Exclusive Excerpt from The Snow Birds

 Today I'm sharing with you a small excerpt from my new Christmas novella, The Snow Birds. Enjoy!

*

Twelve Days Before Christmas.

 

“Damnable…arse!”

She had seen that man before and, yes, of course she knew who he was. But it startled her to see him through the window of the antique shop; his rugged, wonky-nosed, distinctive profile coming into view as she frantically rubbed a clear patch with her gloved hand.

Her heart was beating very fast. She thought it meant to fly up through her throat and out of her mouth, following the unladylike curse that had previously shot out of her and briefly misted the window in front of her face.

Hazard Deverell was stealing her snow birds.

Well, they were not officially hers. Not anymore. But she had been saving her coins for a great many months in anticipation of retrieving the item. Every Tuesday she walked by this shop window and looked in to be certain that her mother’s charming jewelry box with the chirping, mechanical snow birds was still there, and on this morning, when she saw the empty spot in the window, she panicked.

Thus came the “Damnable…arse!” repeated several times in quick succession, exhaled with such fury that it had completely fogged over the window pane.

Now, belatedly realizing that she had spoken out loud and in public, she held that breath and stared, in mute fury, through the freshly wiped glass, while the shopkeeper wrapped her snow birds in brown paper and string.

 

*

 

When Hazard came out of the shop with his parcel he almost stumbled over the small, drab woman standing there with tears in her eyes and a vexed line across her brow.

“Pardon me, ma’am.” He tipped his hat to her, remembering his manners.

She looked as if she might scream and that holding it in was taking several years off her life.

When she stepped to the side, he did the same, and then they both repeated the motion, as if attached to each other by invisible thread that jerked them back and forth like puppets in a macabre dance. They couldn’t get out of each other’s way.

“Are you quite well, ma’am?” He squinted down at that maudlin face. “Do you require assistance?”

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed, trying again to escape, while he blocked the path with his instinctive boxer’s stance.

“Wait a minute, ma’am. I know you, don’t I?”

“Most certainly not,” she snapped, as if he suggested something improper. 

And then it burst out of him on a startled breath. “The disappointed gravestone angel!”

She opened her mouth, but closed it again immediately and made an odd, muffled sound. Her damp, flint-colored eyes sparked with a quick flame of anger, before she cast her gaze hastily upon the ground, bit her lip, spun around, and walked away.

Peculiar creature.

It had taken a moment to recognize the woman, because he only ever saw her in the churchyard at Hunsford Green, and from a distance. Today, almost falling over her outside Crayle’s Antiques and Collectibles in Woodheath, she was out of her usual place. The unexpected proximity was a jolt to his nerves, like waking to find a statue standing beside his bed, staring down at him with stony eyes, after somebody had carried it indoors overnight as a prank.

He watched her hurrying away from him along the icy pavement. She looked back over her shoulder, just once, and then quickened her pace again until she was almost running, but not quite. Well, he mused, she definitely had feet that knew how to move of their own accord, so she was not made of marble or granite, as he had once imagined.

But the anger on her face today, outside the antiques shop, suggested a deeply personal animosity to which he took considerable exception. It was one thing to be a private, reserved sort of woman, reluctant to acknowledge a stranger in the graveyard, but it was quite another to be rude, churlish and hate a person to whom one had not even been introduced.

 Hazard decided he was distinctly put out and could not rest until he had made her smile. Once and for all.

So, even though his head told him he had other things to do and that he was simply making trouble for himself, his feet followed her onto the omnibus, intent on finding out exactly what he had done to make her despise him with such wordless intensity. To make her explain herself and why she was trying to haunt his every thought.

She certainly looked as if she had something to get off her chest, and he knew how women held grudges. In a way, he might even be doing her a favor.

* 

Brimming with stifled, angry thoughts and surging waves of grief, Tuppence Sparrow was unaware of that shadow trailing after her feet like a stray pup following a butcher’s cart. It was not until she arrived home, took off her coat and hat, washed her hands, put on her apron, and walked out into her father’s shop to find Hazard Deverell standing there that she realized she’d been followed all the way from Woodheath high street back to her home in Hunsford Green.

His presence seemed to fill the shop, squeezing out all the other customers, who became nothing but melted blobs of butter in her sight. He stared at her, looking curiously smug. As if he thought he had her cornered.

He must believe he’s a real person, she mused. Poor, stupid thing.

Look at him, standing there, all proud of himself and arrogant! And with that parcel tucked under his arm. Her mother’s lovely snow birds, stolen away by a man who could not possibly appreciate their beauty, or the many memories they held for her within the musical notes of their merry chirping dance.

Her eyes watered again as she bit the inside of her cheek.

She set her face with as much nonchalance as she could muster and quickly got on with the business of serving customers in her father’s confectionary shop.

“About time too,” her step-mother grumbled. “Where have you been all afternoon? How long does it take to leave a bunch of heather on a grave?”

