The Tomb of the Honey Bee: A Posie Parker Mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 2)
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Historical Note and 1920s Money
The characters in this book are all fictional (except for the brief mention in chapter eight of Sir Harry Omman, who was indeed President of the Royal Numismatic Society in London between 1919 and 1930).
The historical timings, dates, background and detail described in this book are accurate to the best of my knowledge (including the very real heatwave of 1921, the driest year in history since 1788). However, please see the following exceptions:
In England
1. Boynton Hall in the Cotswolds is entirely fictional. Likewise, so is the village of Stowe-on-the-Middle-Wold, although for somewhere similar, look no further than beautiful Burford, or Swinbrook village (home of the famous Mitford sisters) in Oxfordshire.
2. The solicitors’ firm of Pring & Proudfoot on Bedford Row, London, is fictional. So too are the offices of Bernie Sharp, the literary agent, in Covent Garden. The Army & Navy Store on Victoria Street (where Posie goes on a shopping spree in chapter seven) did exist but stopped trading under that name in 2005. Stanford’s Map Shop is real and can be found on Long Acre, in Covent Garden (for more information see: http://www.stanfords.co.uk).
3. The bee coin which is of significance in this book is fictional (it cannot be found in the British Museum). However, such coins bearing a bee-motif from the ancient world and from Sicily do exist, and for inspiration for my Sicilian bee coin in this story I looked to a good article by Andrew Gough, (see: http://andrewgough.co.uk/articles_bee2).
4. Binkie Dodds, the numismatist, is a fictional character. However, the Royal Numismatic Society was based at the British Museum during the time of this story.
5. Nightingale Mews, Posie’s bedsit in SW7, does not exist. Museum Chambers, WC1, near the British Museum (Posie’s new home in the epilogue) does exist in real-life.
6. As ever, Grape Street in London, WC1, really does exist, although you might have to do a bit of imagining to find Posie’s Detective Agency there.
In France and Italy
7. The famous Blue Train, Le Train Bleu, (which Posie takes in chapter nine to the Cap d’Antibes) was already in service in 1921 (running from Calais to the fashionable hotspots of the South of France) but was not known by such a nickname until 1924.
8. The magical ‘island’ of Ortigia (a part of the town of Siracusa) in Sicily is indeed a gem. Siracusa itself is an absolute treat, especially the Archaeological Park. The sights described in Siracusa and Ortigia in this book all exist, save for Posie’s guesthouse (the Locatelli) down by the harbour, and the apothecary run by monks (Il Gioiello Ambra) in the (real-life) area of the town known as Giudecca. For a similar location to Posie’s guesthouse, see the Des Etrangers Hotel, Ortigia, Siracusa.
9. The Hyblaean honey which is referred to in this story does exist in real-life, and it is a unique honey due to the rare flora found in the Hyblaean mountains. However, it is not quite as rare or as legendary as I have described in this book, and I am not aware of it having any real-life magical or healing properties, nor is its production a secret. Likewise, it is not produced by just the one bee-keeping community. Bees and honey do however have a special significance on the island of Sicily and have always been of great interest to the ancient Greeks and Romans who settled there; both civilisations having Bee Goddesses at points in their histories. For the bee coin which is referred to in this book (and worn as a necklace by both Alaric Boynton-Dale and Posie Parker) see Historical Note 3.
10. The Serafina Monastery in the Hyblaean mountains of Sicily is fictional.
11. The Water Aerodrome (the De Filippis in Siracusa) referred to in chapter sixteen did exist and is historically accurate to the best of my knowledge. It closed in 2008. However, please note that it operated its own Sea-Planes to a variety of places (including Benghazi in Libya) and I am unsure whether or not a seasoned explorer and aviator such as Alaric Boynton-Dale could simply have hired a private Sea-Plane for his own use, but I have assumed so for the sake of the story.
In Egypt
12. There were many international archaeological digs going on in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt, during this time. Mine is made up.
For Agatha Christie fans who are interested in the archaeological digs which are used as the settings for some of her novels (Murder In Mesopotamia is the most obvious), her autobiography Come, Tell Me How You Live, is excellent.
13. The Old Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor still exists, and for its current day incarnation, see: http://www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-1661-sofitel-winter-palace-luxor/index.shtml.
14. The Tomb of Ammotep is fictional, but the Dra Abu Naga necropolis does exist. There are in fact very, very many Egyptian tombs and monuments which include references to bees and bee-keeping. Honey obviously had a huge significance (especially medicinally) in ancient Egypt. The real-life tomb of ‘Pa-Ba-Sa’ in Thebes provided me with some inspiration for the Tomb of Ammotep as described in this story.
15. I have played with dates in my references to the tomb and the curse of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. While the tomb was being excavated by Lord Carnavon in 1921 (the same time as this story is set) the later and legendary story about the curse of Tutankhamun did not start circulating until 1923.
A Short Note on Money
In England in 1921 there was decimalisation in place; a system involving the use of shillings, pence and pounds. I have tried to simplify things where possible to keep things light for the modern reader. However, the 1921 figures for money given in the book equate to:
1. Ten shillings and sixpence (chapter one, a jar of Alaric’s honey) = an approximate 2014 value of £35 or $58.
2. Two Hundred Thousand Pounds (chapter one and chapter twenty-one, the Boynton-Dale Trust money which passes under Alaric’s Will) = an approximate 2014 value of £8 million or $13,346,000. A vast, vast fortune.
3. Ten Thousand Pounds (mentioned in chapter seven, the reward given to Posie by the Earl of Cardigeon for finding the Maharajah diamond. Earmarked by Posie for purchasing a London flat and other living costs) = an approximate 2014 value of £414,375 or $693,495. But this would have been regarded as a huge amount in 1921, and would have seen Posie set up for life, exceedingly comfortably. As mentioned in chapter seven, a flat in the surrounding area of Bloomsbury would probably have cost Posie in the region of a few hundred pounds to buy.
4. Seven Hundred Thousand Pounds (mentioned in chapter eight, the value of the Maharajah diamond which appeared in Murder Offstage: A Posie Parker Mystery #1) = a 2014 value of £29 million or $48,531,923. A staggering, utterly breathtaking and almost fantastical amount.
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Acknowledgements and Author Note
Thank you to Red Gate Arts for producing my art-deco cover design, and to Jane Dixon-Smith for her formatting and design work.
Thank you to Kate Brolly of the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Holborn Library, London, for her invaluable help in establishing the likely purchase value of a flat in Bloomsbury in the early 1920s. I am also grateful to my wonderful readers, whose support and comments are invaluable to me. Here I specifically thank Jules Davies who wrote
concerning house prices in 1920s London, which proved very useful.
My continued thanks go to Marco, and also to Eden, who made this particular writing journey unforgettable. She raced this book into the world, and won.
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About the Author
Cambridge-educated, British-born L.B. Hathaway writes historical fiction and contributes to a number of popular history magazines and websites. She worked as a lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn in London for almost a decade before becoming a full-time writer. She is a lifelong fan of detective novels set in the Golden Age of Crime, and is an ardent Agatha Christie devotee.
Her other interests, in no particular order, are: very fast downhill skiing, theatre-going, drinking strong tea, Tudor history, exploring castles and generally trying to cram as much into life as possible. She lives in London and Switzerland with her husband and young family.
The Posie Parker series of cosy crime novels span the 1920s. They each combine a core central mystery, an exploration of the reckless glamour of the age and a feisty protagonist who you would love to have as your best friend.
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