"You don't seem overjoyed to see me . . ."
Mr. Pottermack planned to install a sundial in his garden, not a dead body. But standing up to a blackmailing bank manager has placed the normally peaceful man in a dire situation. To escape the hangman's noose, he carefully fabricates evidence to make it look as if he never had any visitors. It's almost the perfect crime . . .
Physician, lawyer, and dean of scientific detection Dr. John Thorndyke is drawn to unusual cases, and that of a vanishing bank manager is no exception. With his suspicions aroused, Thorndyke digs into the mystery. Now a battle of wits begins as Thorndyke seeks to unearth the truth, and Pottermack aims to keep it buried.
Originally published in 1930.
R. Austin Freeman (1862–1943) was a British author of detective stories. A pioneer of the inverted detective story, in which the reader knows from the start who committed the crime, Freeman is best known as the creator of the "medical jurispractitioner" Dr. John Thorndyke. First introduced in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), the brilliant forensic investigator went on to star in dozens of novels and short stories over the next decades.