The Crispin Chronicles

Swan Song

The sad deaths in this case owe their origins to the marriage between Adam Langley, the only tenor of reasonable age and girth in England, and Elizabeth Harding, a journalist. Elizabeth was the object of the objectionable Edwin Shorthouse's lust, and when she, having spurned him, married Adam, Shorthouse determined on a campaign of revenge against Adam. His method: arsenic in the make up.

Meanwhile, with the ending of the wartime ban on Wagner, the company came to Oxford to perform. Elizabeth came with them, hoping to interview Adam's friend, Gervase Fen, for a series on the great detectives.

It is in Oxford that Edwin played his swan song, ending up swinging from a rope in his dressing room. Later on, a young would-be composer, Boris Stapleton, who has been showing growing signs of illness, dies, from what turns out to be arsenic poisoning. In the end, Fen is able to demonstrate that Adam, inadvertently, killed both of them.

Several old friends appear in this novel: Lily Christine III, Wilkes, Sir Richard Freeman. Also appearing is Edwin's brother Charles, the famous operatic composer, who offers to buy Lily Christine, and Beatrix Thorne, his secretary, keeper and lover, whose sole aim in life is to prevent him being upset.