This is a mystery I read in the past several years, set in London, about a tall man who worked in the City, left for work, seen by a tradesman in the block by his house, never reached the end of the block. Years later, the ?main character, a younger man or maybe a detective, found him in a circus in Europe. The younger man may have been a relative. It turned out the tall man was very athletic and had bounded over a high brick wall around an estate in his block to live with a woman who collected snakes. They left for France and owned the circus, I think. I thought it might have been a Sayers or Allingham mystery, but the descriptions of each of their books doesn’t sound like it could have been.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
This plot certainly is not one of any of Sayers’ short story collections. IF she wrote something of this sort, it sank long ago and if raised from the deeps, wasn’t widely advertised. [Golden Age mystery writers wrote lots of short stories, and if they were big name writers, may have contributed to special anthologies to raise money for some charity or celebrate a special occasion, etc., and those can be completely independent of their series characters and very possibly never reprinted.]
This sounds like Margery Allingham’s Flowers for the Judge.
I absolutely remember this–just not whose book or what it was. (Maybe a short story?) I’ll try to track it down.
I absolutely remember this story. But I can’t remember the title or the detective either! I’ll try to track it down.
Yes, that’s it, Flowers for the Judge! I kept thinking of it as a separate story.
I found it myself! It’s Margery Allingham’s Flowers for the Judge.
It’s by Margery Allingham, and the title is “Flowers for the Judge”.