Emma Betony was living out her dignified, elderly, poverty-stricken life when an appeal for help from a former student brought her to the little town of Martinmas and a nursing home transformed into a girls' school. Set in 1940, he school had recently been moved from its former English coastal location to avoid German bombers. Famed Edgar-winning mystery critic and acquisitions librarian at the University of Colorado, James Sandoe call this 1941 Golden Age detective novel an essential acquisition for libraries in his "Readers Guide to Detective Fiction." This book marked the fourth and final appearance of Scotland Yarders Dan Pardoe and Tommy Salt.