The murder victim's wife was blind.World War II. During the attacks on Berlin in the winter of 1943-44, wave after wave of British bombers swept over northern Europe and dropped their lethal loads on the German capital. A fair percentage of the bombers would fail to return from these 'ops', and RAF planners calculated the life expectancy of the airmen in weeks rather than months.Therefore it did not seem strange when a Lancaster named D-Daisy landed at its base in England af...

In 1949 Daisy Hayes had a patient more or less her own age, Odile Speed, with whom she had a good rapport at once, and who told her about a strange kind of duel, interrupted for many years, from a short story by Pushkin.Then on Christmas Eve of 1952 our blind sleuth extraordinaire stumbled on the scene of a murder just being committed. She bumped into the culprit and the victim died in her arms. The police interrogated her at once. But soon it became clear that the testimony of a bl...

When all the Christians were thrown to the lionsDaisy Hayes was a sculptress, and blind since birth. In 1964 a French priest came to visit her at the collective studio in north London where she worked. He was fascinated by the impaired artist and told her, "There's this program at the Vatican Museums, where people like you get an opportunity to study archaeological artifacts by touch. Are you interested?" — "Of course, mon Père!"In AD 64 a blind masseuse working at the baths...

In the summer of 1989 the Iron Curtain was unravelling, and Daisy Hayes had just become a pensioner who liked to do her ironing while listening to the latest news on the radio.The doorbell chimed. A police officer handed over a summons—printed in Braille. Daisy was being asked to testify about a baffling and gruesome murder, and had to follow the policeman at once. During the ride to New Scotland Yard, even before the first interview took place, the blind lady reflected that, though...

Chief Inspector Nigel Cockett could have retired at the age of 55, but like a fool he stayed on for that last promotion that would raise his pension just a little more. Unfortunately, just then a corpse turned up in the holding cell of his own police station.Inspector Manson, his young colleague fresh from police college—the chappy that was supposed to succeed him—seemed to think that he, Nigel, was the culprit. Just because he was the only person who had the key to the lock-up in ...

In 1960 Daisy Hayes was asked to replace a physiotherapist on an ocean liner, for just one round trip to New York, at very short notice. Before she knew it she was sailing on the RMS Histria, in the thick of the life on board. With the intrigues and love triangles going on around her, she marveled at the potential for murderous plots on such a voyage. "It's a good thing," she told the ship's detective, "that a liner at sea is a very bad place for killing someone. Too confined to do it unde...

The game started right after Nero's suicide in AD 68, and his death was part of the game. He'd been tricked by the other players into taking his own life, opening the race, the free-for-all to seize power in Rome. What ensued went down in History as 'The Year of the Four Emperors'.But from the start the rivals vying for the top prize discovered that Nero had a half-sister, eighteen-year-old Antonia, the daughter of Claudius and Agrippina, and using her as a pawn became part of the ...

In 1952 there were children everywhere. Or so it seemed to Daisy Hayes, blind since birth, who at the age of 29 had just tied the knot for the second time—to an intercontinental pilot. But on their first flight as a married couple an engine broke down—sabotage?—and they were grounded.Now, there are worst places to stop over for repairs than Rio de Janeiro, especially if you're staying at a grand hotel on Ipanema Beach. But then again, Daisy wouldn't be our favorite blind sleuth if d...

In 1946 Daisy and her friend Beatrice decided to move to Paris, because they were fed up with limping London, still crippled and depressed in the aftermath of the war. And indeed, in the spring of that year, Paris was the place to be—isn't it always? In particular, some very interesting things were going on in Saint-Germain-des-Prés: existentialism, free love, and American jazz throbbing through the night in the cellar clubs.Then one day, just as the two were settling into a new lif...

In AD 79 the emperor Vespasian was dying and some prophetess was announcing the end of the world. Meanwhile Desiderata had to deal with a fresh criminal plot from her old enemy Numa. You'd think that things couldn't get any worse, but that was counting without Mount Vesuvius literally blowing its top above Pompeii.What on earth were our blind 'seeker of justice', her deaf husband Simplex, and uncle Balbus doing there that summer, a true case of being in the wrong place at the wrong...

While treating a patient in the fall of 1972, Daisy managed to winkle out of him that he worked for MI6. Then she blabbed about a planned visit to East Berlin with her friend Margery, who was a chemistry researcher at King's College. Back at the office, the man asked his spooks to do some background checks. It turned out that without even knowing it his blind physiotherapist and her chum had an indirect connection to a high-ranking communist party boss…Meanwhile, in East Berlin, cle...

There is something special about meeting an old acquaintance by chance. A reunion with someone you were close to a long time ago always seems a bit miraculous. But for the blind especially this is a very unlikely occurrence, as you might as well pass one another by without even knowing it.So in 1984, at the age of sixty-one, Daisy Hayes was quite thrilled to encounter her old classmate Janet, blind like her, in her doctor's waiting room. Then a disturbing fact became clear: Janet di...