The King's Justice
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PRAISE FOR THE KING’S JUSTICE
“How far can a multitalented woman be pushed before she breaks? British-born, American-raised Maggie Hope has held an amazing series of jobs since moving to war-torn London. She’s worked for Winston Churchill, traveled as a spy to Berlin and Paris, and escaped from a Scottish island where someone has been killing exiled Special Operations Executive agents. And she’s [now] faced with a new serial murder case when suitcases filled with bones turn up in the Thames….A bit of code-breaking and some deeper insight break open the case but put Maggie in the killer’s crosshairs….Action-packed, intertwined mysteries featuring an introspective heroine and packed with little-known historical details.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Vivid descriptions of devastated London and distinctive, emotionally flawed characters enhance a plot that builds to a wicked twist. This enjoyable effort will inspire those new to MacNeal to seek out earlier entries.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A novel of gripping suspense, The King’s Justice examines how war damages individuals, whether on the battlefield or the home front. The London of 1942, deftly re-created by Susan Elia MacNeal, is a traumatized city, and among its denizens is MacNeal’s ever-riveting Maggie Hope, struggling to overcome personal and professional anguish as she confronts good, evil, and the gray places in between.”
—LAUREN BELFER, New York Times bestselling author of And After the Fire
“Susan Elia MacNeal spins another rousing tale featuring gutsy Maggie Hope. Once again, MacNeal deftly weaves a fast-paced mystery with enticing historical detail, but this time gives us a fully realized exploration of a psychologically wounded but still determined survivor of the darkness of war. A multilayered thriller that will keep you up all night reading!”
—MELANIE BENJAMIN, New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue
“In The King’s Justice, Maggie Hope, a veteran of missions for the Special Operations Executive, is suffering from what we now call PTSD and doing it none too quietly. The mystery is riveting, but Maggie’s emotional journey is at the heart of this superb novel as she struggles to come to grips with the impact of the violence she has endured, as did so many. I devoured this story.”
—JAMES R. BENN, author of When Hell Struck Twelve and the Billy Boyle WWII mysteries
“The riveting King’s Justice by Susan Elia MacNeal brings the war’s toll on Maggie Hope into heart-pounding focus. I love Maggie Hope, and this ninth installment finds Maggie, a former SOE agent, now defusing bombs in London and facing her demons. Bravo to Susan Elia MacNeal for delving deep into war’s psychological effect on women and civilians in wartime. All this while maintaining an edge-of-your-seat pace as Maggie is pulled into the hunt for a missing Stradivarius violin and danger from a notorious serial killer.”
—CARA BLACK, New York Times bestselling author of the Aimée Leduc series, including the forthcoming Three Hours in Paris
“Susan Elia MacNeal transports us bodily back to the sights, the sounds, the smells—and the horrors—of Britain’s, and Maggie Hope’s, finest hour.”
—ALAN BRADLEY, New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Tresses of the Dead and the Flavia de Luce mysteries
“I have read and loved every single one of the Maggie Hope mysteries. In The King’s Justice, MacNeal raises the bar. Maggie faces old enemies, new killers, and her personal demons with an extra helping of her own special brand of derring-do. Longtime readers will be richly rewarded and first-timers will be made instant fans by this taut, breathtaking, and authentic read.”
—PAM JENOFF, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris
“Susan Elia MacNeal’s latest Maggie Hope novel paints a vivid portrait of London during World War II, where serial killers are called sequential murderers and unexploded German bombs are being diffused all over town. Add to this a missing violin, a fine mystery, and MacNeal has another winner.”
—LAWRENCE H. LEVY, award-winning author of Near Prospect Park and the Mary Handley mysteries
“The King’s Justice is gripping. It is reality, gritty and frightening. I feel the cold, the fear, and the courage. The very air of it exists on the edges of my own memory.”
—ANNE PERRY, New York Times bestselling author of Death in Focus
“With any luck the adventures of red-haired super-sleuth Maggie Hope will go on forever. Maggie makes for an appealingly damaged heroine, struggling to overcome the emotional scars espionage and murder have left on her soul, losing herself in cigarettes, scotch, and risk-taking—but the war won’t allow Maggie much in the way of rest, as a serial killer, a missing Stradivarius, and the sensational murder trial of her last antagonist collide in a new series of challenges. Taut, well plotted, and suspenseful, this is a wartime mystery to sink your teeth into.”
