“A Matter of Loyalty” by Elizabeth Edmondson

British mystery writer Elizabeth Edmondson wrote two acclaimed Hugo Hawksworth novels, A Man of Some Repute and A Question of Inheritance. She was almost finished the third when she died rather unexpectedly. The fate of the third novel was left somewhat in doubt.

Her son, Anselm Audley, a British fantasy writer and the author of a series of dramatic narrative histories for the Amazon Kindle Single program, ultimately stepped in. He finished the final few chapters, using his mother’s notes. The result is A Matter of Loyalty, and it is a welcome result indeed.

Hawksworth, an agent with the UK’s Special Branch in the mid-1950s, has been assigned to the small town of Selchester. He’s officially a statistician, but everyone in the town knows the institution he works for has something to so with espionage. It is a small town, after all, and everyone knows everyone else’s business.

A scientist involved with a nearby nuclear research program is found dead, shot in the back of the head. The death is rather inconvenient for the authorities (not to mention the scientist), as he was the No. 1 suspect in a leak to the Russians. But if they can find the killer, the case may be wrapped up nicely and forgotten. And they do identify one, but Hawksworth is convinced it’s the wrong man.

Anselm Audley

Elizabeth Edmondson

Hawksworth’s personal problems play out against the case he’s investigating. He walks with a permanent limp, the result of a shooting in Berlin that ended his military career and led to another. He’s become the guardian of his 13-year-old sister Georgia, and she is quite a handful (and plays a significant role in the story). He’s engaged to a socialite in London, but he’s coming to regret the relationship – she’s determined to maneuver him into a boring government or corporate desk job. And there’s another possible love interest – the lovely Freya Wryton, who lives at Selchester Castle and was the niece of the murdered earl in the first Hawksworth novel.

A Matter of Loyalty is a fast-paced story that bears a close reading – it’s filled with characters and sub-plots and eventually align with the main story but the read had to pay attention.  

In a postscript, Audley says this will indeed be the last of the Hawksworth novels, and describes how he came to finish the story. He’s done well by his mother’s legacy, but we’ll miss Hugo, Georgia, Freya, the American earl, and the other characters in Edmondson’s memorable stories.

Related:

My review of A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson.

My review of A Question of Inheritance by Elizabeth Edmondson.

Photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. (The photo is actually of Arundel Castle, similar to but not the actual setting for Selchester Castle.)

Elizabeth Edmondson’s “A Question of Inheritance”

It’s the mid-1950s. Hugo Hawksworth and his young teenage sister Georgia live at Selchester Castle in the town of the same name, the guests of the Selchester family. Hawksworth was in the special service (later called MI-5) during World War II. Injured in Berlin in 1945, he walks with a limp – and the injury sidelined his MI-5 career into a desk job, at a “special operation” near Selchester.

He’s already solved one murder mystery at the castle. The new earl of Selchester, an American, is arriving with his two daughters, and it seems that someone may be out to do the new earl in. And over a blizzard-like Christmas, a murder happens – but it’s one of the guests, electrocuted in a greenhouse.

In Elizabeth Edmondson’s A Question of Inheritance, Hawksworth finds himself once again finds himself simultaneously engaged in a castle murder, MI-5 politics, art stolen by the Nazis during the war and smuggled to England. He works closely with Freya Wryton, a Selchester niece who writes successful novels under a pseudonym and is keeping her literary activities secret from everyone.

The mystery has all the right appeals – a big castle, a conniving family, art works hidden away in the attic, some light comedy with the teenage sister (and the new earl’s teenage daughters), weather trapping the characters, several credible suspects, and action that keeps popping and driving interest to the end.

Elizabeth Edmondson

Edmondson has written numerous historical novels and mysteries, including a series about Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy. She has also written under the name Elizabeth Aston. Alas, she died this year at age 67 after a short battle with cancer, which means this second mystery is the last of the Hugo Hawksworth novels. And it appears that we’ll never know if Hugo’s relationship with Freya will move beyond partners in solving mysteries to the romance that is only hinted at.

A Question of Inheritance is a good, enjoyable mystery.

Related:

My review of A Man of Some Repute.

Photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. (The photo is actually of Arundel Castle, similar to but not the actual Selchester Castle.)

Elizabeth Edmondson’s “A Man of Some Repute”

It is 1955. Hugo Hawksworth is an agent with the U.K.’s Special Branch, sent to what is essentially a desk job at a department in rural England. His leg was injured by a shooting in Berlin; he will likely be spending the rest of his life using a cane. In tow is his much younger teenage sister Georgia. Through the assistance of a colleague, Hugo and Georgia settle into temporary lodgings at the castle in Selchester, the ancestral home of the earls of Selchester.

They also settle into a good case of murder. Eight years earlier, the last earl was hosting a dinner party, and apparently walked out into the middle of a blizzard and was never seen again. Without a body, the estate cannot enter probate; there’s no successor to the title of missing earl, as his son and heir was killed during the British occupation of Palestine after World War II. His rather grasping daughter Sonia can’t do anything with the castle until the missing earl’s fate is determined.

And then a leaking pipe requires the digging up of part of the castle’s chapel floor. A skeleton is found, one wearing the ring the earl always wore. And it turns out to be the missing earl. The people who were the earl’s dinner guests, including his now-deceased son and his niece Freya Wryton, turn into suspects. The police are eager, perhaps too eager, to pin the murder on the dead son. But nothing is that simple.

Elizabeth Edmondson’s A Man of Some Repute is complicated, but no more so than any of the kind of English mysteries we associate with Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Ngaio March and other classic English mystery writers. It’s full of hidden papers, family passions, and occasional twists and turns. It held my interest to the very last page.

Edmondson is a writer of historical mysteries. She’s written several set in Italy, the French Riviera, Dorset and even on an ocean liner. The stories are set in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

A Man of Some of Repute, published in July, is the first of Edmondson’s “Very English Mysteries,” and will be followed later this month by A Question of Inheritance, set in Selchester and with the same leading characters. She also writes as Elizabeth Aston (she is one busy writer!).

Elizabeth Edmondson

Hugo and the Selchester niece Freya work together to try to solve the mystery, with occasional help from the high-spirited sister Georgia and Hugo’s uncle Leo, a Catholic priest. As they learn more about what actually happened on the night of the dinner in 1947, they uncover a series of ugly family stories, with national security implications. And while the book is not a romantic mystery, Edmondson is masterful at creating the expectation of romance between Hugo and Freya, without a single direct reference to any romance at all.

A Man of Some Repute is a fully satisfying mystery. I’m looking forward to its successor.

Photograph by Karen Arnold via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. (The photo is actually of Arundel Castle, similar to but not the actual setting for A Man of Some Repute.)