Have His Carcase

Have His Carcase was published in 1932 and brings Harriet Vane back to the centre of a Lord Peter novel for the first time since Strong Poison. Harriet, attempting a walking holiday on the south coast of England, finds the body of a young man named Paul Alexis on a remote beach with his throat cut. By the time she manages to reach a telephone, the tide has risen and washed the body away. The investigation runs in several directions at once. Was the killing a death, a political assassination, a romantic crime? Alexis turns out to have believed he was descended from the Russian royal family and to have been corresponding with a mysterious organization that was supposedly preparing to restore him to the throne. Lord Peter joins Harriet in the investigation, with the two of them working as partners rather than as detective and reluctant fiancée. The novel is unusually long and includes a famous coded letter that Sayers expected her readers to decrypt themselves. The Harriet and Peter material is the centre of the book. The puzzle holds up.