Clara Gamadge is staying with her maid Maggie in an upstate cottage while Henry is away on war work. Things start slowly: a solitary figure in an old poke bonnet and dress is seen hanging around nearby; the door to the attic is monkeyed around with. Clara learns that her acerbic neighbour, Miss Radford, is actually a rich landowner, and that her sister, Mrs Hickson, died in that same cottage. Then there is an accident -- or is it? - and Miss Radford ends up with a broken ankle on the spare bed in Clara's cottage. The figure in the bonnet makes another appearance, Miss Radford is killed, and Gamadge returns to find his wife suspected of murder. With the aid of a shrewd sheriff, he triggers a flurry of activity that ends in the murderer's death.
As with Daly's other books, it is the writing that makes Evidence of Things Seen entertaining. The plot this time is simply nonsense: no rational murderer would dress up as an emaciated corpse and expect to fool an observer ten feet away; and the idea that ghostly visitations could distract the police from making a proper investigation was hackneyed long before 1943, and never very plausible to begin with. The murderer's scheme is reasonably clever, if we accept that everyone else will do exactly what they are supposed to, but I don't advise anyone to try it in real life. The atmosphere in the early chapters nearly redeems the book, but as a Daly this is well below average.
Jon.
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