This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, businesses, organisations and incidents portrayed in it are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published 2021
by Poolbeg Press Ltd.
123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,
Dublin 13, Ireland
Email: [email protected]
© Sharon Thompson 2021
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
© Poolbeg Press Ltd. 2021, copyright for editing, typesetting, layout, design, ebook
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978178199-403-0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.poolbeg.com
About the Author
Sharon Thompson is a bestselling Irish author who writes historical novels and short stories. When she is not plotting gritty manuscripts like The Abandoned, The Healer and The Quiet Truth, Sharon enjoys conjuring up light-hearted short stories for magazines like Woman’s Way.
A qualified copywriter, Sharon also hosts radio shows and online events. She chairs panel discussions at literary festivals and contributes to leading websites and blogs. As an avid tweeter, Sharon runs a trending tweet-chat #WritersWise, and founded her own online writing group called Indulgeinwriting.
Sharon’s historical, domestic-noir novel The Murdering Wives Club will be the first in her Sinful Roses series.
Acknowledgements
There’s a special magic that brings me to write every day. I thank and love this magic with all of my heart.
I wish to thank and acknowledge all those who’ve taken me this far along the writing road – those who’ve pointed me in the right direction and brought me to this destination. I am grateful for every purchase, read, review, piece of advice, and kind word.
To you, the reader of this work, I hope you have escaped for a while and will want to read more of my short stories or novels. With your help there will be more.
Thank you to my agent Tracy Brennan and to the great team at Poolbeg Press, Ireland.
To all my fabulous friends, family and community who have supported me all the way.
The last mention goes to my husband Brian – thank you for encouraging me to write about murder and mayhem. But more importantly thank you for being the love of my life and my best friend.
For my husband, Brian.
(Whom I have never wanted to murder)
Chapter 1
Laurie Davenport
27th June 1944
Shadows are my world now, but shards of light dance and a precious English sun warms my knees. I don’t talk about my year and four months in the Sappers, or Royal Engineers. All anyone needs to know is that I was blinded and scarred by shrapnel as we attempted to rebuild a strategically important Italian bridge. What I can recall of the brutality of war, I choose to forget. I still take a small tipple of morphine and it makes me lethargic, but it’s hard to forgo that now. It’s also hard to admit that I didn’t want to live until I knew that my wife was trying to kill me.
The noise of the gramophone scrapes and the drawing-room door opens. I smell Norah’s perfume.
“Morning, sir!” Norah Walsh, my new assistant, breezes in and lays a tray on the table. She fixes the noise, moves papers with a flourish, and then lifts the tray she was carrying again. She grunts slightly for me to sit upright in my favourite high-backed chair next to the glass doors which look out onto the gardens.
My man Giles is away visiting family, leaving Norah in charge of breakfast. The tray is placed on my lap and she brings my fingers to touch the almost-full china cup. It’s all arranged in our set format, so that I can feed myself without spillages.
“It’s a fine summer’s morning,” Norah says. “Let’s ignore this flaming war and be glad that we’re breathing and above ground.”
She is preaching at me, but I’ve come to like her Irish accent. And she’s terribly good-natured, even in the early morning.
That scent is definitely new. Norah is a resourceful lady who bypasses rationing.
There’s an uncomfortable silence then she coughs and says, “Mrs Davenport is still away, I see.”
I nod and touch my moustache.
“You look fine this morning, sir. You did very well in getting dressed without help. I’ll trim your beard later if you’re worried about how you look.”
“There’s no need. Giles will be back later today.”
I listen to her move around and wonder does she mean that for a man on the cusp of forty I look all right? Or does she mean that she’s become accustomed to the burn-marks on my face? I want to ask how I look to her young eyes. I presume that she’s good-looking because General Freddie Ashfield, my dead brother’s friend, sent her here. Freddie favours attractive ladies and has remarked on her striking red hair.
The tea from my favourite china cup is just the right temperature and strength. My moustache hairs tickle the old-gold rim and I sense that she’s watching me.
“Are you still in pain since yesterday?” she asks.
If she means physical discomfort from the healing burns on my right side, then I’m at last able to say, “I’m fine.”
We have discussed my need to return to normality.
“Melancholia?” she asks, coming closer.
I can make out dark and light as she blocks the window with her slender silhouette. I’ve not had the heart to ask her what age she is. But by rough calculations and some amateur detective work, I surmise that she’s in her early twenties.
When, at the start of May, Freddie first proposed her as a personal secretary, I thought her too young to live here at Davenport Manor – but I relented when he insisted that she would be perfect. After two days I became dependent on her. Now, she’s a trusted companion.
