Aconite by Night by Lisa Bedale

Title: Aconite by Night

Author: Lisa Bedale

Publisher: Johns and Fairfield 

Source book: County Chronicle by Angela Thirkell

It is not generally known that Lisa Bedale, the acclaimed author of a series of thrillers, is the nom de plume of Isabel Dale (who marries Lord Silverbridge, heir to the Duke of Omnium).

Towards the end of County Chronicle there’s a discussion between Lord Silverbridge, Noel Merton KC, and Father Fewling. Lord Silverbridge has just got to the bit in Aconite by Night where the delightful detective, Gerry Marston, goes to see the old lady at Platt Farm and when he turns round she’s gone out of the room, and the door has closed of itself and looks exactly like the rest of the panelling and then he thinks he’ll get out of the window but two panels come out of the wall and lock and there he is. Well, obviously he manages to escape.

Rose Fairweather, she who was Rose Birkett, remembers “and he finds a quite shatteringly lovely girl being blackmailed entirely because she had been engaged to a man who was a crook and he kept all her letters…”

Isabel Dale gives herself away as the author by explaining a complicated plot point involving a secret locked drawer in a table that also had a decoy pretence drawer with a key and a keyhole. The secret drawer had a key and a keyhole but no lock. It could be unlocked by turning the handle. And if you think that sounds complicated, I think you’re right.

Also by Lisa Bedale Hot Cross Roads, Rattle His Bones, Which Way Up, Don’t Spare the Hearses  and Blood Down Below!

Images borrowed from the internet