Gordon Griffin & Anne Dover

Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered - by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus - with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos. Various members of the family have their private suspicions about the murderer, and the Chief Constable of Haulmshire wishes before long that he understood them better.