Pat and Jean Abbott have found a way to be together in wartime Britain, Pat as a military intelligence author with the U.S Marines and Jean as a secretary with the Lend-Lease Program. They’ve already made new friends and have been invited to a weekend houseparty at the lovely Tudor home of fellow Americans Stephen and Cynthia Heyward. Despite moments of discord among the other guests, all is well until a pretty young housemaid gets herself murdered. Jean dutifully reports all she sees and hears—well, most of it, anyway—to Pat and to Inspector Yates, the conscientious but unimaginative local police detective assigned to the case. According to Anthony Boucher: “You expect murder on an English weekend party, but imagine killing the maids with the servant problem what it is. Nice quiet writing, interesting people and a well-conceived murder.” First published in 1942, it’s the fifth mystery to feature the globe-trotting couple.

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