This is not exactly scientific detection, though it reflects the times. The "dago" is the prime suspect – as an obvious Spaniard, Frenchman, Italian or Greek a stiletto is his natural weapon. Grant finds the pair's office, and breaks in with the help of a scruffy artist, but they find nobody at home but a cat. Grant finds his partner, an olive-skinned fellow whom Grant dubs "the dago", and chases him on foot, but the young man manages to lose him. They eventually identify him through his rather flashy tie, and establish that he was a bookie. All marks have been removed from his clothes, and he carried no wallet, letters – not even a bus ticket. Nobody in the queue claims the dead man – in fact the woman standing behind him, Mrs Ratcliffe, who was so distressed to find a corpse falling at her feet, claims she never even noticed him. Scotland Yard, in the person of Alan Grant and his Watson, Williams, are called in. A pale young man reaches the head of the line only to collapse as the person in front of him moves on into the theatre – he has been stabbed in the back with a curiously wrought Italian stiletto! It starts colourfully with a London theatre queue inching slowly towards the box office, while a stream of buskers (singers, escapologists) attempts to entertain them. The Man in the Queue is Josephine Tey's first detective story, written in 1929.
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