Cirrus@Austlit

'It was a sweet little 'set-up', ruined by murder.

'Washington Mainwaring was a guest with a purpose, his intentions in the house-party being strictly criminal. Somebody murdered the butler, and in a cold sweat Mainwaring imagined the hangman's noose tightening about his own neck.

'Not that he was the only guest who interested Scotland Yard. How could he be when the party included such assorted characters as Morton Hudson, who had stood in the dock of the Old Bailey, and Mrs. Benton Rome, the embers of whose past still glowed inextinguishably? Even their hostess behaved oddly, though not to the extent that she did not know when to stop talking. And what part in the crime had Dr. Ramsden Hendrick who was twenty miles away when the murder was committed?

'"Arthur Gask knows all there is to know of how to write a good mystery story," says the Sunday Mercury, and this story, featuring once again his famous investigator, Gilbert Larose, proves the truth of that comment.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.