- A Haunting at Holkam, by Anne Glenconner. Hodder and Stoughton, $32.99.
Anne Glenconner was born Lady Anne Coke (pronounced Cook), the eldest daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, and spent her childhood at Holkham Hall, Norfolk. Her father was equerry to King George VI, and she was a Maid of Honour at the Coronation in 1953, before marrying Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner in 1956.
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Tennant famously bought the island of Mustique, gifting a plot of land there to Princess Margaret as a wedding present. Anne was one of Princess Margaret's ladies-in-waiting until the princess' death in 2002.
Anne Glenconner's memoir, Lady in Waiting (2019) was a publishing sensation. Furious at Craig Brown's amusing but savage anecdotal biography of Princess Margaret, Ma'am Darling (2018,) Glenconner wanted to set the record straight about the princess she had loyally served for years, while also revealing her own troubled childhood.
Glenconner turned to fiction in with Murder on Mustique (2020), imagining herself on her favourite island as a Miss Marple in an episode of Death in Paradise. In her new novel A Haunting at Holkham, she has returned to the childhood she described in Lady in Waiting for inspiration.
The ghost is Lady Mary Coke, who refused to consummate her marriage to the son of the 1st Earl in 1747 and was locked up as a result. Her ghost still stalks the cellars of Holkham Hall.
But A Haunting at Holkham is far more than a ghost story. Set in and around the Palladian splendour of the hall in both 1950 and 1943, Glenconner tells a story of a mysterious death and a missing family heirloom.
In 1950, as a result of crippling debt due to death duties, Lady Anne Coke is on a selling trip with samples of the pottery designed and made by her mother and sister at Holkham Pottery, when she learns that her beloved grandfather has been found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs at Holkham. In his pocket is a replica of the famous Coke diamond necklace, and the original is missing.
Anne suspects her grandfather may have been murdered and begins to investigate with the help of Charles Elwood, a promising if penniless artist who is renting a cottage on the estate. The only clue they can find is the name of Anne's vicious, sadistic governess in her grandfather's diary, prompting Anne to remember 1943, the year she lived with her grandfather as a child during the war. Anne wonders if the answer to the mystery of her grandfather's death lies in the past.
This is a novel for fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs. There's a devoted butler, a loyal housemaid, a ball and a cameo appearance by Princess Margaret. What more could you want?
