It's scandalous, really. Poor old General Fentiman, 90 if he was a day, sitting peacefully in his chair in front of the fireplace at the Bellona Club - a little too peacefully, it turns out. Not to mince words, the General was dead - in full rigor mortis - before anyone noticed. It was "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club," by Dorothy L. Sayers, our review on this week's Classic Mysteries podcast, which you can listen to here.
The unpleasantness continues because, as will soon become apparent, the question of precisely when General Fentiman died will prove to be tremendously important to his potential heirs. Lord Peter Wimsey is called upon to try to determine the time of death - and soon discovers that he must also learn how the General died, and whether it was natural or if the old man was helped a bit along the road to the next world.
I think it's one of Sayers' cleverest plots, and I recommend it to you!
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