Description

On a rain-lashed London night, Inspector Gore is summoned to a meeting he dreads—with Eli Sibbers, a sinister moneylender whose grip reaches into the city’s darkest corners. But when Gore arrives, what should have been a tense confrontation turns into something far more chilling: the sound of a violent quarrel behind a locked door and a cry of murder from Sibbers, but no corpse to be found upon entry.

As Gore struggles to reconcile the conflicting evidence—a safe expertly broken into, papers scattered, and a bronze hairpin among the wreckage—news arrives that shatters his assumptions entirely: Eli Sibbers has been found dead on Clapham Common, his body cold for hours before Gore even reached the flat.

With timelines contradicting, suspects multiplying, and his own presence at the scene looking increasingly suspicious, Gore finds himself trapped in a case where nothing adds up, and someone is clearly pulling the strings.

First published in 1926, J. M. Walsh’s atmospheric mystery will keep you guessing until the end.