Although Dorothy Sayers is best known for her mystery stories featuring amateur sleuths Lord Peter Wimsey and Montague Egg, this story features neither. Real estate agent Harold Mummery fears for his ailing wife. Police are hunting for a cook suspected to have poisoned several of her employers. His wife has recently hired a new cook, someone has been tampering with the arsenic-based weed killer in his garden shed, and he is beginning to feel ill. When a chemist identifies arsenic in some hot chocolate the new cook prepared, he rushes home. Themes: fear, suspicion, deception and betrayal, appearance vs. reality.
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