Other mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers:
Busman’s Honeymoon
Clouds of Witness
The Documents in the Case
The Five Red Herrings
Gaudy Night
Hangman’s Holiday
Have His Carcase
In the Teeth of the Evidence
Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories
Lord Peter Views the Body
Murder Must Advertise
Strong Poison
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
Whose Body?
DOROTHY L. SAYERS
Unnatural Death
Harper & Row, Publishers, New York
Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco
London, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto
WIMSEY, Peter Death Bredon, D.S.O.; born 1890, 2ndson of Mortimer Gerald Bredon Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver,and of Honoria Lucasta, daughter of Francis Delagardieof Bellingham Manor, Hants. Married 1935, Harriet DeborahVane, daughter of Henry Vane, M.D.; one son (BredonDelagardie Peter) born 1936.
Educated: Eton College and Balliol College, (1st class honours),Sch. of Mod. Hist. 1912; served with H.M. Forces1914/18 (Major, Rifle Brigade). Author of: “Notes on theCollecting of Incunabula,” “The Murderer’s Vade-Medum,”etc. Recreations: Criminology; bibliophily; music; cricket.
Clubs: Marlborough; Egotists’; Bellona. Residences: 110A,Piccadilly, W.; Bredon Hall, Duke’s Denver, Norfolk.
Arms: Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic catcrouched as to spring, proper; motto: As my Whimsy takesme.
AS MY WHIMSY TAKES ME
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Communicated by
Paul Austin Delagardie
I am asked by Miss Sayers to fill up certain lacunae and correcta few trifling errors of fact in her account of my nephew Peter’scareer. I shall do so with pleasure. To appear publicly in printis every man’s ambition, and by acting as a kind of runningfootman to my nephew’s triumph I shall only be showing amodesty suitable to my advanced age.
The Wimsey family is an ancient one—too ancient, ifyou ask me. The only sensible thing Peter’s father ever did wasto ally his exhausted stock with the vigorous French-Englishstrain of the Delagardies. Even so, my nephew Gerald (thepresent Duke of Denver) is nothing but a beef-witted Englishsquire, and my niece Mary was flighty and foolish enough tillshe married a policeman and settled down. Peter, I am gladto say, takes after his mother and me. True, he is all nervesand nose—but that is better than being all brawn and no brainslike his father and brother, or a bundle of emotions like Gerald’sboy, Saint-George. He has at least inherited the Delagardiebrains, by way of safeguard to the unfortunate Wimsey temperament.
Peter was born in 1890. His mother was being very muchworried at the time by her husband’s behaviour (Denver wasalways tiresome, though the big scandal did not break out tillthe Jubilee year), and her anxieties may have affected the boy.He was a colorless shrimp of a child, very restless and mischievous,and always much too sharp for his age. He hadnothing of Gerald’s robust beauty, but he developed what I canbest call a kind of bodily