The Banquet Ceases

‘Call Bernard! I’ll see him—and you—in hell first!’

It is 1947 and a sumptuous banquet at Fairfield Manor is underway to celebrate Bernard Smith-Wilson’s recovery from a serious illness. Among the guests are Bernard’s childhood friend Rupert Lavering and his wife Louise. A war veteran and recipient of the Victoria Cross, Rupert has had trouble adjusting to peacetime, and was given a loan by Bernard to get started as a stockbroker six months previously.  The wealthy Bernard is obsessed with Louise and uses the evening to separate the couple, threatening to ruin Lavering’s new business unless she agrees to divorce Rupert and marry him. Louise refuses and Bernard takes action, but the next morning he is found poisoned in his study. Circumstances initially point to Rupert, but it turns out several of the guests at Fairfield Manor have grievances against Bernard Smith-Wilson, and that anyone in the house could have accessed the atropine that killed him.

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.