Miss Silver must contend with a vanishing corpse when murder rocks the postwar English countryside in this classic mystery perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Det. Sgt. Frank Abbot of Scotland Yard thought he’d spend a quiet holiday at his family’s estate near the quaint village of Deeping. Instead, he got intrigue and wild tales of a man dragging a horribly murdered girl into the woods. Naturally, he calls his friend, private detective Miss Maud Silver, to take a look. But the case takes a puzzling turn when no one can locate the body of the rumored victim, and the only witness suffers a broken neck. One thing is certain, however: The pastoral peace of this town masks something far more sinister. Miss Silver, a retired schoolteacher with a fondness for knitting and reading Tennyson who has found a new career as a private enquiry agent, “has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot” ( Manchester Evening News ).

First published in 1948 in the US by Lippincott.

Mary Stokes was walking through Dead Man's Copse one evening when she saw, in the beam of a torch, the corpse of a young woman dressed in a black coat, black gloves, no hat and an eternity ring set with diamonds in her ear. But when she and Detective Sergeant Frank Abbott went back to the wood, the body had vanished.

This would have been mystery enough for Miss Silver to solve if a woman had not also reported that her lodger had gone out on Friday dressed in a black coat, black beret, black shoes and large hoop earrings set all around with little diamonds like those eternity rings. She never came back...