When the case is tried, the jury brings in a verdict of manslaughter, with a strong recommendation to mercy on the ground that 'Campbell was undoubtedly looking for trouble'. The police are sceptical, but Wimsey offers a reconstruction, and over the course of twenty-four hours demonstrates how the killer contrived the scene above the stream and also established a false alibi.įerguson confesses, but states that Campbell's death happened accidentally during a fight, and was not murder. It was the absence of that tube that Wimsey had noted at the start. Asked for his opinion, Wimsey finally reveals that the true killer was in fact Ferguson, the only one of the artists who while painting often kept spare tubes of paint in his pocket and who absentmindedly pocketed a tube of white while creating the faked painting. The police put forward several theories, implicating all of the suspects either as killer or as accessory. The Procurator Fiscal, the Chief Constable and the investigating police officers meet with Wimsey to review the evidence. The task of identifying the culprit is made more difficult because of the complexities of the local train timetables, the easy availability of bicycles, and the resultant opportunities for the murderer to evade notice.Īll six suspects are eventually traced and give statements in which they deny killing Campbell, but none are entirely satisfactory. Wimsey investigates, with some assistance from his friend in London, Charles Parker.

One of the six is the criminal, and five are red herrings.Īll the suspects behave suspiciously: some leave the district without explanation, others give obviously inaccurate statements or conceal facts. Six talented artists in the area have had recent public brawls with Campbell: Farren, Strachan, Gowan, Graham, Waters and Ferguson. Whoever killed Campbell also executed the painting in Campbell's distinctive style, to contrive the appearance of an accident. A local doctor believes that the degree of rigor mortis suggests that Campbell died during the previous night. Sayers includes a parenthetical note at this point: 'Here Lord Peter Wimsey told the Sergeant what he was looking for and why, but as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page'. Lord Peter Wimsey, who is in the region on a fishing holiday, suspects murder when he realises that something is missing from the scene which makes it likely that another artist painted the picture. When he is found dead in a stream, with a still-wet half-finished painting on the bank above, it is assumed that he fell in accidentally, fracturing his skull. Sandy Campbell is a talented painter, but also a notoriously quarrelsome drunkard. The novel is set in Galloway, a part of Scotland popular with artists and recreational fishermen. Significant locations in the novel – a sketch map.

Dorothy sayers have his carcase