George Bellairs

A body in a trunk draws Thomas Littlejohn of Scotland Yard to a peculiar English village On a cobblestoned street almost too quaint to be believed, two antique dealers named Grossman and Small have set up shop. Grossman is short and meek, while Small is large and brutish, but their partnership seems happy enough until the day when old Miss Adlestrop purchases the large oak chest in the window and finds Mr. Grossman stuffed inside it—stone dead. The cozy English hamlet is thrown into an uproar, overwhelming the local constabulary and requiring the services of Detective-Inspector Thomas Littlejohn. Cool-headed and never in a hurry, Littlejohn has solved his fair share of village murder cases. But when the key to the fatal chest goes missing, Littlejohn discovers the community to be so infested with jealousies and secrets that he begins to envy the dead man.

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the 3 directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own axe to grind. Bellairs' novel of small-town grudges with calamitous consequences revels in the abundant possible solutions to the central crime as a masterpiece of misdirection.