A Case of Mice and Murder

Whenever I meet new people and they ask me what I do, I say ‘I am a barrister’. I never pause to think about it. I have been saying it all my adult life. I live and work in the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London. I put on a wig and gown and went to court and argued cases every day for more than thirty years. I am a barrister. The last time I said it, was at a party thrown recently by my agent. It was the first publishing party I had ever been to. ‘I am a barrister,’ I said in response to a polite query from a fellow guest. ‘Oh, he said ‘What are you doing here, then?’

What was I doing there? I am still wondering.

‘A Case of Mice and Murder’ is my COVID novel. Faced for the first time in my life with enforced seclusion, I wrote it more for fun than with any thought of publication.

The story was inspired by the extraordinary status of the Inner and Middle Temple (collectively known as the Temple.) The area, as a so-called ancient liberty, is in many ways quite separate from the whole of the rest of London. It is an independent local authority. And believe it or not, the City of London Police enter only with the permission of the Temple and share policing of the area with the Temple porters. Couple that with the fact that the same Temple porters man the gates 24 hours a day and the area is locked at night to all outsiders, and you have the makings of a classic murder mystery. It really only needed a body, a detective and a sidekick. So I set to, and ‘A Case of Mice and Murder’ is the result.

It tells the story of two mysteries in 1901 in the heart of legal London.

The first is the dramatic murder of the Lord Chief Justice and the quest to find his killer. The second a sensational legal battle over the rights to a book written by an anonymous author. 

There is one man linking them; Sir Gabriel Ward KC, Eton and Oxford educated, brilliant, solitary, reclusive, bound by compulsive rituals; reluctant sleuth in the first story, legendary advocate in the second.

The body of the Lord Chief Justice, is found in evening dress, with mysteriously bare feet, lying in the Temple one morning in 1901. The ‘how’ is not very difficult; a carving knife is sticking out of his chest. But who would do such a thing to a conventional successful Judge? And why?

Sir Gabriel Ward KC has no desire to play detective. He wants to be left alone to prepare for his next case. But he literally stumbles upon the body and so becomes drawn into the mystery.

His sidekick is Constable Maurice Wright of the City of London Police, who yearns to become a detective, left school at fourteen, has never read a book for pleasure and who lives with his large loving family in the East End of London.

At the same time as he and Wright investigate, Sir Gabriel is worrying about his next case; and that is a mystery, too. Sir Gabriel is not the kind of barrister who blusters his way round the Old Bailey representing murderers and his cases might be thought dry and technical. But not this one. Ward is representing a publisher who found the manuscript of a children’s book on his office doorstep with no hint as to its authorship. He published it and found himself with a smash hit that makes him a fortune. A woman claims to be the author. But is she really?

Between them, Sir Gabriel and Constable Wright while unravelling the complexities of the cases discover, along with the murderer, and the true author of the book, a friendship across the social divides of Edwardian England.

Now close to publication, I still feel like a barrister at heart but maybe, when my book actually comes out I will get over my imposter syndrome and feel able to say, when I am next asked, that I am a writer as well.

A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith is published by Raven Books on 18th July 2024.

The Inner Temple: a warren of shaded courtyards and ancient buildings forming the hidden heart of London’s legal world. A place where tradition is everything, and murder belongs only in the casebooks. Until now… When barrister Gabriel Ward steps out of his rooms on a sunny May morning in 1901, his mind is so full of his latest case – the disputed authorship of bestselling children’s book Millie the Temple Church Mouse – that he scarcely registers the body of the Lord Chief Justice of England on his doorstep. But even he cannot fail to notice the judge’s dusty bare feet, in shocking contrast to his flawless evening dress, nor the silver carving knife sticking out of his chest. The police can enter the Temple only by consent, so who better to investigate this tragic breach of law and order than a man who prizes both above all things? But murder doesn’t answer to logic or reasoned argument, and Gabriel soon discovers that the Temple’s heavy oak doors are hiding more surprising secrets than he’d ever imagined.