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  Strong Poison: Chapter 22 - Urquhart's Turkish Delight 26.09.2026 17min

  Norman Urquhart answers Wimsey's letter and comes to the flat, where Bunter serves Turkish coffee and a box of Turkish Delight. Watching the clock, Wimsey takes over an hour to review Philip Boyes's death and Mrs. Wrayburn's will, then works through the fatal dinner course by course: the water bottle, the sherry, soup, fish and casserole. That leaves the omelette, and the cracked egg Urquhart bought himself and asked to have used, an easy vessel for powdered arsenic.Wimsey explains how Styrian peasants build up a tolerance to solid arsenic, and says Urquhart's complexion, his sleek hair, his refusal to drink at dinner, a packet from a foreign chemist, and his hair and nail clippings all point the same way. Then he claims the Turkish Delight was smothered in arsenic an hour and a half earlier. Urquhart makes no attempt to be sick and bolts, only to be caught by Parker and Bunter and handcuffed. Wimsey admits he never poisoned the sweets at all.Urquhart gorging on the Turkish Delight while Wimsey drinks black coffee and old brandyWimsey sketching a noose in the air and saying 'hemp, Mr. Urquhart, hemp'The experiment of loading a cracked egg with arsenic through a small glass tubeUrquhart blaming a medicine prescribed by Dr. Granger for the arsenic tracesWimsey doubting the poet's line that Mithridates died old
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 21 - A Manicurist Joins the Plot 26.09.2026 6min

  Lord Peter Wimsey presses his proposal again, and Harriet Vane refuses to marry him. It would not be fair to him, she says, and she is frightened of a bond she could not escape, though she would live with him instead. Wimsey argues that his family motto, 'I hold by my Whimsy', puts the tradition on his side, but Harriet cannot see beyond the next few weeks and begs him to stop asking. He agrees and leaves for an appointment with a manicurist.The manicurist, found with help from Chief Inspector Parker, is a sharp eyed girl called Mabel who accepts a dinner invitation. When Wimsey explains what he wants she balks, fearing witchcraft or trouble, until he confides the whole story. Won over, she agrees to collect nail parings and hair from a stingy regular customer, with help from Fred, his regular, and Wimsey hands her an envelope holding two chemically clean pill boxes for the samples.Wimsey's joke about the original Gerald de Wimsey at the siege of AcreHarriet's point that people forget lovers but not a murder chargeMabel's worry about spells after a column in Susie's SnippetsA jealous friend across the restaurant picturing a flat in Paris and a thousand pound necklaceWimsey promising Mabel an unbirthday present, perhaps mink
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 20 - A Secret Panel and Bunter's Marsh Test 26.09.2026 37min

  The registered envelope from Windle reaches the office, and Mr. Pond opens it, making him a witness. When Miss Murchison bursts into Mr. Urquhart's room she notices a dark line in the panelling behind his head. After hours she talks her way past the charwoman Mrs. Hodges, finds the sliding panel by accident, and opens the inner cupboard with Blindfold Bill's keys. Inside are Megatherium Trust certificates showing Urquhart gambled Mrs. Wrayburn's money, the will, and a foreign chemist's packet of white powder.At Wimsey's flat, Parker lays out the case: Urquhart's motive is strong, but everything Philip Boyes ate or drank at dinner was shared or tested. Bunter reveals that Hannah Westlock found Boyes's bedroom water bottle emptied and dried. Then Bunter runs Marsh's test on Miss Murchison's sample and a dark ring with a metallic centre forms, confirmed as arsenic. Wimsey reads all night through the notable British trials and by morning announces he knows how it was done.Rule 7 of the Cattery: always distrust the man who looks you straight in the eyesMiss Murchison teasing Urquhart outside a butcher's window until he stalks offA scrap of silk torn from her own bag as her excuse to Mrs. HodgesFreddy Arbuthnot complaining that the chemistry show lacks pepThe books left open for Bunter, from the Maybrick trial to A Shropshire Lad
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 19 - Miss Climpson and the Wrayburn Will 26.09.2026 9min

