A Relic of War

"Mordecai Ledbury, crippled, ugly and saturnine, the most famous advocate of his day and a man with many enemies, spends a night in a dilapidated old house where his family once lived, hoping to discover what event in her early life had turned his mother into an embittered woman, full of malice." "By morning, outside the bedroom where Mordecai was sleeping, a masked intruder lies dead, the back of his head blown off by a shot from a heavy calibre pistol. The gun is the relic of Mordecai's eccentric and reclusive uncle who had lived in the isolated house from the end of World War II. Mordecai admits to firing the shot so is he guilty of murder? Or was the gun, as he claims, only intended to frighten off the intruder, making the killing not 'excessive use of force' but a tragic accident?" "With its resonance for modern society, this is a legal cliffhanger, with the Director of Public Prosecutions, aided and abetted by a hostile local police force - whose chief constable Mordecai had insulted at a party - pressing for a charge of murder, and the public and the press arguing for the accused to go free."--BOOK JACKET.