The woman had no idea that she had gone into Woodheath on the omnibus that day, of course. “Where’s father?”

“Upstairs having a kip. Had one of his turns again. And there you were, off gallivanting. Some daughter you are. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“I’ll take over now, Maud, if you need a rest. Go and make a cup of tea for yourself and father. I’ll manage here.”

Her step-mother did not need to be urged twice. She abandoned a customer in the midst of serving and marched off through the curtain. “Tea! As If I have time to sit about with my feet up sipping tea.”

Tuppence worried about her father and his “turns”. He was understandably tired. For many years he had kept the business going with the help— which varied in usefulness— of all his daughters, but none of the other girls took much pleasure in serving customers, or in making fudge and toffee. Their father’s remarriage was the final straw. One by one they left to start new lives and families. Only the middle daughter, Tuppence, stayed behind, not having enough gumption to take flight from the Sparrow’s nest.

Since her father had begun to retreat more and more from the shop and took to slyly escaping, as much as he could, to The Cock and Bull Inn on the corner, his remaining daughter had taken over much of the work herself, rising early and staying up late to keep the shelves and jars well stocked. She was also very much the creative force, coming up with many new flavors and shapes of confectionary to tempt customers in.

“You’re my right-hand girl, Tuppence,” her father had said.

To which her step-mother huffed, “’Tis just as well she does something to earn her keep around here.”

Both her presence and her occasional absence were equally resented by Maud. Indeed, Tuppence couldn’t seem to get her presence quite right.

Now creatures that must have escaped from her imaginary other lives were stepping out into this one. It could only spell trouble.

Or, in this case, Hazard. In every possible way.

 

*

 

The first time she saw him, he was standing at a grave, just a few rows away from her mother’s. Immediately she thought that he possessed a dented sort of handsomeness, one of which he was probably all too well aware. He moved with a commanding confidence, as if he never had a doubt or a regret. He was a giant of a man who seized life with both hands, never feared anything, never really felt thwarted or left wanting for anything, because he had it all without trying. All that she had decided about him within the first five minutes, sketching for him a history and a present that seemed to suit his looks. As for his future, that she did not dare imagine.

She did not believe in the idea of a destiny. In Tuppence’s opinion— which was never sought— a person was born and then they died. Whatever happened in between was entirely reliant on accidental circumstances and their own stupidity.

Which probably explained why she had never ventured more than a few miles from her home and satisfied any other urges from the safety of her imagination.

Once the man had left the churchyard, she wandered over to read the inscription on the grave at which he had stood for so long.

 

Lily Rose Deverell

Beloved Wife and Mother

Forever now an Angel

1857-1882

 

And then she not only had a name for him, but all her ideas about the man were confirmed.

Lily Rose Parker had once been a star of the music hall; a celebrated beauty, famous for flying across the stage while she sang, apparently wearing angel’s wings and very little else. Tuppence and her sisters had read about her in the newspaper, although they never went to the theatre to see such an exhibition for themselves. Then, one day, the actress married Hazard Deverell. That was in the newspaper too and increased Lily Rose’s notoriety, for his name was just as infamous as her scantily clad performances. The woman must have courted trouble deliberately, Tuppence thought.

“Isn’t he that prizefighter?” one of her sisters had exclaimed as they all leaned over the newspaper. “Our Tuppence used to cut his picture out of magazines.”

“She always had the strangest fascination for the lives of people she would never meet,” her other sister chimed in, teasing. “Especially if they were very wicked.”

Hazard Deverell had been in the newspaper for various exploits, including a naked swim in the Serpentine after a disastrously unlucky hand of poker; beating a man almost senseless for insulting his grandmother, and showing his buttocks to the Countess of Beddingham, after she called him an “uncouth American upstart”.

Tuppence had collected all the clippings about him, not really having a reason why, but simply wanting to have some part of all that excitement, which she would surely never know in real life.

So all these years later, Tuppence had no intention of telling her sisters that she had seen the man in person, there in Hunsford Green, in the very same graveyard where their mother was buried. They would laugh and shake their heads. Or else they would be concerned for her state of mind, which was worse.

They would know it had to be all in her head, as, indeed, she did too.

But when he appeared in the churchyard, his hair was lengthier and had more of a curl to it than she had previously imagined in her daydreams, and his skin was darker than she would have expected, hinting at something exotic in his blood. Not quite a gentleman but dressed as one. Underneath the fine, gold embroidered waistcoat and silk ascot, there was an extraordinary male animal, escaped from a circus or the zoological gardens.

He always placed a bunch of expensive hothouse flowers on his wife’s grave and threw away the dead, dried sprigs. All Tuppence had for her mother was some heather, which she grew in a pot on her windowsill, the contents of her purse not running to the cost of florist-bought blooms. Especially while she was saving her pennies to buy back her mother’s snow bird jewelry box and all those memories it contained for her.

