This is a historic murder mystery novel, set in the summer of β as we know from a casual reference to an obituary in a newspaper of schoolmaster and ghost story writer M. James died 12 June The Riverside Villas Murder is a third-person narrative which mostly sees events from the point of view of good-looking, precocious, year-old schoolboy, Peter Furneaux.
He lives in one of a row of modest semi-detached houses backing onto a little river in a small suburb on the edge of south-east London there is a description late in the book of the drive from Waterloo Bridge, through Brixton and Norbury, to his house. Inevitably, there is a local girl, the object of his obsessions, year-old Daphne who lives across the Green and ignores, or pretends not to understand, his hesitant flirtations, resulting in Everests of anxiety and frustration.
He realises this at a dance at the village hall. She dances with him perfectly normally, as all the other married couples and older singletons are politely dancing, or exchanging partners between dances. But when the lights go out she presses herself against him and whispers that she really likes him. So this, the most powerful thread in the first parts of the novel, amounts to a coming-of-age or losing-of-virginity tale.
Early in the novel persons unknown break into the fusty local museum and steal a random collection of old coins, as well as an ancient mummified body, variously described as prehistoric, or Roman or Celtic.
Of no obvious value, anyway. At this point we are introduced to the trio of policemen who will be involved throughout see below. Peter runs out into the garden, shouts for Mrs Trevelyan to come help, which she does, then phones the police. When Mrs T was with him alone. Statements are taken. The area is scoured. A week or so later Peter is in the bath playing with himself , his mother making up the bedrooms, when he hears a knock at the front door, his father answer it, and then a scuffle, shouts, a loud bang.
