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Episode 520 - The Leopard Lady (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-19 19:23:25
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Murder Mystery or Weird Tale? It's The Leopard Lady by Dorothy L. Sayers!

Special thanks to our party-crashing reader: Rachel Lackey of Rachel Watches Star Trek!

Next up: The Cyprian Cat 

Comments

Anonymous

I vote supernatural. The faery folk just finding new ways to interfere in the mortal realm.

Anonymous

I’m so excited that you’re covering Sayers... and also ashamed that in the many years since I first read this story, it never occurred to me that it might be supernatural, even a tiny bit. What a failure of imagination on my part! I agree with Chad that I would have liked to see Lord Peter take a crack at this; in another short story he does something similar, pretending to be a wizard in order to get access to someone. Excellent episode.

Anonymous

The murder inspired by the detective novel, "The Sands of Windee," that you mentioned at the top of the podcast was recently covered by the true crime podcast, Casefile. Here's the link if you're interested in checking out the episode: https://casefilepodcast.com/case-150-the-murchison-murders/

Anonymous

Holy crap! I had no idea that Dorothy Sayers came up with the Guinness toucan. As an enthusiast of both Guinness and weird fiction I shall raise a glass to her next time I have one. On a more sombre note, I consider myself pretty empathetic but before I became a parent instances of child murder/abuse were horrifying, but in the abstract, as deplorable as any other tragedy or instance of human brutality. But after becoming a parent...I can't explain the viceral fear and horror it evokes. There are now horror stories I can't ever revisit because of that. I just finished "My Heart Struck Horror" by John Hornor Jacobs (highly recommend- it's very Weird, maybe more Machen than Lovecraft) which starts with the death of the protagonists wife and child off-page in a freak household accident (we learn this in the first few pages and it's not at all graphic) and while the novella was top quality to me nothing of the cosmic horror could top that dash of human horror in the first few pages.

Lord Rancid
>>46147283

To be fair, she didn't come up with the Toucan, just the advertising slogans. An illustrator called John Gilroy designed the bird, though his first idea was a sea lion blancing a pint on it's nose. A whole menagerie of animals followed for the ad campaign, of which teh toucan was but one.

Steve

My Dad used to live in Colney Hatch, the district, not the psychiatric hospital. Very nice reading from the mystery guest.

Anonymous

Chad refering to Smith & Smith as a ‘pop-up’ shop made me picture some trendy pop-up staffed by hipster assassins. “Welcome to Humford & Sons’ Contract Killings. Would sir care for a decaf soy latte whilst you peruse our offerings? Ah, sir has a good eye - Anais is busy whipping up a fresh batch of our artisinal digitalis poison, made by crushing locally sourced foxgloves with a pestle and mortar made from Himalayan rock salt. Or perhaps sir prefers a killing with a more personal, human touch? Kai here is hand-braiding a mulberry silk garrote, enhanced in the center with a Savoy Knot, and wielded in the traditional Thuggee manner - or Phansigar, if one prefers the Southern Indian term. Pardon? Strangle someone with our hands? Oh, sir is clearly a wit, ha ha!”

Anonymous

Wow! That's a very grim tale. I think the worst part (besides the child murder of course) is the casualness of how they discuss what they are going to do. Regardless of wether there is a supernatural element or not, they are all psychopaths!

Anonymous

"Or it could just be a slice of cheese between two other slices of cheese..." Had to stop the podcast and rewind that part to make sure I heard it right. What the what?! Sounds like a sandwich made by a Mi-go.

Anonymous

Although Chris was skeptical that Smith & Smith can operate as a non-magical entity, this concept of an invisible yet ubiquitous and near omniscient network has precedents — think of Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty, the silent film serial LES VAMPIRES, or Fritz Lang's crime dramas involving the criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse. A more benign example is in the short story "The Adventures of Major Brown" by G.K. Chesterton: Adventure and Romance Agency, Limited, a service that arranges thrilling escapades for its clients, thereby providing them with entertainment and exercise. (Chesterton, like Sayers, is notable both as a mystery author and a Christian apologist; fans of Neil Gaiman's THE SANDMAN will recognize him as the model for the character known as Gilbert or Fiddler's Green. His best known works are the Father Brown stories, about a crime-solving Catholic priest, which have inspired various film and television adaptations. Some of his other short stories and books have a fantastical air that verges on magical realism, but I don't know if any of them can be categorized as "weird" aside from his short novel THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, which might be worth checking out.)

Anonymous

No "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" jokes?

Anonymous
>>46195615

Down the onyx steps he comes! Nyarlathotep, Black Messenger! Bringer of strange joys from nighted Yuggoth! Teacher of marvels! Cheese within cheese within cheese! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!

Anonymous

Thank you for the content warning on this and The Black Cat. I have loved listening to y'all since 2014, but I don't need child/animal cruelty kicking around in my head.

Anonymous

I've always read this as a supernatural story, because it feels so much, as Chris pointed out, like a traditional story about the Fae. I think then that if Smith & Smith are indeed faeries (or at least Miss Smith) what they get out of it isn't the 1000 pounds but rather pulling whoever they "remove" into Faerie.

Anonymous
>>46199935

The thing I've always found interesting about Sayers, is unlike Chesterton's mysteries, which always have a strong Catholic overtone, Sayers' characters, even her self-insert Harriet Vane tend far more towards the secular - Whimsey himself admits to being more or less an atheist in Gaudy Night, and Sayers (according to Wikipedia, anyway, but the citation seems solid) had no plans to change that.

Anonymous

I think we could describe the illustrious party at the start as featuring the creme de la crime?

Anonymous

I have to cast my vote for the supernatural route. The money is virtually worthless and what they get out of it is either the boy's soul. And once the deal is sealed everything will appear logically to have been done by him so any thought of a shady hitmen for hire group goes entirely out the window. Then again, they may get to come around and collect on him in some way even though he gets a big pay day in the form of incident free money.

Anonymous

Where did they get a leopard? I think we’ve finally discovered what Manimal’s Grandpa got up to.

Anonymous
>>46233551

This kind of evokes the Leopard Lady as a Batman villain.

Anonymous

This story reminded me of 'Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff' by Peter Straub, in which the eponymous two gentlemen appear and offer to do some dirty work for the protagonist. Straub's a good writer and I'd call at least some of his work including this one weird. But I can't recommend this story because it had a strong element of sadism that I found distasteful even though it is kept to some degree off camera.

Anonymous

Like Karlandos I see this as the start of a blackmail conspiracy. Once he is rich, the Smiths have a big hold on him. Anyway, whatever we think happens next, it is a truly chilling tale and the uncertainty of the supernatural element makes it a weird one. Thanks guys - this creepy story and your discussion of it had me gripped.

Anonymous

I'd like to cast my vote for a group of serial killers. A group of folks who love to kill and have made a game of it by only killing folks that other people want dead. This gives them both the inside information that helps them accomplish murder and co-conspirators strongly motivated to assist with the cover-up. Certainly it appears they are using drugs to make folks more suggestible. I've, er, heard that one's perceptions and memories thereof can be rather afield from how stuff actually was. I may, for example, have had a friend who (post-Grateful Dead show) announced that his hand was a roach. To our great relief, it was a happy roach.

Anonymous

Bunch of 3rd imposters... “boy: I saw a leopard lady acting super sus leaving med bay!” Them: “Boy must be crazy because we never saw leopard lady at medbay”. *boy was ejected.... not an imposter* Them: oh.... no

Anonymous

This really feels like the pilot for a TV series that never got picked up. All it needed was a couple of mismatched detective trying to hunt down Smith & Co.....