[These notes were made in 1985:]. A domestic melodrama this time, with an eccentric snob called Mr Pyke Period, his lodger who appears to die accidentally in an open ditch, and a series of complicated relations & near-relations. There is the obligatory cooing young couple whom no-one really suspects; there's a thoroughly bad lot who should have done it but didn't, and there's "The Moppet," his girlfriend. It turns out to be the elderly frump, protecting "The Moppet" from just retribution for theft. Meanwhile, there are mix-ups with two letters, and a pair of driving gloves on which the solution depends. Alleyn is all efficiency in this one, his equanimity not even disturbed by the fact that one of the Nice Young Things is a personal friend.