  Staying the night at the house, Miss Climpson persuades Miss Booth to send the will by registered post to Norman Urquhart with a covering letter, and volunteers to fill the hot water bottles. Alone in the kitchen she steams open the sealed envelope over a slow kettle, hides the paper knife behind the stove when Miss Booth returns, reads the will in three minutes, and reseals it before calmly making tea.Her letter to Lord Peter Wimsey, dated January 7th, 1930, sets out the terms. The real estate and 50,000 pounds go to Philip Boyes, with a paragraph forgiving the ill treatment she suffered from his family. The residue goes to Norman Urquhart, sole executor. Miss Climpson plans to stay on in Windle to warn Miss Booth against Mrs. Craig. Wimsey tells Bunter to have Mr. Crofts put off the case, claiming the criminal and the motive, though he admits he still does not know how it was done.Miss Booth showing unwelcome signs of independent judgment about keeping the willThe kettle taking about seven minutes that felt like an hourThe envelope hidden behind a dish cover with its flap doubled backThe will's witnesses, Eva Gubbins, housekeeper, and John Briggs, gardenerMiss Booth sealing the outer envelope with Mrs. Wrayburn's private seal
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 18 - A Spirit Message from Cremorna Leads to the Hidden Will 26.09.2026 23min

  Back at Hillside View, the boarding house ladies warn Miss Climpson off spiritualism. Mrs. Pegler is still furious that Mrs. Craig once claimed the late General had played the accordion at a seance, and Miss Tweedle suspects the henna haired Mrs. Craig of being on the make. Miss Climpson keeps her appointment anyway, and her invented control Pongo reveals himself as Pongocelli, a Renaissance acrobat who died nursing a child through the plague in Florence.On Monday the Ouija board spells out a message from Cremorna, Mrs. Wrayburn's stage name, asking that her will be sent to Norman and saying it is 'in the B'. Miss Booth and Miss Climpson search the crammed, tasteless rooms for hours, stretching the letter B to cover bureaus, beds, boxes and anything big or black. A black notebook yields a row of seven figures, the library shelves swing out to reveal a safe, and on the second try the combination opens it. On top lies a sealed envelope: the will of Rosanna Wrayburn, dated June 5th, 1920.Miss Etheridge defending a spiritualist friend she calls a real saintMiss Climpson skipping Sunday's sitting because her conscience revoltsThe corridor lined with portraits, programmes and relics of the Green RoomMiss Climpson's shame at the bedside of the tiny, helpless old womanMiss Booth deciding the B stood for black book, the hiding place of the combination
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 17 - Miss Climpson Fakes a Table Rapping 26.09.2026 15min

  After supper at the Wrayburn house in Windle, nurse companion Miss Booth goes up to settle the paralysed Mrs. Wrayburn, who can only mumble, and leaves Miss Climpson alone in her sitting room. Miss Climpson reads the mantelpiece like a case file: a silver framed photograph inscribed 'My dearest Lucy from her ever loving Harry', a Coventry photographer, a clergyman father with pupils, a Maidstone Ladies College prize, and a nephew in khaki named G. Booth.Around a bamboo table in the firelight, Miss Climpson works wrist hooks and a soapbox on her garter to rock the table and rap out answers. Harry returns, forgives Lucy, and sends the old joke 'Go to Coventry'. A mischievous George Washington interrupts, a new control named Pongo sends him off, and a school friend from Maidstone recalls cakes eaten after lights out. Miss Booth is thrilled, calls her a wonderfully strong medium, and begs her to come back the next night.Miss Booth explaining that the blue rays of daylight shatter the spirits' vibrationsThe table lurching violently because Miss Climpson overestimated the force needed to move bambooA falling coal breaking the spell just as Miss Climpson fakes a tranceMiss Climpson privately scolding herself for slipping up over George and choosing the name HelenMiss Booth describing Mrs. Craig's control Fedora, a slave girl thrown to the lions under Nero
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 16 - Miss Climpson, a Spiritualist Nurse, and a Fake Seance 26.09.2026 29min