—KATE QUINN, New York Times bestselling author of The Huntress
“Inimitable, indefatigable, intrepid—there simply are not enough good adjectives to describe Maggie Hope. The latest installment of Susan Elia MacNeal’s masterful series brings us a wiser and wounded Maggie, one who defuses bombs and buzzes around London on her motorbike, drowning her demons in pink gin and pitting her wits against a serial killer determined to have the last laugh. I was riveted from the first page to the last, rooting for Maggie all the way. Reading her latest adventure is like walking a tightrope made of razor wire.”
—DEANNA RAYBOURN, New York Times bestselling author of A Murderous Relation
“I love the Maggie Hope series. She’s a wonderful heroine—courageous and complicated, talented and tormented. In this, Maggie’s ninth adventure, Susan Elia MacNeal goes deeper to show how war inflicts mental as well as physical scars. Richly researched and heavy with the brooding atmosphere of wartime London, the novel boldly tackles the darker, unexplored territory of the Home Front. Loyal fans who have watched Maggie Hope grow will cheer her on as she faces her own and other demons with habitual intelligence and verve.”
—JANE THYNNE, author of The Words I Never Wrote
“A new Maggie Hope mystery is always cause for joy, and The King’s Justice proves once again that Susan Elia MacNeal sits at the top of her genre. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, this novel immerses readers in the threadbare vibrancy of wartime London and the moral complexity at the heart of justice, as Maggie battles her own despair to track down a murderer of extraordinary depravity. MacNeal spins yet another superb yarn that will leave you yearning for the next.”
—BEATRIZ WILLIAMS, New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Hour
“The King’s Justice is a powerfully emotional work that poses difficult questions for Maggie as she searches for justice. A charismatic but severely damaged heroine, Maggie’s a ticking bomb, not unlike the dangerous, unexploded ordnance it’s her job to defuse daily. The King’s Justice is a poetically nuanced portrayal of London in war, twisted souls, and hard moral choices. But more than anything else—and best of all—it’s a brilliant novel featuring a very human Wonder Woman.”
—JAMES W. ZISKIN, author of A Stone’s Throw and the Ellie Stone mysteries
The King’s Justice is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright
© 2020 by Susan Elia
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: MacNeal, Susan Elia, author.
Title: The king’s justice / Susan Elia MacNeal.
Description: First edition. | New York: Bantam Books, [2020] | Series: A Maggie Hope mystery; 9 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019038115 (print) | LCCN 2019038116 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399593840 (hardback; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780399593857 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945—England—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A2774 K56 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613.A2774 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038115
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038116
Ebook ISBN 9780399593857
randomhousebooks.com
Title-page image: © iStockphoto.com
Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Victoria Allen
Cover illustration: Mick Wiggins
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Sources
By Susan Elia MacNeal
About the Author
Ashes denote that Fire was—
Revere the Grayest Pile
For the Departed Creature’s sake
That hovered there awhile—
Fire exists the first in light
And then consolidates
Only the Chemist can disclose
Into what Carbonates.
—EMILY DICKINSON
Prologue
March 1, 1943
Each incoming tide of the Thames brought another layer of debris, and, when the waters receded, mysteries could be found buried in the silt. There was always trash, but there was also the hope of treasure: white china baby doll heads, the green spiral necks of wineglasses, small silver thimbles, coins from ancient times. On the sand-covered banks, the mudlarkers patrolling the shores paused to watch German planes fly overhead. “Good riddance,” Martha Biddle said to her young partner, her eight-year-old grandson, Lewis.
Lewis shook a fist at the gloomy sky. “And don’t you come back!” he shouted into the cold air, as the last aircraft disappeared. The two mudlarkers returned their attention to the sand. “Grannie, look!” the boy cried. “There’s something down here—something big!”
“Careful now, love,” Martha warned. A compact woman in her late fifties, Martha had iron-gray hair covered by a floral scarf. She wore a frayed wool coat with buttons straining at the holes; tall black rubber waders protected her feet and legs.
The boy was using a sharp-edged trowel to scrape at something buried beneath the damp sand, his hands protected by oversize leather gloves. “Grannie!” he called again. “I think it might be”—he pounded on the object, with a resounding metallic clang—“an anchor, maybe?”
“Don’t bang at it, love!” She picked her way over. “It could be a UXB,” she said, referring to the unexploded German bombs still littering London.
