"Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett of Scotland Yard, to give him his full title. A deceptively insignificant man in early middle age, with sandy hair and a mild manner, with a flair for intuitive deduction which he described, with some embarrassment, as 'my nose.'"
Henry is in Geneva at the Palais des Nations for a conference of police officers of different countries dealing with international drug smuggling. His wife Emmy has come along for a bit of vacation. It looks like a simple junket at first, but then the American delegate tells Henry there's a leak from their committee, and what are they going to do? It has to come from one of the committee members or staff.
Then John Trapp, one of the simultaneous translators, is killed in the committee rooms. Because the work of the committee is about secret countermeasures to the drug trade, there's a door warden who takes names and notes the time when everyone comes in. The only possible suspects are the six police officers on the committee, the two other simultaneous translators, and the verbatim reporter. And, of course, one of those possible suspects is Henry Tibbett himself, for quite a while the primary suspect. The murder weapon, a knife, comes from the Geneva home of a rich American.
Was Trapp the leaker? Or did he know who the leaker was? Or was he killed for some entirely different reason? (His romantic life is pretty complicated.) All three possibilities are given a reasonable airing.
Of course, Henry figures it out in the end, less as a result of his nose then from sensible insights. (How many words a minute can a good typist manage?) I thought it was a good enough entry in the Henry Tibbett series, but not my favorite. Henry behaves in a way that might be OK in a different kind of mystery series, but seemed inappropriate here.
No comments:
Post a Comment