A locked room. A house full of suspects. And one detective who thrives on the impossible. When author Hugh Curran is found dead in his securely latched chamber at Valentine Loft's Westchester estate, local investigators are stumped. The door was locked from inside. The windows were barred. Yet Curran lies motionless, and every guest in the house becomes a suspect. Enter Fleming Stone, a quiet scholar of a detective who favors good books and better manners but possesses an almost supernatural instinct for unraveling the seemingly unsolvable. As Stone examines the gathered guests, their alibis, and the curious details of the crime scene, the tension among the weekend party curdles into something far more dangerous than mere suspicion. Wells serves up the kind of Golden Age puzzle that rewards careful attention. The locked-room scenario is merely the opening move in a complex game of wits, where motive, opportunity, and human psychology collide. For readers who cut their teeth on Christie and Sayers, or anyone who believes the greatest detective stories are intellectual puzzles wrapped in human drama, this 1923 collection offers exactly what the genre does best: a mystery designed to be solved by an attentive reader as much as by the detective.