The boy brushed away more sand, broken shells, and bits of chipped red brick. “It’s an old anchor by the looks of it—lots of rust.” Lewis looked up to his grandmother, eyes wide. “Most of it’s still buried.”
“Leave it be, pet—we aren’t strong enough to carry it anyway. And be careful—those UXBs could be anywhere. ‘Souvenirs from the Blitz.’ Government hasn’t dug them all up and gotten rid of ’em yet—probably never will.” Martha fixed her gaze on the boy. “Don’t mistake one for a buoy.”
“Yes, Grannie.” Lewis had heard his grandmother’s warnings about unexploded bombs many times before.
“Don’t ‘Yes, Grannie’ me, young man!” she said, shaking her trowel at him. But she was smiling, and he grinned back before walking away from the anchor.
They were mudlarking on a stretch of the Thames near the Tower, the square Norman turrets of the White Keep visible. Above, the sky had taken on a greenish cast; rain had threatened all day. The air on the riverbank was raw and smelled of seaweed. Victorian bronze verdigris lion heads, mooring rings clamped in their mouths, served as flood warnings. When the lions drink, London will sink. When it’s up to their manes, we’ll go down the drains, the old saying went.
A seagull landed on a nearby rock and eyed Martha and Lewis. “Nothing here for you!” Martha called, waving her arms at the bird. The gull ignored her, preening. “Cheeky,” she muttered.
An icy wind blew. She watched Lewis pull his hand-knit scarf tighter around his throat and look out over the Thames. The river was both ancient and ever-changing, broad and vast, murky and dangerous. Today the brackish water was a dense bottle-green color, a mixture of fresh from its estuarial origin inland and salt from its ultimate demise in the sea, combined by the eddies of the current.
A small tugboat passed, causing waves to lap the pebbly shore. Seagulls circled above, and, higher up, a skein of geese flew by in a long, ragged V. There were people, small as ants, making their way back and forth across Tower Bridge. A dark-plumed cormorant dipped its sharp beak into the water and caught a slick, wriggling eel; it twisted, trying to escape, as the bird carried it away through the air.
Lewis tore his eyes away from the sky and focused on the sand and stones in front of him. The best things to discover were the ancient love tokens—in the seventeenth century, it had been fashionable for young men to make rings for their beloved out of bent silver sixpence. If the women liked the men, they’d keep the rings—but a good number of the rings had ended up in the river. Even more modern rings were fairly regular finds. The Yanks bought them for their sweethearts back in the United States.
As grandmother and grandson worked in the fading afternoon light, they were aware of the tides, of the deep mud and silt that could suck them in. Still, something glinted in the muck. “Grannie!” Lewis shouted.
Martha looked up and, seeing his joyful expression, made her way over. He was kneeling, digging away the cold sand with his gloved fingers. Finding the gloves too clumsy, he ripped them off and used his bare hands, finally uncovering a golden ring. He held it up reverently. “Her
e,” he said, handing it to his grandmother.
She took a pair of spectacles from her coat’s breast pocket and put them on. Peering through the glass, she examined the details. “It’s a poesy ring,” she told him. “Probably from the time of Henry the Eighth.” She squinted. “It says, ‘I Live in Hope.’ ”
Lewis looked at her with wide eyes. “Is it good?”
“Oh, yes it’s good, ducks—marvelous, even. It’ll fetch a pretty penny from one of those gum-chomping Americans, to be sure. You did well, my love.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “I always say mudlarking’s twenty-five percent practice, twenty-five percent knowing where to look, twenty-five percent knowing what to look for, and twenty-five percent good luck. Today you had all four!”
Lewis grinned. He knew what a good find meant. “Tonight we’ll have sausages?”
“Tonight we’ll have sausages. Do you want to go home for tea now?” she asked, taking in his flushed cheeks and raw hands. The wind had picked up. “Or do you want to stay out longer?” She was experienced in gauging the tides and knew they still had some time left. “It’s up to you, love.”
Lewis was invigorated by his find. “Let’s stay!”
Martha smiled. “All right, then.” She looked up at the rising tide. “Just a half hour more, though, and then—”
“Hey, lookee here!” he called, racing over to what he spied.
“Careful!”
“No, it’s not a bomb, Grannie—it’s a suitcase.” A brown leather valise, embossed with a rough crocodile pattern, poked out from a heap of moldering seaweed.