Read an Excerpt from Miss Scarlet and the Duke: House of Mystery
For fans of Miss Scarlet, the world of the beloved TV series is expanding in the most tantalizing way. Miss Scarlet and the Duke: House of Mystery, an all-new mystery book, is set against the backdrop of Victorian London at the height of “Egyptian Mummymania,” and follows Eliza Scarlet as she is drawn into a chilling new case after the opening of an ancient sarcophagus reveals not a mummy… but the body of a recently murdered young woman.
As fear spreads through the city and women continue to vanish from London’s streets, Eliza finds herself pursuing a killer who seems to disappear without a trace. Alongside Inspector William Wellington and familiar faces including Moses, Oliver Fitzroy, Rupert Parker, and Ivy, she must navigate a labyrinth of secrets, deception, and danger stretching from the city’s darkest corners to the drawing rooms of high society.
Written by acclaimed author Victoria Dowd, Miss Scarlet and the Duke: House of Mystery is an original story set within the Miss Scarlet universe created by Rachael New and offers fans a new mystery to enjoy beyond the screen.
The audiobook edition is narrated by celebrated voice artist Kate Reading, winner of multiple Audie Awards and widely recognized as one of the leading voices in audiobook storytelling.
Read an excerpt from the book below and enjoy the audiobook and eBook available June 23, 2026. Print edition coming soon!
Find out more about Miss Scarlet and the Duke: House of Mystery, and download a full chapter.
Excerpt from Miss Scarlet and the Duke: House of Mystery, Chapter 4:
Eliza Scarlet sat at her desk studying the empty room. Empty again, just like her purse. With so much crime on the streets, how could that client’s chair opposite her remain so resoundingly unoccupied? She already knew the answer to that question. Nestled between the pawnbroker and the funeral parlour, between debt and death, number forty-three Ebury Lane might have had ‘Mr Henry Scarlet - Private Detective’ hanging above its door, but it was a woman who sat behind the desk now. London’s first lady detective – or at least that’s what her advertisement in The Illustrated Police News said. She avoided the question of whether she could still be a detective if she had nothing to detect. Currently, the ledger in front of her was empty. There’d been no cases for weeks. She’d even lost out on the case of the Tattersall’s missing dog on the basis that Miss Bonbon would feel safer in the hands of a man. Miss Bonbon being a Pomeranian.
Eliza had realised from an early age that women could do almost anything in the criminal world. They could commit crime, primarily prostitution if the cells were anything to go by. And most assuredly be victims of crime, if The Illustrated Police News laying open on the desk was anything to go by. Its pages were filled with the gory tales of yet more slayings or women’s bodies simply washed up on the Thames foreshore. Suicide was apparently an epidemic amongst lost, abandoned women. Destitution and death seemed an inescapable fate for the fallen woman. However, the one thing London with its thriving, dirty underbelly, found to be the most extraordinary was the idea of a woman who might actually want to solve one of these crimes. A female detective.
Eliza lifted her eyes from the tawdry headlines and studied the photograph hanging on the wall: a picture of her as a child standing with her father. Perhaps if she stared at it for long enough, she could dive back to a time, when everything was less complicated.
‘Oh yes, Eliza,’ she said, as if talking to her younger self. ‘You can commit crime and have all manner of crimes committed against you. But why would you ever be so foolish as to think you could solve them? People obviously require a man for justice to be done.’
Her eyes burned as she looked at her father’s sepia face, Mr Henry Scarlet, the man whose name was still in gold letters across the glass of the office door. In that moment, she felt so close to him that she could almost hear him speak again, ‘Come now, Lizzie,” the warm voice echoed. She’d heard people say someone’s voice is the first to be forgotten. Every day since his death she’d tried to remember the sound of him, how his voice rose and fell, trying to recall its tone like memorising a melody.
He’d only been dead a few months, but an ocean of days seemed to have washed in between them now. She’d survived that first torrent of grief, the unimaginable idea that she would never see or hear him again. But now Eliza was adrift in the aftermath, a new world where Henry Scarlet no longer existed. The office was still here, the map on the wall, the books on their shelves, the same as it was the day he died. The city beyond the door still turned as it always did, and yet she was motionless to it all. She’d never been lost before, but then her father had always been there to navigate through any storm. Even when her mother’s lungs had finally surrendered to tuberculosis, Henry still somehow kept them afloat.
