nineveh_uk: Illustration that looks like Harriet Vane (Harriet)
nineveh_uk ([personal profile] nineveh_uk) wrote2012-10-25 08:19 pm
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Even more things Dorothy L Sayers didn't write

Groom’s wedding night confession. Marriage nullified, judge recommends further charges.
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[identity profile] ethelmay.livejournal.com 2012-10-29 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
Goodness, I'd just assumed he'd confessed to the murder! I mean, when you've got a murder on the premises, isn't that what you confess to? Anything else would be... well, untidy. Or something.
tree_and_leaf: Dark haired woman, pen and ink drawing with watercolour. Looks a bit like Harriet Vane. (Harriet)

[personal profile] tree_and_leaf 2012-10-29 09:15 am (UTC)(link)
Well, a confession of murder might well be grounds for divorce, but discovering your spouse isn't, in and of itself, grounds for annullment, because annullment is a ruling that the marriage was never valid, not merely that it's been dissolved. But as nineveh_uk points out, the non-consummation which might result from such a confession would be, I was just forgetting the most obvious grounds for an annullment!

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2012-10-29 01:03 pm (UTC)(link)

I don’t think discovering Peter had murdered Mr Noakes would in itself be grounds for Harriet to divorce him at the time, and they haven’t been married long enough for him to commit adultery. Post-1937 maybe Harriet could divorce Peter for desertion, but as the same law changed things so you couldn’t get divorced in the first three years of marriage, she’d still have to wait.
tree_and_leaf: Watercolour of barn owl perched on post. (Default)

[personal profile] tree_and_leaf 2012-10-29 07:56 pm (UTC)(link)
And it would be hard to slope off to Brighton with a hired nobody if you were in the condemned cell...

[identity profile] nineveh-uk.livejournal.com 2012-10-29 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Though it has just struck me that Peter could always divorce Harriet for adultery.
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