Old General Fendman was definitely dead, but no one knew exactly when he had died--and the time of death was the determining factor in a half-million-pound inheritance.
From Dorothy L. Sayers, the mistress of the Golden Age mystery, the fourth whodunnit featuring the dashing and brilliant Lord Peter WimseyOn November 11, ninety-year-old General Fentiman is found dead in an armchair at the Bellona Club. No one knows exactly when his death occurred--information essential in determining the recipient of a substantial inheritance. But that is only one of the mysteries vexing Lord Peter Wimsey. The aristocratic sleuth needs every bit of his amazing skills to discover why the proud officer's lapel was missing the requisite red poppy on Armistice Day, how the Bellona Club's telephone was fixed without a repairman, and, most puzzling of all, why the great man's knee swung freely when the rest of him was stiff with rigor mortis.
Dorothy L. Sayers was born in 1893. She was one of the first women to be awarded a degree by Oxford University, and later she became a copywriter at an ad agency. In 1923 she published her first novel featuring the aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who became one of the world's most popular fictional heroes. She died in 1957.