Midnight Hag — Joan Fleming

There was no nonsense about old Mr Cumlock. When he decided to die, he died, maliciously leaving his fortune to an unknown son as an act of revenge. 'I can't live without a woman, and I can't live with one,' his heir, Valentine Belmont, an artist, used to complain; this difficulty that had dogged him throughout his life was to bring everything tumbling about him in a blaze of disorder. The events in his life had a fearful symmetry enacted, it seems, solely by the light of falling stars ... 'A first-rate study of malice, death and ancient feuds stewing in a small town' Birmingham Evening Mail