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Whose Body, concluded

Quite a complicated plot.  The murderer is a surgeon and scientist, Dr. Julian Freke.  He believes that conscience is utter nonsense.  He murders Reuben Levy because Levy bested him in love years earlier, but also to prove his point about conscience. Wimsey somehow sees the whole picture and solves the crime.  I'm not sure I get it yet.  It goes something like this:  Freke, a dissector of bodies for his occupation, comes upon a vagrant who looks something like Levy.  This man dies of a broken neck.  Freke then kills Levy by breaking his neck with a poker.  Freke substitutes Levy for the vagrant.  A team of dissectors work on him and then bury him.  Great . . . except Freke has an extra body . . . the vagrant.  Here's where it gets interesting.  Rather than just disposing of the body somehow, Freke makes the man look as much like Levy as possible, transports it across a rooftop, and deposits it in the bathtub of a neighbor.  This causes the police no end of confusion, which I guess is Freke's point.  Wimsey figures it out, though.

Some nice sardonic English humor  throughout. I'll probably read another Sayers book some day, but no rush.


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