John Mapstead kept twelve horses at his riding-stables.  Eight were for hire, three came and went mysteriously in connexion with race meetings and one was for his own use.  It was in the loose-box of the latter that they found his battered body, and the horse was squealing mad and had blood on its hoof.

The verdict of the inquest with Death by Misadventure, but Dame Beatrice Bradley, Gladys Mitchell’s unique detective, began to make inquiries which uncovered one strange feature of the case after another, until by a cold process of deduction she and her secretary were in a position to prove just what had been gong on in the Hampshire countryside.