She had noticed that, in addition to the flowers, he always put seed down for the birds too. Perhaps that is what first prompted her curiosity and made her watch, very cautiously, from the corner of her eye. From all that she had read, he wasn’t the sort of man to bother about little birds.

The second time she saw Hazard Deverell standing by his wife’s headstone, he had tipped his hat and wished her a good day. Tuppence looked over her shoulder, assuming there was somebody else at whom he spoke. But there was only her.

“Good day,” he repeated cheerily.

Why on earth would he want to speak to her? Perhaps he mistook her for somebody else. It was most improper for a strange man to address a lady he didn’t know.

Clearly, he had not heard from her step-mother that she was a great lump of a girl who stole fudge when nobody was watching. He did not know that she lived in imaginary worlds just to keep herself from committing violent, desperate acts, as befitted plain spinsters of a certain age, temperament and situation.

He must not know that she was practically engaged to Horace Pinchbeck and not a hussy who spoke to utter strangers in graveyards.

He was a man who, according to stories she’d read, had once entered a party with three women on his arms. And left it with an additional two. A man at whom a scandalous fille de joie had thrown her stockings, so that he was obliged to complete a boxing match with the silk-trimmed articles draped over his head. He won, incidentally, which suggested he was accustomed to the inconvenience.

She would not encourage him in whatever mischief he sought to embroil her.

Tuppence Sparrow had problems enough already, without adding Hazard Deverell to them. But he, it seemed, was determined.

 

****

Read on in The Snow Birds, available now as an ebook from all the best online stores and in print from Amazon in your country.

Character Showcase - Hazard "Haze" Deverell

He’s a man with a colourful past and some painful regrets. According to the newspapers and scandal sheets, he’s done it all and then some: badly-behaved women; drink; brawls, and lost wagers. Not to mention a few midnight swims in the Serpentine, and in the nude. But, as he would be the first to say, you should never believe everything you read about him.

Besides, he’s ready to break free from his regular comedy of errors and start a fresh slate. It’s time for Hazard Deverell to grow up.

And it all began to change for him, about six months ago, when he spied a strange face in a graveyard -- a woman who refuses to smile at him. When catching his eye is the aim of almost every other woman he ever meets, this one seems determined to avoid his notice. She certainly never encourages it. But something about her expression has awoken a long-dormant memory. He can’t think why, but he won’t rest until she’s forgiven him for whatever he’s done to her. Whoever she is.

The son of Rush Deverell, and a grandson of the notorious True Deverell, Hazard has grown up a nomad and adventurer, never quite fitting in wherever he goes, but beating his own path through life. Born in America, he lost his mother when he was only a few days old, and his father brought him to live in England when he was seven. Instantly his accent and manners set him apart from other boys his age and made him a target for the school bullies. Haze learned to fight back with his fists, and he’s been fighting ever since.

Of all his family, Haze is closest to his grandmother, Lady Charlotte Rothsey, a scandalous divorcee. Like him, she’s something of a social outcast, considered by the rest of the family to be a hopeless case. But, in each other, these two difficult people have found a connection and a cause that is not, in fact, lost.

Haze visits his grandmother every day and brings treats for her insatiable sweet tooth. In return, she gives him her advice on “gentlemanly” behavior and manners. She wants him to find his place in life and a good wife – somebody she can approve of this time, unlike the first. Lady Charlotte is planning to go off on a grand adventure before Christmas (a season she has never enjoyed) and before she leaves, it’s important that her favourite grandson finds somebody to take her place in his life. Somebody to love him properly. Somebody for whom he will finally settle down.

He’s spent thirty-two years living up to his names. Both the “Hazard’ and the “Deverell”. Now, he is a champion pugilist and owner of a gymnasium for young boys from all walks of life. He is also a widower and parent to a ten-year-old girl, Clementina, who is almost a stranger to him these days. But his past decision to put her daily care into the hands of two maiden aunts from his wife’s family is one of the mistakes he now has plans to amend. It’s the first order of business in his scheme for improvement.

To win back his daughter’s affections he might have to tempt her with those delicious white fondant snow birds he found in a curious little confectionery shop. And while he pleases his daughter and his grandmother with these sweet treats, Haze soon finds himself equally tempted by the unsmiling angel who makes them.

Find out what happens when Hazard Deverell meets Tuppence Sparrow in  The Snow Birds 

Character Showcase: Tuppence Sparrow

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice.

In my seasonal offering this year, the heroine, Tuppence Sparrow, works in the family confectionery shop. Started by her grandfather many years before, and situated in the quiet, out-of-the-way village of Hunsford Green, “Sparrow’s Confectionery” is something of a local institution, but new customers are rare. It’s 1892 and since the advance of the railway in England, many coaching inns — and towns that grew up around them—are much less busy, and that goes for The Cock and Bull in Hunsford Green, which was once a bustling gateway for travelers up and down the north road from London. As a consequence, strangers are much less frequently seen about the village than they once were and business is slow.