  After Parker's news about the packet, Mr. Crofts says 'I told you so', and Lord Peter Wimsey endures a week of forced idleness and the doting happiness of Parker and Lady Mary. Freddy Arbuthnot confirms Norman Urquhart was deeply involved in the Megatherium Trust disasters. Meanwhile, Miss Climpson writes from Hillside View boarding house in Windle on January 1, 1930. She has seen the 18th century house at Appleford with its cedar and Italian porch, and learned from the gossip Mrs. Pegler that Mrs. Wrayburn's nurse companion is a Miss Booth, about 60.Miss Climpson stakes out the town's tea shops, consuming cup after cup, and finally trails a stout nurse to a boot shop and the dim Oriental Cafe. Using a parcel of stationery she pretends to have found, she sits down beside Caroline Booth, who is reading a book called Can the Dead Speak? Seeing her chance, Miss Climpson claims to be a medium and wins an invitation to the house. She rigs a soapbox on a garter to crack on command and wire up her sleeve to tip a table, then sets out to steal Mrs. Wrayburn's will.Miss Climpson's grateful reflections on first class travel and on how much freer women are than in Queen Victoria's dayHer cover story of a small inheritance and sketching trips, backed by girlhood watercolour lessonsThe chase through Windle with a flapping black veil and a pretend errand for an India rubberWhat a Psychical Research man taught her in Bournemouth about sealed slates and wax spirit handsCaroline Booth's reliance on a medium named Mrs. Craig, who is conveniently abroad
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 15 - Wimsey's Despair, a Mission to Windle, and the Found Packet 26.09.2026 14min

  After a celebratory lunch at Rules, Lord Peter Wimsey takes stock and finds little progress. His faith in Urquhart's draft will is gone, the Nine Rings packet is still missing, and it is December 30 with no plan. Pacing his book lined room, he catches his own reflection in the Venetian mirror, a fair and foolish face with a monocle, and nearly smashes it with a bronze. Instead he sends Miss Climpson to Windle in Westmorland to reach the paralysed Mrs. Wrayburn at Appleford and find her will within about a week.Then, in a gentler mood of melancholy, he goes to Scotland Yard and demands to know Chief Inspector Parker's intentions toward his sister Lady Mary. Parker protests that a policeman cannot presume, and Wimsey tells him he is making Mary unhappy after five years of mooning. Only then does Parker reveal his own news: the police have found the white paper packet from the Nine Rings, traced it through one of the barmen, identified it, and analysed it. The chapter ends as Parker, looking like a man breaking bad news, prepares to say what was inside.Wimsey's grim thought of how easy it would be to hasten the death of a frail 93 year oldHis instruction to Miss Climpson to stay at a boarding house for the gossip and find the nurse's weaknessMiss Climpson asking the vicar for a special intention for someone on a difficult undertakingWimsey's suggested proposal lines, from a spot of matrimony to going down on one kneeParker exploding at the idea that he could be making Lady Mary unhappy
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 14 - Miss Murchison and the Wrayburn Deed Box 26.09.2026 17min

  Miss Murchison deliberately leaves a paragraph out of an urgent affidavit so Mr. Urquhart will order her to stay late and retype it. Once Mr. Pond leaves for the Tube, she climbs a wobbly revolving chair to reach the Wrayburn deed box, only to find it moved to the bottom of a new stack. Then Mr. Pond returns for a forgotten jar of caviar, and she claims she was chasing a mouse while praying her skeleton keys are not lying in plain view on her desk.Spooked again by boys chasing a ball and a possible policeman outside the unblinded window, she carries the box into Urquhart's private office and, following Blindfold Bill's advice not to hurry, opens it. There is no will inside. Instead she finds a list of securities, a power of attorney from January 1925, and a deed of trust from July 1920 making Urquhart sole trustee of Mrs. Wrayburn's entire property, attached to a letter from the old woman asking him to take charge of everything.The pile of deed boxes: Universal Bone Trust, Trubody Limited, Flatsby and Cotton, Sir J. Penkridge, and BodgersMr. Pond lamenting that typewriters make clerks careless and promising to fetch a kittenThe charwoman Mrs. Hodges noticing she had not heard the typewriter goingRosanna Wrayburn's 1920 letter, written at over 80, saying she might one day become feeble in her headMiss Murchison heading to Soho for supper, humming the Whitechapel hymn
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 13 - Blindfold Bill's Lockpicking Lesson in Whitechapel 26.09.2026 24min

