The Herapath Property

Jacob Herapath, a Member of Parliament who owns a model estate of modern flats in Kensington, is found shot through the right temple in his estate office, a revolver lying close by his hand. Suicide is the obvious reading until the timing collapses: the police surgeon puts death at about midnight, yet Mountain the coachman set his master down at Portman Square as the clocks struck one, and someone had eaten his sandwiches and poured his whisky. Selwood, a secretary of barely three weeks, is drawn into a case that widens into a will leaving everything to Herapath’s niece and nothing to Barthorpe, the nephew who expected it. Fletcher covered murder trials as a journalist, and the inquest routine and the solicitors’ manoeuvring ring true. He was among the most prolific crime writers of his day.