The Starvel Hollow Tragedy

A fire guts a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors, and three charred bodies are pulled from the ashes: the miserly old recluse who lived there and two of his servants. Local authorities rule it a dreadful accident, but when a banknote traced to the dead man’s hoard turns up in circulation, Scotland Yard’s Inspector Joseph French is sent north to explain how money that should have burned came to be spent. Crofts builds the case the way he once built railway lines, patiently and to scale, testing every alibi and timetable until the fraud behind the flames comes clear. Ruth Averill, the old man’s orphaned niece, stands to inherit and to lose the most. This Golden Age detective classic is available here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.