Death Wears a Mask

The Mephistolean Mr. Harvey Tuke makes his second appearance in our Murder Revisited series, and an unusually rewarding encore it is. Mr. Tuke, who loathes the country, settles down to a long week-end in the hamlet of Steeple Mardyke with unconcealed boredom and distaste. His misgivings are confirmed at once when he is drafted into service as an umpire in a black-out drill. During the course of these patriotic and precautionary manoeuvers, Mr. Tuke finds that there is something far more distasteful than country life : i.e. country death. Murder methods vary widely, but Mr. Tuke was wrong in supposing himself familiar with them all. The bleeding and broken body of Norman Sleight, trampled to death by a herd of deliberately stampeded horses, signalized something new and particularly evil in his experience. This grisly prologue to a country weekend transforms Mr Tuke from an official observer to an observant official, and during the ensuing days he is at his satanic best, his razor-sharp mind and unerringly tactless tongue combining to speed the progress of his relentless investigation.