The Dead Secret

New York: Akadine Press, 1999. Reissue. Soft Cover. Very Good. 5x1x7. Smoke odor. 1999 Soft Cover. xii, 452 pp. A classic tale of mystery and suspense from the author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White. The secret of the title is the parentage of the heroine, Rosamund Treverton, who has been passed off as the daughter of the wealthy former actress Mrs Treverton of Porthgenna Tower, but is in fact the illegitimate child of her servant Sarah Leeson by a local miner (Mrs Treverton's motive was to provide her husband with a child, being apparently unable to bear children herself). Sarah writes down the details of the secret from the words of the dying Mrs Treverton, and hides the paper bearing the message in an unused room at Porthgenna.