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The Snuffbox Affair
A Peregrine Appleby & Hedges Mystery
Peregrine Appleby is a young man of mild surprise and permanent bewilderment, a freelance poet whose career has the unfortunate habit of driving literary journals into receivership. He lives a life of quiet comfort in Mayfair, largely because his valet, Hedges, possesses a "prospective competence" that borders on the supernatural. Hedges doesn't just pack trunks; he anticipates crises, manages aunts, and ensures Peregrine never accidentally attends a Royal garden party in a burgundy dressing gown.
When a formidable summons arrives from Aunt Drusilla (a woman whose disapproval can wilt potted plants at forty feet), Peregrine is whisked away to the village of Lower Swatting-on-the-Wold for the annual fete. The stakes are deceptively low—until they aren't.
What begins as a simple weekend of reading Keats to elderly residents and dodging "beastly" rural duties quickly spirals into a high-stakes horticultural heist involving:
A Ruby-Encrusted Snuffbox: Accidentally surrendered as a tea-room tip.
The Grand Marrow Competition: Where forty-pound vegetables are treated with the reverence of holy relics.
A Runaway Daughter: Working undercover as a waitress named Mabel.
Tippy Tollimache: A best friend currently obsessed with the scientific development of a waterproof monocle.
When the missing snuffbox is secreted inside the village's prize-winning marrow, Peregrine must rely on Hedges's cryptographic past and Tippy's surprising skill with a lockpick to prevent a social catastrophe. To make matters more complicated, the arrival of the sharp-witted Cressida Vane—who reads Virgil in the original Latin while driving a supercharged sports car—forces Peregrine to confront something even more terrifying than his Aunt: his own feelings.
In a world of beeswax seals, midnight garden raids, and moral croquet, can Hedges orchestrate a reconciliation between a rigid magistrate and his daughter while ensuring the snuffbox returns to the right pocket?
