The Black Cabinet — Patricia Wentworth

Chloe Dane inherits a fabled ancestral estate -- and plunges into deadly danger -- in this novel of romance and suspense from the author of the acclaimed Miss Silver Mysteries
 
The lowly assistant to a London dressmaker, Chloe Dane yearns for a new life. She has bittersweet memories of being a carefree child playing hide-and-seek at Danesborough, her family's magnificent country estate. Decades later, the ancestral mansion has been restored to its former glory -- and Chloe is shocked to discover that she is the sole heir.
 
Danesborough is not the sun-filled, evergreen place she remembers. The trees are bare and the house is shrouded in mist. But the enormous gold-and-black lacquered Chinese cabinet in the drawing room is exactly the same. Chloe's childhood imagination created an entire story out of the intricate carvings on the cabinet: a flowing river filled with boats and fishermen and one frightening man she called Mr. Dark.
 
But now, as Chloe begins to uncover Mitchell Dane's true motives for bequeathing her the centuries-old manse, she has a very real reason to be afraid: The truth about what's hidden in the black cabinet will soon threaten her life.