Elizabeth must not only wrangle her bickering staff members she must also maintain the house and lands on limited funds and paltry war rations, which she does with the welcomed income derived from the estate’s remaining tenants. One such tenant, Winnie Pierce, appeals for help from Elizabeth when Winnie’s wayward and headstrong 16-year-old daughter, Beryl, goes missing after a planned date with her farmer boyfriend, Evan. Winnie’s husband, has been called up to fight the war, as have all Sitting Marsh’s able-bodied men, so she naturally turns to her landlady for assistance.

Elizabeth agrees with Winnie that it’s best at this early juncture to leave the police out of the matter, and she reluctantly fulfills her role as lady of the manor and reassures Winnie that she will look into what may have happened to Beryl. But Elizabeth is soon distracted by the news that her house has been requisitioned by the U.S. Army to serve as temporary barracks for eight servicemen and their handsome officer, Major Earl Monroe.

Beryl’s bicycle is found half buried in the sand at the bottom of a seaside cliff, and not long after her body is discovered. She has been strangled to death. Elizabeth is very mindful of her role in and responsibility to the town and so undertakes to investigate the murder without involving the local constabulary more than necessary. Clues are fast uncovered when Beryl’s purse is found and Elizabeth makes a thorough search of the girl’s bedroom, unearthing a hidden love letter, a one-way ticket to London and an American military lapel pin.

Elizabeth must proceed cautiously with her tenants and the townspeople and the American soldiers. Tensions are brewing due to the presence of the seemingly rich American soldiers who have swarmed the village and overwhelmed the young ladies with gifts of perfume, stockings and chocolates, causing the girls to behave in independent, modern ways the town elders frown on in their desperate attempts to hang on to a swiftly disappearing way of life. Furthermore, the Americans are touchy about the presumption by many that an American soldier killed Beryl, which makes things uneasy for Elizabeth and Major Monroe, to whom she finds herself ineluctably attracted.

Elizabeth is a prim and proper English lady almost devoid of a sense of humor, but she is smart and kind, if a bit sensitive to the villagers’ skepticism about her ability to run the manor. She, too, clings to the hope the old ways will not die at the end of the war, but she must bend to the demands of a rapidly changing world. Her concession is to zoom about town on a battered motorcycle with a sidecar - but attired nonetheless in a proper dress and hat.

This is a good, old-fashioned mystery, with plenty of suspects, clues and red herrings. Sitting Marsh and its array of small-town citizens are realistically and humorously depicted, and Elizabeth smartly goes about uncovering who the killer is. The cartoonish, slapstick scenes with the warring Violet and Martin jar with the mostly staid proceedings, but I suppose some comic relief is called for.

All the bowing and scraping and to-her-liege homage the villagers pay to Elizabeth and which she accepts as her rightful due, may be a bit much for American tastes, but given the time and setting, the behavior is probably appropriate and shouldn’t detract greatly from what is a solid murder mystery.

The story ends on the eve of the soldiers’ move into the manor and with Major Monroe’s having revealed a disturbing fact about himself, but these unresolved subplots are evidence there may be more Lady Elizabeth mysteries to come. And that’s a happy possibility for readers.

--Lillian Jackson