Ngaio Marsh

Agatha Troy, world famous painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies and Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn is called in.

New Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer wanted to celebrate his wife's birthday in style. The pièce de résistance would be the jeroboam of champagne. But something went horribly wrong and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn witnessed it himself.

One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction, packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead.

Despite two husbands being dead and a daughter marrying the wrong man, no one believed Sybil Foster would commit suicide, especially Roderick Alleyn. For the field was ripe with unfortunate engagements - one of them a very grave mistake.