But this Christmas, Tuppence Sparrow, is inspired to make a new product for their shelves – white fondant snow birds, each filled with a surprise center. Her step-mother thinks the idea will never take off, but her father is willing to experiment and give her creation a chance to take flight.

Neither of them know where she came by her inspiration, but Tuppence has a wild imagination and as long as she saves it for the shelves and jars of their shop, all is well.

It’s only when her imagination spreads its wings

further afield and her creations begin to take a more solid form that the trouble really starts.

What, or who, is Tuppence Sparrow’s real snow bird with the surprise soft center? And is her new creation really Everything Nice, or is it secretly Everything Naughty?

Tuppence is the middle child of the family and the last to take flight from the nest. With her elder and younger sisters both married and moved three miles away, she is now her father’s “right-hand man” in the shop and behind the scenes. Her step-mother wants her gone too and is taking steps to have her removed as soon as possible. But Tuppence worries about her father and she is determined to keep “Sparrow’s Confectionery” as it has always been, despite her step-mother’s aspirations to change, expand and “improve” the premises.

Tuppence likes things to stay as they are. She is fearful of the world outside the shop and is only brave in her mind, where she imagines herself living far more exciting and daring lives. In reality, she prefers the safe and the familiar – never speaks up or complains. But her imagination is where she goes to get away from her loneliness and her sorrows. And where she wreaks revenge on her enemies.

One day a strange man walks through the door of the shop and he bears a shocking resemblance to somebody she keeps tucked away in a biscuit tin. She can’t understand how he got out; which of her many lives he belongs in — or why he’s so intent on making her smile.

It’s thirteen days to Christmas and Tuppence Sparrow is too old to believe in Father Christmas. For her, the season lost its magic long since.

But this year she is about to rediscover the enchantment of Christmas, for she will come face to face with romance and with destiny— both of which she has given up believing in too. 

Get your copy of The Snow Birds now.

Image:  Photo my own and 'Always Busy' by Charles Spencelayh (c. 1901)

The Snow Birds

 Coming to you this Christmas -- THE SNOW BIRDS.

It is Christmas 1892, and the toffee hammer of sweet destiny is about to fall upon the most unlikely hero and heroine who ever graced a love story.

 *

 Tuppence Sparrow works in her father’s confectionery shop, where everything has stayed much the same for half a century; where creaky floors and tilting shelves are all part of its whimsical charm. Like the shop, Miss Sparrow has some wonky traits, but she holds her tongue, minds her own business, seldom smiles, and certainly never encourages the attentions of scandalous men. At least, not in this lifetime.

 But to help her days go by, Tuppence imagines herself into other lives, and into a world where she is bold, brave and reckless. A world far from the sleepy village of Hunsford Green, and a universe away from the very proper man she is one day expected to marry.

Trouble is, she can no longer be sure which of her nine lives is the real one, and if she doesn’t stop day-dreaming she just might lose them all.

*

 Unlike Miss Sparrow, the man with whom she is about to collide, has lived only one life, and he’s flown through it by the seat of his breeches. When he’s wearing any.

 

The scandal papers are full of his exploits: from a naked swim in the Serpentine after a lost wager, to airing his buttocks before an outraged countess, who called him an “uncouth American upstart”. He is a man at whom a notorious fille de joie once threw her stockings, forcing him to win a boxing match with the dainty, silk-trimmed articles still draped over his head.

Calamity and chaos have stalked our dubious hero for thirty-two years, although, as he would be the first to admit, his antics have often “seemed like a good idea at the time.” Now he’s trying very hard to fix his wrongs; to set himself upright at last and settle down. Unfortunately, well-behaved females rarely interest Hazard Deverell, and as much as he believes in fate, his own has not been very kind to him.

But a strange encounter has unleashed his sweet tooth and convinced him that a woman with the face of a disappointed gravestone angel will be his saving grace.

 If only he can persuade her likewise.

 It’s thirteen days to Christmas. Unlucky for some, but he prefers odd numbers.

 And peculiar women.

AVAILABLE NOW FROM AMAZON!

COMING SOON FOR CHRISTMAS!

 A Victorian novella to get you in the mood for sugar plums and fondant kisses! Keep an eye out for some teasers and release date news.

A Father's Legacy

 When our father died in May of 2016 he was 89. He left behind a family that loved him and would miss him greatly, every day. But he also left us with his memories, typed up in a computer file so that we couldn't forget them. Reading his words, even now, five years later, we can still hear his voice telling those stories; we can still see his smile and his eyes crinkling up with laughter. He left us, and future generations of our family, with a wonderful gift. I'm sure he had no idea how much it would be cherished. 

Last year, at the peak of lockdown, my sisters and I decided that we'd try to do something for him in return. We collaborated long-distance on a book, using his words and some of our own.

