He learns that, under the terms of her will, he stands to inherit most of her substantial fortune (money sorely needed by his grandsons, Robert and George Fentiman).

Lady Dormer dies the next morning, Armistice Day, and that afternoon the General is found dead in his armchair at the Bellona Club.

As the estate would amply provide for all three claimants, the Fentiman brothers suggest a negotiated settlement, but Ann Dorland absolutely refuses.

Contriving to be present later when the body was discovered, Penberthy was able to certify a natural death without arousing suspicion, in spite of Robert's intervention which initially confused the time.

Writing in 1990 Katherine Kenny described the book as the most successful of Sayers' early fiction, coupling a slick detective plot with vivid details of post-war English life.

"The book is a tightly constructed little drama based upon the old joke about an Englishman's club so stuffy that its dead members cannot be differentiated from the living – a pertinent comment upon the society so described.”[2] In 1973 the novel was the subject of a BBC TV mini-series starring Ian Carmichael as Wimsey.