Geoffrey Buller is an everyday office worker when he unexpectedly inherits a title and Forde Manor with its collection of priceless art. Widowed Betty Stanton takes the post of housekeeper and is surprised when she finds the new Sir Geoffrey having the paintings cleaned. The house is empty and Sir Geoffrey in Italy when disaster strikes. Inspector French reconstructs the cunning and complex crime from a mosaic of detail. Freeman Wills Crofts was born in Dublin and worked in railway engineering before turning to detective fiction. To his plots he brought a mind trained in mathematics, specialising in the seemingly unbreakable alibi and transport timetables. His best-known character is Inspector Joseph French, who appears for the first time in Inspector French's Greatest Case. French achieves his results through dogged persistence.