Plot
During a hiking holiday on the South West coast of England, the detective novelist Harriet Vane discovers the body of a man lying on an isolated rock on the shore, not far from the resort of Wilvercombe; his throat has been cut. Harriet takes photographs and collects items she finds on and around the body, including a distinctive razor. The man's blood is still liquid, from which it is concluded that he died shortly before she arrived at 2:00 pm. There are no footprints in the sand other than hers and those of the victim. Unfortunately, the corpse is washed away by the rising tide before she can summon help.
Alerted to the discovery by a friend, Lord Peter Wimsey arrives, and he and Harriet start their investigations. The victim is identified as Paul Alexis, a young man of Russian extraction, employed by a Wilvercombe hotel as a professional dancing partner. The police tend to the view that Alexis' death was suicide and that he had cut his own throat. Wimsey traces the razor Harriet found with the body to an out-of-work hairdresser, Mr Bright, who says that he sold the razor to Alexis the night before Alexis's death.
Alexis was engaged to a rich widow in her fifties, Mrs Weldon. Her son, Henry Weldon, ten years older than his mother's lover and by all appearances a simple and brutish man, is appalled at the prospect of his mother's remarriage to a gigolo, and at his potential loss of inheritance. He travels to Wilvercombe to monitor the investigation while ostensibly comforting his mother after her loss. Weldon appears to be a likely murder suspect, especially after Harriet recognizes him as a tourist she saw camping near the shore on the day of Alexis's death. He admits to having been in the area in disguise on that day, but he has an alibi for 2:00 pm.
Staged to look like suicide, Alexis' death is gradually revealed to be the result of an ingenious murder plot that played upon Alexis' fantasies. Wimsey and Harriet discover that in the period leading up to his death Alexis, an avid reader of Ruritanian romances, believed himself to be a descendant of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. A series of encoded letters received from an unknown source convinced him that he was being called to return to Russia to take his place as the new rightful Tsar. He was lured to the rock by his anonymous correspondent, who urged him to be ready to meet a "Rider from the Sea", who it was said would be carrying instructions for his journey to Warsaw. Once at the rock, Alexis presumably met his death at the hand of the murderer, who had ridden his horse along the beach through the incoming tide to avoid leaving tracks. The problem remains that no horse or rider was seen in the vicinity around 2:00 pm; however, a nearby neighbour reports having heard a horse pass by around noon.
Wimsey, Harriet, and Wimsey's valet Bunter ultimately discover that "Mr Bright" is actually a friend of Weldon's and the husband of one of the key witnesses for Weldon's movements during the day, and played a part in convincing Alexis of his royal lineage. Weldon's alibi remains secure for the believed time of death, 2:00 pm; however, Wimsey infers that Alexis suffered from the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia (a disorder known to have affected the Russian royal family), resulting in his blood remaining liquid for much longer than would normally be expected — meaning he could have died hours earlier than supposed. Weldon and his co-conspirators are undone by their unsuccessful attempts to reshuffle their alibis to match the new information about the time of death, and by proof of their actual friendship.
Even as Wimsey and Harriet solve the case, Mrs Weldon has already moved on to another gigolo at the hotel, a sympathetic French dancer named Antoine.
Criticism
In their overview A Catalogue of Crime (1971/89) Barzun & Taylor noted that the book was "A great achievement, despite some critics' carping. The people, the motive, the cipher, and the detection are all topnotch. Here, too, is the first (and definitive) use of hemophilia as a misleading fact. And surely the son, the mother, and her self-deluded gigolo are definitive types". [3]
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