Inspector Hadley the Foreign Office Murders

After a short leave, Inspector James Hadley returns to Scotland Yard in September 1882 and is summoned to the Commissioner's office, where he is informed that Charles Barrington, a high ranking official at the Foreign Office, has been found murdered alongside the naked body of a young man. The Commissioner demands that the investigation should be conducted in secrecy as Barrington was involved in high level negotiations with the Russian Embassy regarding British troop deployments in Afghanistan. The fact that Barrington was unmarried and a sodomite adds to the need for utmost secrecy in the investigation. Suspicion falls on the Russian Nihilists, who murdered Countess Helena Petrovna in Hyde Park a year previously, but that is soon discounted as a mysterious young man called Roger Freeman, who visited Barrington at the Foreign Office, becomes the prime suspect. As the investigation proceeds, Countess Natasha Petrovna, the sister of the murdered Countess, arrives at Scotland...