Gently in the Night

Audrey Chadwick's corpse is found on a church altar and, whilst she told her parents and landlady she was a nurse, the not so happily married Bacchus recognizes her as a hostess at a Playboy-style drinking club he has used, called Rakes, run by brash American Patrick Donovan. Audrey had had an abortion - news to her volatile boyfriend - and the doctor who performed it tells Gently it was because she had been raped. Margaret Bishop, an anti-abortionist, heads a group picketing to close Rakes but her husband is Donovan's lawyer and very much at odds with Margaret's views. He admits intimacy with Audrey but denies rape, nonetheless making him the prime suspect. After the murderer has been unmasked the club is shut down and Gently, having earlier accused Bacchus of being out of condition for his youth, bizarrely takes him on in a charity boxing match. Written by don @ minifie-1