Publisher's Synopsis
The mystery of 31 new inn book is written by R. Austin Freeman. The novel has a plot story that contains one of the last surviving inns of Chancery that has recently passed away after upwards of four centuries of newness. The tracking chart described in Chapters II and III has been actually used in practice. It is a modification of one devised by me when I was crossing Ashanti to the city of Bontuku. Mr. Weiss's patient was suffering from a typical case of opium or morphine poisoning, he writes. The man's pupils were contracted to such an extreme degree that only the very minutest point of black was visible at the center of the grey iris. His features were relaxed and he seemed in a dreamy, somnolent state. Later on, the inquest into the death of Jeffrey Blackmore was opened and adjourned by Mr. Thorndyke, who asked Mr. Marchmont to describe in writing the circumstances surrounding his death. He saw a man lying on his bed in Mr. Blackmore's lodgings, and he seemed to be holding some small metal object in his hand. I thought it rather a queer affair, so he went across to the lodge and told the porter about it.
