Tell-Tale Murder

Since the disappearance of her husband seveteen years before, Jane Mannion has lived a life of seclusion on the Cornish coast with her children, David and Vanessa and a macabre old woman called Ellen. Suspected by local gossips of poisoning her husband (her mother was also a suspected poisoner) she shuns village society and extends a grudging welcome to her son's fiancee Maureen and her father. This last is a lawyer with a firm belief in heredity, and he wants to make a thorough check of his future son-in-laws family history. When a body is found in a disused mine shaft on the moors he discovers more than he has bargained for. Jane identifies the corpse as that of her husband. But between the evidence of the aged maid and Jane he unearths a story of Richard Mannion's death and the fact that Jane had a lover. Now, for the sake of his daughter, he must prove Jane's guilt or innocence. This task is further complicated when he discovers that his chauffeur Howell is the missing lover - and Vanessa's father. Anxiously they all await the result of the official inquest; no poison was found in the body and Jane is cleared.  Her son marries by special licence, and by a judicious piece of blackmail on the chauffeur's part, Vanessa's future is assured - with her father in South Africa. Jane Mannion is left alone with her memories, her old mother masquerading as a servant, and the knowledge that the body on the moors was not that of her husband. He still lies where she buried him - under the flagstones of a house she can never leave.