A golden age mystery novel, first published in 1925.

York, 1907. Newly retired Inspector Faro is delighted at the prospect of staying in the Dower House, situated on a Roman villa once home to Emperor Severus. But he arrives to find his wife Imogen distraught and desperately searching for her missing Irish cousin, who seems to have vanished without a trace . . .

Widely praised for her rich and elegant prose, Annabel Davis-Goff delivers the story of Molly Hassard, an Anglo-Irish orphan coming of age in a formerly privileged society. As the Protestant-Irish emerge from the postwar years, the refuse to face the inevitable: They have beautiful old houses, but can scarcely afford to heat them; eat meals on exquisitely set tables, while the roof leaks; and talk very seriously about the importance of making suitable marriages. When Molly flees the genteel poverty of Ireland for London of the 1960s, she must balance the allure of the new against the romance of a world that no longer exists.

Governess-turned-detective Miss Silver investigates a deadly conspiratorial ring Charles Moray has come home to England to collect his inheritance. After four years wandering the jungles of India and South America, the hardy young man returns to the manor of his birth, where generations of Morays have lived and died. Strangely, he finds the house unlocked, and sees a light on in one of its abandoned rooms. Eavesdropping, he learns of a conspiracy to commit a fearsome crime. Never one for the heroic, Charles’s first instinct is to let the police settle it. But then he hears her voice. Margaret, his long lost love, is part of the gang. To unravel their diabolical plot, he contacts Miss Maud Silver, a onetime governess who applies reason to solve crimes and face the dangers of London’s underworld.

England, early May, 1926 After the funerals of the late Duke of Sutherland and his daughter-in-law, Charlotte, (and of course Grimsby, the blackmailing valet), the younger members of the family—Philippa Darling, her cousins Christopher and Francis, and Crispin, Viscount St George—are invited to a weekend party at the Dower House in Dorset by Dowager Lady Peckham’s children, Constance and Gilbert. Once in Dorset, things go sideways very quickly. Lady Peckham’s ward, the lovely Dutch emigree Johanna de Vos, has been making a dead set at Crispin, and has had him all to herself for the past few days. Constance’s time has been monopolized by Francis, while Pippa wouldn’t throw Crispin a rope if he were going down for the third time. However, the house party also includes the beautiful Lady Laetitia Marsden, a former dalliance of Crispin’s, and she doesn’t take the competition for his affections—or his title and fortune—lying down. As a result, when the lovely Johanna is found murdered, the suspects are plentiful. Did Lady Laetitia decide to remove her rival? Did Lord Geoffrey, her brother, the handsy one, lose control and strangle the woman he was trying to seduce? Or perhaps Crispin was tired of the relentless pursuit, and took matters into his own hands? When Lady Peckham also dies, miles away in Wiltshire, the case develops yet one more wrinkle. Now Pippa, with some help from Christopher, must figure out who wanted the two women dead, hopefully before the murderer can consign her to the same fate.

DIVMiss Silver visits the country to keep an eye on a friend who may be in peril/divDIV/divDIVIt is time for Judy to get out of London. Her sister and brother-in-law have just perished in an air raid, leaving her in charge of their four-year-old daughter, and Judy wants no more to do with death. She arranges for work in a piece of the countryside untouched by the war: a charming manor called Pilgrim’s Rest. But it may be that she has more to fear than the Blitz./divDIV /divDIVWhen she tells Frank Abbott of her plans, he warns her that strange things have been happening at Pilgrim’s Rest. The family patriarch is recently dead of mysterious circumstances, and his heir has just suffered a series of near-fatal accidents. He cannot sway Judy, for she needs the work. But he does convince the governess-turned-detective Maud Silver to follow Judy to the village, to be on hand in case country living turns dangerous./div