The Clevedon case

the long version

Dennis Holt, well-known criminologist, comes to live in a remote village where everything spells peace and quiet. Late one night a girl taps on his window asking to be let in. She explains that she has hurt herself while lost in the fog. The next day Holt is precipitated into the midst of the Clevedon mystery. Sir Philip Clevedon is found stabbed with a hat-pin, but the coroner's inquest pronounces death through poisoning. The local police help on details, but it is Holt who carefully and none too easily reconstructs the happenings preceding the murder, and in the course of discovering the real culprit he unearths some very surprising events in the lives of the main characters of the story.