Look to the Lady
First US edition cover
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| Author | Margery Allingham |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Albert Campion |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher |
Jarrolds Publishing Doubleday, Doran |
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Publication date
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1931 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Preceded by | Mystery Mile |
| Followed by | Police at the Funeral |
Look to the Lady is a crime novel by Margery Allingham, first published January 1931, in the United Kingdom by Jarrolds Publishing, London, and in the United States by Doubleday, Doran, New York, as The Gyrth Chalice Mystery. It is the third novel featuring the mysterious Albert Campion, accompanied once more by his butler/valet/bodyguard Magersfontein Lugg.
Albert Campion rescues Val Gyrth from the streets of London, to help him save a family heirloom, the Gyrth Chalice, from a band of devious criminals. In Suffolk, he reunites the son with his family, but soon one of them is found dead, and preventing the theft of the chalice must be combined with solving the mysterious death.
Val Gyrth, heir to the Gyrth family and their traditional vocation of guarding the famous Gyrth Chalice, is homeless and wandering the streets. After a mysterious chain of events, he is plucked out of danger by Albert Campion, who explains that a conspiracy of art collectors and criminals hopes to steal the treasure his family is charged with protecting.
Returning Gyrth to his family, in the village of Sanctuary in Suffolk, Campion is shocked when Val's aunt Di, a bohemian who upset the family by being photographed with the chalice, is found lying dead in a spooky forest clearing, apparently frightened to death.
With Val's 25th birthday, at which a great secret will be revealed to him, fast approaching, Campion and the Gyrths smuggle the chalice to London, evading ruthless crooks. There, they find it is a fake, a replacement made a few hundred years ago, while the genuine, thousand-year-old chalice remains out of sight. A crook informs them that someone named "Daisy" is behind the chalice thieves; Val is left in the safety of Campion's flat, protecting the decoy chalice.
Back in Sanctuary, Lugg has been frightened by a monster in the woods, perhaps the same thing that scared Aunt Di to death. Accompanied by the Gyrths' neighbour, a historian friend of Campion's, and a local woodsman, they trap the monster, revealed to be an aged witch of the village, protecting her slow-witted poacher son, descendants of a family of witches with the name Munsey. They further learn that she was encouraged to frighten Aunt Di by someone named Daisy, and the local woodsman tells Campion that a local stable owner, whom Campion has met a few times already, is called Daisy.
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