The Master of the Fallen Chairs — Henry Porter

'He came on the shortest day of the year between the storms that carried the sea twenty miles inland and the great snow of that winter. But before his arrival there was an equally mysterious disappearance...' The first in a trilogy, THE MASTER OF THE FALLEN CHAIRS sees thirteen-year-old orphan Kim living with his elusive guardian, surly tutor and various servants in a grand but dilapidated old house called Skirl. When one of the servant girls goes missing, a dark cloud descends on the house. The arrival of a stranger in the dead of night plunges everything further into mystery, and introduces a bit of magic to the mix too...