The Secret of the Tower

Inkston offers Cynthia Walford a refuge after her engagement collapses just before the wedding. Her host, Doctor Mary Arkroyd, once worked as her visiting governess and now runs a medical practice near London. Mary answers Cynthia's distress with brisk advice and a walk across the heath. Their friendship introduces a village where old houses, new suburban developments and professional rivalries sit close together.

Anthony Hope's novel combines this social setting with a mystery that draws on Mary's powers of observation. In a later scene, while Cynthia and Captain Alec celebrate their attachment, Mary wakes with a sudden conviction that the word Morocco supplies a vital clue. The contrast between her professional excitement and the couple's happiness gives the dialogue its humor. Readers interested in women doctors in fiction will find a practical, outspoken central figure, while the village conversations reveal anxieties about reputation, trust and life after the First World War.