It is not a thick, heavy important book of the sort that might catch Oprah's eye. We don't have a large marketing budget to help promote it and we rely on word of mouth. But we never expected to have a best seller on our hands, in any case. We simply wanted to get his story out there for other folk to read and enjoy. We wanted to share a little bit of the lovely man, who we were lucky enough to know as our father, with the rest of the world. Hopefully, we thought, there will be some people who might find encouragement from our dad's story. I know that we found the process of writing and producing the book extremely uplifting, especially during what was otherwise a difficult year for everybody. It brought us, in many ways, even closer to dad. At times, it felt as if he was right there with us, putting the story together and offering advice. I hope he's pleased and proud of the finished product.

We'll never stop missing him, but we've managed to keep a part of our dad very much alive with us, not just in the many photos and home movies he collected over his 89 years, but in his story. In "Everything He Never Said" our father's voice lives on and is still making people laugh, which he would have enjoyed very much in his own mischievous way. 

Of course, his story is not all laughter. Nobody's story is all light and sunshine. Our father had more than his share of struggles along the way, but he managed to keep going and overcome all the obstacles to build a good life for his daughters. He never looked for anybody's pity and if he had sad days when we were growing up, he never showed it. I'm sure that writing it all down at last was cathartic for him too.

Our father was a quiet man who didn't like to make a fuss. He had strong opinions, but wasn't likely to talk about them very often. So what would he have thought of being put out there on the internet? I worried, at first, that he might not approve. But now I think he would be amused and fascinated by the technology behind it all. He enjoyed learning about new things and was never afraid to try anything. When we were schoolchildren he loved hearing about our lessons and, since his own formal education had been limited, he often shared in the discoveries we made along the way. 

"Fancy that!" I can hear him saying with a chuckle. 

So while he might never have done this for himself, I believe he would be quietly proud and surprised that we did it for him, and pleased that we managed to get the project completed together.

In fact, I think that our dad would have become an author himself, if he'd had more time. When he first learned how to use a computer, he began writing some fiction and enjoyed it tremendously. He never tried to get anything published, but his head was full of stories and characters -- much like my own. And he believed in going as far as we might go; of getting as much out of life as we could. He didn't have much time for people who sat on their behinds, felt sorry for themselves and got nothing done. He liked to keep busy and moving forward. He loved gory computer games and was thrilled by the development of remote controlled TV when we were kids! If you've read the book, you can imagine the tricks he played on us with that.

So I'm glad that we helped him move on with the times again and finally become a published author. We have set him off on a new adventure across the world. He might not be on the other end of a phone line anymore, but his love is still with us. It will live on with us -- with his grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews --all via the magic of the internet.

Yes, he would be amazed and, I think, shyly chuffed.

I keep an old black and white photo of dad with his brother in a frame on my living room wall. While we were working on the book, I found a beautifully patterned brown moth one morning, perched on the frame, sleeping with its wings spread out to show off and feel the sunlight. I like to think it was dad giving his blessing and saying "Get on with it, gell! I'm here!"

Thank you, Dad, not just for "Everything He Never Said", but also for everything you ever did. For everything you gave us.

xxx

(EVERYTHING HE NEVER SAID (e-book version) is now available at a special price from Amazon in your country! It is also available as paperback at the original pricing.)

 

Another exclusive excerpt!

 Good Morning! As we spring ahead an hour and creep closer to warm weather and sunshine at last, I thought I'd share with you another excerpt from A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT. Enjoy!

*

Viennese Fingers and a Fit of the Female Hysterics.

“My good man, there has been a murder. At least one. A great deception has taken place and evil is afoot. Someone is coming to harm. Perhaps we are already too late. Oh, and my name is Euphemia, Lady Carew. I am not sure of the order in which you need to know it all, so I throw it all aloft and see what lands first.”

She commanded the young constable’s attention further, by reaching over his desk and slamming shut the book he’d been reading.

“Alas, I fear that all will smash upon the floor since your hands appear too slow and slight to catch any of it.” She looked the skinny chap up and down, feeling more than mildly disappointed.

Sadly, young men these days were not what they used to be. No wonder she’d run out of lovers and lost the will to find a new one.

He had jumped a little when she shut his book. Now he drew back and stared at her for a moment, as if she was some sort of exotic, poisonous spider that had got loose from an exhibition. Although it was still daylight out, the police station was poorly serviced by inadequate and grimy windows, so the gas bracket above his head was already lit, lending a somewhat flat, yellowy, waxy and surreal aura to his appearance.

“Now, who is in charge of this dismal place?” She briskly rapped her gloved knuckles on the desk to rouse him further from this stupor. “I insist you take me to them at once.”

“In charge?” He finally stirred himself and swallowed. “That would be Detective Inspector Deverell, ma’am. But he be out at present. Went to Harrogate.”

“Why on earth would he want to go all that way when he is needed here?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. He keeps his business to himself. Could be that he went to drink the spa waters. They do say as ‘tis right beneficial to the health.”

“Why? What’s amiss with him?”

