That night he was taken fatally ill, apparently with gastritis. Returning from a holiday in North Wales in better health, Boyes had dined with his cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, before going to Harriet's flat to discuss reconciliation, where he had accepted a cup of coffee. Harriet, outraged at being deceived, had broken off the relationship.įollowing the separation, the former couple had met occasionally, and the evidence at trial pointed to Boyes suffering from repeated bouts of gastric illness at around the time that Harriet was buying poisons under assumed names, to demonstrate – so she said – a plot point of her novel then in progress. Publicly professing to disapprove of marriage, he had persuaded a reluctant Harriet to live with him, only to renounce his principles a year later and to propose. The novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her former lover, Phillip Boyes: a writer with strong views on atheism, anarchy, and free love.
Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears. Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L.
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