Bøger af Dorothy Fielding

An innocent masked-ball party in the touristy town of Cluny turns into a puzzling scene of crime with two of the guests being found dead in a locked room! Excerpt: "Anthony!" Vivian Young made a laughing surprised clutch at a tall figure stalking ahead of her down the station platform. The man turned sharply. At the sight of his fiancée he smiled pleasantly, though a sharp observer would have said that there was something in his eyes that suggested a man about to make the best of a position not entirely to his liking. "My dear girl!" he ejaculated warmly, "what brings you to Macon? Did you get into the wrong train, or out of the right one, or what?" "I'm on my way to Cluny."

Excerpt: "Harry Moncrieff is going mad--raving mad. Or else he takes drugs and is not always responsible for his actions." She spoke almost in a whisper, her eyes dilated. "My poor Lavinia! No wonder she has changed into something so white and frightened. And the twins! No one at Beechcroft can be safe with that man. I thought he was going to murder me this morning. I think he would have, had we been alone in the house. As it was, though he chased me round the breakfast table, I managed to get out of the room and away from the house. I couldn't find Lavinia...Ann Bladeshaw had left with the twins and Nannie...The chauffeur refused to drive me to the station..." She stopped and seemed unable to go on."

Soon after receiving a beautiful pearl necklace set as a wedding gift from her husband, the bride is found murdered! Even the pearls are found to be fake. So, who killed the innocent bride? Where are the real pearls? Excerpt: "Kitty Walsh had just been watching the marionettes. At first with keen amusement; but suddenly they had become not funny at all--instead, a sort of ghastly parody on life. They looked so incredibly alive, their actions seemed too intelligent, and yet they were only puppets that were dancing, and making love, and even committing murders with such energy and dash. She shot a glance at Ronald Mills beside her it had been his idea that in lieu of another dance they should watch the Show for a while. He caught her eye and followed her back into the ballroom."

Rose Charteris' dead body at the bottom of a sand pit let the onlookers believe that probably she died due to a freak accident... But Chief Inspector Pointer is deeply suspicious as there are many people who will directly benefit from her murder! Excerpt: "Cockburn thought that the colonel looked vexed. An old scar on his forehead blazed a bar of crimson. A sign of anger. Yet he could hardly be annoyed with the girls for knowing where the professor was. But already the colonel had puzzled him on the courts. Generally a fine player--to-day! Cockburn eyed him as he cut a cigar unevenly, and decided that something was up. It was not Colonel Scarlett's habit to chip a Corona like that. Nor to hold it so tightly that it leaked. Nor to smoke it at a pace which would turn it into an overheated cabbage stalk."

The night Mrs.Tangye committed suicide with her service-revolver, the maid heard footsteps in the garden which suddenly stopped when she switched on the light! Whose footsteps were they? Did Mrs.Tangye actually commit suicide or, was she murdered? Excerpt: "They were talking of the death of Mrs.Tangye who had been found, yesterday afternoon, sitting dead beside her tea-table, with a service-revolver lying on the floor beside her, and a bullet from it through her heart. The Webley was a souvenir of her days as an officer in the Waacs during the last year of the war, and was kept on a bracket in the room. Her husband had explained to the Coroner that his wife had recently spoken of having her initials engraved on it. He suggested that she must have been looking it over with that in her mind when she had met with her fatal accident."

A dead body is found in a hotel's wardrobe and points towards an unfortunate case of drug-overdose. But Inspector Pointer is not convinced and treats it as a murder mystery. Is he right in his presumption? Or, is it indeed a drug-overdose case? Excerpt: "The door opened noiselessly, and four men came in. They were in plain clothes, and one carried a large box. "Evening," said the first. "I am Chief Inspector Pointer from New Scotland Yard. These are detectives Watts, Miller and Lester. What's wrong?" "I 'phoned," a tall young man answered crisply. "I am the manager of the hotel. This is Mr. Beale, an American gentleman to whom this room was let a couple of hours ago. It really belongs to a young fellow who is away for the week-end, but as there was no other room available we assigned it to this gentleman for the one night. Mr. Beale has just told me that there is something wrong about the wardrobe you see there. Kindly investigate that large knot-hole in the back for yourself, Inspector."

