The Poisoned Chocolates Case

At Roger Sheringham's smoky, exclusive Crimes Circle, murder is treated as both parlour game and serious intellectual challenge. When the members gather to hear Chief Inspector Moresby's account of Mrs. Graham Bendix's death, Sheringham proposes an audacious experiment: six independent minds will spend a week solving the case themselves, competing in theories while Scotland Yard has already given up hope. The mystery begins with a seemingly trivial gesture at the Rainbow Club, where Sir Eustace Pennefather angrily passes on a box of chocolates to the reserved, prosperous Graham Bendix. The chocolates, their wrapper, and the accompanying letter soon become crucial evidence. Back home, Bendix and his cultured, affectionate wife Joan taste the sweets and are struck by a strange burning numbness. Within hours, both are violently ill, and the scent of bitter almonds points toward poison. Joan's death turns a stable, loving marriage into a scene of sudden domestic catastrophe. As gossip, suspicion, and social vanity swirl around the tragedy, the Crimes Circle weighs the facts through clashing personalities and methods. Among them are the timid Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick and the swaggering detective novelist Morton Harrogate Bradley, who loudly dissects the use of nitrobenzene and the narrow type of mind it implies. Wit, class, and deduction collide as the novel's central contest of brains begins. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.