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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
I’m not quite sure to what you are referring, jcn363?
To get back to the book, did anyone pick what I think was an error in the confession letter? In it, Sir Julian wrote to Lord Peter that the Dowager Duchess suggested “a motive for the murder out of what she knew of my previous personal history.”
How was he to know that she had made that comment? In fact, Sir Julian himself had told Charles Parker that he had wanted to marry Lady Levy but had been turned down in favour of Levy. This was during his conversation with Parker after the inquest. So in trying to cover his tracks, he had handed the motive to a policeman.
As we have all agreed, definitely not a good mystery compared with some of Sayers’ later books.
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I didn't notice at the time, but that does seem to be a mistake. Even if we assume that Freke assumes the motive was learned through the Dowager Duchess, he knows far too much of the circumstances (Thipps etc) for it to be merely an assumption.
There is also the fact that the motive was suggested merely by the coincidence of Freke's involvement with the body in the bath and his relationship to the missing Levy - the timing was not as tight as Freke's confession seems to suggest.