Death Wears a Mask

Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club. May Forbes, forty plus and single, visited Broomstick Common four nights each week to feed the feral cats. It was during one of these visits that she happened to see a masked man suspiciously carrying a spade. Filled with fear for her safety, she accidentally went in the opposite direction and ended up at the Mettlesome Horse, a local establishment where the renowned lawyer, Arthur Crook, happened to be enjoying a drink at the bar.

I knew Providence had some reason for making me wallow in that sea of slope, Crook thought as he listened to her story. So when the body of pretty eighteen-year-old Linda Myers was found buried on the Common, he was convinced of it. Then, May Forbes knew what she had seen--and she knew, too, that the murderer had seen her, and that her turn would come next . . .

A number of people had good reason for wishing the girl dead, Crook discovered, when he undertook the defense of the man the police had accused. He was soon to realize that someone wanted him dead too. Subsequently, May Forbes, who had spent her entire life working happily at the nearby draper's shop, vanished during her lunch break and never returned.

Death Wears a Mask (AKA Mr. Crook Lifts the Mask) takes the ubiquitous Mr. Crook from his beloved London to a village community, where he finds that murder is spelt the same way wherever you come across it.