Charles was in a vile temper and Anne was catching the full benefit of it. Charles Courtley is a difficult man. Prone to violent outbursts and a bully to his wife and daughters, he has uprooted the family from London to an old manor house in remote East Anglia. Spoilt by his growing wealth and increasingly intolerant of any dissent, Charles enjoys controlling 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 shot dead in a woodland clearing, evidence from an unreliable witness points to Courtley’s secretary, but he has a cast iron alibi and the resulting trial ends in an acquital. A year later, a seemingly innocent death and an odd cenotaph leads Chief Inspector Simon Sturt to reconsider the case. Dorothy Erskine Muir (1889–1977) was one of seventeen children 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: In Muffled Night (1933), Five to Five (1934) and In Memory of Charles (1941).
