Busman's Honeymoon
First edition
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| Author | Dorothy L. Sayers |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lord Peter Wimsey |
| Genre | Mystery, Detective novel |
| Publisher | Gollancz |
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Publication date
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1937 in literature |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Preceded by | Gaudy Night |
| Followed by | In the Teeth of the Evidence |
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh (and last) featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It is the fourth and last novel to feature Harriet Vane.
Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry and go to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Hertfordshire which he has bought her as a present. The honeymoon is intended as a break from their usual routine of solving crimes (him) and writing about them (her), but it turns into a murder investigation when the seller of the house is found dead at the bottom of the cellar steps with severe head injuries.
A "" is a holiday spent by a bus driver travelling on a bus: it is no break from his usual routine. By analogy, anyone who spends his holiday doing his normal job is taking a "busman's holiday".
After an engagement of some months following the events at the end of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry. They plan to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Harriet's native Hertfordshire which Wimsey has bought for her, and they abscond from the wedding reception, evading the assembled reporters.
Arriving late at night, they are surprised to find the house locked up and not prepared for them. They gain access and spend their wedding night there, but next morning they discover the former owner, Noakes, dead in the cellar with head injuries. The quiet honeymoon is ruined as a murder investigation begins and the house fills with policemen, reporters, and brokers' men distraining Noakes' hideous furniture.
Noakes was an unpopular man, a miser and (it turns out) a blackmailer. He was assumed to be well off, but it transpires that he was bankrupt, owed large amounts of money, and was planning to flee his creditors with the cash paid for Talboys. The house had been locked and bolted when the newly-weds arrived, and medical evidence seems to rule out an accident, so it seems he was attacked in the house and died later, having somehow locked up after his attacker. The suspects include Noakes' niece Aggie; Mrs Ruddle, his neighbour and cleaning lady; Frank Crutchley, a local garage mechanic who also tended Noakes' garden; and the local police constable, who was his blackmail victim.
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