Showing results by author "Clara Benson" in All Categories

It is Hogmanay, and Angela Marchmont is at Fives Castle, the Scottish seat of the Earl of Strathmerrick, to see in the start of 1928. But when she finds out that the Foreign Secretary, the American Ambassador, and the Head of British Intelligence are also among the guests, Angela begins to suspect that something momentous is afoot. Before long, they are all snowed in and a body is discovered, and Angela soon finds suspicion directed against herself....

After her bruising encounter with the law, Angela Marchmont has vowed to give up detecting and is doing her best to forget the events of last winter and the terrible lie she told to save herself. So, when a letter arrives from beyond the grave requesting her help and reminding her of the past, she is anything but pleased. Drawn reluctantly into one final case and spurred on by her guilty conscience, Angela soon discovers a viper's nest of family betrayals and hidden enmities that have lain undisturbed for years and that may have led to the deaths of more than one person.

The ladies of Clerkenwell Central Hall are none too pleased at having their temperance meetings disrupted by the rowdy communists next door, but for Miss Olive Stapleton in particular, the uneasy coexistence proves fatal when she is found stabbed through the heart with a paper knife. Enter Freddy Pilkington-Soames, who’s been recruited by British Intelligence to investigate a suspected communist plot to stir up a general strike. Freddy thinks there’s more to Miss Stapleton’s death than meets the eye, but as he delves more deeply into the mystery, it only becomes more puzzling.

Italy, 1938: When Stella arrives in Florence, it’s love at first sight. She is wowed by the rolling hills dotted with olive trees, the buttermilk villas with shuttered windows and terracotta roofs that glow gloriously in the sunlight. Even the breeze holds the scent of freedom - freedom from England, where the shadow of her past haunted her.