Busman's Honeymoon with severe head injuries. A "busman's holiday" is a holiday spent by a bus driver travelling on a bus: it is no break from his usual routine. By analogy, anyone who spends his holiday doing his normal job is taking a "busman's holiday". After an engagement of some months following the events at the end of "Gaudy Night", Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry. They plan to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Harriet's native Hertfordshire which Wimsey has bought for her, and they abscond from the wedding reception, evading the assembled reporters. Arriving late at
Lord Peter Wimsey from her engagement in case he was killed or mutilated. The girl later married another, less principled officer. Wimsey served on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, reaching the rank of Major in the Rifle Brigade. He was appointed an Intelligence Officer, and on one occasion he infiltrated the staff room of a German officer. Though not explicitly stated, that feat implies that Wimsey spoke a fluent and unaccented German. As noted in "Have His Carcase", he communicated at that time with British Intelligence using the Playfair cipher and became proficient in its use. For reasons never clarified, after