A visiting friend once said to Margery Allingham: “My dear Marge, although you write crime novels, you do have a dainty drawing room!” “What did she expect?” Margery wondered. “Did she think I would keep a corpse under my sofa?”

Margery Allingham, the creator of Albert Campion, is one of detective fiction’s greatest “Queens of Crime”. From the late 1920s until her death in 1966 she produced a series of novels as deliciously humorous as they are surreally strange. Friends and fans alike remember her warmth and wit; few, if any, sensed the fear and depression that tormented her.

This biography was researched in the very room where Margery Allingham worked, and written with the full co-operation of Margery's sister, her secretary and her housekeeper. It was first published in 1991. Since then, however, new material has become available, including a revalatory collection of letters and the startling truth about her husband's relationship with the writer Nancy Spain. Was there a corpse underneath the sofa? The book's new title, introduction and afterword invite the reader to look again.

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