  Miss Joan Murchison, 38, spent twelve years with a financier whose schemes collapsed, leaving her out of work until the Cattery took her in. Now she visits Lord Peter Wimsey's flat for crumpets and hears him play Bach's Italian Concerto. She reports that the office typewriter was bought new three years ago and that Urquhart stayed late typing the night of Wimsey's visit. Wimsey concludes the will draft was typed fresh to fool him, and asks her to break into the Wrayburn deed box to find the real will.For that she needs training, so Wimsey takes her to Whitechapel Road to see Bill Rumm, once the great safe breaker Blindfold Bill, now a converted locksmith whom Wimsey once caught breaking into his safe. They arrive mid prayer meeting, join in 'Sweeping Through the Gates', and then Bill teaches her to lift a spring and slip a catch with wire picklocks. Wimsey cracks a combination lock from a sinner named Sam, sings 'Nazareth' for little Esmeralda, and everyone sups on eight beautiful trotters.Miss Murchison's detective work pacing Red Lion Square until Urquhart turned off the light at 7:30Wimsey warning her the job could mean a charge of possessing safe breaking toolsBill's boast that he could open any deed box blindfold in boxing gloves with a stick of boiled macaroniHis lament that nobody does an artistic job now that any fool blows safes apart with explosivesWimsey's instructions to memorise the residuary legatee and any mention of Philip Boyes
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 12 - Christmas at Duke's Denver and Freddy Arbuthnot's Engagement 26.09.2026 17min

  Christmas at Duke's Denver begins badly when Mrs. Dimsworthy asks Lord Peter Wimsey over tea whether he is defending 'that frightful poisoning woman'. Captain Tommy Bates condemns Philip Boyes's books from a newspaper excerpt, Miss Titterton would commute Harriet's sentence for a new novel every six months, and Mr. Harringay cites Madeleine Smith as proof that an arsenic poisoner can make a good wife. Bates then declares the police never put innocent people in the dock, forgetting that the Duke of Denver himself once stood trial for murder.Escaping to the billiard room, Wimsey hears from Freddy Arbuthnot that Urquhart has reportedly been dipping recklessly into the markets, and that Freddy is marrying Rachel Levy in a synagogue after winning over Lady Levy by claiming he had served nearly seven years for her, like Jacob for Laban. At two in the morning on Boxing Day, Lady Mary Wimsey visits her brother's room, and he quietly steers her toward Chief Inspector Parker, who has been dining with her.Mrs. Featherstone praising Boyes's prose as Gallic in its audacity and restraintThe Dowager Duchess thanking the press for picking out all the plums so nobody has to read the booksMiss Titterton wondering whether a murderess's husband would always check the taste of his coffeeFreddy explaining how a Bible in the pew at a late wedding gave him his winning lineLady Mary offering to give up her self designed pyjamas if Parker proposes
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 11 - Cremorna Garden's Vindictive Will and a Telltale Typewriter 26.09.2026 14min

