The Chinese Shawl — Patricia Wentworth

At twenty-one, Laura Fane comes into her inheritance and travels to war-torn London to meet with her solicitors. There she is introduced to her lovely, charming, yet poisonous cousin Tanis Lyle who invites her to the Fane family estate, The Priory, for a house party. Miss Silver is among the many weekend guests. Laura also meets Carey Desborough, a wounded R.A.F. pilot, and the two fall deeply in love. Their happiness is complicated by Miss Agnes Fane, who mistakenly believes that Tanis and Carey are engaged. Miss Agnes, who brought up Tanis, blindly and bitterly perceives Carey's love for Laura as reminiscent of her own broken engagement to Laura's father twenty-two years earlier. But there are many hearts that have been broken. And when Tanis is killed, it becomes apparent that there are several individuals with strong motives for her murder, including Carey Desborough. Miss Silver offers to assist the police with her astute powers of observation and her keen sense of human nature since she is on the spot. She strives to find justice and to save the young lovers from the dark shadows of the past, which are haunting them so persistently.