Original Sin

Innocent House is a mock-Venetian palace occupied by Britain's oldest book publisher, Peverell Press. After a spate of malicious pranks, the ruthless managing director, Gerard Etienne, is found dead, the office mascot, a stuffed snake, jammed in his mouth. Who wanted Etienne dead? Just about everyone on staff - and several authors, too.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of extraordinary ingenuity as they begin to probe the dark, private tragedies of Etienne's mistress and colleagues. But the mystery at Innocent House may prove too deep, too old, and too evil to stop at just one death...

Book One: Foreword to Murder

1

For a temporary shorthand-typist to be present at the discovery of a corpse on the first day of a new assignment, if not unique, is sufficiently rare to prevent its being regarded as an occupational hazard. Certainly Mandy Price, aged nineteen years two months, and the acknowledged star of Mrs Crealey's Nonesuch Secretarial Agency, set out on the morning of Tuesday, 14 September for her interview at the Peverell Press with no more apprehension than she usually felt at the start of a new job, an apprehension which was never acute and was rooted less in any anxiety whether she would satisfy the expectations of the prospective employer than in whether the employer would satisfy hers. She had learned of the job the previous Friday when she called in at the agency at six o'clock to collect her pay after a boring two-week stint with a director who regarded a secretary as a status symbol but had no idea how to use her skills, and she was ready for something new and preferably exciting although perhaps not as exciting as it was subsequently to prove.