Anna Dean
Author of the Dido Kent mysteries
A Place of Confinement
But the case becomes darker when a man who has promised to provide information about Miss Verney's disappearance is murdered before he can explain himself.
And there is evidence of dark secrets being concealed within Charcombe Manor's walls. Mr William Lomax believes that Dido is too suspicious; but she insists that there are a great many questions to be answered. Why, for example, are the manor guests kept awake by the sound of ghostly crying in the night? Why does Miss Martha Gibbs burn her hair with the hot poker every time she curls it? How is Mr George Fenstanton raising money to build a new seaside resort town at Charcombe? Why are there lights shining at night in the supposedly deserted east wing of the manor house? And why is Miss Emma Fenstanton concealing cooked chicken legs in her workbox?
Dido's curiosity is all alive, but, as she investigates, she finds that this case touches her more closely than she had supposed. In fact, the welfare of the man she loves and all her own future happiness depend upon her discovering the truth.
Book Four in the Dido Kent Mystery Series
Miss Letitia Verney - heiress to £20,000 - has disappeared. She went out walking with a young man and has not been seen since. Her friends at the ancient manor house of Charcombe are shocked. And their consternation increases when the young man declares that he escorted Miss Verney safely back to the house - that he actually saw her walk in through the front door; because her friends were all gathered upon the other side of that door, and they are all sure that she did not come through it.
'Young ladies cannot simply vanish,' declares Miss Dido Kent, 'If a lady disappears from one side of a door she must appear on the other.' And she sets about finding a rational explanation. For Dido - who is visiting Charcombe Manor in the role of companion to her wealthy, ill-tempered Aunt Manners - is particularly in need of a diversion just now.
