I Am the Only Running Footman (Richard Jury Mysteries Book 8)

In a rainy ditch in a Devon wood, a hitchhiker is found dead. Almost a year later, on another rainy night, another murder; this time, however, the victim is found just outside a pub called I Am the Only Running Footman, near Berkeley Square in London’s fashionable Mayfair District. Devon policeman Brian Macalvie is convinced that the two murders are connected. And thus, in his eighth case, Richard Jury is drawn into the so-called Porphyria killings. A particularly elusive pair of murders. From the streets of London to the village of Somers Abbas, Jury and Macalvie are joined by the stolid if hypochondriac Sergeant Wiggins and the reluctant Melrose Plant. They meet in another pub, the Mortal Man, and, amidst the clatter and cry of the Warboys family, they ponder a labyrinthine set of clues. New Scotland Yard superintendent Richard Jury is convinced it's more than coincidence when two beautiful young women are found strangled to death with their own scarves -- one in Devon, the second outside a fashionable Mayfair pub. Both women were as strikingly similar in life as they were in death. Neither had enemies that Jury can find. Now, somewhere in the night, a killer is biding his time, beckoning Jury and Devon's local divisional commander, Brian Macalvie, down an elusive trail of tragic family secrets and even more fatal lies.... Brian Macalvie and Richard Jury are joined by Sergeant Wiggins and Melrose Plant in the investigation of the Porphyria killings.