It is high summer and London is sweltering so when Tolefree and Farrar receive a message from their old friend Professor Pye, inviting them to join him in the delightful Cotswold village of Albury, they are only too ready to accept. But Pye has an ulterior motive. He hopes that Tolefree will put his detective talents to work on the mystery of Mr. William Abbott, a man recently arrived in Albury purporting to be an artist, and whom Pye believes to be nothing of the sort. For, climbing up to the local Roman remains by moonlight one evening, Pye has overheard Abbott conspiring with another local resident and threatening another newcomer to the village with a gun. Who is Abbott? What is his clandestine mission at Albury? And could it possibly have anything to do with the local legend of a hidden hoard at Abbott's Chantry, the local manor house and former monastery?
Tolefree shares Pye's suspicions. But his investigation has barely begun, when Abbott is found murdered in the library of the Chantry
Originally published in 1939, this is a vintage murder mystery from the golden age of crime fiction.