DOROTHY SAYERS: HAVE HIS CARCASE
(SAYERS, Dorothy L. Have his carcase. 1st pub. in pbk. by New English library. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974, xi, 468 pages. ISBN 978-0-450-02712-3.)
NOTES:
•HV = Harriet Vane = detective story writer,
•PW = Lord Peter Wimsey,
•Robert Templeton = detective from HV’s novels.
•the chapter titles are usually pieces of new evidence.
•a website with notes: http://planetpeschel.com/the-wimsey-annotations/have-his-carcase/
SHORT PLOT OUTLINE:
• HV is on vacation, eats lunch on a beach, falls asleep, a sound wakes her up, she goes to a rock (called Flat-
Iron) that is close to the sea and on it there is a man with a lot of blood, his throat is cut, she knows high tide will take the
body with it but she isn’t strong enough to remove it from the rock, at least she takes photos of the corpse and tries to
find someone to help her move the body or tell the police, moves towards a town, meets a man and he goes with her,
meanwhile the body is washed away, found 2 weeks later…. she stays at a hotel there for maybe 3 weeks because she
wants to investigate it with lord Peter Wimsey, but also because she is one of the suspects, so she has to stay.
DETAILED PLOT & QUOTES WITH PAGE NUMBERS:
•HV’s opinion: “The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a
manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.” (1)
•“[...] and Harriet, though not too old to care for her personal appearance, was old enough to prefer convenience
to outward display.” (3)
•example of intertextuality, hv: ”Perfectly simple, my dear Watson.” (5)
•investigates tides for her novel.
•sees a man on a rock: “Now, if I had any luck, he’d be a corpse, and I should report him and get my name in the
papers. That would be something like publicity. [...] But these things never happen to authors. [... ] Harriet’s luck was
in.” (7)
•feels sick because of the corpse (8)
•“Keep your head, my girl. What would Lord Peter Wimsey do in such a case?” 8-9
•“She conjured up his [Robert Templeton’s] phantom before her in the suit of rather loud plus-fours with which
she was accustomed to invest him, and took counsel with him in spirit” 9
•anti feminist opinion: “There might be a few scattered houses on the road, but they would probably belong to
fishermen, and ten to one she would find nobody at home but women and children, who would be useless in the
emergency” 10
•“Well how long had the man been dead, in any case? This was a thing Robert Templeton would have known,
too, for he had been through a course of medical studies among other things, and moreover, never went out without a
clinical thermometer and other suitable apparatus for testing the freshness or otherwise of bodies” 12
•“The innter breast-pocket, of course, was the one for papers, but Harriet felt a deep repugnance to handling the
inner breast-pocket.” 14
•2 farmwomen aren't portrayed to be intelligent
•wants a male tourist help her with letting the police know: “After all, what could he do? He was in exactly the
