London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946. First Edition. Publisher's red boards lettered in yellow and spine and front cover. With the slightly rubbed and foxed dust-jacket, not price-clipped, depicting a woman descending a staircase holding a candle, with a petrified expression on her face. Spotting to endpapers and general embrowning to text pages, as often the case with the poor quality paper stock employed in this period. A macabre tale in the Horace B. Treadgold mystery series, in which Clarissa Pell, on her first visit to England, is forced to take refuge at a sinister old inn, following a cycling accident. When a fellow guest is murdered she is taken under the wing of a local family, who invite her to stay at Arkwood, their magnificent stately home.