When Nurse Vera Dean accepts a comfortable position in a country home in Virginia, she hopes to recover her nerves and health. In her new job she has only one patient to look after: a paralysed man named Craig Porter. Her patient is not demanding and her employer, Hugh Wyndham, is pleasant and understanding. Unfortunately, her peace is disturbed when well-known civil engineer Bruce Brainard stops at the Dewdrop Inn one night and is taken ill with vertigo attack. Vera gives him medicine that evening and leaves his room when he falls asleep peacefully, but in the morning he is found dead in a pool of blood with a slashed throat. And so the complicated inquiry into the suspicious death of the engineer begins...

The Moving Finger, first published in 1918, contains all the elements of a classic mystery novel: a mysterious murder, a handful of suspects and a detective who solves the puzzle with impressive deductive skills.