Character Showcase - Lady Carew

 The infamously scandalous divorcee known as Lady Carew has been away from England for at least a decade, so her return is causing quite a stir. Even the lady herself isn’t sure why she came back.

It all began with a lost shoe-- one of a very good pair -- and a strange, haunting dream. Although she’s been susceptible to the odd premonition all her life, this one was especially peculiar, gruesome and seemingly out of the blue. The effect is powerful enough to lure her back to England after all these years; to Yorkshire and to Whitherward Fell, where she was born in the house called Furthermore. She never thought she’d return to this wretched place of her miserable childhood, but here she is, with several mysteries for Detective Inspector Deverell to solve.

Firstly, what, exactly, is living in the cupboard under the stairs?

Lady Carew likes to tell stories and her imagination is so vivid that sometimes she loses the boundary of what’s real and what isn’t. So how much of what she tells him about her past can the detective believe? How much does the lady herself believe? She claims to have dreamed of a murder, as if she saw it with her own eyes, although she was several thousand miles away from where it happened at the time.

Secondly, Lady Carew wants to know who her mother was – not only what happened to her, but where she came from – for nobody ever knew her name.

 “She’d heard folk whispering of how, four years before she was born, a woman was found on Whitherward Fell, sat beside a rowan tree, reading a volume of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. The fact that she was fully and respectably dressed, clean and well-spoken, was not as much grist to the rumor-mill as her claim to remember nothing of where she had been before that day, who she was, or how she got there. She had with her only a small trunk of belongings, which included a music box, a mirror, a few pieces of jewelry and her dictionary…”

 With such a mysterious provenance, it is, perhaps, no surprise that the woman now called Lady Carew has not led a conventional existence. Instead she has been drawn to life outside society's rules, going very much her own way. She might be considered an outcast and a scarlet woman, but having got this far, she swears she will go down with a roar and fighting like a tiger. And she won't go to her  grave with any regrets.

 “Wherever she went, folk called her The Mad Englishwoman. To them she was a wild creature who enjoyed swimming in the sea in rough weather, without using the discretion of a bathing machine, and where there was no lifeguard on duty. In truth, although she enjoyed cultivating the image, if all her days and nights were really conducted so recklessly, she would never have survived to be—

The age of a fine, full-bodied and fruity vintage, thank you very much.”

 The lady has her secrets and her sins-- and she enjoys every one of them-- but she’s come back to Whitherward Fell looking for answers to a great many questions.

And for a few little things, such as vengeance and justice.

Oh, and to find out who the devil she really is.

Will she get her answers with Detective Inspector Deverell's help?

Be thee warned: A DEADLY SHADE OF NIGHT is coming soon!

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 (Image: Portrait of a young lady with long dark hair, by William Breakspeare 1855-1914)