A stormy night. A seemingly deserted farmhouse in the north of England. A young farmer returns to find a well-dressed woman seated at his desk, dead from a gunshot wound. John Leslie is completely mystified. Who is she? The police identify her as Mrs. Draycott, a visitor to the area. And since John cannot provide a plausible alibi, he is charged with her murder.

Luckily for him, famed barrister Sir Edward Kean and Allen “Hatter” Fayre, both friends of John’s aristocratic fiancée, believe in his innocence and are determined to help him. Fayre, recently returned from a career in India, has the time to follow up on the meager clues at his disposal. These involve a tramp, a mysterious car, a bad-tempered doctor, and a pen. Complicating matters is the decidedly unsavory past of the much-married Mrs. Draycott. But as Sir Edward points out, Fayre is an amateur, and deciphering which clues are pertinent to discovering the murderer is tricky business.

Molly Thynne produced six detective novels in her career during the genre’s Golden Age. The Draycott Murder Mystery is her first and her spot-on depiction of the upper classes in her novels came from personal experience. A wealthy descendant of the Marquess of Bath and the painter James Whistler, Thynne’s literary career spanned the era between the wars.

Originally published in 1928.