Albert Campion #12

World War II is limping to a close, but it isn’t the Germans who are troubling the Dowager Marchioness of Carados right now. The problem, rather, is her son’s upcoming marriage, to a nearly appropriate girl, and its potential for being derailed by a distinctly inappropriate one. Who apparently chose the Marchioness’s son’s bed in which to swallow a fatal handful of pills.

Never one to be cowed, the Marchioness enlists a friend to dump the body in a temporarily empty flat. But the flat’s owner – one Albert Campion – returns home unexpectedly, on brief leave from the war. Understandably a bit put out, Campion determines nonetheless to carry out his original plan: a fast change of clothing and then off to the country and the loving embrace of his wife. The police, however, have other ideas.

“A most ingenious puzzle that mingles a sense of the grim with lively humor” – Times Literary Supplement

“Will satisfy almost any reader” – New Yorker