With a Bare Bodkin

For the duration of the war barrister Francis Pettigrew gives up his practice at the Middle Temple and goes to work for the Board of Control for pin manufacture in Marsett bay. He lives in accommodation with various other members of the department, most of whom are wartime civil servants drawn from the industry itself. To cope with the boredom, several of the other residents press one of their number - a middling writer of detective fiction - to draw up a fictional plot in which the controller of the department is murdered. Several of them go wholeheartedly into this, planning it as a stabbing with a bodkin. The killer they select is the eccentric Miss Danville.

When a few weeks later Miss Danville is herself stabbed to death with a bodkin. The coincidence suggests it might have something to do with the plot. Equally, the engagement of his shy, attractive secretary may have provided a motive of sorts. Inspector Mallet, on secondment from Scotland Yard to investigate black market activity linked to insider trading at the Board of Control, is called in to oversee the murder case.

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