The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth: A Miss Silver Mystery

If one has to be an orphan, it is helpful to have some sort of inheritance and be reasonably attractive. Laura Fane has “white skin, dark hair, and the grey-green eyes which were her real beauty.” She lost her parents when she was just five but her father’s decision to jilt his cousin Agnes when he met and fell for Laura’s mother caused a family rift. Now 21, she has come to London to meet with a lawyer about her inheritance. She currently receives £400/year, mostly from renting her father’s home, the Priory, to her Cousin Agnes, and she works as a secretary at a convalescent home for soldiers.

Family friends invite Laura for dinner and dancing: the young men are RAF pilots on leave, including Carey Desborough, who arrives with a cousin she has never met, Tanis Lyle. Laura soon learns that while Tanis acts friendly, her remarks hide a spiteful meaning, and she is known for going after other women’s men, then dropping them when bored. Although Tanis lost interest in Carey when he was hospitalized after a bad plane crash, she is furious that he and Laura fall in love at first sight. Laura is worried when Cousin Agnes invites her and Carey to visit the Priory, which is also Tanis’s home. She is eager to see the Priory but afraid she will be accused of stealing Carey from Tanis, repeating family history, and it doesn’t help that Agnes and her sister, Lucy, worship Tanis.

Unsurprisingly (at least to the reader), when the Priory is full of guests, with Tanis upsetting everyone in sight, there is a murder, and Laura’s Chinese Shawl puts her squarely in the middle. Conveniently, Miss Silver, Wentworth's famous (more or less) private detective, is already staying at the Priory, so does not need to be summoned to (unofficially) assist the local superintendent, Randal March, whom she has known since she was his family’s governess (he is very fond of Miss Silver and often appears in the early books of this series).

This is one of Wentworth’s best mysteries and does not require having read earlier books in the series. The characters are varied and easy to distinguish between and the action moves effortlessly from London to the country. Some of her heroines are bold and some are giddy: Laura is in the middle, quiet but determined. She recognizes her improbably-fast connection/relationship with Carey is “quite mad,” which is refreshing, and she also realizes that visiting someone who has a grudge against her parents may cause problems. Once all the guests, with their rivalries, arrive at the Priory, the tension increases and there are plenty of red herrings. I could not guess the murderer until the very end. It is easy to find a copy of this book, as there are many editions, and a good one to start with if you have never tried this author.

World War II: In contrast to some mysteries written during this time frame, Wentworth neither ignores the war nor makes it central to the plot; rather, it is somewhere in the middle, which is interesting. The relative Laura stays with in London is elderly and stubbornly refuses to leave her home “to please Hitler.” Two of family friends who invite her out are RAF pilots, like Carey, and the elder brother works at the War Office. Petra, in love with the brother infatuated with Tanis, is bored by her job “sorting out the most revolting clothes for the bombed.” As mentioned above, Laura herself works at a convalent home.  And the reason Miss Silver is already visiting the Priory is to investigate some pilfering – the suspects are two evacuated families living without drama in the servants’ wing.

Title: The Chinese Shawl: Miss Silver #5
Author: Patricia Wentworth
Publication: HarperCollins, mass market paperback, 1996 (originally published in 1943)
Genre: Mystery/series
Source: Library

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Cloak and Dagger 2026

• Spinster September 2026