A coroner’s inquest sat upon the body of the deceased, and returned an open verdict of “Found drowned.” Some people in the town and neighbourhood, among whom were the Newtons, professed much grief at the calamity . . . How, or for what reason, they could not tell; but here was the death, it might be by accident, or it might be by suicide, in a state of drunkenness, of their predecessor, not long after they had lost every thing (as they in the freedom of their language said they had) through a fire on the premises. The insurance company heard of the death of Mr. Paterson, and the secretary got it into his head that the Newtons were incendiaries and murderers—that they had killed this man for some evil reason best known to themselves. He consulted the solicitors of the company, and they employed me to sift the mystery, and, if it turned out that the secretary’s suspicions were justifiable, to spare no trouble or expense in obtaining evidence upon which to prosecute the alleged miscreants. I went down secretly, and investigated all the circumstances as far as I could. I collected a variety of little scraps of fact, which left no doubt in my mind that the secretary was right. I came, indeed, to the conclusion that these Newtons were the vilest wretches who had for a long time been permitted to escape the hangman. The follow-up to “The Private Detective” features 17 stories in very much the same style as its predecessor. The anonymous narrator reveals how he introduces a fake candidate in order to “spin” a local election; how a “plant” is used in the snatching of wages; how financial frauds are enacted; how an innocent servant was accused of theft; and how an incendiary gang was used in an insurance fraud.