The Nine Tailors

I went into 'The Nine Tailors' expecting a well-written golden-age mystery. I was curious to see Peter Wimsey without Harriet Vane as a balance. I wasn't expecting anything more than some colourful scenery, a bit of wit and an engaging puzzle. I got all those things but they weren't really what the book was about.

'The Nine Tailors' is a story lacquered with lots of layers of imagery and inquiry but, at its heart, I think it's about Sayers' love of the Fens and its people and her understanding, expressed through Wimsey, of her arms-length relationship to it.

I didn't always find it an easy book to read. At the start, I was a bit overwhelmed by a tide of technical details of bell-ringing that I couldn't follow and which, especially in show more the audiobook version, became tedious. I could follow the lengthy descriptions of church architecture more easily because I love to visit old churches but even so, it was a lot to take in.

Eventually, I let go of trying to understand the detail of bells and church and focus on the meaning behind them. A picture emerged of bell-ringing as something that binds a village together. The bells and the church are hundreds of years old. They've stood at the centre of the village, marking all the significant events of village life, for generations. The peals the bell-ringers pull are marvels of mathematics, a sort of Bach in sounding bronze, and yet they are mastered by men with no education but a great deal of commitment. Ringing the bells is a disciplined, collaborative act that requires skill and stamina. The sound of the bells is so strong and so rich that you can lose yourself in it. The book starts with nine hours of bell-ringing. Think of losing yourself in the sound for that long but never letting go of your concentration and constantly having to use your muscle and your wit. That is a mighty meditation.

The bell-ringers are men of the village, with a hierarchy of their own when in the bell tower. The vicar links them to the bells and the music in a way akin to leading the parish in prayer. When Sayers has Lord Peter Wimsey step in at the last moment to ring in the New Year with nine hours of bell-ringing, he puts aside the title and status he was born to and becomes someone judged by his ability to play his part, to collaborate with the other bell-ringers and give himself to the music welcoming the New Year across the village. It seemed to me to be a kind of baptism.

Sayers presents the church as the physical and emotional centre of village life. The vicar and his wife are two of the most engaging characters in the book. He is distracted, obsessed with bell-ringing, proud of the history of his church and is easily distracted from the practicalities of life. His wife is practical and organised and effectively runs the Parish. The two of them represent a link between the village and the rest of English society. They seemed to me to be benign colonists or perhaps transplants who have started to mutate. The church stands above the village and the voice of its bells can be heard everywhere. At one point the church becomes, not for the first time, a refuge for the villagers, a sort of Ark against the floods. I thought these descriptions of bells and church were Sayers' way of showing the spiritual life of the village.

Her love of the place is so deep, it mostly carried me along in an 'isn't that charming' sort of way, like something from an earlier era, perhaps 'Under The Greenwood Tree' or 'Lark Rise To Candleford'. But I'm not from that place or time or faith and one small thing pulled me out of the mood. I learned that, when a man dies, the Tailor bell is rung nine times to mark his death and then once for each year of his life. Suddenly the charming but obscure title to the book got translated in my head as 'The Death Knell' and I imagined the book rewritten as a piece of Noir. It was what I learned next that pulled me out of the cosy world of the book and back into a place I recognise. Although when a man dies, he gets nine bells tolled for him, when a woman dies, she gets six bells tolled for her. I found myself suddenly angry at the fact that, even in death, the Anglican church treated women with less respect than men, and angry again that no one even comments on it.

Wrapped around this depiction of village life and this contemplation on death knells, there is a murder mystery and Peter Wimsey is at the heart of solving it. It's a clever mystery. I couldn't have guessed how the murder was done or by whom. It's also a mystery that adds another layer of symbolism to the book. The cause of death and the consequences of the killing both speak to an almost supernatural force driving justice and atonement.

The mystery decorates rather than drives the plot. The plot moves at a pace so slow, it feels as though you're drifting on the narrative stream with no rudder and no objective other than taking in the view. A TV version of 'Nine Taylors' might get as far as the inquest (about 25% into the book) shortly after the credits but in doing so they'd completely miss the point, which is to immerse yourself in the slow rhythm of life in this isolated village.

As we drifted along, I found myself taking a quiet delight in how Sayers writes. Her prose bubbles with a gentle humour that never sneers or uses sarcasm but rather shows her affection for the people of the village and the way they treat each other.

