If only everything could take place in the “snuggery.”

23. The Silent Halls of Ashenden – Dorothy Daniels

I, for some reason, expected this to be set in the 1970s, but it’s totally not. It’s way earlier, when you needed a horse and carriage to get around. And the Satanism that took down the school of Ashenden in scandal was 10 years earlier. Mara’s father supposedly hanged himself over Satanism after three students also supposedly hanged themselves over their initiations into Satanism and so closeth the school. Mara’s mother is dying and she went essentially silent right after the scandal and now she wants Mara to reopen the school and clear her father’s name.

Mara wants to live there alone, after all there is a “snuggery” to hang out in, but her father’s lawyer and his housekeeper don’t want her to do that for lots of reasons. And she spends one night alone there and wakes up with weird fragmented memories of being taken from her room, chloroformed when she wakes up a bit, put on some sort of cold altar, essentially not violated – lucky her, and then is back in her room in a robe with a bleeding knife and her father’s initials embroidered on it facing a black candle and a drawing of Satan with part of a poem on it. Well then.

Then the former students come and one former professor and Mara’s suddenly suitor, Jethro, and one of the student’s former suitors now turned fiancee, and then it all goes to hell somewhat politely. Mara’s very serious about her investigations, but incapable of keeping hold of the evidence she finds. The former student who doesn’t need a fiancee is now a medium and an eccentric and she’s just got to have a seance in that gymnasium. That doesn’t go well for anyone and the ending is quite rushed, but turns out exactly how you’d expect.

 

Finny could create his own “snuggery,” at least if one interprets that as a place to snuggle, at a moment’s notice.