The Heiress and the Hatbox — A Thornwick Hat Shop Mystery, Book 14

Some families are written down. Some are only remembered.

Thornwick, 1927. When a record-agent from London asks whether the hat shop kept any account of its custom in the nineties, Agnes Ambrose climbs into her mother's loft and finds forty-one hatboxes that were never called for.

One of them was left in the rain in October 1898 by a woman with nothing. It does not contain a hat.

Days later the record-agent is dead at the foot of a vestry stair, her notebook gone, and the county is calling it a fall. Agnes knows better. Somewhere between a pawn ticket, a christening cap worked in lily-of-the-valley, and a wrong turn taught hand to hand through four generations of lacemakers, there is proof that a great estate has been held for sixty years on a lie.

And there is a patient, well-liked man who intends that nobody should ever be able to say so.

Perfect for readers who love:

• Forgotten hatboxes and family mysteries
• Inheritance secrets and a great estate held on a lie
• A deeply personal case for Agnes
• Clean mysteries with no graphic violence or bad language

Book 14 of A Thornwick Hat Shop Mystery. Read the series in order, or jump in here.