Appleby's End was where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard. But that was not the only coincidence. Why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make such a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?

Inspector Appleby is called to St Anthony's College, where the President has been murdered in his Lodging. Scandal abounds when it becomes clear that the only people with any motive to murder him are the only people who had the opportunity.

Successful minor poet, Philip Ploss, lives a peaceful existence in ideal surroundings, until his life is upset when he hears verses erroneously quoted as his own. Soon afterwards, he is found dead in the library with a copy of Dante's Purgatory open before him.

A gruelling night of shrouded motives and confused identities develops when the last of the Dromios is found murdered, with both of his hands burnt off. Inspector Appleby wrenches the facts from a melodrama in which the final solution is written in fire.

When an American multi-millionaire is keen to buy an Elizabethan manor, she comes up against fierce opposition from a young boy, Jay, and his band of bowmen. It seems that behind a monumental, seventeenth-century carving lies a hoard of treasure.