Crime-Book Society paperback edition - 1936?
The Lady of Ascot was a loose novelisation of Edgar Wallace's play M'Lady, which ran for a mere twenty-three performances in 1921 at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End. Apparently, it was panned by theatre critics! Well, I liked the novel - what one might call a rattling good yarn.
John Morlay, is a private 'detective' dealing only with the commercial credit of people. He is the remaining grandson of one of the Morlay Brothers, a reputable firm in London confining themselves to that lucrative and usually colourless branch of criminal detection. The reader first meets him peering through the trim box-hedge of Little Lodge, a pseudo-Queen Anne manor at Ascot, so small that it might have been built by some plutocrat to give his young and pampered daughter the joys of a practicable doll's house. Morlay meets up with a Scotland Yard friend, sub-inspector Pickles, who informs him the new occupant of the manor will be Countess Marie Fioli - "she's a schoolgirl - leavin' in the middle of term, which is bad. She's comin' up next week - her guardian or something has bought the house". Back in his London office, Morlay receives a visit from an acquaintance, Julian Lester, who was a little too tailor-made, his manners a trifle too precious...Morlay hated his jewelled sleeve-links and his pearl tiepin...Julian came in, looking as though he had stepped out of the proverbial bandbox. Now for one of those coincidences which keep most detective/thriller tales going. Lester has his eyes fixed on the eighteen-year-old Countess Fioli - he thinks there is money to be had from a matrimonial link up. He explains the importance of a Mrs Carawood - nineteen years ago Mrs Carawood was a nursemaid in the employ of the Countess Fioli, a widow who had a house at Bournmouth, and who was, I know, a member of a very noble family. The Countess died, leaving no will but a baby, whom she asked Mrs. Carawood to care for. Mrs Carawood became a wealthy woman - through opening eventually a chain of shops, which were bringing in, so Lester surmises, a considerable sum of money. Marie Fioli is now attending the prestigious, and expensive, Cheltenham Ladies' College. Good for Mrs C. But Lester thinks she has used the dead Countess' money for her own ends. He will investigate!
Morlay's interest is aroused; he visits Mrs Carawood's main store in Penton Street, Pimlico. He talks to the shop assistant - a tall, lank youth wearing a green-baize apron. His red hair was long and untidy, and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles gave him an appearance of comic ferocity. Mrs C. is not there, but has gone to Cheltenham to see Marie. Morlay then did a thing which was more inexplicable to himself. He takes a train to Cheltenham! From then on it is a, surprisingly sentimental, roller coaster. Morlay meets up with Mrs C. - in the region of fifty, swarthy of face and yet not unpleasant to look upon. There was something of the gipsy in the romantic Mrs Carawood; then Marie - there were harmony and grace in her movements...the gaucherie of childhood had come to be a rhythm; the round, firm cheeks had delicate shadows. To Morlay, she is simply beautiful! Mrs C is agitated when she hears Morlay is a 'detective' and, determined to get him onside, visits him in his office and tries to employ him to watch Marie's interests. Although, refusing payment, Morlay agrees to act in an honorary capacity.
Morlay and Marie get to know each other; Lester tries to find out more about Mrs. C - there is clearly a mystery about her relationship with 'the Countess'. A further mystery occurs when a down-and-out man called Mr Hoad (he was a man whom Morlay met at the start of the tale at the Little Lodge - another coincidence) gives a message marked Urjent to Marie for Mrs C. Clearly, something in Mrs C's past needs sorting. A Father Benito, of the Franciscan Church in Mayfair, goes to see Morlay and made a statement which brought John Morlay to his feet, wide-eyed. There are another hundred pages to go, but the reader begins to see a glimmer of light - it was here I began to guess the probable outcome. In other words, who Mrs Carawood really was; who the ex-Dartmoor lag Hoad was; and, in particular, who exactly was the young Countess of Fioli. Wallace holds our attention to the end, skilfully linking up Lester with the above threesome, as well as unveiling Lester's own proclivities. More must not be given away, except to admit that Marie and Morlay are going to live happily ever after. I repeat - I enjoyed the novel.
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