The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite (HB)

1935. Dora's on the first train to London, having smuggled herself out of the house in the middle of the night to escape her impending marriage. But unluckily for her, Dora's Fiance is more persistent than most and follows.

As Dora alights at Paddington station, she is immediately forced to run from the loathsome Charles Silk-Butters. She ducks into the London Library to hide and it is there, surrounded by books, where she should feel most safe, that Dora Wildwood stumbles across her first dead body.