Murder on the Cliffs

by Joanna Challis

  “When he comes back?” my mother lamented. “Whenever will that be?”

  My father rolled his eyes. “You women, always ready to spear a man. Paint on a smile now because we’re here.”

  The luncheon party commenced.

  Spotting a willowy tree outside Sir Winston’s mansion, I slipped the notebook out of my reticule. I had two letters to write. One to Ewe, and one to Lianne. I’d not forget Lianne needed a friend now, especially as it appeared likely her brother would hang for murdering Victoria Bastion.

  “Hello, old girl.”

  I smiled up to see J. M. Barrie usurp a seat beside me. “Are we in camouflage? I hope so. I simply can’t abide political mumbo jumbo, can you?”

  I watched him try to hide, albeit unsuccessfully, behind a palm leaf, and laughed. I loved Uncle Jack for his eccentricity and penchant for Brussels sprouts. I said I didn’t spy any of his favorite vegetables on the table fare this day and he gave me a woebegone look. “Woebegone, dismal . . . I found a new word the other day, Uncle Jack. Lugubrious . . . for a gloomy, cheerless character, and I know exactly the person who fits it. Mrs. Trehearn, except I’ll have to call her something else, won’t I?”

  “How about Danvers?” he reflected behind his palm branch, his fingers splaying across in horror. “Oh, hide me, there’s the chancellor and he’s after a signing. Trouble is, I can never get away. . . .”

  So we camped out, the two of us, for a good hour or so until Father found us and roused us back to normal land. Mother was most put out, but, of course, she sent Uncle Jack a charming smile.

  I was grateful to go home to Cornwall.

  To the house at Ferryside, to my room overlooking the river, my writing desk, the boats in the harbor . . .

  Putting aside Ewe’s letter, where she recounted all of the local Windemere news, including Lianne doing well and taking up Jenny’s love of monograms, I gazed out the window.

  I thought of Padthaway. I thought of all the people, the faces, the long, winding drive up to the gracious mansion, a white- faced Mrs. Trehearn waiting at the door, the corridors leading to the west wing and that magnificent room, crazy old Ben snipping at his hedges in the garden . . . and an idea for a novel burned within me, deep and irrepressible.

  I sat down to write.

  A boat in the harbor drifted toward me, its name elusive but for the first letter.

  A monogram . . . large, scrawling, distinctive.

  A monogram . . . beginning with R.