Yet, I don’t want to admit that my emotions are all still in a mess. I cry at the drop of a hat and flinch at every bang or wallop. The nightmares are still vivid as hell. I didn’t see much of the real fighting, but our battalion was under severe pressure from enemy fire regularly. Someday, I might get my confidence back but it’s taking a long time.
Charlotte, my wife, has been away for many months now. I’ve no idea where she’s gone and I’ve been torn between missing her and being able to relax a little. I’m back alive in my childhood home, dear Davenport Manor, and today is indeed a good day. I managed to get myself dressed and downstairs to put on my favourite music. The sun is warming my knees. I’m a lucky man indeed. Then why don’t I feel it?
“More music?” Norah asks. “The wireless is full of bad news. D-Day and the likes. Word is filtering through too of more captured allies in Assisi. But let’s not think about that right now. How about we listen to something upbeat and cheery, eh?”
She makes me smile but I don’t think that she moves to pick anything from the collection of records on the shelf.
“When you’ve finished your toast, what is the plan for today?” she asks. “Will we open the General’s file?”
I still don’t feel up to taking on life,
never mind a new task. General Freddie is convinced I can find another role for myself. If I must be productive, I want a job that doesn’t involve being an officer or an architect. I have hated anything to do with construction since someone stepped on an enemy mine buried deep in the mud.
From the day and hour I set foot on the cold, icy Italian soil I’m ashamed to say that all I wanted was to be home warm in my bed, or in front of a good fire with a cigar and a nice whiskey. I never wanted to be a hero – or a cripple. But here I sit.
General Freddie gets impatient with me. He’s an army man through and through. A man whose own life is the army cannot see that mine should be full of architectural plans and the beauty men can build instead. Explaining and finding my way out of this darkness is very difficult. But there’s something motivational about Norah’s enthusiasm and she’s starting to wear down my determination to be miserable.
Freddie said, “Norah Walsh is one of my most highly thought-of personnel. Make use of her keen brain and abilities. Get back in the saddle, Laurie. Your country still needs you.”
When I returned home on an army stretcher I made an oath to rebel for the first time in my life. Being one of the lucky ones to be repatriated home, I should have been grateful. However, I’m aggressive and angry most of the time and, although I’ve always been compliant, this is going to change. The dependable, solid, moral me in school and in the army is no more. My country took everything from me. My darling parents were bombed in the Blitz. Their London home levelled because father was too stubborn to return here to our country estate. My only brother blown to bits somewhere in Poland, and me, orphan Laurie, only half the man he was.
I also have a rather large dilemma. I left at the start of this wretched war as a married man. I returned a cripple to a wife who wished I had died or been captured. Once I admitted that to myself, I found convincing others was even harder.
“She really is trying to kill me,” I told my trusted confidants.
Freddie was incredulous. “You cannot bandy about such things without proof. If her father hears that accusation – we’re all done for! He has Churchill’s ear.”
“He’s an arse-licker, Freddie,” I said. I like to use Norah’s crude Irish words.
It was after ‘accident’ number two that Freddie insisted that I needed a personal assistant.
“I was pushed from the top landing. It was not an accident. And the morphine overdose was not my fault. I may be blind, but I’m not losing my mind. You’ve known me a long time, Freddie – long before these blasted uniforms – and I’m telling you now that Charlotte has tried to do me in on more than one occasion. I don’t know my wife any more and I swear to you that I would never try to take my own life. All of it is her doing. When she is here, I’m a nervous wreck. But lately she’s cavorting off wherever she pleases and, although I’m not altogether sure that I should allow it, I have to. As how does a blind man stop his errant wife from doing anything?”
The General’s feet shuffled. He was uncomfortable.
I was glad that I couldn’t see either of their faces.
Norah sighed. “I think that you should just let Mrs Davenport go where she wants. Make it easy for her to leave.”
A little piece of my heart broke. I almost felt it crack off. I stood and cried in front of them both. I loved my wife.
Norah held me close. It was comforting: soft hair on my cheek, the scent of perfume and the smooth touch of a hand on mine.
“I thought we could be happy.” I blubbered like a child. “I loved the woman I left here in my home. But she’s not who I thought she was. What can I do now?”
“War changes us all,” the General said. “There’s no going back for any of us. I’m going to suggest, yet again, that you need find a purpose, Laurie. Something to take your mind away from all of this. Top up her allowance and let her stay away. Find a challenging, new direction for yourself.”
“I’m blind!”
“It might come back,” he replied like it was a stray cat or something. “They said your sight could improve.”