There were set pieces that I thought quite marvellous. The continuous flow of speech that establishes the characters of the vicar, Mr Venables (great choice of name) is fast and deft and very effective. The way the Sextant and the Vicar talk at cross-purposes when the body is found which, as well as being humorous, shows how a man who is never in a hurry tells a tale to a man who is never quite sure what to do next. The vicar's letter to Wimsey is a masterpiece. The vicar's whole character is on the text of that letter. The description of the Coroner's brisk handling of the inquest feels like fancy camera work in the way it cuts out unnecessary detail and, in the process, establishes the atmosphere of the event.

When I finished the book, I was struck by the way its tone reminded me of Jon McGregor's 'Reservoir 13' which takes a disappearance as its starting point but spends its energy capturing the rhythm of village life. In 'The Nine Tailors' the tracking of the crime is secondary to the immersion into the life of a Fen village. It also uses that solid, unvarying life of that village to reflect on the life Wimsey is living. The book starts and finishes with Wimsey stepping outside his normal life to make up new roles in the village. Yet he cannot escape who he is and what he knows. He remains entangled in the affairs or Red House. Finding the solution as to who died and who was involved in the death brings nothing but disruption and pain. When he finally understands the killing, what used to be a memory that made him smile with affectionate pride has been transformed into something sinister.

I'd wanted to see who Peter Wimsey was without Harriet Vane. In 'The Nine Tailors', Wimsey seems to skim along, dipping in and out of engagement with others. He presents himself as no more than a genial puzzle solver but I think he is constantly trying to step out of the shadow of his own knowledge of the world. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I was struck by the image of Wimsey's car, last to leave the flooding sluice, at the back of the queue of vehicles, axle-deep in water and being pursued by an impersonal but unstoppable flooding tide, as a symbol of the man's life. show less

Lord Peter Wimsey, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last

I’ve read one novel by Dorothy L. Sayers before. I cannot remember which one it was. At the time I found it slow-paced and boring. Isn’t it lucky that we are rarely the same readers we were years ago? I jumped into a group read and was delighted.

As we begin, Wimsey’s car has an unfortunate encounter with a ditch, so he ends up spending a few days in a nearby village. There is a lovely church (the descriptions made my heart beat faster). ”Impressive!” said Wimsey. ”Why, it’s like a young cathedral.”

There is a lot of geekery about church bells and bell ringing. We are talking about English change-ringing, to be exact. (There is a YouTube rabbit hole show more here for you, if you are willing.) What is Kent Treble Bob? I have no idea, but it sounds grand. I don’t think I’ve ever read a mystery so focused on church bells – as a theme, as a symbol, as a plot device – it was fascinating.

The murder mystery is dark, gory, gothic. It is intricate, you need to pay attention. All the major reveals are impressive and heartbreaking. Yet to me, the book was more about the time, the place, the landscape, the people of the village, how people talked, the beautiful way the community came together when disaster struck. I savoured it all slowly, and the book let me do that. I’m grateful and I want more.

Favourite quotes:

”Mouth up, mouth down, they brawled with their tongues of bronze, and through it all that shrill, high, sweet, relentless note went stabbing and shivering.”

”Wimsey saw that the only way to quiet the Rector was to desert him without compunction.”

”I’m a terrific success at pottering around asking sloppy questions. And I can put away quite a lot of beer in a good cause.”

”…they’re all idiots – mostly, that is.”
”Most people are,” said Wimsey, gravely, ”but it isn’t kind to tell them so.”

”Mr. Edward Thorpe, forty-four, very correct and formal, presented a bland Civil-Service front to the impact of Wimsey’s personality.” show less

Read it and loved it a long time ago. Reread as audio and enjoyed it very much and realized again what a wild and meta kind of writing is going on — change ringing math throughout, including in the arrangement of the chapters and parts. Peculiarly British, and fascinating. I also love it when murder mysteries acknowledge the real sorrow and pain that investigations bring up, and this one has that melancholy habit.

Toll-toll-toll; and a pause; toll-toll-toll; and a pause; toll-toll-toll; the nine tailors, or teller-strokes, that mark the passing of a man. The year is dead; toll him out with twelve strokes more, one for every passing month. Then silence. Then, from the faint, sweet tubular chimes of the clock overhead, the four quarters and the twelve strokes of midnight. The ringers grasped their ropes. ‘Go!’

