Who Killed the Earl of Moran?

Mrs. Mary Alder, in discharging her last duty to her mistress, the Dowager Countess of Moran, goes to deliver a list of the aging countess’s engagements for the following day to her son, the earl, in his study, only to discover that the earl has been bludgeoned to death. When Mary is accused of the crime, her son, Julian, rushes to his employer, Curtis, of the Curtis Inquiry Agency, for help, and Curtis promptly enlists the aid of Barnaby and Penelope Adair and Scotland Yard’s Inspector Stokes. Not that the trio needed much summoning as they’ve already been instructed by the Police Commissioner to solve the case with all speed.

With the victim being a powerful nobleman and a major political player, from the first, the pressure is on to find who had dared kill the earl. While the investigators quickly rule out Mrs. Alder as a suspect, they soon discover that the other major suspects—the rest of the earl’s family—were all in the Moran House drawing room at the time of the murder, under each other’s eyes. And while it quickly becomes clear that quite a few people wished the earl dead, which one actually did the deed remains a perplexing mystery.