When Sir William Ponson doesn’t call down to his butler for his customary evening drink, the unusual turn is initially brushed away, but the alarm is raised once his servants find that he has disappeared from the house. It’s only the following morning that, at the bottom of a set of rapids, a damaged boat—and his body—are discovered. Initially the death is assumed to be a horrible accident, but it’s not long before enough suspicious evidence is found to merit a visit from Inspector Tanner of Scotland Yard.

The Ponson Case is Freeman Wills Crofts’s second novel (following the well received The Cask ) and amply demonstrates his skill in tightly plotted crime stories, in particular with his encyclopedic knowledge of train stations and timetables gained during his day job as a railway engineer.