Greenmask by Jefferson Farjeon

John Letherton was a man who believed that there was magic in life. He, however, had never experienced it. He was now on the train on his way to Wales for a walking holiday. He was joined in his compartment by a good looking but rather "common" woman with black hair and good legs by the name of Daisy Vail. They had a nice chat, and John was quite surprised that she got off the train at Dolberis which was his destination. She was met by a car at the station, while John needed to walk.

Dolberis was a lovely town surrounded by mountains, however, John decided that he did not wish to stay in the town, but to seek lodgings farther out of the town. He started walking and eventually found what appeared to be a hotel called the White Lion. When he tried to get a room, it was evident that the manager did not want him to stay there. Then Daisy Vail showed up. It was apparent that she was staying there, and she told the manager that the room next to hers was vacant, and so he got that room. When John went down for dinner, it seemed that the other guests were a very strange and unfriendly lot. He was told that the occupant of room 9 was seriously ill, but when John took a peek in the room after dinner, he found that it was empty.  Later in the evening, as John was walking along a bridge near the hotel, somebody tried to push him over the edge. Daisy Vail found him, brought him his knapsack and told him to get away from there and to go back to the town of Dolberis.

John got away but not to Dolberis. Instead he headed off into the woods in the dark of night. He eventually grew tired and went to sleep in the woods where he was found by Robert Gill, a kindly and pudgy elderly man. Gill told John that he had always wanted to live in a castle, and now he had the money to rent one for the summer. Gill invited John to come and stay at the castle. There John learned that Gill had trouble keeping servants because it was believed that the ghost of a highwayman, Greenmask, haunted the castle and the servants left after seeing the ghost. Mrs. Gill was also visibly upset by Greenmask. The only dependable servants remaining were Benson, the butler, and Ruth his daughter.

John and Gill discovered the bodies of two of the servants in the nearby river, but could not report the crime to the police because the phone line at the castle had been cut, and Gill's car had been put out of commission. Then two of the people from the mysterious White Lion hotel showed up at the castle and applied for the servants' positions. John found himself in the midst of a very ominous mystery involving both dead bodies and a ghost.

This book is set in a very lovely and remote part of Wales. The isolation of the setting adds to the ominous story. The book is full of suspicious people, both at the White Lion and at the castle. Indeed as the story progressed, I began to suspect everybody of being in some illegal conspiracy even though I didn't exactly know what that conspiracy was. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

J. Jefferson Farjeon is one of the overlooked writers of the Golden Age of the mystery, but he is finding new readers as the British Library is republishing some of his books. Greenmask was published in 1944 and only used copies seem to be available.