Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Who was the ghostly figure of the Monk who was haunting the Priory? This is the main question for the family who had just inherited the Priory from an uncle, and were now visiting it. The Priory, part of a medieval monastery, was now the property of  brother and sister Peter  and Margaret Fortescue, and their sister Ceclia Malcolm who was married to Charles Malcolm. They were accompanied on their visit by their Aunt Mrs. Bosanquet. They found that the butler, Bowers,  and the housemaid were terrified of the ghost.

One evening, they heard a bumping noise on the stairs and found that a skull has been rolled down the staircase. Further investigation found that there was priest's hole at the top of the stairs which contained the skeleton of somebody who had been there for a very long time. It was Mrs. Bosanquet, who seemed the most sane and level headed of the party, who encountered the Monk in the night. They decided  to call in the local police in the form of Constable Flinders. They had little faith in the Constable who seemed quite at a loss in the beginning, but did take his investigations quite seriously, and kept a watch on the priory and the neighbors.

They got to know their neighbors. There was Mr. Titmouse who collected moths, and who could be seen wandering through the property in the night. Most striking of all the neighbors was the drunken French artist Monsieur Duval. M. Duval was of the most modern school of French art, and expressed his emotions in his rather awful paintings. He lived in a cottage which was a dreadful mess. Charles visited him and found that Duval seemed to believe that the ghost of the Monk had some unexplained hold over him, and if the hold were broken, Duval could move away his hovel in this small village. Then there were Mr Strange who had wandered onto the Priory property and who took quite an interest in it, and Mr. Fripp, the floor cleaner salesman. Fripp and Strange were seen talking to each other and seemed to be friends.

The whole situation became more and more intense especially after the murder occurred, Then two of the residents of the house stumbled into a maze of hidden passages and found their life threatened. It does come to a very satisfactory climax with everything explained, and just a little hit of romance.

If you are a reader who enjoys the adventures of pleasant people involved in mysterious adventures in very old English houses with secret passages and hauntings, you will like this book. It is Georgette Heyer's first mystery novel, written in 1932. It is lacking some of the wit and detection skills of the later books, but is still an entertaining read.