Grey Mask

by Patricia Wentworth

Ebook, 2011

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A young wealthy Londoner returns from years of wandering the world to discover a criminal gang operating out of his family home. Although he is able to spy on one of their meetings, he doesn't know who they are — the mastermind wears a grey mask and other gang members are referred to by number

instead of name. Except he recognized one of them — the young woman whose abrupt breaking of their engagement on the eve of their wedding first sent him on his peregrinations. Charles is reluctant to involve the police unless he can protect his erstwhile love, Margaret, from getting arrested. So he enlists the help of Miss Silver, an unassuming middle-aged woman who has developed a reputations for helping wealthy people with their private troubles. Despite this being the first book in a rather lengthy series featuring our determinedly unflashy friend, her role here is rather constrained. She delivers her reports to Charles whilst industriously working away at her knitting, a different object every time he sees her. Along the way, Charles and Margaret find themselves trying to protect a daffy teenage girl whose life is in danger from the plotters; these scenes provide some great comic relief.

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Description

Fiction. Mystery. HTML: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..… (more)