  Over breakfast Norman Urquhart shows Lord Peter Wimsey the draft of Mrs. Wrayburn's will and explains the family tree. John Hubbard, a Nottingham banker, lost everything and left three daughters: Jane, whose line produced Philip Boyes; Mary, Urquhart's grandmother; and Rosanna, who ran away to the stage as Cremorna Garden, took money, jewels, and carriages from fashionable London, and turned it all into consolidated funds. Jane's husband Henry Brown even tried to have her thrown out of church at his wife's funeral, and the old actress never forgave.The draft leaves everything to Urquhart and forbids him to give or lend any of it to Philip Boyes, which seems to support a suicide from despair. But Wimsey notes it was typed on a Woodstock machine with a chipped lowercase p. After a jealous visit to Harriet Vane, including talk of his lost love Barbara, he gets a report from Miss Murchison: Urquhart hoards chocolate creams and Turkish delight and may be tangled in the Megatherium Trust crash. Her letter shows the same chipped p and misaligned A.Why the Hubbard bank failure left three well educated sisters pennilessUrquhart's grandparents taking a box at Cremorna Garden's shows while the Browns returned her letters unopenedWimsey grinding his teeth over Harriet's novel about two Bloomsbury artists and a poisoningHarriet's warning that he would always be jealous and never give her a square dealWimsey reciting logic mnemonics as romantic poetry for Barbara near St. John's
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 10 - The Barmaid's White Powder and Urquhart's Convenient Will 26.09.2026 30min

  At Scotland Yard, Chief Inspector Parker introduces Lord Peter Wimsey to Mrs. Bulfinch, once Miss Montague of the saloon bar at the Nine Rings in Gray's Inn Road. Around the longest day, at about five past ten by a clock kept fast, a white faced young man stumbled in, asked for a double brandy, said he had had a shock that upset his gastric trouble, and stirred a white powder into water with a fountain pen. He left the packet behind, its label torn off. She put it on a shelf behind the bar, and now nobody can find it.Mr. Crofts is furious that Wimsey let the police hear it first, and Wimsey snaps that he wants Harriet cleared, not acquitted by a fluke. At Bedford Row, where the Cattery's Miss Murchison now types, Norman Urquhart proves remarkably helpful. He confirms that the rich great aunt is Mrs. Wrayburn, once the actress Cremorna Garden, now over 90, and that he is her sole legatee for an estate of seventy or eighty thousand pounds. He adds that Boyes once asked about it and was told he had no chance, then fumbles a search for the will's draft.Mrs. Bulfinch's husband worrying that going to the Yard will spoil the pub's respectable nameHer fear that the powder might be poison or 'snow', which is why she never tasted itCrofts's worry that the police will now find or fake a harmless powderThe small freckles on Urquhart's pale, clear skin that Wimsey notices up closeUrquhart's suggestion that old people should be put out of their misery like a favourite animal
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 9 - Crumpets, Kitchen Gossip, and a Scandalous Great Aunt 26.09.2026 18min

  Bunter turns a delivered note into a tea invitation and sits in Norman Urquhart's kitchen toasting crumpets with the cook Mrs. Pettican and the parlourmaid Hannah Westlock. They relive Philip Boyes's final illness: the hot water bottles, the greenish colour, the agonising cramps that Nurse Williams said she had seen only once before. Hannah remembers pins and needles in his hands and feet during his spring attacks, which Bunter notes were signs of arsenic given over time.The women describe how Urquhart went over the dinner with them the next morning, asking whether the eggs were fresh and what became of the chicken. Hannah recalls he told her to cork the Burgundy and seal it with sticking plaster bearing her initials, which proved lucky when the police came. Then the talk turns to Mrs. Wrayburn of Windle, the rich, childish old woman Urquhart keeps visiting: a former actress Queen Victoria would not allow to perform before the royal family, whose two children died of cholera.The eggs bought by Urquhart himself from a shop on the corner of Lamb's Conduit Street, one of them crackedThe casserole chicken finished entirely by the maids, except a piece given to the catMrs. Pettican's theory that a bash on the head in temper is understandable but slow poisoning is the work of a fiendPhilip Boyes's cynical verdict on his great aunt's fortune: 'The devil took care of his own'Bunter's farewell promise to spend Christmas at Duke's Denver
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 8 - Bunter Goes Courting and Wimsey Tours Bohemian Studios 26.09.2026 36min

