'Mr Gabb, your son did not commit suicide. He was murdered.'

Simon Gabb had everything – or so it seemed: a beautiful house, a big estate, a flourishing business and two sons, both endowed with evident capacity for carrying on the family firm. One was brilliant, inventive, the other dependable and efficient. And yet something was manifestly wrong. A secret invention, on which his business was engaged for the government, became known to those who had not right to know it. But how and where did the leak occur? It was a mystery which created suspicion and dissension within the family and also engulfed everyone who dined with them one Saturday night. The next morning his elder son is found murdered by the lake. Smouldering emotions within the family erupt, confusing the issues which Inspector Mallet is called upon to unravel. The solution to the case is as much a study in relationships as in crime.

Mary Fitt was the pseudonym of Kathleen Freeman (1897–1959), a classical scholar who taught Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff. Beginning in 1937, Freeman wrote twenty-nine mysteries and a number of short stories as Mary Fitt, and was elected to the Detection Club in 1950. Aside from her detective novels, Freeman published many books on classical Greece, scholarly articles and children's stories. She lived in St Mellons in Wales with her partner Dr Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet, a family physician and author.