The Ten Teacups

"There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W.8, on Wednesday, July 31st, at 5 p.m. Precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested."

The note was delivered to New Scotland Yard, its words evoking a cold murder case and its unsolved mystery of the ten teacups found beside the body. Scrambling to prevent a second killing, the police set up a watertight cordon at Berwick Terrace. But gunfire rings out from the top floor at 5 p.m. on the 31st, and the corpse of one of the celebrity tenants is found in a locked room, shot twice from behind, a smoking gun by their side and on the table – ten teacups. The killer has vanished into thin air, an impossibility which calls for the masterful sleuth Sir Henry Merrivale to enter the fray.