Chapter I: Front Matter

The Layton Court Mystery

by Anthony Berkeley

Contents

I. Eight o’Clock in the Morning
II. An Interrupted Breakfast
III. Mr. Sheringham is Puzzled
IV. Major Jefferson is Reluctant
V. Mr. Sheringham Asks a Question
VI. Four People Behave Remarkably
VII. The Vase That Wasn’t
VIII. Mr. Sheringham Becomes Startling
IX. Mr. Sheringham Sees Visions
X. Mrs. Plant is Apprehensive
XI. Lady Stanworth Exchanges Glances
XII. Hidden Chambers And What-Nots
XIII. Mr. Sheringham Investigates a Footprint
XIV. Dirty Work at the Ash Pit
XV. Mr. Sheringham Amuses an Ancient Rustic
XVI. Mr. Sheringham Lectures on Neo-Platonism
XVII. Mr. Grierson Becomes Heated
XVIII. What the Settee Had to Tell
XIX. Mr. Sheringham Loses and Wins the Same Bet
XX. Mrs. Plant Proves Disappointing
XXI. Mr. Sheringham is Dramatic
XXII. Mr. Sheringham Solves the Mystery
XXIII. Mrs. Plant Talks
XXIV. Mr. Sheringham is Disconcerted
XXV. The Mystery Finally Refuses to Accept Mr. Sheringham’s
Solution
XXVI. Mr. Grierson Tries His Hand
XXVII. Mr. Sheringham Hits the Mark
XXVIII. What Really Did Happen

To my Father

My dear Father,

I know of nobody who likes a detective story more than you do, with the possible exception of myself. So if I write one and you read it, we ought to be able to amuse ourselves at any rate.

I hope you will notice that I have tried to make the gentleman who eventually solves the mystery behave as nearly as possible as he might be expected to do in real life. That is to say, he is very far removed from a sphinx and he does make a mistake or two occasionally. I have never believed very much in those hawk-eyed, tight-lipped gentry, who pursue their silent and inexorable way straight to the heart of things without ever once overbalancing or turning aside after false goals; and I cannot see why even a detective story should not aim at the creation of a natural atmosphere, just as much as any other work of the lighter fiction.

In the same way I should like you to observe that I have set down quite plainly every scrap of evidence just as it is discovered, so that the reader has precisely the same data at his disposal as has the detective. This seems to me the only fair way of doing things. To hold up till the last chapter some vital piece of evidence (which, by the way, usually renders the solution of the puzzle perfectly simple), and to achieve your surprise by allowing the detective to arrest his man before the evidence on which he is doing so is ever so much as hinted to the reader at all, is, to my mind, most decidedly not playing the game.

With which short homily, I hand the book over to you by way of some very slight return for all that you have done for me.