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 restraint
• The Dowager Duchess thanking the press for picking out all the plums so nobody has to read the books
• Miss Titterton wondering whether a murderess’s husband would always check the taste of his coffee
• Freddy explaining how a Bible in the pew at a late wedding gave him his winning line
• Lady Mary offering to give up her self designed pyjamas if Parker proposes