The offspring of a profligate scoundrel and a drunken circus performer, Aleck Severn was born inside a prison's walls after his mother stabbed his father to death. Severn shows no outward signs of inheriting his parents' faults: a handsome, affable man about town, he is popular with his friends and beloved by his wife Marianne. But she begins to suspect her husband has a dark secret. What is he doing during those long nights alone at a remote house? And what connection could it have to the bodies of murdered women being found around London?

One of the earliest novels inspired by the...