The Congo Venus

It doesn’t take a lot to be the belle of the expat community in Leopoldville, a flyspeck in the Belgian Congo: A pulse and a pair of pumps will do the trick. Liliane Morelli brought rather more than that to the party, but it didn’t help: She’s still dead of what the doctor calls blackwater fever though any idiot could tell you that mosquitoes were not to blame. Enter Dr. Mary Finney, the Miss Marple of the missionary brigade. She doesn’t do a lot of praying—or a lot of doctoring, come to that – but her sleuthing skills are top-notch. Peering and poking, sticking her sunburned nose where it doesn’t belong, she soon discovers the sad truth: Lots of people wanted Liliane. But nobody seems to have liked her much.