The Invitation to Penmorrow Hall

The summer fête ends in triumph—and its treasurer is murdered before the accounts can be settled. Penmorrow Hall has opened its grounds for a crowded district-nursing fête, while the Bay Hotel houses guests, organizer's and private disagreements. Honorary treasurer Constance Keverne discovers that charitable subscriptions, household wages and the day's takings do not tell the same story. She seals the papers and prepares to demand an explanation. Before morning, she is dead. Hotel owner Edmund Trewin and his niece Katherine must discover who could leave an apparently continuous family conference, reach the Hall and return unnoticed. Bea Harcourt's knowledge of social habits helps expose the danger in polite assumptions: a person assigned to pour tea, answer messages or sit with a guest is not necessarily a person anyone actually saw. Behind invitations, duty lists and respectable generosity lies a missing interval—and someone who will kill to keep the accounts from being read correctly.