Showing results by author "Patricia Wentworth" in All Categories

Who was William Smith? And why was Mavis Jones so horrified to see him? For seven years William had worked as a woodcarver for the local toyshop, ignorant of his true identity. The war had robbed him of his memory, and no one expected him to ever find the answer. So when he took his work to Evesleys Ltd, why was his life instantly in danger? When William makes the frightening discovery that there are people determined not to let his memory return whatever the cost, Miss Silver is called in to investigate.

James and Carmona Hardwick are spending the summer playing host to numerous friends and relatives in an old Hardwick family residence by the sea. The arrival of Alan Field, a devastatingly handsome though shady figure from Carmona's past, destroys the holiday atmosphere in the old house and replaces it with a mounting tension, culminating in murder. Fortunately, Miss Silver is present to unravel the complex mystery and seek out the murderer amongst them.

Miss Silver joins a friend from Scotland Yard to investigate a suspicious suicide. Frank Abbott’s vacations never last very long, and his trip to Field End is no exception. He has hardly enjoyed a moment of Jonathan Field’s hospitality before tragedy strikes. A niece ventures into old Jonathan’s study at night to ask him a question, and finds him stone cold with a revolver by his hand. An obvious suicide, it seems, but Inspector Abbott is not so sure.

Timid Renata Molloy is in mortal peril after overhearing details of a breathtaking conspiracy. But her courageous and near-identical cousin Jane Smith—homeless and just two-and-elevenpence away from the workhouse—is willing to take her place if it means a roof over her head and plenty to eat. So Jane, with the help of Captain Henry March of Scotland Yard, whose hand in marriage she once refused, finds herself incognito at stately Luttrell Marches, enmeshed in a mystery of secret formulae, political plots, and a maze of secret doors and secret passages …

As a mute, burly German peasant is helping British soldiers move a fallen tree, he's struck on the head. When he regains consciousness he calls out to the astonished Major Manning, using his nickname "Monkey"—in perfect English.

It is a black Chinese cabinet decorated with figures that once ignited little Chloe Dane's imagination. It was in the drawing-room of her family home, Danesborough. Later, it held secrets that shamed and sickened her. Poor but honest Chloe hasn't been to Danesborough for years and believed she was the last of her family. So when a distant cousin introduces himself and declares that she will be his heir, she finds herself in the huge house again. And she wants none of it.

Sir John Waveney has inherited Waveney Hall. A veteran of the Great War himself, his inheritance has come because of the deaths in action of his two distant cousins, leaving him as the next male heir. He hopes to make the acquaintance of his two remaining cousins, Lady Jenifer Marr and Anne Belinda. But Lady Marr proves very vague about her twin sister's whereabouts. Is she traveling with a friend or (as has been intimated) has she been incarcerated in a mental institution? No one seems to actually know, and several people seem bent on frustrating John's attempts to find her.

Jenny has never been one to feel sorry for herself. The illegitimate child of a wealthy man and a statureless woman, she has been an orphan since before she can remember. It is a hard life made bearable only by the kindness of her guardian, an old woman named Miss Garstone, who has always treated Jenny as her own. Struck down by a motorist, "Garsty" dies, whispering to Jenny that her parents were actually married, and she is the rightful heir to the Alington fortune.

Althea Graham's hypochondriac mother seldom visits the gazebo - yet she is found dead in it one morning. The Graham estate had once enjoyed a rural view, but now the grounds are part of suburban London and the gazebo is an anachronistic summerhouse. Scotland Yard becomes suspicious of Althea and her fiancé, the dashing foreign correspondent Nicholas Carey, because the death of her mother frees them to be married at last.

Twelve-year-old Peter Waring is an orphan with an assortment of relatives who don't quite know what to do with him. But Peter's concern is for Rose Ellen, the little girl his mother took in before she died, and for whom none of his relations feel any responsibility. They are however intrigued by Peter's legacy. His father had hidden The Annam Jewel, a mysterious and priceless object that Peter will inherit on his 25th birthday. But Peter's first task is to rescue Rose Ellen from the wretched institution where she has been sent.

She awakes in a dark place. A young woman with a shattered memory, she knows neither who she is nor how she came to be in this abandoned house. All she possesses is a faint sense that someone is lying dead at the foot of the stairs. Horrifyingly, she is correct. In the cellar lies a young woman, her body broken, her head split, her life undone by a revolver’s shell. The amnesiac flees and finally has a stroke of luck: She meets Maud Silver.

The engagement of effervescent Mally Lee to handsome, well-connected Roger Mooring is not going well. They quarrel constantly and Mally's idea is to spend time apart and delay the wedding. She has no money of her own and hopes to find a job, which materializes when Sir George Peterson hires her to be a governess to his daughter. She happily heads to London and all is well until Sir George and his odious secretary, Paul Craddock, accuse her of the theft of a diamond brooch and an important paper.

Jane is broke, she's just lost her job and her landlady has kicked her out. When an amorous young man approaches her on a park bench it soon becomes clear that he has mistaken her for her cousin Renata. Their mothers were identical twins and even though Jane has never met her, Renata's fiance insists they too are identical. He's desperate. It seems Renata sleepwalked into a meeting of her father's friends and overheard their criminal plans. She's lied about hearing anything but they doubt her story and are holding her prisoner.

A young woman goes to the country to reconnect with old relatives, and stumbles on a murder only Miss Silver can solve. An orphan of the Second World War, Candida Sayle has gotten so used to life with her guardian that she never considered that she might have a family somewhere. When her guardian dies, a letter appears from an unheard-of aunt, informing Candida that it is time for her to return to the Benevent family fold. The young woman ventures to the country, and finds a strange pair of spinsters who spend their days obsessing over family lore.

Sally Meredith's young life has been full of adventure. As a suffragist, she fought for women's right to vote. She drove an ambulance in France during the war. And she's already had a proposal and a broken engagement. But the past few years have been deadly dull, taking care of a cranky relative and now living alone in a quiet village. So when her eccentric uncle Fritzi arrives with the tale of his most recent invention - a deadly gas that nations are striving to get hold of - she's intrigued.