Book 1 Sunny ridge

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Something wicked this way comes.

—Macbeth

One. Aunt ada

Mr. and Mrs. Beresford were sitting at the breakfast table. They were an ordinary couple.

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Two. Was it your poor child?

How Sunny Ridge had come by its name would be difficult to say. There was nothing prominently ridgelike about it.

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Three. A funeral

“Funerals are rather sad, aren’t they?” said Tuppence.

They had just returned from attending Aunt Ada’s funeral, which had entailed a long and troublesome railway journey since the burial had taken place at the country village in Lincolnshire where most of Aunt Ada’s family and forebears had been buried.

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Four. Picture of a house

Tuppence drew a deep breath.

“It’s just the same,” she said.

She and Tommy were standing on the front doorstep of Sunny Ridge.

“Why shouldn’t it be?” asked Tommy.

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Five. Disappearance of an old lady

Aunt Ada’s things arrived in due course. The desk was installed and admired. The little worktable dispossessed the whatnot—which was relegated to a dark corner of the hall.

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Six. Tuppence on the trail

“Oh dear,” sighed Tuppence, “oh dear.” She looked round her with gloomy eyes. Never, she said to herself, had she felt more miserable. Naturally she had known she would miss Tommy, but she had no idea how much she was going to miss him.

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Book 2 The house on the canal

Seven. The friendly witch

Before leaving the next morning, Tuppence took a last careful look at the picture hanging in her room, not so much to fix its details firmly in her mind, but to memorize its position in the landscape.

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Eight. Sutton chancellor

After leaving the canal house, Tuppence drove slowly on along the narrow winding road which she had been assured would lead her to the village of Sutton Chancellor.

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Nine. A morning in market basing

“Ah well,” said Mrs. Copleigh, as she bustled out of the room. “Another day. That’s what I always say when I wake up.”

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Book 3 Missing—a wife

Ten. A conference—and after


“Well, Beresford,” said Major-General Sir Josiah Penn, K.M.G., C.B., D.S.O., speaking with the weight appropriate to the impressive stream of letters after his name. “Well, what do you think of all that yackety-yack?”

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Eleven. Bond street and dr. murray

Tommy jumped out of a taxi, paid the driver and leaned back into the cab to take out a rather clumsily done up parcel which was clearly a picture.

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Twelve. Tommy meets an old friend

From the opposite side of the road, Tommy surveyed the premises of Messrs. Partingdale, Harris, Lockeridge and Partingdale.

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Thirteen. Albert on clues

Tuppence blinked her eyes. Vision seemed rather dim. She tried to lift her head from the pillow but winced as a sharp pain ran through it, and let it drop again on to the pillow. She closed her eyes. Presently she opened them again and blinked once more.

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Book 4 Here is a church and here is the steeple open the doors and there are the people

Fourteen. Exercise in thinking

“I suppose what we ought to do is think,” said Tuppence.After a glad reunion in the hospital, Tuppence had eventually been honourably discharged.

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Fifteen. Evening at the vicarage

“Diamonds!” Tuppence gasped.

Looking from him to the pebbles she still held in her hand, she said:

“These dusty-looking things, diamonds?”

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Sixteen. The morning after

It was the morning after the party.

Ivor Smith and Tommy paused in their conversation and looked at each other, then they looked at Tuppence. Tuppence was staring into the grate. Her mind looked far away.

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Seventeen. Mrs. lancaster

Tuppence stood there frowning, and then, suddenly, quite unexpectedly, the door opened.

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