After her mother’s death cracks had begun to form, and as Eliza grew older, they only became more obvious. Henry had managed to raise Eliza well enough on his own. She was cared for, happy, a bright, exuberant child! Sometimes a little too exuberant for the various schools she had left... But with his darling wife, Lavinia, gone, Henry had less care for himself. A light had been extinguished in him and, increasingly, he struggled to find his way through the darker hours. It became easier for him to drown out the noise of grief with drink.
Eliza turned her mother’s wedding ring around the fourth finger of her right hand where it had stayed since her passing at the age of eleven. The memories of her mother grew more tarnished with every passing year, how long before those of her father did the same? Eliza’s vision grew cloudy.
‘No tears,’ she heard him say in that quiet, unassuming way he had, always with a slight smile in his voice. ‘Or there’ll be no supper.’
Eliza wiped under her eye. ‘You always said that and there always was.’ She sighed and looked down at her empty purse. ‘Let’s hope there will be again.’
She leaned back in his old chair. It creaked with a familiar tone and she felt its arms around her. So many hours her father had devoted to instructing her in the fine art of his profession. He’d schooled her in the important things in life, like how to detect arsenic with the Marsh test or the effects of chloroform on a human body. It wasn’t what you’d call a traditional education. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. But what was the use of it all if she couldn’t get past one simple and unavoidable fact? She was a woman.
Who on earth was going to employ her to solve their crimes when there were plenty of other male detective agencies within the square mile? No one except for the slight outline standing there behind the frosted glass. The figure gave a timid tap on the door. Eliza instantly straightened in her seat, pulling down her pinstriped waistcoat. She cleared her throat.
‘Come in.’ Eliza adopted an authoritative yet curious voice. At least, that’s what she hoped it sounded like.
The woman who entered didn’t seem to notice or care what tone Eliza used. By the look on her face, she had much greater matters troubling her. There was something bird-like about this fragile woman, the startled look and nervous twitch, the delicate bones of her tracing under such pale skin. Her dark hair was parted down the centre, as even and bright as a blackbird’s feather.
‘Miss Scarlet?’ she asked, her voice as anxious as her eyes. ‘Miss Eliza Scarlet? The… the lady detective?’
Miss Scarlet rose from the chair and held out her hand. ‘Detective will do just fine, thank you. Please, take a seat.’
The woman was tentative at first as she entered and crossed the room, her steps quickening as though she was afraid to be caught out in the open space. She gave an apprehensive glance towards the door then back to Eliza.
‘And you might be…?’ Eliza asked raising her eyebrows.
The woman looked confused for a moment before answering, ‘Maud. Maud Evans.’ The edges of her words faltered. ‘I’m… I’m a Daughter of Anubis.’
Eliza’s face clouded over at the mention of this name. She glanced down at The Illustrated Police News and the story of the young woman who had been discovered in an ancient mummy case. London was buzzing with eager fascination for every detail of this macabre incident.
Maud followed Eliza’s eyes and nodded solemnly at the ghoulish newspaper illustration of a dead young woman lying on the floor beneath the ancient artefact, surrounded by horrified academics. ‘That was my friend.’ She raised her chin to a proud angle. ‘Eve. She was one of us as well, Miss.’ Her voice broke and she paused, collecting herself before continuing in a quiet, fearful tone. ‘One of the Daughters of Anubis that is. Silas the Seer’s assistants.’
Eliza’s thoughts went to last night’s unusual entertainment in the company of Ivy and Mr Potts at the Egyptian Hall, and the bizarre spectacle of the Moth Lady rising up from her cocoon, supposedly brought forth by the conjuror, Silas the Seer. Lining the sides of the stage had been the Daughters of Anubis. Eliza had not paid the individual women much attention. They all looked the same. Every magician had assistants. There was nothing unusual about that.
However, the most recent report of a woman’s death certainly was unusual, with her body tumbling out of a box that had been sealed shut for three thousand years. Not just any old box either. An ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. The mystery had already gripped London. But then any mystery involving a dead pretty young woman seemed to fire up this city’s blood.
