David Poindexter's disappearance, etc.

David Poindexter, a younger son of an impoverished but respectable Sussex family, has settled into a modest living as a country clergyman near Twickenham, courting Edith Saltine despite his thin finances. When an unexpected letter reveals an inheritance from an estranged uncle, Poindexter's fortunes transform overnight — and shortly after, he vanishes entirely, riding off one afternoon and never returning.

His disappearance throws the town of Witton into speculation, complicated by revelations that the eloquent preacher was quietly in debt to half the neighborhood. Julian Hawthorne — son of Nathaniel Hawthorne — builds a tightly plotted Victorian mystery around the gap between a man's public virtue and his private troubles.