A hack writer, jealous of his wife who has turned into a succesful novelist, plans to murder her and marry his mistress. He rigs up a device to burn down his country cottage at a time when he expects his wife to be in it, but instead finds his wife at their London home, she saying that she agrees after all to a divorce and has sent the mistress to the cottage as a nice surprise.
Suspense, July 1960.
Reprinted in
The Saint Magazine, July 1963.
Included in the collection Crime and Detection, ed. John Higgins.