Mr Notting Hill

After meeting at a charity auction, Parker sees a relationship with Tristan as her opportunity to fund her charity, while Tristan hopes to build a business deal with Parker's father, but neither counts on their attraction to one another when they decide to go ahead with their mutually-beneficial plans.

Kensington, Notting Hill, and Paddington describes a set of locales in England that have historical and cultural importance, while also providing humorous depictions of local habitants known to the author. Excerpt: "There lived Mr. Burden, who kept a rag and bottle shop, and who was an orator and a great man on the Kensington Vestry, also a proprietor of Bayswater omnibuses, whose wife kept a greengrocer's shop. Poor woman, she was of such proportions that when she died I saw the coffin lowered from the bedroom window into the street by ropes."

Source documents compiled by insurance investigator Ralph Henderson are used to build a case against Baron "R___", who is suspected of murdering his wife. The baron's wife died from drinking a bottle of acid, apparently while sleepwalking in her husband's private laboratory. Henderson's suspicions are raised when he learns that the baron recently had purchased five life insurance policies for his wife. As Henderson investigates the case, he discovers not one but three murders. Although the baron's guilt is clear to the reader even from the outset, how he did it remains a mystery. Eventually this is revealed, but how to catch him becomes the final challenge; he seems to have committed the perfect crime.

Book I THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL Chapter I—Introductory Remarks on the Art of Prophecy Chapter II—The Man in Green Chapter III—The Hill of Humour Book II Chapter I—The Charter of the Cities Chapter II—The Council of the Provosts Chapter III—Enter a Lunatic Book III Chapter I—The Mental Condition of Adam Wayne Chapter II—The Remarkable Mr. Turnbull Chapter III—The Experiment of Mr. Buck Book IV Chapter I—The Battle of the Lamps Chapter II—The Correspondent of the Court Journal Chapter III—The Great Army of South Kensington Book V Chapter I—The Empire of Notting Hill Chapter II—The Last Battle Chapter III—Two Voices

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called Keep to-morrow dark, and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) Cheat the Prophet. The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable. They stoned the false prophets, it is said; but they could have stoned true prophets with a greater and juster enjoyment. Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.