Ninety-year-old General Fentiman has been sitting very quietly all day long in his usual fireside armchair at the Bellona Club, oblivious to the hustle and bustle of Armistice Day celebrations, when a fellow member finally notices that he is a corpse. How long he has been in this condition is not at all clear, but the exact time of his death turns out to matter very much to the potential heirs of his substantial fortune. While attempting to resolve the rivals' competing claims, Lord Peter Wimsey realizes that the old general was murdered. Who did it is another matter, however, and it takes all of Wimsey's skills and considerable persistence to ferret out the surprising truth. A VINTAGE MYSTERY CLASSIC.