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Original poster

Th think that Miss Climpson should have been in The Nine Tailors

265 replies

Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:30

Miss Climpson did not appear in this book.

The purpose of this thread is to examine why this oversight occurred.

The Chalet School books may be mentioned if people wish.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:32

@missclimpson

Come and defend yourself.

And we want to know the full details of your previous experience with fake mediums, too.

OP posts:
Nowisthemonthofmaying · 07/07/2019 14:33

I love Miss Climpson! She should have been in all of them

Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:33

Not again!

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:36

@Nowisthemonthofmay

Indeed she should.

Possible Miss Sayers hadn't got round to inventing her when she wrote the earlier books.

I think DLS should have rewritten all the books which didn't feature Miss C.

OP posts:
CMOTDibbler · 07/07/2019 14:46

I've been listening to the BBC dramatised DL Sayers, and absolutely agree - Miss Climpson is fantastic and should have had her own books

Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 14:53

What do you think of Busman's Honeymoon?

Miss C did appear, as a guest at the wedding, but had no part to play in the detection of the murder of Mr. Noakes.

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 07/07/2019 14:56

I don’t think Peter had established “the cattery” then, had he?

MoaningMinniee · 07/07/2019 14:57

What I've always wondered is why Hilary Thorpe didn't get invited to the wedding?

MoaningMinniee · 07/07/2019 15:02

I think Miss Climpson and the cattery first appear in Unnatural Death, the third Lord Peter novel. So she would have been available for everything except Whose Body and Clouds of Witness.

Fiderer · 07/07/2019 15:44

Don't mind Miss C not being in Busman's Honeymoon as that was all v Peter & Harriet - and Bunter.

Would have liked to have more about Hilary Thorpe getting the emeralds back but must admit have not re-read the books in years. Listen to the BBC dramatisations on Audible. Was there anything in the books about it? Restoring the family fortunes and having a gloriously independent future?

Perhaps there wasn't much for Miss C to do in TNT. The police conveniently tracked down Nobby Cranton.

Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 16:13

@BertrandRussell

No, The Cattery had not been established when DLS wrote TNT.

I do think he style was much easier in the later books - and PW was less insufferable.

@Fiderer

Yes, Nobby Cranton was tracked down by Parker and Co.

Remember all that fandangle with Suzanne Legros and the red cow having died - I wonder how many people reading TNT managed to disentangle that plot.

I only fully understood it when I watched the dramatization with Ian Carmichael as PW, ringing dem bells.

I have always thought that plot is a clusterfuck.

OP posts:
missclimpson · 07/07/2019 16:24

Oh how kind of you all. (Blushes and flutters).
Well my dears, first of all I was busy learning the tools of my trade because one's shorthand and typing skills are so important for a gel of my station are they not? Then I gained employment at a City firm and discovered to my horror that the senior partner was engaged in fraudulent activity which I was obliged to bring to the attention of the Chairman of the Board. As a result I lost my position and times were rather hard, but a dear friend drew me to the attention of dear Lord Peter, who was greatly in need of my skills.
I was unable to travel to Norfolk because of a most untimely blizzard, but I am glad to say that in later years I was able to assist Lord Peter and the unfortunate Miss Vane.
In answer to your most indelicate question, the secret of how I secured the clicker in my bloomers, I will take with me to my grave.

Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 17:03

@missclimpson

Ha!

I always wondered what Mrs. Whatsername at the Guest House would have said to you if you'd been a married woman but decided, after investigating fake mediums, that the mention of putting things up your fanjo so that you could retrieve them later on, in a pretend trance, would have been something DLS might have spared us from reading.

And you from enduring. Dreadful.

OP posts:
Original poster
Jemima232 · 07/07/2019 17:09

@missclimpson

By the way, I am intrigued by the way you mention "the tools of your trade" in that way.

Were shorthand and typing the only tools you got used to?

Always wondered if Miss C was a VER-GIN y'know?

Because Miss Murchison did get married (eventually) and her marriage was mentioned in Gaudy Night. Poor old Harriet was left to deal with the Poison Pen without the assistance of The Cattery or of her annoying amour-in-waiting, DLS's wish-fulfilment - Peter Wimsey.

Anyyone MNetters who were up at Oxford? Did you go to Gaudys? When did they stop holding them?

OP posts:
missclimpson · 07/07/2019 17:35

Ah "the tools of my trade". Well dear, shorthand and typing, absolute discretion, the ability to lip-read (my grandmother was very deaf even though she made extraordinarily eccentric and unusual use of her ear trumpet) and an insatiable curiosity about what some might call the seamier side of life; these are the most important weapons in my armoury.
I cannot comment on your other question, unmarried gels of my generation remained unacquainted with the more personal details of the opposite sex.

Allington · 07/07/2019 17:53

And the ability to make a proper cup of tea, surely?

QuaterMiss · 07/07/2019 17:55

My least favourite from Harriet is "Can you eat your egg less splashily" to one of the DC she managed to have despite being over forty when she married Wimsey.

(From the CS thread!)

Why am I perfectly sure Jemima that in the JPW-co-authored Thrones Dominations, which begins after the honeymoon, Harriet was in her thirties when she discovered she was pregnant? I recall her having a conversation about her age with some gent (possibly an in-law) at a dinner party. I will be annoyed if I’m wrong ...

Allington · 07/07/2019 17:55

And all gels of your generation 'learnt to sketch a little', I seem to recall.

Given your innate modesty, I have always imagined that this meant you had an international career as an artist, but it didn't do to boast

Allington · 07/07/2019 17:57

LP was over 40, but Harriet a fair amount younger.

She ?late 20s? in Strong Poison, then it took 3 or 4? 5? years to agree to marry LP. Mid-30s at the oldest?