The "unfortunate" and "coincidental" deaths of Rev. John Avery and a local village fellow do not excite any suspicion in locals until Inspector Pointer gets involved in the case! Excerpt: "The rector got up from his writing table and laying his pipe down, stood a moment as though collecting his thoughts. A distinguished-looking man of around forty was John Avery, with his tall spare figure, his clever, scholarly face. He was frowning as he absent-mindedly straightened a yellow china jar on the corner of the mantelshelf. Then he returned to his knee-hole table, and, taking an apple from a plate which always stood on the corner, began slowly to eat it, still with a look of abstraction on his face, still with some inner discomfort marking a frown on his fine forehead. The apple automatically disposed of, he drew out his watch and looked at it. Four o'clock. His sister-in-law would probably be in her own sitting-room."

A gift of an ornate Chinese chest ends up becoming the coffin of the receiver. Who killed him? And, why was his body put inside the same chest that was supposed to be exhibited in a party? Chief Inspector Pointer must solve the clues to this locked-room mystery and find the killer before it's too late! Excerpt: "Mr.Farrant to see you, sir, Very urgent.Mr. William Farrant." The private inquiry agent smoothed his forehead and nodded as he glanced at a calendar of social events which his clerk prepared for him daily. A moment later a young man was shown in. He was of big build, but moved with a step so noiseless that even now, when he came forward and shook Schofild's outstretched hand, no footfall could be heard, and the room had parquet flooring."

Ronald Craig's death from arsenic poisoning riles up lot of feathers in a small country side with each person having a strong motif! Excerpt: "You say you're going up to town, Bob, as soon as you've left here. Anywhere near Pont Street? Good. Then do you mind wheeling that nearer to me?" The sick man waved a thin, but still brown hand, to where a little writing cabinet, shaped like a miniature roll-top desk, stood on a swing table. "Thanks," he went on. "Just wait a minute, will you, while I write a note. If you'll drop it in Houghton's letter-box, or hand it in yourself, I shall be much obliged." He hesitated. "Yourself," he repeated. "It's most important, and I don't want to wait for the post."

A ghost prank by a bunch of youngster goes horribly wrong when one of them gets fatally injured by a loaded revolver. Was it really an accident or was it a pre-planned murder? Excerpt: "Moy was about the same age, around twenty-five; small of stature, quick and eager in eye and movement. Tark, the third man, struck such a different note that at first glance one would have taken him for a foreigner. Moy liked Haliburton, but he did not care for his companion, whom he had met in his company a couple of times lately. But, though he did not like Tark, Moy was interested in the man. For the young solicitor was writing a play in secret, and was keenly interested in finding characters for it. Haliburton, he had decided, was no earthly good to a writer. Rich. Easy going. Kindly...but this other, the chap with the name that suited him somehow--because it rhymed with shark probably, Moy decided--he might be very useful. He turned to him now."

A murder mystery thought to have been solved ages ago comes back with a bang when an unidentified body of a man is found at the Dover Beach with severe head injuries. Excerpt: "Elsie and Inskipp watched them disappear. "There, but for the grace of God--" murmured Inskipp unctuously. "I don't think any one should be as ugly as those two are," said Elsie. She spoke meditatively, objectively. She was an artist, and, incidentally, a very pretty girl. And as though to give her another look at them, the brother and sister suddenly reappeared, walking briskly towards them. As usual, Florence Rackstraw was in the lead. She was very tall. Her head was too large for her bony body, and seemed to be all face, a face the colour of mottled mahogany. Her hair, straight as that of a mouse, was looped in two curtains over her ears and gathered into a tight little bun on her long, scraggy neck. Her eyes protruded. Her chin retreated. Her nose was hooked. Her mouth consisted of two thin, pale lines that slanted up to one side."