Hang on to your hats, everyone - we're in Psychological Thriller land, where every communication is pregnant with meaning, like this:
"Good morning," she rasped, suspiciously. "Would you like -- " she hesitated " -- coffee?"
He met her gaze steadily. "No." he said after a moment. "I think -- no. Not quite. Could I have -- ?" There was a meaningful pause. "Could I have -- tea?"
Her head spun. Tea? What did it all mean? At last she was able to gasp out the words: "Milk and sugar?"
"Milk, perhaps, but -- " Something seemed to occur to him. "Milk, to be sure. But sugar? I don't know. And yet -- " He could hold back no longer. "Yes, sugar!"
She was tremulous, overcome with his steely determination. "One lump?" she demanded hotly, "or two?"
Shorn of this nonsense, the plot is simple. Toby Dyke and George, Ferrar's series detectives - a lobotomised version of Campion and Lugg -- find Edgar Prees by the cliffs, apparently being restrained from committing suicide by Gordon Weedon. They take Prees to his home and he is put to bed by his daughter Joanna and secretary Peggie Winnpole, who is engaged to Gordon. The next day Prees insists on going off to work as usual in his Herbarium, where he is found, shot dead, shortly afterwards by his assistant Dan Moon and his friend Gerald Hyland. Hyland's purpose in life is to forget things and be a red herring. Moon exists so someone can marry Joanna when all this is over. And there is a sinister foreigner, Dr. Vanedden, with mesmeric powers of persuasion. They play little part in the investigation, which mostly consists of Toby Dyke going over things which people somehow forgot at the time but manage to remember several days later.
There are drugs in it somewhere, but you probably guessed that already. The isolated Herbarium turns out to have seen as much traffic as Pitt Street on a busy day. Peggie Winnpole dies of an overdose of sleeping pills, but nobody seems to mind. Two more deaths later, in no way abashed, Toby wraps up the case. Now Joanna can marry Dan, which is what really matters after all. So much psychology, so little interest. And what has Botanist's Bay got to do with it? I have no idea.
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