At either end of the mystery is an isolated old man, retired Colonel James Lockyer-Fox, and his now-grown biological granddaughter, Captain Nancy Smith, who was long ago put up for adoption. Caught in the middle is the Colonel’s lawyer, Mark Ankerton, who is tasked with bringing Smith back into the family.
It turns out that Smith, whose character and features echo those of both her grandfather and his deceased wife, doesn’t really care about being a long-lost heiress. She’s more than happy with the family who adopted her, who are well-to-do themselves, as Ankerton realizes while he waits to meet her in the Smith sitting room. “A nineteenth century map on the wall above the fireplace showed Lower Croft and Coomb Croft as two distinct entities, while a more recent map next to it showed the two within a single boundary, renamed Coomb Farm.”
Farms, land owners, tenants, and property rights are recurring themes in the story, which deals with long-buried secrets, shame and blame, loyalty, and gossip. The Colonel hopes to leave his estate to Smith, largely cutting out her biological mother and uncle. The gossip mongers who have cruelly isolated the Colonel since his wife’s suspicious death live on parts of the farm that he’s already had to sell off to pay his wastrel children’s bad debts. The man and his property are both being neglected by his elderly servants, who live in a “tied cottage” on the property and cannot be evicted and replaced with younger workers. And now travelers are camped on adjoining land, intending to take over “waste property” and put down roots.
The action takes place in Devon, largely on the Colonel’s estate, which Walters describes deftly. “He opened the door on to a walled courtyard and ushered Nancy through...Weeds grew in profusion between the cobbles, and the terra-cotta tubs contained only the brittle skeletons of long-dead plants...They emerged onto an an expanse of parkland...Frost still lay in pockets under the shrubs and tress that formed an avenue facing south, but the bright winter sun had warmed it to a glistening dew on the sweep of grass that sloped away and gave an unrestricted view of Shenstead Valley and the sea beyond.”
The travelers are led by a man calling himself Fox Evil. His name hints at a connection to the Colonel, and he knows far more detail about the area and its inhabitants than a stranger should. He runs his band of travelers like a military group, even down to insisting they all wear black scarves and balaclavas when they face the locals. He alternately neglects and terrifies his own young son, Wolfie, and when some of his fellow travelers begin to balk at his treatment of both Wolfie and themselves, he ratchets up the fear with razor and hammer he carries in his pockets.
Walters does a great job of moving between points of view and raising tensions as she peels away layer after layer of the lies and deceptions from which her characters have woven their lives.
While the story is compelling, and its setting is beautiful, I can't say it's set me on fire to go and explore Devon in reality, just in case its inhabitants are all as deceptive, angry and vindictive as most of this story's characters.
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