Book description
Haltingly, a boy tolls his fearful story to Scotland Yard officials -
how he alone had witnessed from the vantage point of his commuter train
a scene of terror in a dingy room . . . a blood-chilling tableau framed
in a lighted window, glimpsed for a moment between patches of fog, and
then gone.
Chief-Inspector Johnson listens tolerantly, yet official credence can
hardly be given to such a tale. Terry Byrnes is an impressionable,
imaginative lad. No crime of violence has been reported in the Battersea
area, and if the boy has witnessed murder, where is the corpse?
But if Scotland Yard is not worried, Janet Lapthorn is; and sometimes a
fretful woman can be a powerful agent in the processes of justice. She
has a number of questions which demand answers. Why have her letters to
her close friend, Felicity Hilton, gone unanswered? Why has Felicity
abandoned her husband, Alastair? Why has Alastair lied about his wife’s
whereabouts? To come straight to the point, where is Felicity Hilton?
The evidence is disjointed. The clues are scattered. But slowly the
mists of conjecture dissolve - as the police, like patient
archaeologists themselves, reconstruct the hideous form and face of an
unspeakable crime. Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in
Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin
School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the
University College Hospital in London she was granted M. R.C. S. and L.
R.C. P. in 1922, and a M. B. B. S. in 1924.
Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous
uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.
Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard
. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in
1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books
featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at
Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped
found the Crime Writers' Association in 1953 and served as chair during
1959-60.
