I’ve just finished reading this murder mystery, and I’m wondering if the cause of death is plausible. Big fat unboxed spoiler following in the next post.
The Nine Tailors is the novel centered around the English art of change ringing. A dead body is discovered and no cause of death can be determined at first, even after an autopsy (the novel was published in 1934).
In the end, Lord Peter determines that the victim died after being left tied up overnight in the church’s bell tower, very close to the bells. A nine-hour peal was rung overnight, and the victim was killed by the noise of the bells.
Lord Peter comes to this conclusion when he goes up into the tower himself later, while a peal is being rung. He becomes distressed and disoriented, and his nose starts to bleed. He is barely able to escape from the tower.
Could someone really be killed this way?
Where’s mythbusters when you need them?
I have no idea, but I remember reading an analysis of the novel in some crime fiction journal that discussed this very question. Various medical ‘experts’ were interviewed and they all considered the scenario implausible.
My WAG is that it’s very unlikely. Extreme sound can kill (and there have been efforts to weaponize sound pulses for crowd control), but could bells produce such sound? Sound extreme enough to kill would probably be extreme enough to damage the church, and possibly injure the bellringers. Being chained in a belfry would be a hellish ordeal–it would certainly deafen you, painfully and permanently, and possibly drive you insane–but fatality seems unlikely.
As a Sayers fan, I have to say her fondness for unlikely murder methods is one of her weaknesses. Strong Poison and Busman’s Honeymoon are also marred by medically or physically improbable murder schemes; Raymond Chandler said of the latter book’s method, “A murderer who needs that much help from Providence is in the wrong business.”
It might just be possible according to this physicist. (It’s the first article and it’s long).
As a matter of interest, earlier in the piece the author links to Cecil Adams’ column Can a noise be loud enough to kill you?. He verifies Cecil’s salient points, to wit:
One grey area is the decibel count of the church bells in question. A quick look around tells me that most bells operate in the range 55-80 dB, but this might be wrong at the top end. However, I can’t discover at what distance from the bells this sound level is measured. Clearly, the closer you are to the source of the sound the louder it is going to be.
I can’t find any examples in real life where a bellringer, or anyone else for that matter, has been killed by the sound of bells.
Well, it was also a cold, snowy night. Couldn’t pplain old exposure account for the death?
StG
Peter remarks, at the end, that he has heard it said to be death to enter the bell chamber of St. Paul’s during a peal. Which actually makes it odd that he didn’t guess the cause of death much earlier.
Thanks for the links, Chez Guevara.
According to the novel, the victim was left wearing a coat, with food and water. Also, the person who discovered the body claims that in his experience (most of these characters are WWI veterans) people who die from exposure curl up and die fairly peacefully. This victim appeared to have experienced some kind of acute distress.
I just finished reading this book not too long ago (I’m reading them all chronologically) and though much of it flew right over my head (I didn’t understand anything about the bells part of it) the cause of death worked for me. Whether it was plausible or not, I assumed that pressure would build up in your head, blood vessels would break, and dead you’d be. I believed it, and thought what a horrible horrible way to die.
I much preferred Murder Must Advertise, my favorite Wimsey so far. I’m working on Gaudy Nights now.
Usually I read books in order too, but when I finished Have His Carcase I skipped ahead to Gaudy Night because I was anxious to see more of Harriet. I had been saving The Nine Tailors because it was the only Lord Peter book I hadn’t read. Gaudy Night is probably my very favorite of them all.
I went online and looked up videos of change ringing, and read a little about the methods, and now I’m longing to help ring a peal. Sadly there are no bell towers around here.
Eleanor - I loved Gaudy Night, too. I love how Peter respects Harriet enough to tell her that it didn’t matter if the task was painful and hard, if it was the right thing to do. It really showed he valued her as an equal.
And I know that people disparage Busman’s Honeymoon as sentimental claptrap - I loved that, too. Harriet’s line about actually being happy and looking forward to life, rather than just steeling oneself for the next blow has always rung true to me. And poor Peter at the end - he just takes everything to himself.
StG
I loved Busman’s Honeymoon. When Harriet wakes up with Peter and worries about him because he suddenly looks old to her…
Do a search of the Board and you can find a very useful thread on The Nine Tailors and change ringing, started by me some years ago. (I just tried, but it bombed and now I’ve got to wait 229 seconds before I can search again. So you’re on your own.)
Very interesting, thanks!
And I love Busman’s Honeymoon, too. When Peter is experiencing his usual post-crime-solving bout of despair, he decides to go Harriet instead of suffering alone…
According to this review of Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life & Soul, by Barbara Reynolds:
I wonder if one of the ‘three small technical errors’ was that you can’t kill somebody with the sound of church bells. 
Thanks Rocketeer and Cunctator!
I’ve just read that other thread and some of the links given and I understand things a bit better now. Since I’ve never heard (or rather, never paid attention to) a peal, I went searching on YouTube (god I love YouTube!!!) and found several useful videos.
This video gives examples of how each of the 11 bells at Cologne Cathedral in Germany sound, one by one, then at the end, how they all sound rung together. While reading The Nine Tailors I couldn’t really understand how the bells were different. A bell is a bell is a bell, right? It made no sense to me. That video made me see (hear) how very wrong I was. Each bell has its own distinct sound. My favorite bells were at 3:57, Speciosa, and especially, at 4:21 Pretiosa, a very sad and mournful bell.
Here’s a video with a full 10 minutes of the Cologne Cathedral bells. (to be honest, I could only take a couple of minutes of it. I can’t even BEGIN to imagine nine freaking hours of that cacophony! I wonder how many people have murdered someone or committed suicide from living near one of these places)
Here’s a video of a group of change ringers. (Westminster Abbey)
The Science of Church Bells (ooh, I just found this, which makes some of the others redundant)
Here’s a video of (eventually, after some rope shots) the bells themselves while ringing. (in Amsterdam)
This has an animation as to how the stays work.
This has nothing to do with any of the above type of bell ringing, but it’s very cool. Unfortunately there’s no subtitles.
Oh, this is cool, about change ringing bells in New York.