| He Should Have Died Hereafter | |
| Author: | Cyril Hare |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Francis Pettigrew Inspector Mallett |
| Genre: | Detective |
| Publisher: | Faber and Faber MacMillan (US) |
| Release Date: | 1958 |
| Media Type: | |
| Preceded By: | That Yew Tree's Shade |
He Should Have Died Hereafter is a 1958 detective novel by the British writer Cyril Hare.[1] [2] It is the fifth and last in his series featuring amateur detective Francis Pettigrew, a retired barrister. It also features an appearance of Inspector Mallet, a former officer of Scotland Yard who had last appeared in the author's With a Bare Bodkin (1946).[3] It was published in the United States by MacMillan under the alternative title Untimely Death.[4]
While holidaying with his wife in Exmoor, Pettigrew comes across a body in a beauty spot he had last visited in his childhood. When he returns with members of the local stag hunt, the corpse has disappeared. A couple of days later the body reappears at another location nearby and is identified as a ne'er-do-well who is the estranged husband of the woman whose house they are staying at. Mallet has retired to the district, but is hired to launch a private investigation by cousins of the deceased who believe the death may have been fraudulently concealed in order so that his wife and children should benefit from a large inheritance from his wealthy uncle. The matter ends in a convoluted case before the Court of Chancery but Pettigrew is still set on solving the murder that the local Devon police have failed to do.