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!

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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)