“Errr hmmm.” The fellow’s brow wrinkled. “Not sure I know where to start with that one,” he mumbled.

 “Has he not enough villains to keep him busy in York?” she exclaimed. “Are we to be overrun by robbers and rogues with nobody here to manage the business, but you? I hope your detective does not return to find corpses strewn about the streets and every bank vault emptied, while you sit here with your tea and biscuits!”

“I can take a report for thee, ma’am.” His fingers crept across the desk for a small leather-bound notebook.

“This is all most inconvenient, but I suppose I have no choice,” she murmured to herself. “The underling will have to—” Suddenly overcome by a fit of coughing, she searched desperately for a handkerchief and, in so doing, dropped the contents of her reticule onto the police station floor. Her empty gin flask spun away across the stone, and she watched it go, the hollow clanging echo transformed into the sound of Old Pip’s shovel, striking against something buried in the earth. She looked down at her fallen possessions. The ground, for a moment, had gone soft beneath her feet— she could feel her heels sinking in and an apple rolled by her foot. But now the floor was stone again.

With another cough stifled, she managed to wheeze, “After all this time, I hardly know where to begin my story. How much of it is true; how much of it is in my mind.” She paused. “I’ve never told any of it before to somebody who understands fluent English, you see. I didn’t want to be dragged back into the lunatic asylum. I fled England in the first place to escape that fate.”

The young man behind the desk had opened his notebook and readied his pen, but now he put them aside, sidled out from behind the desk and stooped to retrieve her fallen articles, one by one, from the floor. When she would not take them from his hands, being too overcome with her thoughts, he set them on the desk, lining them up with care. He glanced at her between each rescue, with a very slight frown of admonishment, as if she was a child who had thrown her toys across the nursery floor and he was the long-suffering, underpaid nanny.

She gazed at the sad parade of her most-treasured possessions: a pearl-handled comb missing some teeth, a black velvet choker with a silver heart and a broken clasp, and a palm-sized mirror— all that were once her mother’s. There was also a small vial of French perfume; face powder; honey lip balm; matches; a length of frayed ribbon with roses printed upon it; Welford mint pastilles; her cigarette case, and the silver gin flask. Like the contents of a magpie’s nest. No handkerchief. What the devil had she done with her handkerchief? It was trimmed with good lace too and embroidered with silk initials.

The constable now tried to ease the empty reticule from her hands, but she resisted, turning it inside out in search of her missing item.

“Damn and blast,” she muttered. “I gave it to Anxious Fanny, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Did thee? Mayhap thee ought to sit down? Shall I fetch a chair?”

She hardly listened. “I know that something is not right, you see, young man. It is the something that eludes me.” She batted his fingers away. “Something I saw today, after the funeral. Or was it something I didn’t see?”

“After the funeral, ma’am?” He moved back around his desk now, still eyeing the row of shiny trinkets and then her garments, with suspicion. Rich green velvet, trimmed with gold braid and frog clasps, with an underlayer of rhubarb silk ruffles, was, of course, most definitely not mourning attire. And then there was her extravagantly feathered hat, with not a black veil in sight.

“The funeral of Alma Clemmons,” she explained, thinking he ought to know that name.

But his expression showed no sign of recognition. “That’s the murder victim, is it?” He began to write in his book, frowning earnestly.

 “Alma? A victim? I could cheerfully have done it myself, if that was the case.” She gave a lusty laugh. “I am, after all, a thoroughly bad lot, so they say.” Suddenly dizzy, she clutched the desk. Oh, she wished her flask wasn’t empty. She shook it to be sure. “Alma? No. She succumbed after a long illness. Finally succumbed. Yes, that’s what they called it.”

The constable paused his pen above the inkpot. “But you said there’s been a murder, ma’am.”

She pressed fingers to her brow, where crow’s wings drummed against her skull. “The victim for whom I speak has no voice of her own. Her jaw was severed by the blow of an axe. She needs to be found. I saw her in my dream.”

“A dream, ma’am?”

She swayed, feeling sick. She hadn’t eaten today. Not a bite, but for a mint pastille. Her feet were so light she didn’t see how they could stay down on the floor.

“I think you ought to sit down, ma’am.”

“And I think you ought to be quiet,” she snapped, “and let me get my thoughts in order.”

Slowly she returned the items to her reticule, considering each one for a moment as she held it in her palm. How strange it was, she thought, that these were the few pieces she carried with her and felt so lost without— the necessities of her life. A lot could be told about a person from what they carried— how much and how little they kept near. What remained in them, with them and on them. Like wrinkles, freckles. And scars.

“I lived there long away and far ago, you see.” She shook her flask again, just to be sure, and hiccupped. “I never really left the place. Or a small part of me is still there. In the cupboard.”

“In the cupboard?” The young man frowned and scratched his brow. “What cupboard is that then?”

“That’s where the body is. It opened the cupboard and saw me, and I saw it.”

