The Nine Tailors

Dorothy L. Sayers is one of the most important mystery novelists of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction that thrived in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s. Like her contemporary, Agatha Christie, Sayers wrote a popular series whose principal character is an amateur detective. There are 11 novels in the Lord Peter Wimsey series written between 1923 and 1937, and multiple short story collections based on the same character. Wimsey was also depicted in movies starting in 1935, on radio primarily during the 1940s, and in two television adaptations in the 1970s and 1980s. Both of these productions are now available on video.

The Nine Tailors (1934) is Sayers’s ninth title in the Wimsey series and was inspired to a limited degree by her own life experience. Sayers’s father was a minister, as is one of the major characters in the novel. He was vicar of a town near the fens that Sayers uses as the setting for her story. Likewise, her father restored the church bells in his parish, which inspired Sayers’s interest in the subject of change ringing. Lastly, some of the character surnames in the novel come from the church graveyard near Sayer’s childhood home.

The Nine Tailors falls into the mystery fiction category. It is set during a contemporary period that would correspond to the early 1930s. The story unfolds between New Year’s Eve and the following Christmas season, although most of the action occurs around the two holidays a year apart. Except for a few scenes set in London, the rest of the novel takes place in the small village of Fenchurch St. Paul in East Anglia, Great Britain.

The story uses a limited third-person narrative technique from the viewpoint of Lord Peter Wimsey. As the book follows Wimsey in his attempts to solve the mystery of a murdered corpse buried in a churchyard, the novel examines the themes of the dangers of dredging up the past, the perils of sacrilege, and the difference between human law and divine justice.

This study guide references the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 1966 hardcover edition.

Plot Summary

Lord Peter Wimsey and his valet Bunter are driving to visit friends in East Anglia when a snowstorm sends their car skidding into a ditch. Unable to get the necessary repairs done that night, the men take shelter at the village parsonage with Rector Venables. Venables is a change-ringing enthusiast and tells Wimsey all about the nine-hour bell concert that will take place that night in the church. When one of the bell ringers unexpectedly falls ill, Wimsey volunteers to take his place. The concert doesn’t end until nine in the morning on New Year’s Day. Only an hour afterward, Venables is abruptly called away to the deathbed of Lady Thorpe, the wife of Sir Henry, the local aristocrat.

A few days later, Wimsey’s car is repaired, and he and Bunter go on their way. Two months later, Wimsey receives an unexpected letter from Venables requesting his help. It seems that Sir Henry has just died too. While digging Sir Henry’s burial plot beside his wife, the church sexton discovers that a corpse had been dumped into Lady Thorpe’s grave immediately after her burial.

Wimsey returns to the village and joins forces with local police Superintendent Blundell to determine the corpse’s identity. The plot thickens as the body leads them to the theft of an emerald necklace 15 years earlier and an escaped convict, presumed to be dead, who is very much alive. While Wimsey partially solves the mystery, the final answer eludes him until the following holiday season when he is invited back to the fens.

When torrential rains cause the village to flood, Wimsey takes shelter in the church belfry and accidentally stumbles upon the missing piece of the puzzle and the strangest murder weapon imaginable. Having now completely solved the mystery, Wimsey departs and leaves the village to resume its peaceful way of life.