  Lord Peter Wimsey sends Bunter to charm his way into Norman Urquhart's kitchen, where the parlourmaid Hannah Westlock and the cook hold what Wimsey needs. Bunter first surprises his master by asking whether he plans changes to the household, having correctly guessed the lady in question. Wimsey then enlists Marjorie Phelps, who makes figurines and porcelain, to guide him through the studio parties of Philip Boyes's circle. At the Kropotkys', amid kippers, sausages, and a tone poem inspired by five days on the Piccadilly tube escalator, he finds Ryland Vaughan eating caviar with a pickle fork.Vaughan calls himself Boyes's only friend, blames Harriet's spite and Urquhart's influence, and insists Boyes would never have killed himself without telling him. Then, drunk on brandy, he pulls a small bottle from his pocket that he is saving until he finishes editing Boyes's books. At the flat of Sylvia Marriott and Eiluned Price, Sylvia suspects the too sleek Urquhart while Eiluned bets on suicide out of spite. A phone call from Parker brings news: the police have found the pub and are on the track of a packet of white powder.Marjorie's verdict that Vaughan is a 'house dog' for his friend the geniusVaughan's claim that Harriet refused to give Boyes opinions on his writingA fat critic dismissing the tone poem as bourgeois program music next to an ecstasy on the letter ZEiluned Price refusing to let Wimsey carry her kettle of six pintsMarjorie's plea that Peter not change, and his sudden fear that everything will
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 7 - A Murder Plot Game in Holloway and Urquhart's Absent Office 26.09.2026 11min

  Back at Holloway, Lord Peter Wimsey asks Harriet Vane whether Philip Boyes ever made a will. She says he did, in her favour, while they lived together, mostly to name a literary executor, and adds that she was earning four times what he did. Wimsey then floats a 'plot' for a detective story: a crime novelist kills her writer friend with the method from her latest book so both their works become bestsellers. Harriet plays along with dancing eyes, adding a twist in which the murderess signs a deed of gift so a loved one profits after she is hanged.Wimsey goes to question Norman Urquhart in Woburn Square but finds him called away to a sick relative. The cook explains that if the old lady dies he will be busy settling her estate, and that everyone ate from Boyes's dinner. At the Bedford Row office an elderly clerk supplies the address, care of Mrs. Wrayburn at Appleford, Windle, Westmorland, and grumbles that his lady typist has just left to get married. Wimsey rushes to a phone box and has Miss Climpson send candidates to fill the vacancy.Why Harriet assumed Boyes had changed his will after they partedThe legal snag that a murderer cannot profit from the crime, and how a deed of gift gets around itWimsey's quip that he knows who gets most of Boyes's profits, and it is not a beloved objectThe cook's relief that she, Hannah, and the master all ate the same foodWimsey's order for a steady typist with no heavy face powder and skirts four inches below the knee
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 6 - Philip Boyes's Father, His Will, and a Bestseller Boom 26.09.2026 20min

  Lord Peter Wimsey drives to Tweedling Parva to see the Reverend Arthur Boyes, a faded, gentle clergyman who admits he never met Harriet Vane and has grave doubts she is guilty. He shows Wimsey his son's letters: one cheerfully announcing that he would 'regularize the situation' at a registrar's office, the next reporting that the wedding was off and that Harriet had made a fool of herself and him. Boyes had mentioned a Barbados voyage from Harlech, and his will, made during the Welsh trip, left his copyrights to Ryland Vaughan, replacing an earlier one in Harriet's favour.There was no family money, no insurance, and barely fifty pounds a year from the books. Yet at the publishers Grimsby and Cole, Mr. Cole cheerfully explains that Boyes could not have done better than get murdered: every copy sold out after the exhumation and a memorial edition at a guinea is coming. Harriet's agent reports a similar boom, with her new book selling seven thousand before publication, though he fears a slump once she is freed. Wimsey leaves with the galleys of her arsenic novel, Death in the Pot.The father's refusal to inherit his son's copyrights because he disapproved of the booksHis mention of an old relative, well over 90, whom the family has not seen in over fifty yearsWimsey doubling back to stuff treasury notes into the church expenses boxPrinters working night and day to reprint Boyes's early volumes for the librariesThe agent's warning to read any Grimsby and Cole contract very carefully
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 5 - Miss Climpson's Cattery and the Hunt for a Motive 26.09.2026 19min

