Murder most horrid

Whenever I attend a committee meeting, a literary panel, a small but formal dinner in the private dining room of a club or hotel, or a conversazione (all very infrequently), I am afraid that my frivolous mind turns to detective fiction. This, I think, would be the perfect setting for a murder mystery, and I would certainly go on to write it—if only I could think of a plot, which I never can. But it is very seldom that people meet in such circumstances without at least one of them, and usually more, having a plausible motive for murder. Of course, a murder, like a conversazione itself, should take place in a beautiful setting: on Lake Como, …