Alberta Mansbridge is having a tea party. She’s an elderly woman of fortune who controls a family business and is philanthropic to many causes and people in need. However, she doesn’t suffer fools and abandons anyone who tries to cheat her.
When the guests arrive on this snowy Sunday afternoon, no one answers the door. The guests become alarmed, but the house is secure, so they call the police. Inside, they find Alberta dead, strangled. No one has broken in, so Inspector Corby guesses that one of the guests arrived early and killed her, and we know this is true from the Preface.
What quickly becomes obvious is that none of the guests seem likely to have killed Alberta, and none of them have alibis except the wife of Alberta’s nephew, Anthony Seldon (a most unlikable wife, by the way). Anthony seems to be the one with the biggest motive, since he is likely to inherit much, but he claims not to know that. The two most suspicious characters, Barry Slater, a young ex-con, and Marcello Bartolozzi, an Italian conman, are not likely to have cut off their own income streams, although Barry disappears before the police arrive and remains missing for some time.
The others are Myra Heseltine, an old friend with whom Alberta had fallen out; Ewan Musgrave, her doctor; John Armistead, manager of her company in Yorkshire; and her lawyer, Russell Holdeworth.
This novel spends a lot of time up front with the interviews of the guests. I’ll say up to one third of the book. It’s definitely not an action mystery, but it doesn’t lag, either. I found it interesting that the murderer seemed obvious a good 80 pages before the end, but the evidence was needed. Overall, I found this novel interesting of approach and entertaining.
What? Me Read? 