The Mask

In the Gildford night, the Old Grange burns. Henry Blackwood — master maskmaker, once the pride of the Maskmakers' Guild — dies in the flour-dust blast that levels his own house. His wife Eleanor survives, unconscious, under suspicion. The only one who saw it happen is Lucy, his little girl: half-deaf, half-blind, and mute with terror. Detective Edmund Holt has three sweets in his pocket and one witness who refuses to speak. Bit by bit he earns her trust, and bit by bit her small hand points a shaking finger — at her own mother. But the more Holt digs, the less the case holds. A life insurance policy quietly re-signed on Henry's last living day. A first wife, Violet Marsh, who died in a mill explosion ten years ago — and was never found. A river-house proprietor who vanished at the same time and was never seen again. Henry's final masks, painted in a strange new orange, reek of resin — and of something else. Someone wanted the explosion to look like murder. Someone else wanted it to look like accident. And the man who made masks did not die wearing one.