The Disappearing detectives

Fifteenth in the long-running mystery series with Dr Launcelot Priestley. > No. 13 Beaumaris Place was the last remaining private residence in a street long since given up to apartment houses. Dr Lancelot Priestley was all too familiar with its rather gloomy interior, for he had been in the habit of calling there to see its owner, his old friend Sir John Claverton, though circumstances had prevented him from visiting for some time. >When he did at last call again at No. 13 it was to find Sir John ill and his doctor uneasy. On a second visit he was informed that Sir John had died suddenly the day before. The family physician was not the only person to find circumstances which seemed to him suspicious, and after consultation with Dr Priestley there was little doubt in anyone's mind that Sir John Claverton was poisoned. >Nevertheless, the case presented several baffling aspects, but by ingenious deductions from slender clues Dr Priestley eventually succeeded in finding a satisfactory solution to the case that became famous as The Claverton Mystery. >This title was first published in the Crime Club in 1933.