Inspector Collier meets a wealthy American in the lobby of a hotel one evening and begins chatting with him. He is Mr. Pakenham, and he explains that he was a survivor during the war of the sinking of the Coptic. He and eight other men were afloat on a lifeboat for days, and he being ill, the others kept him alive. Ever since then, the men have met once a year to celebrate their survival, and last year, Mr. Pakenham announced that he was leaving his estate to whomever of the group survived him. This year, however, only a couple of men showed up.
In the meantime, Corinna Lacy returns from Europe where she has been working as a companion. She is not well off, but she has a few assets, so she writes her second cousin, who is also her trustee, to ask his advice about selling her property to pay for a secretarial course. She has never met Wilfred Stark, but he invites her to his place to talk about it and turns out to be a friendly, fatherly sort of person. While she is there, she meets his neighbor, Gilbert Freyne, who has a shadow on his past.
Investigating an apparent accident in which a blind man walked into an empty elevator shaft, Inspector Collier recognizes Henry Raymond, a man who was meeting Mr. Pakenham the night of the dinner as one of the prospective heirs. Inspector Collier begins looking into the other heirs. He can’t find some of them, but several of them have died recently, and one of the heirs is Gilbert Freyne, with whom Corinna is falling in love.
Yes, it’s a plot! We find out part of it as early as page 60, but the rest is not clear until the end. I had my suspicions pretty early, though, and they were right. But that didn’t make the book any less fun to read.
True to its 1929 origins, there isn’t a lot of characterization going on here, and Corinna is eventually so much the heroine in peril that she might as well be tied to a railroad track. But there is a bit more of an emphasis on character development than in most mysteries of this time, and at least it’s not a puzzle mystery. It’s more of a mystery/adventure story.
Will innocent lives by saved? Including Mr. Pakenham? Will the murderer or murderers be brought to justice? Has Corinna fallen in love with a villain or victim? And what about Mr. Pakenham’s cat?
I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.
What? Me Read? 
This sounds fun. I haven’t read anything by Moray Dalton yet, but I do have one of her other books, The Strange Case of Harriet Hall. I hope it’s as good as this one!
I asked for the first one. Now I’ll ask for more!
“Corinna is eventually so much the heroine in peril that she might as well be tied to a railroad track.” Haha, that made me laugh! I must try Moray Dalton – I’m sure one of them is already on my wishlist.
It was fun.
This does sound fun, I haven’t started on Dean Street Press crime yet and there looks like a lot of tempting titles!
This is my second, I think. The other one I read a long time ago.