Fell Murder

Fell Murder by Edith Caroline Rivett

Fell Murder opens on the fells above Garthmere Hall in Lunesdale, where the elderly bailiff John Staple encounters Richard Garth, the estranged heir who left for Canada twenty-five years earlier after his father, old Robert Garth, cursed his marriage to Mary Ashthwaite. Richard, now a Merchant Navy seaman on Atlantic convoys, has returned only for a brief walking tour, insisting he wants nothing to do with his family or Garthmere Hall, though Staple urges him to reclaim his inheritance one day. Unseen, Richard's young half-brother Malcolm overhears the entire exchange. At the Hall, the fractious Garth household is introduced: domineering old Robert, his capable farming daughter Marion, his idle son Charles (returned penniless from Malaya), the sickly poet Malcolm, and land-girl Elizabeth Meldon, who is fond of Malcolm. Old Garth is tyrannical and tight-fisted, resisting Marion's wish to invest in better breeding stock despite the farm's wartime prosperity. That night Malcolm tells Elizabeth about seeing Richard, swearing her to secrecy, and both witness old Garth wandering the house. The next day, after the family helps Staple bring in his oat harvest, a storm breaks. The following morning Marion confronts her father over farm finances; the argument ends when a gun left loaded in the office falls and discharges, narrowly missing him—blamed on an accident, though no one admits handling the weapon. Later a local "fox hunt" is organized, drawing together the district's farmers, including Bob Ashthwaite, Richard's embittered former father-in-law who had been ruined by a rent dispute with old Garth. After the hunt, Staple finds Robert Garth shot dead at close range in an old farm shed, clearly murdered rather than killed by accident. Suspicion falls on various figures: Ashthwaite, seen near the scene; Jock, Ashthwaite's simple-minded farmhand, who gleefully proclaims people "shot" the old man; and, once a Wheatsheaf innkeeper reveals that a man named Richard Garth had registered there days earlier, the vanished heir himself. The pompous Superintendent Layng investigates clumsily, alienating the taciturn locals, and finds an American twenty-five-cent coin at the murder scene. Deeming the case too complex and his resources too thin, the Chief Constable calls in Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Macdonald arrives and, unlike Layng, wins the farmers' trust by learning their customs and speech. Through unhurried conversations with Staple, Ashthwaite, and Marion, he reconstructs the geography and timeline of the crime, weighs the cases against Jock and Ashthwaite, and begins to suspect the household's own secrets—including the hidden fact of Richard's recent, unacknowledged visit—hold the key to the murder.

By Edith Caroline Rivett · First published 1944 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction · 17 chapters · 62,457 words

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To / A Freeman of Lancaster

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Fell Murder is listed on Textopian as a novel by Edith Caroline Rivett, dated 1944 CE.

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