The cigar and contraband supplies that he brought were always welcome. But there was no clarity as to what I was to spend my time doing. I was no longer a man who could earn a wage, that was a certainty. Feeling sorry for myself, and others, was wearing very thin.
“What do you think, Norah? What do you make of all of this?” the General asked.
I was shocked. It was unusual for Freddie to even acknowledge a woman, never mind ask her opinion.
“Arrah now, I shouldn’t judge,” she said in her Irish way. “But if Mr Davenport believes this, then somebody should listen to him.”
“But you don’t believe me?” I asked in a high piercing tone.
“I haven’t met Mrs Davenport,” she said. “I cannot talk about another woman without knowing her ways for myself. But I think that you’re a good and honest man, sir.”
“Cook and Giles didn’t need convincing,” I sniffed, forgetting that they were staff and employed at the Manor since I was a child. Both of them never liked Charlotte. I should have listened to their murmurings, but I was blinded by love. Blinded indeed. Perhaps it was lust? Perhaps it was ambition?
Charlotte is from a well-connected family. I thought that she wasn’t in need of money. She was perfect. Or so it seemed. I was in my late thirties and was told it was time for settling down. Then the war surrounded us. Marriage was both romantic and necessary.
“You’re daydreaming again,” Norah says, standing by the shelves in the far corner. “You tilt your head and get that faraway stare when you’re doing that. What are we going to do today? We’ve made progress counting the steps between rooms and learning the layout of the furniture – and how to ascend and descend the stairs. But I think it is time we went out somewhere? The sun is nice. A walk around the garden would please the groundsmen and –”
“No.”
Silence. There’s a shuffle of paper, a creak from the chair and the flip of a folder being opened.
“The General sent some more documents. I can read them to you. And – before you act like a bold child again, I think this top one might interest you.”
“Could I have some more tea?” I ask, not wanting to seem too curious about what she has in front of her.
Norah ignores my request for more tea and begins to read. “‘Scotland Yard have dismissed these cases.’The names, dates and some information have been blacked out, sir, but it says . . . um, here we are . . . it says ‘despite the findings, General Ashfield fears these men were murdered and that it was perpetrated by someone close to them. It has been suggested that their wives were somehow involved’. Well, well, well! Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
I sit forward in the chair and the sun heats my reddening face.
Norah’s breathing has changed. I can tell that she is excited.
“There’s a note here from General Ashfield. It says: ‘This is for your consideration, Laurie. If you’re interested in this, I can furnish more information and get you involved. It is not an active case but I’ve been given clearance to have a civilian look at another angle of this intriguing mystery. I also want this to be the work that will get you back on your feet.’”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Norah sighs. “I agree with him, Mr Davenport. When do we start?”
Chapter 2
Norah Walsh
“‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen’,” I mutter and bless myself quietly before entering the kitchen. I’ve had some time off from the prying questions of Giles, Mr Davenport’s butler. He’s back now from a few days’ leave and when he gets a chance he tries to prise more information from me. We get along well and I’ve missed his help, but he’s rightly worried about his boss and my purpose for being here.
He perches now on the kitchen stool, peers from under those spectacles and grey eyebrows, and asks, “Family is so important. I’m sure that yours want to h
ear more regularly from their red-haired Irish colleen?” He has tried to pull my past out of me a few times now. “And is working here really better than working for the General?” He continues shining the silver tea service like an Aladdin’s lamp. “You must find work here very different?”
“I’ve heard that spies in Germany are tortured during interrogation,” I reply. “When will that start?”
Giles chuckles while the skinny, sullen-as-ever cook batters on at the bread dough on the large kitchen table.
If only I could tell them the truth about my past. I wish that I could confess that I’m no longer someone’s mistress. I have more to me than a pretty face. And I’m content here even if everything about Davenport Manor is antique: the servants, the furniture, the gardens and the air. I like Laurie Davenport, but he is still a product of his class and the manor itself – stuck in a rut, scarred by time and terribly stuffy.
“You’ve been here about eight weeks now,” Giles says, “and it’s obvious that you will stay, so we’re just being friendly.” He cocks his greying hair towards Cook, who looks more wizened than any Irish witch would be.
She smiles and rolls her eyes. They work well together and it’s clear that they’ve been friends for many years. They are kind people.
Good-natured Giles laughs and waits on me to tell him about my past. His eyes are wide and curious. The nosey git! I’ve told him heaps about myself but he wants more.
“I’ve told you lots about my family and how nanny-work took me to England. What else do you want to know?”
I look around the ordered, clean surfaces for something to eat. From the shiny pots and pans hanging neatly, to the large east-facing window, there’s not a cobweb in sight down here. Cook keeps her domain spotless.
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