The Mystery of the Member: Identifying a Corpse in Whose Body? (1923), by Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers began writing Whose Body?, her first Lord Peter Wimsey detective novel, in London in January 1921, when she was was 27 years old. A letter that month from Sayers to her mother reveals that the novel rather changed in the writing. In the novel as published the naked body discovered in the bath belongs to a "semitic-looking stranger" who is at first thought to be vanished Jewish financier Sir Reuben Levy; but in fact the corpse turns out to be that of some other, stubbornly anonymous individual. But here's how Sayers conceived this plot in her 1921 letter:My detective story begins brightly with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez. [Sayers herself wore pince-nez at this time.] Now, why did she wear pince-nez in her bath? If you can guess, you will be in a position to lay hands on the murderer....By October, when Sayers had finished the novel, the dead body in the bath had altered from a fat woman wearing a pince-nez to a middle-aged…