SUCH A FITTING END to Richard Davenport, his head smashed in by the urn containing the remains of Gladys’ parents. We did not have this in mind when we first plotted The Perfect Patsy; originally, Davenport was to be extradited to another country to face charges for a crime he committed years earlier. That would have allowed us to bring Davenport back when we were in the mood for a real bad guy.
But after his re-appearance in The Slain Saint, our early readers to a person demanded that we kill him off. We decided they were right. But we also decided that Gladys had to be the one to kill him, in self-defense. He’d put her through so much, robbing her not only of her parents, but her innocence as well, it seemed fitting that the young woman Davenport saw as only an object of his lusts shoul