  Lord Peter Wimsey sits down to tea with Miss Climpson in the office of what looks like a typing bureau. Upstairs, a staff of spinsters, widows, retired schoolteachers, and out of work actresses answer advertisements from matrimonial swindlers and shady financiers, and the frauds tend to end up before a magistrate. The bureau has a private telephone line to Scotland Yard and runs on Wimsey's money; he calls it his Cattery. Over teacakes he sorts the possible motives for killing Philip Boyes: passion, money through robbery, insurance, or inheritance, blackmail, and suicide.Every line seems to lead nowhere, and Wimsey admits suicide is his favourite theory, if only someone could find the bottle. He calculates the deadline: the Michaelmas term ends on the 21st and the Hilary term begins January 12. At Scotland Yard, Chief Inspector Parker teases him about going 'goopy' over the girl, then realises Wimsey is serious. Wimsey asks the police to trace any arsenic Boyes owned, any pub he entered near Doughty Street that night, and any bottle or paper discarded there.Miss Climpson's grim story of a young man who joked about shooting himself and then did so by accidentHer suggestion that Boyes might have met an enemy in a public house during the missing ten minutesWimsey's worry that Urquhart could have poisoned the soup, and the snag that he ate it himselfWimsey comparing himself to Jack Point from The Yeomen of the GuardHis tip that police should search the bushes of the Mecklenburg Square garden
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 4 - Lord Peter Wimsey Proposes to Harriet Vane in Holloway Jail 26.09.2026 20min

  The day after the hung jury, Sir Impey Biggs holds a Sunday council of war with Lord Peter Wimsey and the solicitor Mr. Crofts. Wimsey explains exactly how the jury split: Miss Climpson with her militant high church conscience, a sweet shop owner who has buried her third husband and distrusts all medical evidence, and an artist who thought Philip Boyes a conceited prig. The defence has about a month before the next sessions, and Wimsey privately guarantees the costs that Harriet's publishers and a newspaper have been carrying.Admitted to Holloway as part of the defence team, Wimsey meets Harriet Vane across a long deal table under a warder's eye. She tells him Boyes had tested her devotion and then offered marriage 'as a bad conduct prize', and that she believes he took the poison himself. Wimsey then asks her to marry him once this is over. She informs him he is proposal number forty seven. Walking away light headed, he stops at a shop window reading 'One month only' and realises how little time he has.Sir Impey Biggs's remark that anyone who believes the Christian creeds will not boggle at adverse evidenceHarriet describing Boyes as a man who thought great artists deserve to be kept by ordinary peopleWimsey offering Harriet plots for her books and assuring her his brother handles the old oaks and family plateTheir shared delight in quoting Kai Lung across the prison tableWimsey's promise to change suits on every visit so she can judge him from every angle
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  Strong Poison: Chapter 3 - The Hung Jury That Saved Harriet Vane from the Gallows 26.09.2026 13min

  With the summing up over, the court settles in to wait for a verdict that everyone assumes will take twenty minutes. The reporters Waffles Newton and Salcombe Hardy worry about missing the evening editions, while Lord Peter Wimsey tells Chief Inspector Parker flatly that he has made a mistake and the girl is innocent. The Dowager Duchess, who has been reading one of Harriet Vane's novels, remarks that she did not guess the murderer until page 200.The hours pass: two, three and a half, five. Spectators gossip about murderess faces at Madame Tussaud's, a fight breaks out in the crowd outside, and the judge sends to ask if he can help. The foreman finally admits the jury cannot agree, glaring at the elderly spinster in the corner. Sent back once more, they return after more than six hours still deadlocked, and a new trial is ordered. Wimsey rushes to Sir Impey Biggs to join the defence, then finds the holdout, Miss Climpson, at the jury door.Wimsey telling Parker the Crown's case is watertight and wrong for one reason: Harriet did not do itOverheard courtroom chatter from a young couple sure that a hard face and no tears prove guiltThe rumour that Sir Impey Biggs wins prizes breeding canariesThe judge discharging the jury and excusing them from service for twelve yearsMiss Climpson's confession that she could not in conscience say Harriet did it, and Wimsey's promise to kiss her