In Memory of Charles

Charles Courtley was a difficult man. Prone to violent outbursts and a bully to his wife and daughters, he had uprooted his unhappy family from London to a country house in remote East Anglia. Wealthy and increasingly intolerant of any dissent, Charles enjoyed dominating everyone around him. His family, his employees and even the locals - banned from using the traditional footpaths on his forested estate - have multiple reasons to bear a grudge. When Charles is killed in the woods, Inspector Simon Sturt finds conflicting motives and tangled relationships between Mrs Courtley, her daughter Pamela and the local men whose family had once owned the estate. But each has an alibi for the time of the murder and no one is talking... Dorothy Erskine Muir (1889-1977) was one of seventeen children (twelve who reached adulthood) of John Sheepshanks, Bishop of Norwich. She attended Oxford, worked as an academic tutor, and began writing professionally to supplement the family income after the unexpected death of her husband in 1932. Muir published historical biographies and local histories, as well as three accomplished detective novels, (1933), (1934) and (1941). Each is an intricate fictional account based on an unsolved true crime.