Nine Coaches Waiting is a then-contemporary romantic suspense novel by Mary Stewart who became known as "The Queen of Suspense". The novel was copyrighted by the author in 1958 and published on 1 January 1959. The setting is the late 1950s—contemporary to the time of its authorship and first publication.
Nine Coaches Waiting is the tale of a young English governess, Linda Martin, who travels from North London via Paris then Geneva to the remote Château Valmy, beyond Thonon, France, in the French Alps, to take care of nine-year-old Philippe de Valmy. There she finds herself entangled in a murder plot which eventually results in the revelation of a dark secret.
Linda's full given name is Belinda but she uses "Linda for short—or for pretty, [her] mother used to say." Linda is the Spanish word for beautiful or pretty.
In keeping with Linda's background in poetry and other literature, Stewart employs chapter epigraphs with quotes from the works of numerous poets, playwrights, and authors, that fit the themes or actions of each scene. Among these are lines from Macbeth, King John, and Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, as well as from his Sonnets 88 and 90. Others are from John Milton; Charles Dickens; John Keats; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Robert Browning; John Donne; George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; William Blake; George Meredith; and John Webster. Although there are sometimes two, all epigraphs are much briefer than Thomas Middleton's lines that head the first chapter and from whence Stewart derived the book's title. (See Title under Notes below.)
A good example is the epigraph from King John that introduces Chapter VIII:
And the final epigraph (at Chapter XXI):
Look you, the stars shine still.
Cinderella is referred to by Linda, as is Jane Eyre, for obvious reasons. Mary Stewart's vast literary knowledge and background are particularly, yet seamlessly, manifest in this book.
Contents
Synopsis
Linda Martin lands in Paris to take her new post as governess to the 9-year old Philippe, Comte de Valmy. She is feeling uneasy about hiding her past, particularly her French birth and fluency in the French language, from her employers, since Mme. de Valmy had been strangely adamant at her interview about wanting an English governess who would not be tempted to slip into French. Linda, who had been orphaned herself, quickly becomes protective of Philippe, who has also lost both his parents in a tragic accident.
Philippe lives with his aunt and uncle in the vast and ornate Château Valmy in the alpine French countryside not far from Geneva, Switzerland. Léon de Valmy, Philippe's uncle, runs the estate on behalf of his under-age nephew until the boy inherits in 6 years.
When Linda arrives at the eighteenth-century château—described as a mansion with its "four-square classic grace" that makes it less than a romantic castle with turrets and pinnacles but more than a country house—she is enchanted by its beauty and history, but is also struck by the sense of menace surrounding its inhabitants. Léon is a character who Linda begins to suspect may have plans to take over both the title and the chateau. When Linda meets his son Raoul, she learns more about the de Valmy heritage and wonders to what extent he is involved in the threat to Philippe. As she becomes closer to Philippe and Raoul, Linda draws nearer to identifying the source of the threat, and suspects the "English governess" who supposedly does not speak fluent French is being set up as the scapegoat to a plot. She feels she may not be able to trust those she wants to, no matter how innocent or attractive they may seem. The governess must then try to save Philippe's life as well as her own.
Characters
Linda Martin: The 23-year-old English governess who arrives at the Château Valmy to take care of young Philippe and further his education in English by only speaking to him in that language. At the age of 14, Linda's English father and French mother died in a plane crash out of Paris where Linda was raised, and she spent the next 7 years in a North London orphanage, then 3 years working as a general helper at a boy's prep school in Kent. As a consequence, she understands loneliness, living with it as a constant since her parents' deaths. Brown-haired and gray-eyed, fluent in both English and French, Linda conceals her French background and history because she needs and wants the job badly, and it seems so important to Héloïse de Valmy, interviewing her in London, that she be an "English girl." Lovely without being aware of it, humble and dependable with a good deal of common sense despite having a romantic imagination, Linda is the protagonist and the narrator. Linda's father was a poet and writer who had "made poetry a habit" with her and taught her that "poetry was awfully good material to think with." In spite of her relative lack of education, she is intelligent with a retentive memory and a large store of remembered literary lines and verses that come back to her at various, often opportune, times. When the famous French fashion designer Florimond visits the Valmys, Linda is comfortable with his "clever oversophisticated chatter" which reminds her of her father's "drink-and-verses jamborees" that she'd been allowed to attend as a young teen before her parents were killed. At the same time, Linda is also compassionate and able to tease Philippe playfully and relate to him on his level, not only as a preceptress but also as a friend—the only one he has. She quickly becomes very fond of him, and protective in whatever way he needs it, looking after him beyond the line of duty.
Léon de Valmy: called The Master by those in his employ, Léon is the mysterious and seemingly cynical trustee of the opulent eighteenth-century Château Valmy and the extensive Valmy estate, managing it in an obsessive way, ostensibly for his nephew Philippe until the boy inherits at the age of fifteen. He uses a noiseless motorized wheelchair, having lost the use of his legs when he broke his back in a polo accident twelve years before. He had managed Valmy for his brother Étienne, the Comte de Valmy, from the time of their father's death because Étienne preferred to live in Paris. A "big, handsome, powerful man" who is "damnably attractive" with a considerable charm of manner when he chooses to use it, Léon sees himself as Milton's "thunder-scarred angel" Lucifer after the fall, in reference to his crippled state—and, it appears, in other ways as well. He always had to do everything and do it better than anyone else, as if a devil were driving him. If a fallen angel, he must needs be an archangel (the "Demon King"). Black-browed and black-eyed with now-white hair, he's known to be a superior landlord with an overwhelming personality and is well-respected by the denizens of the Merlon River valley. He is able to navigate his wheelchair through the Valmy château (using the lift installed in the library), and through the formal gardens, but not through Valmy's steep woods. He uses Bernard for that. Cradled in the great pine forests of the region and reached from the valley via a charming centuries-old stone bridge over the river and a sharp zig-zag upwards through the trees, Château Valmy includes vast lands covered with timber, one of the chief sources of income for the mountainside estate.