A Christmas Gathering

Lord Victor Narraway, once head of Special Branch in London, travels to Cavendish Hall with his wife, Lady Vespasia, for what should be a restful country Christmas with old friends. Victor has another purpose he keeps to himself. He is supervising the handover of sensitive papers that could expose a traitor.

The exchange fails. Victor's contact is attacked and left barely alive, and the house party carries on around the injury with a thin show of seasonal cheer. Guests make conversation, the festivities go ahead, and someone under the roof knows what happened.

The attack stirs painful memories of a similar gathering years earlier. Victor begins to suspect that the old case and the new one are linked. With the holiday running out, he and Vespasia have to decide which of their longtime acquaintances could be capable of murder.

This is a Victorian-style mystery novella set within a single country house, with a closed circle of suspects and a suspicion that grows over the course of the visit. It is the seventeenth of Anne Perry's Christmas novellas and features characters from her Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels.