Bestselling author Josephine Tey s classic final mystery featuring her best-loved character Inspector Alan Grant filled with all the Tey magic and delight and now featuring a new introduction by Robert Barnard. On sick leave from Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant is planning a quiet holiday with an old school chum to recover from overwork and mental fatigue. Traveling on the night train to Scotland however Grant stumbles upon a dead man and a cryptic poem about the stones that walk and the singing sand which send him off on a fascinating search into the verse s meaning and the identity of the deceased. Grant needs just this sort of casual inquiry to quiet his jangling nerves despite his doctor s orders. But what begins as a leisurely pastime eventually turns into a full-blown investigation that leads Grant to discover not only the key to the poem but the truth about a most diabolical murder.