Clouds of Witness

Clouds of Witness was published in 1926 and is the second Lord Peter novel. The setup is more personal than the first book. Peter’s older brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, has been arrested for the murder of Denis Cathcart, the fiancé of their sister Lady Mary Wimsey, at the family country estate of Riddlesdale Lodge during a Yorkshire shooting party. The Duke refuses to explain his movements on the night of the killing because doing so would compromise the reputation of a married woman. Peter must clear his brother’s name without his brother’s cooperation.

The novel is more legally textured than Whose Body? Sayers had been reading parliamentary procedure and uses it well. The case eventually reaches the House of Lords for a peer-of-the-realm trial, one of the last in English legal history. The investigation involves a Soviet-leaning agitator group, a poaching local farmer, and Lady Mary’s complicated romantic life. Bunter is in fine form. The novel signals Sayers’s growing seriousness about the form. Stronger than the debut and a clear step forward in the canon.