Anthony Berkeley, “The Poisoned Chocolates Case”

A box of chocolates. A murdered wife. And six brilliant minds who cannot agree on who killed her.

One morning at the Rainbow Club in London, Sir Eustace Pennefather receives a box of liqueur chocolates he never ordered, and in a fit of bad temper hands it to a fellow member, Graham Bendix. Bendix takes the chocolates home to his wife. By the evening he is seriously ill. By nightfall Joan Bendix, young, charming and apparently without an enemy in the world, is dead. Someone has filled the chocolates with poison.

Scotland Yard is baffled. So Chief Inspector Moresby does something unheard of: he lays the whole case before the Crimes Circle, an exclusive society of amateur criminologists founded by the novelist and gentleman detective Roger Sheringham. A famous barrister, a successful playwright, a writer of detective stories, a sharp-tongued novelist, Sheringham himself and a timid little man named Mr Chitterwick whom nobody takes seriously. Each will investigate alone. Each, on a different evening, will present a solution.

Each solution is logical. Each is convincing. Each points to a different murderer.

First published in 1929, Anthony Berkeley’s masterpiece is a detective story that plays with the very idea of detection: a dazzling, witty and wickedly clever demonstration that the same facts can prove almost anything, in the hands of a clever enough reasoner. Admired by generations of crime writers and readers, it remains one of the great puzzles of the golden age, and one of its most delightful satires.

Crimina

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