Orphan Lady Margaret Cheyne returns home on her eighteenth birthday to live with her embittered maiden aunt and to take up her inheritance of the family jewels. The Cheyne jewels include a pendant featuring the Purple Emperor, a priceless jewel looted from a temple during the Indian Mutiny. During her time at school in Paris, Lady Margaret has met and fallen in love with Sir Edgar Brenton, the son of an old flame of her aunt and a neighbour in the village of Hampton, where Cleek’s adored Ailsa Lorne has also taken up residence. Lady Margaret’s return leads to a mysterious and sinister chain of events, which Cleek and Superintendent Maverick Narkom of Scotland Yard attempt to unravel, with, of course, the help of the irrepressible and ever-hungry Dollops, Cleek’s cockney sidekick. This full-length mystery is a welcome return for Hamilton Cleek, whom we first met in Cleek: The Man of the Forty Faces.
Latest episodes of the podcast The Riddle of the Purple Emperor by Mary E. Hanshew
- 01 – Which Introduces a New Friend
- 02 – The Home-coming
- 03 – In the Dark
- 04 – The House of Shadows
- 05 – The Threads of Chance
- 06 – The Cry in the Night
- 07 – In the Tiger’s Clutches
- 08 – Complications and Complexities
- 09 – The House with the Shuttered Windows
- 10 – A Shot in the Dark
- 11 – A Terrible Discovery
- 12 – The Woman in the Case
- 13 – Tightening the Strands
- 14 – The Plot Thickens
- 15 – Tangled Threads
- 16 – In the Doctor’s Surgery
- 17 – Miss Cheyne Again
- 18 – Dollops Takes a Hand
- 19 – The Twin Scarves
- 20 – A Twisted Clue
- 21 – ‘Tis a Mad World, My Masters
- 22 – The Trap
- 23 – Untwisting the Threads
- 24 – An Unexpected Contretemps
- 25 – A Tale Unfolded