The Wooden Overcoat

Clifford Flush founded the Asterisk Club in Chelsea to provide a home for wrongfully acquitted murderers, being one himself. Qualified prospective members need only to name the club as beneficiary in their wills in order to avail themselves of its comforts and unique services. Unfortunately, there isn’t room at the club for Benji Cann, a gentleman’s outfitter newly acquitted –to his great surprise– of murdering his mistress. So Flush arranges for Benji to be temporarily quartered next door in a rat-infested house inhabited by two artistic couples. When Benji and a female member of the Asterisk Club turn up dead, the two households both have reason to avoid the police and dispose of the bodies.