Julian Freke, the detection, and the possibilities in Peter Wimsey are so many signs of genius about to erupt.

Other recurring characters include Inspector Parker, solicitor Murbles, barrister Sir Impey Biggs, newshound Salcombe Hardy, and financial whiz the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, who finds himself entangled in the case in the first of the Wimsey books, 1923's Whose Body ?.

Lady Thorpe, wife of Sir Henry Thorpe, the local squire, dies next morning and Wimsey hears how the Thorpe family has been blighted for 20 years by the unsolved theft of jewels from a house-guest by the butler, Deacon, and an accomplice, Cranton.

Edward Petherbridge also played Wimsey in the UK production of the Busman's Honeymoon play staged at the Lyric Hammersmith and on tour in 1988, with the role of Harriet being taken by his real-life spouse, Emily Richard.

Wimsey eventually arrives in Oxford to help her, and she gains a new perspective on him from those who know him, including his nephew, a current undergraduate at the university.

Wimsey served on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, reaching the rank of Major in the Rifle Brigade.

For reasons never clarified in any of the books, after the end of his mission as a spy behind enemy lines Wimsey in the later part of the war moved from Intelligence and resumed the role of a regular line officer.

It is not exactly known when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment agency for women, a means to garner information from the otherwise inaccessible world of spinsters and widows, but it is prior to Unnatural Death ( 1927 ), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient.

Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals.

To distinguish Death Bredon from Lord Peter Wimsey, Parker smuggles Wimsey out of the police station and urges him to get into the papers.

In the final Wimsey story, the 1942 short story " Talboys ", Peter and Harriet are enjoying rural domestic bliss with their three sons when Bredon, their first-born, is accused of the theft of prize peaches from the neighbour's tree.

" Whereupon Miss Murchison, the indefatigable investigator employed by Wimsey for much of this book, comments " Or, if one wasn't accustomed to be waited on, one might use the water from the bedroom jug.

Lord Peter Wimsey was played by Ian Carmichael in a series of independent serials that ran from 1972 to 1975 and adapted five novels ( Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors ) and by Edward Petherbridge in 1987, in which three of the four major Wimsey / Vane novels ( Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night ) were dramatised.

Ian Carmichael starred as Wimsey in radio adaptations of the novels made by the BBC, all of which have been available on cassette and CD from the BBC Radio Collection.

However, Sayers ' first reference to Le Fanu appears in an earlier Lord Peter Wimsey novel, The Nine Tailors ( 1934 ), where he is quoted directly ( from Wylder's Hand, in the opening to the seventh " part " of Chapter II and again in the opening to the second " part " of Chapter III ) and a mysterious letter is referred to ( first by Wimsey's valet, Mervyn Bunter ) as " written by a person of no inconsiderable literary ability, who had studied the works of Sheridan Lefanu and was, if I may be permitted the expression, bats in the belfry, my lord.

Wimsey accepts an offer from the highly respectable management of Pym's Publicity, Ltd. ( a light disguise for S. H. Bensons, where Sayers worked ) to investigate a mystery and avert a scandal.

In Five Red Herrings ( 1931 ), a Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter ( a Balliol man ) is asked whether he remembers a certain contemporary from Trinity.

In Five Red Herrings ( 1931 ), a Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter ( a Balliol man ) is asked whether he remembers a certain contemporary from Trinity.

Some editions include as a foreword a letter written by Sayers " To my friend Joe Dignam, the kindliest of landlords ," from which it becomes evident that she herself was in the habit of having holidays in Galloway-a habit attributed to Wimsey in the book-and that on one of them she promised her landlord to write a detective novel set in this area, of which the book was a fulfilment.

* Miss Harriet Vane-protagonist, a novelist with whom Wimsey is in love, having saved her from the gallows

They plan to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Harriet's native Hertfordshire which Wimsey has bought for her, and they abscond from the wedding reception, evading the assembled reporters.

The 1942 short story " Talboys ", the very last Wimsey fiction produced by Sayers, is both a sequel to the present book, in having the same location and some of the same village characters, and an antithesis in being lighthearted and having no crime worse the theft of some peaches from a neighbour's garden.

Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey, returned from a European honeymoon, are settling into their new home in London, where daily life is affected by the illness and then death of the king.

The press is naturally interested ; Wimsey hastens to the scene, after receiving a tip from a journalist friend, to help shield Harriet from suspicion.

Wimsey, after looking out of the window, has an alternative: Tallboy must go home, on foot, and never look behind him.

Wimsey is described as having authored numerous books, among them the following fictitious works:

There is only a closed circle of suspects to deal with, and Wimsey has no emotional involvement, although, having alerted the Police to Campbell's murder, he subsequently reflects that Campbell was a man anyone might feel justified in killing, and that the six suspects are all generally decent people.

Wimsey speculates that Will may not have wanted to live, having guessed his part in killing Deacon.

His deep remorse and guilt at having caused Crutchley to be executed leave doubt as to whether he would undertake further murder investigations-and in fact Sayers wrote no further Wimsey novels after this one.

Sayers admitted having partially based Bunter's character on P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves, although Wimsey and Bunter are quite distinct from Wooster and Jeeves.

A bon vivant who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective.

Wimsey was for a time unable to give servants any orders whatsoever, since his wartime experience made him associate the giving of an order with causing the death of the person to whom the order was given.

She has known Wimsey for years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers.

Thus, Peter Wimsey remained forever fixed on the background of inter-war England, and the books are nowadays often read for their evocation of that period as much as for the intrinsic detective mysteries.

* Conundrums for the Long Week-End: England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey ( 2000 ) by Robert Kuhn McGregor, Ethan Lewis ISBN 0-87338-665-5

By day he is Bredon, a distant, impoverished Wimsey cousin who works for a living.

Wimsey wins the match for Pym's, which is about to expose his cover when the police, led by Parker, arrest " Bredon " for the murder of Dian de Momerie.

Murder Must Advertise was adapted for television in 1973 as a mini-series starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey, Mark Eden as Chief Inspector Charles Parker, Bridget Armstrong as Dian de Momerie, Peter Bowles as Major Milligan, and Paul Darrow as Mr. Tallboy.

Eventually, the jewelled cat leads Wimsey to Cathcart's mistress of many years, who had left him for an American millionaire.

In 1975, an adaptation starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey and with Peter Jones as Bunter, was made for BBC Radio 4.

Wimsey is asked to help solve the puzzle by his friend Mr Murbles, the solicitor for the Fentiman family.

Robert agrees to watch for Oliver, and Wimsey arranges for detectives to assist him.

Lord Peter Wimsey, who is in the region on a fishing holiday, points out the inconsistency which makes it impossible for Campbell himself to have worked on the painting.

The Five Red Herrings is the Peter Wimsey story which is most obviously set as a puzzle for the reader.

Large parts of the book follow the various Scottish police officers, who are shown as highly intelligent and competent, and for time seem to overshadow Wimsey.

Asked for his opinion, Wimsey finally reveals to the reader exactly what alerted him to the murder, and points the finger at the true killer.