The Bells! The Bells! Esmeraldaaaaaa!.....Okay, okay, wrong book. Well, at least the Esmeralda part.

Lord Peter is such a handy bloke to have around. Not only can he solve mysteries like it's nobody's business, he's also a seasoned change ringer. So, when his car breaks down on New Year's Eve and he and Bunter are taken in at the vicarage show more in Fenchurch St. Paul, he helps his host out by joining a nine-hour-long bell ringing service.

‘Not in the least, Mrs Venables. Nothing would please me more than to ring bells all day and all night. I am not tired at all. I really don’t need rest. I would far rather ring bells. The only thing that worries me is whether I shall be able to get through the peal without making stupid mistakes.’

What the congregation does not know when they ring in the new year, is that at the same time, a man died mysteriously in their midst.

‘A corpse? Well, of course there’s a corpse. Lady Thorpe is buried there. You buried her yourself.’
‘Yes, sir, but this here corpus ain’t Lady Thorpe’s corpus. It’s a man’s corpus, that’s what it is, and it du seem as though it didn’t have no right to be there. So I says to Dick—’
‘A man’s corpse! What do you mean? Is it in a coffin?’

This was a great story. Not only did the mystery prove to be more than a straight-forward who-dunnit, there were also a few more insights into Lord Peter's and other characters war time experiences. Sayers really made sure that her postwar settings did not deny the scars and damage that the First World War had left on the survivors. It's an aspect of the series I very much admire. And all of it is tied up with a lot of humor.

‘Superintendent,’ he said, ‘I think I have been the most unmitigated and unconscionable ass that ever brayed in a sleuthhound’s skin. Now, however, I have solved the entire problem, with one trivial exception. Probably you have done so too.’
‘I’ll buy it,’ said Mr Blundell. ‘I’m like you, my lord, I’m doing no more guessing. What’s the bit you haven’t solved, by the way?’
‘Well, the murder,’ said his lordship, with an embarrassed cough. ‘I can’t quite make out who did that, or how. But that, as I say, is a trifle.' show less

An amateur detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, is snowbound in a small English town on New Year's Eve. He helps the town's people ring in the new year on their church bells. Three months later Wimsey is called upon to solve the mystery of a dead body found in the churchyard. The 20-year-old theft of an emerald necklace lies at the heart of the case. The book's title comes from a specific ringing of the church bells to note a death in the parish.

This is my first experience with Sayers and the infamous Wimsey. I really enjoyed it. It's a delicious English detective story, complete with polite inquiries and afternoon tea. It's certainly not fast-paced and can lag a bit as they toss ideas back and forth, but it pays off in the end. I'll have to show more pick up more of Sayers' work, but mysteries and other essays she's well known for.

"Bells are like cats and mirrors, always queer, doesn't do a thing to think too much about them." show less

This was one of the few remaining Whimsey books I had left to read; not being English by birth, and ignorant of the art behind bell ringing, I'd naturally thought this was a mystery about tailors; you know, those that produce clothing. I was set straight a few of years ago, and became determined to read it, because a mystery about bell ringing sounded a LOT more interesting.

Nine Tailors was both what I did and didn't expect. From what I'd picked up about bell ringing by osmosis, I knew it was going to be one of the more esoteric mysteries, so I was going to have to depend a lot on context, or spend a lot of time googling. But I didn't expect the almost thriller-ish pacing towards the end, especially as the rest of the book was almost show more languid in it's exploration of the murder of the stranger in the tower.

In a genre where Cabot Cover Syndrome abounds, with a dozen murders in a small town/village occurring within months is the norm, it's refreshing to pick up a golden age mystery where – time passes –. Indeed, it's 6 months or so before the readers are given a partial solution, and it's almost a year to the day before the true nature of the killing is understood.

If the esoteric nature of the plot aren't a barrier for the mystery lover, there's an outstanding mystery to be had. Several classic elements are here: coded messages, riddles, cold crimes, treasure, and intrigue in graveyards. It's not strictly a perfect mystery - the cold crime in question starts out with three men clearly involved, but later in the book that third man is discarded; this totally left me confused later in the book, forcing me to go back and re-read earlier sections to get back on track.

