Scarlett: Cat's Paw

From his great Gothic mansion in Boston’s Fenway, wealthy and elderly Martin Greenough rules as a mercurial despot over a curious menagerie of dependents that includes his determinedly respectable companion, Mrs. Warden, some rather odd servants, various nieces and nephews and their spouses and a male cat named Lucy. On the occasion of childless Cousin Mart’s birthday, the vultures—or, in deference to the niceties, let us say the relatives—gather to demonstrate their devotion to the old man—though they are, in fact, much more interested in the old man’s money. When it is learned that Cousin Mart is changing his will, however, the family’s feathers are ruffled and the squawking begins! After Cousin Mart’s long burning candle is violently snuffed out during an evening of Fourth of July fireworks festivities, it falls to keen-minded Inspector Kane—accompanied, as usual, by his faithful chronicler, the prim attorney Mr. Underwood—to collar an individual who proves to have been a most clever killer indeed, even by the elevated standard of the ingenious Roger Scarlett.

Additional

First published in 1931.

Author

'Roger Scarlett' was the pseudonym of writing pair Dorothy Blair and Evelyn Page.