Neap-Tide Madness

Summary

Edward Phillips Oppenheim (1866 – 1946) was a popular and successful English writer of genre fiction, especially thrillers.

"Neap-Tide Madness" is the strange story of Sir Jaspar Slane's visits to the Dormy House in Norfolk. One foggy evening, returning late from the golf course, Slane glimpses the figure of a man emerge from the mist carrying a hunting rifle. The figure raises his gun and shoots at Slane from close quarters, narrowly misses him and vanishes again into the mist. When he makes it back to the Dormy House, Slane learns that the loose madman is the mysterious Mark Rennett - a fishman and hunter who lives in a ramshackle cottage on the marshes with his extraordinarily beautiful wife. Slane decides to to confront Rennett about the incident, but the encounter does not go at all how he hoped. On his next visit to the Dormy House though, a peculiar murder takes place and Slane discovers the key to it.