Reviewer: M. L. Worley from Kingdom of the Mouse, United States
Bill Fent, driving old Professor Berry home dinner, would have been just another Road Traffic Accident at Tappet's Corner for Inspector "Happy" Harry Harpe - that perenially depressed member of the Berebury Force, who's never seen anything to smile at in Traffic Division - just another accident on the way back from Berry's, one life gone and the life of another driver hanging by a thread. Unfortunately for somebody, Dr. Dabbe is *very* thorough in his work as police pathologist, so during the routine post-mortem, he found the poison somebody slipped to Bill Fent during dinner at Strontfield Park. If Dr. Washby hadn't been called away unexpectedly, Fent wouldn't have had to drive Berry home, and a poisoner might have got away with murder.

Now, of course, the case belongs to Harpe's friend "Seedy" Sloan and his raw assistant Crosby of the CID, working out who at a dinner for twelve could have poisoned the host without being seen. After attending the funeral, they have another loose end to worry about: the widow, hearing of their presence, fainted dead away, then shut herself up in her room - but it seems more like fear than guilt.

Who would want to murder Bill Fent, a respectable local magistrate burdened with an entailed estate? His next of kin seems to have had a good reason *not* to - both the owner and an adult heir have to work together to break an entail and start turning land into cash, and the Fents had had bad luck in meeting the requirements, what with the World Wars killing off family members at inopportune moments. But *somebody* thinks Sloan can make sense of it; before long, he has a second murder on his hands...

This isn't what I would call a country house party case, although Constance Parva is definitely in the country. The dinner guests were local worthies: the local doctor, his new bride (hence the reason for the party), the old rector's daughter Cynthia Paterson, Quentin Fent the heir, to name a few. Cynthia Paterson alternates with Sloan as the viewpoint character, filling in background information in a gentle way; as a rector's daughter, she's attended far too many funerals to concentrate solely on the service, and contemplates the attendees instead, with some of her father's taste for literature thrown in. (In one of Aird's many references to Italian art, the notion that Charity's opposite is Folly was always good for a sermon. That kind of thing.) --.

RELEASE NOTES:

Released as part of a personal BC-ing challenge: 30 releases in 30 days. This is Day 10.