In Memory of Charles

Charles, according to all accounts, had clearly been boiling up to be murdered.

Charles Courtley was a difficult man. Prone to violent outbursts and a bully to his wife and daughters, he had uprooted his unhappy family from London to a country house in remote East Anglia. Wealthy and increasingly intolerant of any dissent, Charles enjoyed dominating 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 killed in the woods, Inspector Simon Sturt finds conflicting motives and tangled relationships between Mrs Courtley, her daughter Pamela and the local men whose family had once owned the estate.  But each has an alibi for the time of the murder and no one is talking…