Gaudy Night

Wimsey agrees to meet Harriet at Fellows’ Garden the following morning to discuss the chess set incident. As he approaches, Harriet assesses him physically in a way she’s never done before. She’s always appraised him intellectually and finds herself wondering if an alliance between intellect and flesh is even possible. She dismisses the combination as absurd and thinks, “If Peter wanted to make the experiment, he must do it without Harriet’s connivance. Six centuries of possessive blood would not be dictated to by a bare forty-five years of over-sensitized intellect” (530).

The two go back to her room to inspect the damage. Wimsey discovers two sets of footprints in the room—one belonging to Miss Hillyard, and the other to the vandal. It appears that Miss Hillyard only paused briefly before leaving. Harriet is about to seek out Miss Hillyard to make an apology, but Wimsey offers to go in her place. Harriet waits in the quad because she doesn’t want to talk to anyone in the common room. Miss Hillyard finds her there and apologizes for her own accusations regarding Harriet’s relationship with Wimsey. The two agree to put the matter behind them.

That evening Harriet receives an urgent message from St. George. He says he’s again caught a glimpse of the strange woman he first met inside Fellows’ Garden. She was spotted on Magdalen Bridge in broad daylight. The viscount says, “She was walking along, muttering to herself, and looking awfully queer. Sort of clutching with her hands and rolling her eyes about. She spotted me, too. Couldn’t mistake her” (526). Harriet asks St. George to come to the college for dinner in hopes of identifying the strange woman there.

Harriet belatedly realizes that she needs to warn Miss de Vine that she may be in danger from this deranged individual. Before going in search of her, Harriet puts on the dog collar to protect herself. When she arrives at Miss de Vine’s chamber, the room is dark. She steps inside and is assaulted by someone who tries to choke her. Surprised by the collar, the attacker stumbles. Harriet falls too and gashes her head on a bookcase. When she returns to consciousness, she sees the room filled with people and Miss de Vine unconscious on the couch.

Hours later, Harriet awakes again in the Infirmary to learn that Miss de Vine had a mild heart attack when she found Harriet on the floor in a pool of blood caused by her head injury. St. George comes to visit Harriet and fills in the gaps about what happened. Wimsey arrived on the scene shortly after the attack and immediately asked where Annie was. After a lengthy search, the scout is found stuffed into the coal bin. She, too, was attacked but never saw her assailant’s face. Wimsey has been called away yet again on government business, but he left instructions for Harriet to keep still until he returns. The proof of the vandal’s identity is beginning to pile up nicely, and he will reveal all when he gets back.

After giving the assaulted individuals a few days to recover, the Dean convenes a meeting in the Senior Common Room. Wimsey is there to explain the facts of the case. He points out that the attacks didn’t begin until after the arrival of Miss de Vine during the Gaudy Night festivities. This limits the possible suspects to faculty, staff, and servants. Wimsey is convinced that the note slipped into Harriet’s academic gown was intended for Miss de Vine, but a mistake was made because of the similarity in their label tags: H. de Vine and H. D. Vane. Wimsey then goes on to describe the nature of the other attacks. Referring to the culprit as X, he concludes, “The bias displayed by X seemed to be strongly antischolastic, and to have a more or less rational motive, based on some injury amounting in X’s mind to murder, inflicted upon a male person by a female scholar” (549).

Knowing that Miss de Vine is the spur for these attacks, Wimsey determines to learn if she has injured anyone in her prior career. During his dinner with the academics, Wimsey coaxes the story of Robinson’s disgrace out of Miss de Vine. He then begins to trace Robinson’s current whereabouts as well as that of his family. The man committed suicide three years earlier, leaving a widow and two small daughters. That widow is none other than Annie, the scout. She bitterly resents the female scholars who destroyed her husband’s life and brought his family to financial ruin. Wimsey then explains how she committed each of her crimes and moved about with no one the wiser. She also locked herself in the coal bin to deflect suspicion. Padgett found the access key she hid under a pile of coal.

Wimsey wants to have Annie arrested, but the Dean insists on allowing the woman to defend herself. When Annie is brought into the room, she freely confesses to the crimes. She vents her hatred toward female intellectuals by saying:

What business had you with a job like that? A woman’s job is to look after a husband and children. I wish I had killed you. I wish I could kill you all. I wish I could burn down this place and all the places like it—where you teach women to take men’s jobs and rob them first and kill them afterwards (563).

She then turns her wrath on Wimsey and spits in his face. She says men like him encourage female academics but know nothing about the struggles real women face in the real world. Annie goes on to accuse Harriet as the worst of the lot for using Wimsey and then discarding him when his purpose has been served. After hurling more abuse and accusations, she’s taken from the room. Stunned and shaken by this outburst, everyone leaves the common room except for Harriet and Miss de Vine. The elder woman counsels Harriet to reach some decision about her relationship with Wimsey. When Harriet asks if she would advise marrying such a man, Miss de Vine retorts, “A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. You can hurt one another so dreadfully” (571). Miss de Vine tells Harriet to stop hurting herself and other people as well.

Once the identity of the Poison-Pen has been revealed, the tension at the college eases. The narrator observes, “They were all normal again. They had never been anything else. Now that the distorting-glass of suspicion was removed, they were kindly, intelligent human beings […] as understandable and pleasant as daily bread” (573). A few days later, Wimsey seeks out Harriet for a long talk about their personal relationship. He explains that his initial pursuit of her was egotistical and self-absorbed. He confesses, “I was so terrified of losing you before I could grasp you that I babbled out all my greed and fear as though, God help me, you had nothing to think of but me and my windy self-importance” (575-76).

Harriet protests that her own behavior was equally to blame. Before he departs on other business, Wimsey asks her to attend a musical concert at the university with him on Sunday evening. Afterward, they walk to the middle of Magdalen Bridge to enjoy the glowing lights of the university. Harriet begins to explain how much her feelings have changed toward Wimsey. She admits that her murder trial left her emotionally shattered and mistrustful of herself. It has taken five years for her to regain a sense of her own value. She hints that if Wimsey will renew his proposal one more time, it might meet with a more favorable reply.

Because she can’t bring herself to say the word, “Yes,” Wimsey helps her by speaking Latin and receiving her reply in the same language: “‘Placetne, magistra?’ ‘Placet’” (582). In English, he is asking, “Does it please thee, Lady Scholar?” Harriet replies, “It pleases.” As the two share an embrace, a university official walks by and mutters to himself:

The Proctor, stumping grimly past with averted eyes, reflected that Oxford was losing all sense of dignity. But what could he do? If Senior Members of the University chose to stand—in their gowns, too!—closely and passionately embracing in New College Lane right under the Warden’s windows, he was powerless to prevent it (582).