Speak No Evil — Mignon Warner

Rendell Maxwell Pym brutally murdered his beautiful young wife. The fact that his conviction was overturned by the Appeal Court made no difference. He was the man everyone loved to hate. Only one person, right up until the moment the last dying breath left his body, claimed he was innocent of the crime everyone believed he had committed, and that was Pym himself.

Who, then, is carrying out his, a dead man's, vendetta against the three prosecution witnesses who testified against him at his trial? Or is it no more than a mere coincidence that the doctor - the first of Pym's three wise monkeys, ‘See No Evil', who gave damning evidence of Pym's brutality â€" was himself brutally murdered in a Scottish graveyard and found with his eyes taped shut?

And what of Mr Justice Halahan â€" the so-called ‘Hanging Judge' â€" who passed sentence on Pym? He was found hanged in his home with one of his hands taped over his good ear. Coincidence again that Pym's second wise monkey, ‘Hear No Evil', is now dead?

Antonia Manners, a young private investigator, doubts it. She takes her suspicions that Pym is alive to Benjamin Bing, a prominent spiritualist healer, who advocated a controversial form of hanging as a means of treating the judge's severe migraine headaches. Hours later, Tony, who was known to be depressed over a health issue, fell to her death from a train while thought to be journeying to Scotland to investigate the doctor's death.

Suicide…or murder?

The shadowy underworld figure who employs a hint of blackmail to coerce the clairvoyant, Edwina Charles, to investigate Tony's death, wants the truth.

Mrs Charles is far from convinced that there is any reason to doubt the coroner's verdict of suicide at Tony's inquest. That is, until Pym's third wise monkey, the detective who arrested Pym and charged him with murder, is found with his mouth taped closed.

The question Mrs Charles has to find an answer for is this: why would Pym â€" if he is alive, as it would seem Tony Manners suspected â€" target the three wise monkeys he swore vengeance on, and not the man he claimed murdered his wife?

In a startling dénouement, Mrs Charles finds her answer, one that leaves her no less shocked than everyone else who was involved, in one way or another, with Rendell Maxwell Pym, the wife murderer.