Ultimately, I figured out both identity and cause of death well before Whimsey, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the story - indeed, Sayers, in all her mastery, created a fair play mystery where I, as a reader, was actively trying to figure it out, and I had the clues I needed to do it. But even more than this, Sayers created a story where I was invested in the village of Fenchurch St. Paul; I needed to know about the fate of the village and villagers more than I needed to know whether or not I was right. When Whimsey figured out how the man died, and I learned whether I was right or not, it was, as I believe Sayers intended, rather anticlimactic and merely a footnote in light of the events that came before.

I didn't go with a higher rating because I think I'm going to need to re-read this one in order to appreciate the work as a whole. There's a feeling that there's a complexity to the writing and story telling that I missed the first time around; I was too focused on the trees to fully appreciate the majesty of the forest. But even so, it's a book I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who appreciates fine writing and an excellent mystery. show less

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

My introduction to Lord Peter Wimsey was via the 1970s TV series staring the excellent Ian Carmichael as the aristocratic sleuth. I recall my mother and I being amused to see Ian Carmichael in this role when we thought of him primarily as Bertie Wooster in the original 1960s TV adaptation of Jeeves with Dennis Price playing the unflappable valet.

In my mind the Lord Peter Wimsey tales were simply cosy crime stories. That is how I perceived them in the TV show and that is how I thought of the novels until reading The Nine Tailors.

I have to confess that this is the first Dorothy L Sayers novel I have read. It did not disappoint but until my curiosity was aroused by a few un-sleuth-story-like allusions show more I did not think the tale was anything other than a cosy crime novel.

My reaction to the book on the cosy crime story level is that it very much fits the bill of the golden age of crime novels and is enjoyable in that context alone. I must admit the book brought out the aristocracy element more than I had recalled from the shows and I was finding myself a bit annoyed at the deference shown to someone with a title on the basis of nothing other than their privileged position. Lord Peter did, of course, have his reputation as rather a good sleuth.

The first thing that raised my suspicion that Sayers was doing something more than writing a detective story was the mention of Abbot Thomas. The name “Abbot Thomas” rang bells (how apropos) at the back of my mind. “Of course,” thought I, M. R. James. He has a story called [The Treasure of Abbot Thomas]. There’s a coincidence. I wonder if Abbot Thomas was a real person and his tomb is in the fens.”

Next I found intricate descriptions of carvings on the pews in the parish church. This reminded me of M.R. James’s story [The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral].

I was subsequently amused to see a chapter starting with a quote from [Wylder’s Hand] by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the nineteenth century writer of horror stories whose tale, [Carmilla], is considered to have influenced Bram Stoker in his writing of [Dracula]. Le Fanu’s work is not as well known generally as it deserves to be so I was intrigued at Sayers quoting one of these pieces.

My curiosity roused I turned to the omnipresent Google. I entered, “The Nine Tailors Abbot Thomas Le Fanu”, and clicked the search icon. The first result of my search was:
http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/HConrad-OBriain.html

The link took me to a paper in the academic journal, “The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Stories”.

This paper is entitled:
“Providence and Intertextuality: LeFanu, M. R. James, and Dorothy Sayers' The Nine Tailors”

It was not just my imagination. I was not the first one to notice the links. It appears Sayers was a great fan of the Gothic tale and very fond of works of Le Fanu and M R James. Being a fan of these tales too I found another level of pleasure in reading The Nine Tailors. Finding out something about an author’s interests can open up an entirely new dimension of enjoyment when reading their work.
You can read the academic paper for yourself. I will not repeat the way it explains how The Nine Tailors is structured as a Gothic novel and how it contains many of the tropes that define the genre. I had been wondering about the inclusion of the final part of The Nine Tailors as it was not necessary to resolve or explain the crime. The academic paper demonstrates that this section serves the purpose of finishing the story in the style of a Gothic novel.

I had been thinking that while I enjoyed reading this novel I probably would not deliberately chase down more stories by Dorothy L Sayers. Now that I know she has hidden Gothic allusions and structures in her works I am more enthusiastic about reading more of her books. As it happens, my wife is a great fan of Sayers’ novels so we have a few of them around the house. I wonder if my wife knew she was reading Gothic stories. show less