Another fellow now joined the younger man at the front desk and, with a copious amount of chest thrusting, introduced himself as Sergeant Moffat. “What seems to be the matter, ma’am?”

“The lady doesn’t know, sir,” the constable muttered. He shot a quick glance at her empty flask— the last piece of life to be stuffed back in her reticule— and then he said, in a softer tone, “Mayhap, thee be under the weather, ma’am. Ought to come back later. When thee be feeling better like.”

She drew herself up taller and swallowed another hiccup. “I do not care for your tone, young man. Nor do I appreciate the insinuation.”

“I had an auntie fond of the gin. After she’d had a good belly-full, she always accused folk of wanting her dead and buried. Threw a punch once at my uncle over the Christmas goose.”

“I am not inebriated. How dare you suggest—?”

“I smell the gin, ma’am,” he whispered, “despite the mint.”

Sergeant Moffat exhaled a weary huff. “Shouldn’t waste police time, ma’am. Now, off thee goes and I daresay tomorrow all this’ll be forgot.”

When he tried to grasp her elbow, she pulled away, hot with fury. “Listen to me, imbeciles! You fail to understand. There has been a murder. I saw it happen.”

“Did you indeed? And what is your name, madam?”

She sighed. “As I told you, my name is Lady Carew.” She jabbed her finger toward the constable’s little book. “Write that down. Carew.”

The sergeant was squinting at her, his moustache twitching and nostrils flaring. “And where did this supposed murder take place?”

“The house they called Furthermore on Whitherward Fell.”

He rolled his eyes and huffed. Under his breath he grumbled, “Not another one.” Then he raised his voice to her as if she might be hard of hearing. “Alright, dearie. Off you go then.”

“But do you not require details?”

“Ever since that story were in the newspaper, diggin’ up that old murder, we’ve had all the local lunatics and drunkards in, tellin’ us they know who did it. Their Uncle Bob’s chimney sweep’s cousin, or their sister’s dog. Or even that they did it.”

 “I am not a lunatic!”

The two men behind the desk exchanged looks.

“Alma and my husband thought I was, but I am not,” she continued, trying to explain. “After the divorce from Sir Edgerton Carew, I fled these shores and put it all behind me, for I was warned that if I made trouble, steps would be taken to put me away forever and I had spent long enough locked away in a cupboard.” Effie waved her arms, like a bird desperate to take flight. “So off I went to the heat and the sunlight and the forgetting.” Then she clasped both hands to her bosom. “But coming back here today, for Alma’s funeral, I realized that I have been gutless, weak and selfish. Now it is time.” She thumped her fist on the desk, swept up in a passion. “Time to settle all scores. Whatever is done to me as a result.” Taking a step back, she straightened her hat and her shoulders. “So there. Now ask of me what you will. I suppose I must be questioned. This once I shall forgive the impertinence.”

They were both staring with their mouths open, until Sergeant Moffat recovered enough to ask. “Alma? Who’s Alma?”

The younger man whispered, “The lady what’s dead, sir.” He looked down at his notebook. “Alma Lemons.”

“Clemmons, for pity’s sake! Two ‘m’s.” She stopped, her attention seized by the plate of shortbread fingers, with their ends dipped in chocolate, sitting on a plate beside his notebook. “Oh,” she muttered, fanning her face with a glove. “I feel quite faint.”

The constable followed her gaze. “They’re called Viennese fingers, ma’am. From Miss Greenwood’s shop. They’re a special favorite o’ mine. Would you…?”

She took one before he could finish and bit into it with some satisfaction.

The sergeant’s face rumpled with annoyance and his moustache trembled indignantly as he muttered about crumbs all over the desk. “We’re here to uphold the law, Constable Wilmot, not feed vagrants off the street. This ain’t the sailor’s rest or a soup-kitchen.”

But with her energy partially restored by that delicious, buttery, crumbly biscuit, Effie continued, “Now, do follow along! I know that something happened in that house. You must go there and search the place for a missing Polly.” She paused to select another shortbread finger. “Then there was today, at the funeral. Something occurred to me today. Something there was quite wrong, but I do not know yet what it was. Oh, I wish my head would stop spinning! I have travelled a long way, of course, and had nothing to eat. ‘Tis no surprise I feel weak.”

Receiving an unsubtle nudge and another eyeroll from his comrade, the constable put down his pen yet again and closed his notebook. “I reckon thee ought to sit down and take a bit o’ supper. Come the mornin’ and a clear ‘ead—"

“I am not drunk,” she replied tightly. “Nor am I a madwoman.”

The sergeant gave a snort of amusement and swiftly moved the plate of biscuits out of her reach. “Well, thee would say that, wouldn’t thee?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He spoke carefully, making big ‘o’s with his lips. “A mad wench wouldn’t go around confessing to madness, o’ course. That would make her sane. But if she be mad, the more she says she en’t so, the more she is so.”

