[1] Part of his long-running series of novels featuring the forensic investigator Doctor Thorndyke, it was published in London by Hodder and Stoughton and in New York City by Dodd, Mead.

[2] Freeman's Thorndyke stories stretched back to the Edwardian era, but this novel was released during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

[3] Mr. Pottermack, a respectable man living in a house on the outskirts of the town of Borley in Buckinghamshire, is confronted one night by his repeated blackmailer James Lewson a local bank manager.

Pottmerack an enterprising man, realises that the sandy soil means that Lawson's footprints are clearly shown all the way from the town to his house.

He develops a mould imitating the soles of the dead mans shoes and wears them to walk some distance away to an isolated heath.

He had been a young bank cashier named Jeffrey Brandon, engaged to his soulmate, who was wrongly accused of stealing and had been sent to prison for five years.

Having escape from detection of the initial killing, Pottermack now realises he has to provide a body that will satisfy the world Lewson is dead so he can marry his sweetheart.