Who Was Robert Eustace?

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

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Spoilers: there will be minor details shared for all the novels and stories listed below, and major spoilers towards the end for The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace. The latter will be flagged just before I get to it, so you can safely listen to the rest of the episode and just skip that part when I tell you.

Mentioned in this episode:

— A Master of Mysteries by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

— The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

— An Honourable Miss by L.T. Meade

— A World of Girls by L.T. Meade

— Stories from the Diary of a Doctor by L.T. Meade and Clifford Halifax

— The Experiences of the Oracle of Maddox Street by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

— The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

— The Sorceress of the Strand by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

— The Face in the Dark by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace

— Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror edited by Dorothy L. Sayers

— The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh and Henry Jellett

— "The Tea Leaf" by Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace

— The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L Sayers and Robert Eustace

— Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers

— Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers

— Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers

— The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers

— Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

Additional sources consulted:

— “The Mystery of Robert Eustace” by Joe Christopher, The Armchair Detective Quarterly volume 13, issue 4, Fall 1980

— Rivaling Conan Doyle: L. T. Meade’s Medical Mysteries, New Woman Criminals, and Literary Celebrity at the Victorian Fin de Siècle by Janis Dawson, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 58, Number 1, 2015

— Dorothy L Sayers, Nine Literary Studies by Trevor H. Hall

— Dorothy L. Sayers: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction by Eric Sandberg

— “Nature Is Lopsided”: Muscarine as Scientific and Literary Fascinosum in Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Documents in the Case by Bettina Wahrig in Poison and Poisoning in Science, Fiction and Cinema: Precarious Identities, 2017

Related Shedunnit episodes:

— Edith Thompson

— The Dispenser

— Dorothy's Secret

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Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/whowasroberteustacetranscript.

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