“What makes you an expert in the matter?”

He chuckled. “I know I ain’t mad.”

She leaned across his desk. “You would say that, wouldn’t you?”

That wiped the humor from his face. “And us men don’t suffer from hystericals.”

“Hystericals?”

“Aye. All het up and twisted about. Fainty and whatnot. ‘Tis a fit of the female hystericals.”

“Oh, I can show you hysterical, you bumptious little man.”

“Look, your ladyship, we’re very busy here.”

“Do you imagine that I am not? Yet I put myself out and delayed my return to London just to speak with your detective fellow.”

“I reckon ‘tis a doctor needed here, ma’am, not a detective.”

“Is that what you reckon, insolent fellow?”

“Ma’am, there’s no occasion to get all aerated,” said the young constable, trying his best to intervene peaceably.

“I shall be as aerated as I wish. Now, listen to me! A murder has been committed in that house.” She took a struggling breath, one hand pressed to her bosom. “It was not a figment of my imagination. Not this time.”

The sergeant exhaled a tight huff and folded his arms. “Go home and sleep it off, ma’am. Come back on the morrow, when thee be sober. If thee still thinks there’s been a murder then. Otherwise, we’ll be obliged to put thee in’t cell for the night, and that’s no place for a lady like thee’sen.”

She licked her dry lips and hugged her reticule, wishing again that her flask was still full, for she was going to need a strong drink to get through this. “I was the one left with life,” she muttered. “And what good have I done with it? Old Pip was right to remind me.”

Sergeant Moffat shook his head. “Go home, ma’am. Constable Wilmot will hail you a Hansom cab.”

Her legs felt very weak now, as if they’d run a fair distance in heavy boots to get where they were and her lungs burned with a fierce fire. As did her head.

Go home? She had none. She had nothing but the contents of her reticule and a tattered steamer trunk of belongings being held for her at the train station. For all her finery and bold manners, Lady Carew was a dried leaf, blown by the winds of autumn. And Effie, underneath it all, was a little girl lost and alone.

A lady like thee’sen, the sergeant had said.

But what was a lady like herself? Was there such a thing? Alma had told her she was a monster; an “elemental creature”.

“As if there could ever be another like you,” her grandmother had sneered once. “The Almighty would have thrown away the mould in shame when he saw his mistake! There was only ever one of you, girl. One was more than enough.”

She felt the strike of a hard, stinging cane across her palm and she jolted out of her memories, drawing a quick, tortured breath. Those rather lovely, chocolate-dipped shortbread fingers, she feared, had only very briefly helped, but they had not been enough to fill the aching void inside her.

Euphemia, dizzy again and breathless, turned away.

Was it any wonder she felt so ill, after the day she’d just endured and the ghosts she was forced to encounter? The guilt?

Gin could only blunt the edges for so long and so far.

No more blind eye. No more cowardice and hiding in hot, sunny places. She had not known what she meant to do when she came home. But now she was here, she would see it through to the bitter end, even if that end was her own. Something had drawn her here. Something waiting in the dark to be set free.

“God help me,” she gasped softly, “I will not leave that part of me behind there again. I will find it and be whole.” Perhaps then, whatever it was that waited for her to come back, would stop haunting her with terrible dreams.

With one hand she reached for the wall to keep herself from falling. But there was nothing. Darkness closed in.

The cupboard door under the stairs banged shut and she heard the rusty bolt, disguised as a caterpillar in the intricately carved wall paneling, screaming as it slid back into place...

READ MORE ABOUT THE MYSTERIES TACKLED BY DETECTIVE INSPECTOR DEVERELL IN THE BESPOKE SERIES:

BESPOKE

A LOVELINESS OF LADYBIRDS

A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT

And more to come!

(Image: 'Portrait of a lady in a feathered hat', by James Sant c. 1860 and 'Tea Leaves' by William Paxton c. 1909)

Release Day!!

 I’m celebrating with lots of exclamation points!!!!!

 Today is the day! A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT is officially released.

Join Detective Inspector Deverell and Miss Lucy Greenwood as they embark on quite a tangled adventure, in an attempt to solve a handful of mysteries all at once. 

And will they ever make it to the altar?

This is the third book in the Bespoke series, and although it’s not necessary that you read the first two books to enjoy this one, I hope you will want to read them all! BESPOKE (book I) is currently available at a very special price to help you get acquainted with Lucy and her Deverell, if you aren’t already.

So make a cup of tea, shake a martini, or pour a glass of wine; then curl up with your book, or e-reader, and escape to 623 pages of adventure and entertainment. No mask is required and you won’t even have to leave your chair. How can anything be better than that?

I hope you enjoy the latest installment in this series and I can promise you that there are more to come for Lucy and Tolly! 

 Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.

If you would like to win a copy of A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT, please check out my author page on Facebook for some competition opportunities this weekend!

 

Jayne.

(Images: Katie's letter by Haynes King, 1897 and my photo)