Death in Dorothy L Sayers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Suicide

"Clouds of Witness" sees Lord Peter's elder brother, Gerald Duke of Denver, charged with murdering his daughter's fiancé at a hunting lodge in the Yorkshire Dales. During the investigation Lord Peter sorts out some family secrets and travels to the US in search of a letter which shows that the dead man was planning to kill himself, after being rejected by the woman he really loved. Constraints of time force him to fly back across the Atlantic, which was not a common or a safe undertaking in 1923.

Answer: Air bubble injected

The murderer in "Unnatural Death" is one of the least attractive characters in Sayers's novels. A chance comment in a restaurant leads Lord Peter to investigate the death of an elderly woman who seems to have died peacefully in her sleep. A curious doctor, a long-lost heir, a kidnapping, and a murderer leading a double life complicate the unravelling of the plot.

The injection of an air bubble into the old lady's arm stopped her heart and left no trace of foul play.

Answer: Digitalis overdose

The murderer in this novel administers an overdose of digitalis to an elderly war veteran in poor health. This is done to allow the murderer's lady friend to inherit a substantial estate from the dead man. The body is then hidden in a phone booth at the Bellona Club and a sign posted on the door, 'Out of Service'. What Lord Peter finds appalling is that the murderer then used the two-minute silence on Armistice Day (11 November), while all the members were standing solemnly outside, to move the corpse to a chair in the corner of the Club's reading room, where the body was discovered some time later.

Answer: Arsenic poisoning

In "Strong Poison" Lord Peter meets Harriet Vane, the mystery writer whom he will eventually marry a few books later. She has been accused of poisoning her lover with arsenic, and her first trial for murder ends in a hung jury. Lord Peter investigates, aided by one of his 'Cattery', a collection of single women who do undercover work for him.

The crime again has to do with a will, the murderer being next in line after the dead man to inherit a substantial estate. He has been dosing himself with arsenic over several months to build up an immunity and then invites his victim to an arsenic-laced dinner.

Answer: Head injuries

In "Five Red Herrings" Sayers used a real setting, an artist's community in the Scottish region of Galloway, for the murder of a very unpopular painter, whose body is found at the foot of a rocky cliff with head and facial injuries. As many as six of his fellow artists had strong motives for murder; Lord Peter must sort through their various movements and alibis to arrive at the person who must have done the crime.

The story also involves a convoluted re-construction of the crime involving railway timetables and the possibility of being in two places at the same time.

Answer: Cut throat

This is the second novel featuring Harriet Vane, whom Lord Peter has asked to be his wife on several occasions. To these proposals she has always refused. On a walking tour on Channel coast in southwest England she comes across a murdered man, still bleeding from his cut throat, on a rock in the sea near the shore.

By the time she can alert authorities and help arrives on the scene, the outgoing tide has washed the body out to sea. Lord Peter arrives and together they investigate why someone would want to murder a foreign dancer to whom older and well-off women are attracted.

Answer: A catapult (slingshot)

Since Sayers herself worked in an advertising agency in London for nine years, she set this novel in a very similar firm. A copy-writer at Pym's Publicity has fallen down a circular staircase with no attempt to break his fall. Lord Peter goes undercover to investigate both this suspicious death and an unfinished letter found in his desk about "undesirable" goings-on at the agency.

He discovers a link with the London society drug-scene and that the murderer killed the copy-writer with a stone shot from a catapult (slingshot) just as the victim began to descend the staircase.

Answer: Apoplexy

Regarded as possibly her best work of detective fiction, certainly her most memorable setting, "The Nine Tailors" takes place in the Fen Country near the North Sea. Lord Peter's car is disabled in a snowstorm on New Year's Eve and he must take refuge at the local vicarage.

This book is principally about campanology (bell-ringing) and that evening Lord Peter takes part in an eight-hour ringing of the bells. A few months later, the discovery of a body in someone else's grave in the village cemetery brings Lord Peter back to investigate.

The novel features a code dependent on knowing the changes in ringing bells, a case of assumed identity, a stolen necklace, and a massive flood which threatens the village where these events have happened. The victim died of apoplexy -- there was no intended murder -- but it would be too much of a SPOILER to go any farther.

Answer: There is no death

In this mystery no-one is killed or even threatened with death. Harriet Vane goes back to her Oxford College (Shrewsbury College, Sayers's fictional creation based on Somerville College where she was a student) for a Gaudy (reunion). There she is asked by the Warden and the Dean to investigate some poison pen letters and some vandalism around the College.

She is given a guest room and begins her investigations. The unpleasant incidents continue and finally Lord Peter (also an Oxford alumnus) arrives to visit his nephew and together Harriet and Peter discover who has been responsible and why.

In the very last paragraph he again asks Harriet (in Latin) to marry him and this time she accepts (in Latin).

Answer: A hanging cactus plant

This was her last full-length story about Lord Peter, although some short stories and an unfinished novel survive. Sub-titled "A Love-Story with Detective Interruptions", the story takes place during Lord Peter's and Harriet's honeymoon in a country house in Harriet's home village.

He has bought this as a country property and also as his wedding present to her. Strangely the previous owner is not there to welcome them, but next day his body is found at the foot of the cellar stairs, his skull caved in.

The book is as much about the start of their married life as solving the murder. The motive has again to do with an inheritance and the murderer set up an elegant trap by which, when the victim opened a phonograph cabinet, a hanging cactus plant was released which crushed his skull.