Other editions of book Whose Body?: The First Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery

"Whose Body" is something of an apprentice work. Lord Peter is here more a bundle of characteristics than a character: a collector of rare books and incunabula, facile with quotations, fluent in French and probably in Latin, a skillful and sensitive pianist who never needs to practise, slightly built but possessed of "curious" strength and speed which he maintains without exercise. Over subsequent books, this caricature smooths and deepens into one of the most interesting and attractive detectives in fiction.In spite of its awkwardness, Whose Body is worth reading. The plot is clever, the villain is believable and sadistic, and most of the supporting characters are a delight. Some of these characters are further developed in later novels: Bunter, Parker, the Dowager Duchess, Freddy Arbuthnot. Others fortunately are not. Sayers is much better with people she might recognise as "like us" then with people from other social groups.

“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi, driver!”The taxi man, irritated at receiving this appeal while negotiating the intricacies of turning into Lower Regent Street across the route of a 19 ’bus, a 38-B and a bicycle, bent an unwilling ear.“I’ve left the catalogue behind,” said Lord Peter deprecatingly. “Uncommonly careless of me. D’you mind puttin’ back to where we came from?”“To the Savile Club, sir?”“No—110 Piccadilly—just beyond—thank you.”“Thought you was in a hurry,” said the man, overcome with a sense of injury.“I’m afraid it’s an awkward place to turn in,” said Lord Peter, answering the thought rather than the words. His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat, as white maggots breed from Gorgonzola.The taxi, under the severe eye of a policeman, revolved by slow jerks, with a noise like the grinding of teeth.The block of new, perfect and expensive flats in which Lord Peter dwelt upon the second floor, stood directly opposite the Green Park, in a spot for many years occupied by the skeleton of a frustrate commercial enterprise. As Lord Peter let himself in he heard his man’s voice in the library, uplifted in that throttled stridency peculiar to well-trained persons using the telephone.“I believe that’s his lordship just coming in again—if your Grace would kindly hold the line a moment.”“What is it, Bunter?”“Her Grace has just called up from Denver, my lord. I was just saying your lordship had gone to the sale when I heard your lordship’s latchkey.”“Thanks,” said Lord Peter; “and you might find me my catalogue, would you? I think I must have left it in my bedroom, or on the desk.”He sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely courtesy, as though it were an acquaintance dropped in for a chat.“Hullo, Mother—that you?”“Oh, there you are, dear,” replied the voice of the Dowager Duchess. “I was afraid I’d just missed you.”“Well, you had, as a matter of fact. I’d just started off to Brocklebury’s sale to pick up a book or two, but I had to come back for the catalogue. What’s up?”“Such a quaint thing,” said the Duchess. “I thought I’d tell you. You know little Mr. Thipps?”“Thipps?” said Lord Peter. “Thipps? Oh, yes, the little architect man who’s doing the church roof. Yes. What about him?”“Mrs. Throgmorton’s just been in, in quite a state of mind.”“Sorry, Mother, I can’t hear. Mrs. Who?”“Throgmorton—Throgmorton—the vicar’s wife.”“Oh, Throgmorton, yes?”“Mr. Thipps rang them up this morning. It was his day to come down, you know.”“Yes?”“He rang them up to say he couldn’t. He was so upset, poor little man. He’d found a dead body in his bath.”“Sorry, Mother, I can’t hear; found what, where?”“A dead body, dear, in his bath.”“What?—no, no, we haven’t finished. Please don’t cut us off. Hullo! Hullo! Is that you, Mother? Hullo!—Mother!—Oh, yes—sorry, the girl was trying to cut us off. What sort of body?”“A dead man, dear, with nothing on but a pair of pince-nez. Mrs. Throgmorton positively blushed when she was telling me. I’m afraid people do get a little narrow-minded in country vicarages.”“Well, it sounds a bit unusual. Was it anybody he knew?”“No, dear, I don’t think so, but, of course, he couldn’t give her many details. She said he sounded quite distracted. He’s such a respectable little man—and having the police in the house and so on, really worried him.”“Poor little Thipps! Uncommonly awkward for him. Let’s see, he lives in Battersea, doesn’t he?”

Whose Body? is a 1923 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, which introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter is intrigued by the sudden appearance of a naked body in the bath of an architect, and investigates. A noted financier has also gone missing under strange circumstances, and as the case progresses it becomes clear that the two events are linked in some way… (wikipedia.org)

Mild-mannered, inoffensive architect Alfred Thipps finds himself in big trouble when, in preparing to take his morning bath, he finds the tub already occupied by a dead body, wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez glasses. Stolid, unimaginative Police Inspector Sugg is convinced the body is that of Sir Reuben Levy, a famous Jewish financier who disappeared the night before - waving aside objections that, as the body in the tub was uncircumcised, it couldn't be Sir Reuben - and promptly arrests Thipps and his maid for murder.Luckily for both of them, the Dowager Duchess of Denver takes an interest, and asks her son, Lord Peter Wimsey, to help out. Working with his old friend Detective Charles Parker of Scotland Yard, who's been assigned to the Levy case, Lord Peter sets himself to the task of figuring out who the dead man in the bathtub is. He soon grows to suspect that the two cases are connected in a particularly sinister way . . . .Lord Peter soon finds himself on the trail of a murderer of a particularly cunning sort, fresh from the perpetration of a shockingly cold-blooded and horrific crime.

The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder-especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath. First published in 1923, Whose Body? established the disarmingly debonair-and somewhat foppish-Wimsey as one of the most enduring characters in English literature. It remains one of the most significant (and most charming) of the Golden Age mysteries.