A Most Contagious Game

by Catherine Aird

published 1967

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A classic mystery from a Diamond Dagger Award–winning author

When a London businessman retires early and buys a Tudor mansion, he’s quite surprised–and perhaps even a little pleased (retirement being pretty boring)–to find a skeleton hidden in a secret room in the house. The skeleton appears to be more than a 150 years old, so the local police leave it to the homeowner to solve the mystery. The police are much more interested in solving a local, modern murder. Somehow the two deaths are connected. First published in 1967, this is Aird’s only non-Inspector Sloan mystery and a complete triumph.

When Thomas Harding retired to the Manor House of Easterbrook he soon discovered that it contained rather more than the house-agents had advertised. It became apparent, more-over, that Easterbrook, despite its outward serenity, had more than one skeleton in the parish cupboard. What for instance was the guilty secret which the village seemed to share with the ancient family of the Barbarys, and what connection could there be between this and the handiwork of an Elizabethan craftsman?

Intrigued by these questions, Thomas Harding found himself helping to solve two crimes at once-the one modern, and the other one-and-a-half centuries old. And it was only after he had found the answers to these questions that the various skeletons could he laid to rest.