The Mystery of Grange Drayton

By Eliza Kerr

Drayton is a small town with secrets. Lawyer James Crowe is desperate to get possession of Grange Drayton, and he tricks the owner into disinheriting his son Harold Drayton by accusing him of murdering his older brother’s son and heir. Lawyer Crowe intends to marry Dorothy Dalton, but she is engaged to Harold Drayton and is waiting for him to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, the lawyer’s sister is secretly embezzling her brother’s money. In the houses and cottages of Drayton things are not always what they seem on the outside. Into this web of dishonesty comes the Rev. Joseph Allgood, the new Wesleyan minister. Dorothy Dalton’s Aunt Kezekia wonders if anyone can really be “all good”!

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Tree Publishing
• Release date: Nov 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912529223

Book preview

About the Book

Drayton is a small town with secrets. Lawyer James Crowe is desperate to get possession of Grange Drayton, and he tricks the owner into disinheriting his son Harold Drayton by accusing him of murdering his older brother’s son and heir. Lawyer Crowe intends to marry Dorothy Dalton, but she is engaged to Harold Drayton and is waiting for him to prove his innocence. Meanwhile, the lawyer’s sister is secretly embezzling her brother’s money. In the houses and cottages of Drayton things are not always what they seem on the outside. Into this web of dishonesty comes the Rev. Joseph Allgood, the new Wesleyan minister. Dorothy Dalton’s Aunt Kezekia wonders if anyone can really be all good!

The Mystery of

Grange Drayton

by

Eliza Kerr

White Tree Publishing

Edition

Original book first published 1884

This edited edition ©Chris Wright 2019

e-Book ISBN: 978-1-912529-22-3

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

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The Mystery of Grange Drayton is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

Introduction

Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About White Tree Publishing

More Books from White Tree Publishing

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Younger Readers

Introduction

There were many prolific writers of Christian fiction in the last part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The majority of these books were fairly heavy-handed moral tales with warnings to young people, rather than romances. Two writers spring to mind who wrote romantic fiction for adults ― Mrs. O. F. Walton and Margaret S. Haycraft, whose works are still popular today. Our White Tree Publishing editions from these authors have been sensitively abridged and edited to make them much more acceptable to today's general readers, rather than publishing them unedited for students of Victorian prose. The characters and storyline are always left intact.

Eliza Kerr is perhaps less well known than Mrs. Walton and Margaret Haycraft, but she wrote in a similar style to the books of Walton and Haycraft, and we welcome Eliza Kerr to our catalogue.

Victorian and early twentieth century books by Christian and secular writers can be over-sentimental, referring throughout, for example, to a mother as the dear, sweet mother, and a child as the darling little child. In our edited and abridged editions overindulgent descriptions of people have been shortened to make a more robust story.

A problem of Victorian writers is the tendency to insert intrusive comments concerning what is going to happen later in the story. Today we call them spoilers. They are usually along the lines of: Little did he/she know that.... These have been removed when appropriate.

Chris Wright

Editor

NOTE

There are 13 chapters in this book. In the second half are advertisements for our other books, so the story may end earlier than expected! The last chapter is marked as such. We aim to make our eBooks free or for a nominal cost, and cannot invest in other forms of advertising. However, good reviews and word of mouth by satisfied readers will help get our books more widely known. When the story ends, please take a look at what we publish: Christian non-fiction, Christian fiction and books for younger readers, and go to our website www.whitetreepublishing.com.

Chapter 1

In the Springtime

The little town of Drayton was in the heart of the English Peak country, in the land where the altars of the Druids still stand on the moorland; where the standing stone of the Roman still lies on the hillside; where the pine and the fern fill the hollows and dells; where the woods are ever damp with the dews of earth-born waters.

Drayton was a quaint, pretty, old-fashioned little town, with four good streets in it, and many a snug flower-surrounded cottage within a few minutes’ walk.

Although it was dignified by the title of town, it was scarcely more than a village, and its business was carried on in such a lazy, comfortable fashion, without bustle, and without undue anxiety, that a London shopkeeper from Tottenham Court Road or Cheapside would have thought the people all asleep, and have desired to stir them up to London activity and London bustle.

In a one-storied house outside the town dwelt Dorothy Dalton, and her aunt, Mistress Keziah. Dorothy was a young woman and very fair to look upon in every sense of the word; but Mistress Keziah had seen fifty summers and was not handsome, although she was comely enough when she allowed her stern features to relax into a smile.

Aunt and niece attended the little Wesleyan chapel on the hillside, as did most of the people of Drayton, and there was mild excitement in the neighbourhood at this time because of the advent of a new minister for the hillside congregation.

The sunshine of early April was beaming through the woods, the ground was lovely with the primroses, and the air radiant with the yellow butterflies that seemed as though they were the primroses themselves that had taken wing upon the balmy winds. Mistress Keziah wended her way home through the streets of Drayton, after having had a vigorous dispute with a neighbour over the merits and demerits of the Rev. Joseph Allgood, Wesleyan minister, Lately appointed to the town of Drayton upon the unexpected decease of its former minister.

Such a name to give the poor man! she muttered contemptuously, as she neared her pretty, flower-surrounded home. "As if any man was ever all good."

Well, Aunt Keziah, have you succeeded in getting the ribbon? asked Dorothy, coming to the gate of the front garden, her hands full of spring blossoms, her yellow hair and brown eyes catching an additional brightness from the sun’s rays.

The little house was enclosed by a garden, the back portion of which had fruit trees in it, and rose bushes, and great masses of lavender and thyme, and such sweet-smelling old-fashioned flowers. Tall, vainglorious hollyhocks, and wallflowers, and mignonette adorned the front portion, with here and there tufts of primroses, and stretches of wild hyacinths, and many another humble, beautiful blossom.

Yes, Ambrose Brown sold it to me. But what a tongue that man has! He’s been arguing these twenty minutes back that Mr. Allgood is the best minister we’ve ever had, and that the congregation would do well to ask Conference to send him to us permanently when these few months are over.

I don’t think Ambrose is far wrong, aunt. The minister is young, and when Mr. Johnson dropped down dead so suddenly it was well for us that there was such a good man to take his place until Conference.

I say nothing against the minister, returned Mistress Keziah, "but I do say there’s no man worthy of much praise, or indeed much blame either. He’s well enough, I’ve no doubt, taking him all in all, but there’s no reason to make a fuss over any of them."

Dorothy smiled. She knew in what estimation her aunt held the male portion of the community, and how useless it was to enter into a controversy with her on the subject.

And did you hear that Lawyer Crowe has offered two rooms on the second floor of his house to the minister? Trust that old man for looking after the money. The poor creature will pay sharp for those rooms, no doubt, and his sister Sarah will give him weak tea and dry bread to aid his digestion.

Why should not Mr. Allgood be comfortable with Lawyer Crowe and his sister? questioned Dorothy smilingly. I do sincerely hope he will be so. We must be kind to him, for I hear he has no women-folk belonging to him, and he must often be very lonely, and miss the many things a woman’s thought and fingers could devise for his comfort.

Mistress Keziah’s aspect was most forbidding as she listened to the words of her niece. Why, one would think it was a privilege to minister to the wants of men. Did men talk in that way about women, and did they say what a pleasure it was to help lonely women on in the world when they had no fathers or brothers to aid them?

Did you hear how Squire Drayton was today? asked Aunt Kezekia. "Ambrose Brown might have had the latest news from Grange