The Nine Tailors

Change ringing is an ecclesiastical practice. While the village church bells can sometimes be used to signal local emergencies, they are primarily meant to communicate events in the religious lives of parishioners, such as baptisms, weddings, and burials.

The secular and spiritual are intertwined in The Nine Tailors. As a result, religious customs play a significant role in the plot. While theft and murder fall into the domain of the secular world, the novel situates these events against a spiritual backdrop.

Deacon steals the emeralds and then has the audacity to hide them behind a wall panel in church during a Sunday service. In fact, he places the gems under the watchful gaze of angels. Wimsey describes these figures with admiration: “Incredibly aloof, flinging back the light in a dusky shimmer of bright hair and gilded outspread wings, soared the ranked angels, cherubim and seraphim, choir over choir, from corbel and hammer-beam floating face to face uplifted” (35).

Cranton also ransacks the church in his search for the gems. In the process, he accidentally strikes one of the bells, and the sound unnerves him. He says, “You’ll think I’m loopy, but I tell you that bell was alive.