Frome: The Hammersmith Murders

A man is being murdered at 16 Caithness Road, was the cryptic message received by the Commissioner of the C.I.D. in an envelope addressed in a straggling hand, on arriving at his office after midnight. It was postmarked Hammersmith, so Inspector Humphrey Bull was called out of bed and very shortly thereafter found himself involved in a swift and murderous plot, so subtle and malignant that it very nearly succeeded in its deadly purpose in spite of him. At 16 Caithness Road he found that a man had just died, but that Sir Henry Dangerfield Pringle, Bart., M.D., F.R.C.S., K.C.B. certified the death as by tetanus. One curious fact that Bull discovered was that the dead man’s father had been killed quite recently in a bus accident and that one of his daughters was present at both deaths. From this sinister beginning Inspector Bull plunges into an investigation that covers murder and a series of break-ins—but can he stop the criminal from committing the final and most terrible murder of all? And why, exactly, is Inspector Bull’s mild-mannered landlord, Mr. Pinkerton, so interested? The Hammersmith Murders was published in 1930. David Frome was one pseudonym (of several) used by American author Zenith Jones Brown (1898-1983).