Toby Dyke, an ex-reporter of no fixed occupation, investigates the curious circumstances surrounding the death of a middle-aged stranger who is run over by a car.

Book by Ferrars, Elizabeth

When Toby Dyke and his companion, George, get caught in torrential rain one night, they are surprised to find that they are not the only ones out in such a fierce storm: Edgar Prees, aging botanist of prestige and reputation, is attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff top. The two men drive Edgar home, collapsed and shaken. When he is then found the following morning shot dead with his own revolver, it seems that his attempt at suicide has succeeded - but is the case really as clear-cut as it appears?

1 ADMIT IT—I made a great many mistakes in that affair at East Leat. But about one thing I was right, or, rather, about one person. I was absolutely right about Rosa Miall. I saw her only once, I never exchanged a single word with her, but I was right that it was Rosa Miall who dominated the whole unpleasant business from beginning to end. That it was in the pattern of her curious mind, in the dire efficiency of her conscience, in the strength and definiteness of her personality that the solutions of most of the questions we had to ask ourselves were to be found, was something that stared at me out of the tangle of evidence as uncompromisingly as she herself might have done. It was because Rosa Miall existed, and that she was what she was, and that she affected other people as she did, that bloody murder ever came to East Leat—at any rate, that particular bloody murder.

Toby Dyke and his friend, George, investigate the mysterious death of Toby's friend John Lestarke-Toye, whose body was found in a ransacked room of his house while the other residents were out