Another classic Robert Goddard mystery, intricate, fascinating and deeply satisfying to the last page.
Actor Toby Flood, formerly of big and small screen but now seldom seen on either, arrives in Brighton on the first Sunday in December with the other cast members of the Joe Orton play 'Lodger In The Throat'. They have been on tour since September, but hopes of a West End transfer have been abandoned and they are all looking forward to the end of the run the following Saturday.
Flood is visited that night by his estranged wife, Jenny, now living with wealthy entrepreneur Roger Colborn, whose country residence, Wickhurst Manor, lies just north of Brighton. Jenny runs a shop in the Lanes and is worried about a strange man who has taken to hanging around outside. Roger has dismissed her concerns, but she wants something done and hopes Toby will agree for old times' sake to follow the man to wherever he lives and get to the bottom of his behaviour. Reluctantly, Flood agrees.
Next day he trails the man to his house and confronts him. Derek Osawin is an unemployed loner, who blames Colborn for his father's death from cancer, on account of dangerous practices at the long since closed plastics factory run by Roger and his father, the late Sir Walter Colborn. Many other workers at the factory met a similar fate and Oswin wants to remind Colborn of what he should have on his conscience. But he is also a fan of Flood's and eventually agrees to lay off.
Circumstances nevertheless conspire to draw Flood further and further into Oswin's life. Colborn gets wind of his contact with Jenny and tries to buy him off, but Flood sees only a longed for opportunity to win Jenny back and presses for answers to a host of questions surrounding the death of Sir Walter Colborn seven years earlier.
Before he fully understands the risks he is running, Flood finds himself entangled in the mysterious - and dangerous - relationship between the Oswins and the Colborns. The prospects of him surviving until the close of the show suddenly start to look very far from good.
