Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover is the most idle and avaricious hero in all of crime fiction. Why should he even be bothered to solve the case?
For its own very good reasons, Scotland Yard sends Dover off to remote Creedshire to investigate the disappearance of a young housemaid, Juliet Rugg.
Though there's every cause to assume that she has been murdered - she gave her favours freely and may even have stooped to a bit of blackmail - no body is to be found. Weighing in at sixteen stone, she couldn't be hard to overlook.
But where is she? And why should Dover, of all people, be called upon to find her? Or, for that matter, even bother to solve the damned case?