This was an enjoyable series, but it reveals some of the traps you can fall into when writing period dialogue. Two come to mind, one only mildly anachronistic, the other seriously so.
The mild one: the Duke twice uses the exclamation "What the hell!" in Miss Scarlet's presence. No Victorian gentleman would ever do such a thing. At best, he might say "What the Devil".
The serious one: Miss Scarlet uses the word "oneupmanship". Really? That word, not to mention the concept it describes, didn't exist before Stephen Potter invented it. "Oneupmanship", the third in his series of "-manship" books, was published in 1952.
It's hard to keep track of these things, but that last one should have set off the writer's alarms.
The mild one: the Duke twice uses the exclamation "What the hell!" in Miss Scarlet's presence. No Victorian gentleman would ever do such a thing. At best, he might say "What the Devil".
The serious one: Miss Scarlet uses the word "oneupmanship". Really? That word, not to mention the concept it describes, didn't exist before Stephen Potter invented it. "Oneupmanship", the third in his series of "-manship" books, was published in 1952.
It's hard to keep track of these things, but that last one should have set off the writer's alarms.