Miss Climpson continues to keep an eye on Mary Whittaker, who has gone away from their little town for a few weeks, looking at chicken farms, because she is thinking of buying one. She takes a friend with her, Vera Findlater, a pleasant but not very clever young woman who has become her best friend. Miss Climpson thinks that Mary is using the girl.
Peter has a sudden inspiration. He remembers that several months earlier, there was an article in the paper about a change in the laws of inheritance, simplifying the rules of inheritance for people who died intestate. He consults Murbles, the family lawyer, who consults a barrister, and it emerges that the law was due to change in 1926, and it might make it more difficult for Mary to inherit. She was the great niece of Miss Dawson and it seems unclear whether the new law would allow great nieces to inherit whereas if someone died intestate and has lost their siblings, their nieces and nephews would definitely be next of kin.
Peter thinks that if Mary feared that she might lose her money, and Miss Dawson was very ill, she might have been tempted to kill off the old lady, in the autumn of 1925, to make sure that she died under the old law.
Parker consults solicitors in the Holborn area, figuring that Mary would probably have sought legal advice. He finds a man who tells him that he did receive a visit from a young woman, some months earlier, and he advised her that the law wasn't all that clear and that it would be advisable to make sure that a will was made, if the next heir was a great niece. Soon after that, he himself was called out to see a dying woman, to make a will and when he got to the place, he found a very sick woman, who wanted her Will made, but who offered him a drink. He drank it, and decided to go back home, after making the will, but he felt very ill. It emerged that he had been drugged with a sleeping potion but not enough to kill him.
He tells Parker that he knew it was the same woman who had consulted him earlier about the new law, because she had a scar on her hand, and the whole incident scared him to death. He went to the house later and found that it was all shut up, and it appears that Mary Whittaker broke in and made use of it.
Parker is now taking the case seriously, but he keeps pointing out that they dont know how Mary has killed her victims. Then Mary and Vera disappear, and their abandoned car is found, with a magazine called the Black Mask, in it with a mark under the title. It seems as if suspicion is being cast on the Rev Mr Dawson.
Then news arrives from a bank in town that Mr Dawson brought in a cheque for 10,000 pounds, which seems suspicious. Wimsey believes that Mary has faked the kidnapping and is going to imply that the Rev Dawson did it or got some East End Villains to do it for him. Miss Climpson is concerned at the disappearance of Vera, and then finds in her local church some notes for a confession (Miss Climpson being High Church). She tries not to look but then looks at them and works out that Vera has been following Mary, when Mary went away, and that it seems as if Mary had left Vera alone to pursue a love affair with a man.
Miss Climpson decides to go back to London to see if she can find Mary Whittaker at the street mentioned in Vera's notes, and disguises herself as a collector for her own local church, working her way along the street. She finds Mary, dressed differently, because she is now playing her alter ego of Mrs Forrest, and Mary attacks her. \
Meanwhile Vera Findlater's body has been found and she too has been murdered. While talking to the doctor, Peter has a sudden inspiration as to how Mary could kill her victims without any signs. He remembers helping a stranded motor cyclist who had an airbubble in his fuel feed, and asks the doctor if the same could apply to humans, that if there was a large syringe used, it could push air into the blood stream and cause death. Parker has people watching Mrs Forrest's flat, and he and Peter hurry there just in time to find Mary trying to kill Miss Climpson with an empty syringe.
Mary is arrested but the detectives beleive that they cannot make a charge stick on the murder of Miss Dawson, but she can be accused of killing Vera and Bertha and attempting to kill Miss Climpson. Hallelujah Dawson has the money she gave him and does not realise that it was done to try and implicate him in killing Vera. But the case goes wrong because Mary strangles herself in prison with a sheet. Peter feels depressed but tries to be cheered by the knowledge that she was caught and stopped from killing, and that the Rev Mr Dawson will now be comfortably off.
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