by Jack Gatland
There was a smattering of hands and a chuckle of approving laughter. Validated, the manager grinned and continued.
‘One reason that the books sold so well, apart from the excellent writing of Reginald Troughton, was that the five characters—‘
‘And the dog!’ a voice called out. Thomas, listening, cringed. He had hated that bloody spaniel.
‘And the dog, yes,’ the manager replied. ‘One reason the books sold so well was because unlike so many other 'teenage detective' stories, these were true, written by Troughton, based on notes and interviews given to him by the Magpies themselves.’
Thomas moved into position for his entrance, and the audience, seeing this, murmured with excitement as, unaware of this, the manager continued.
‘And tonight we're very lucky to have with us one of the original Magpies, a man who has written new introductions for the upcoming reprints, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the group’s first adventure,’ she gushed. ‘He's here today to sign them for you, but before we put him to work, let's hear it for 'Tommy' from the Magpies, Thomas Williams!’
As the audience applauded and cheered, Thomas walked to the lectern, waving to the audience and nodding to the manager as she backed away to give him space. Now at the lectern, he gave a second brief wave to his adoring fans and then spoke, a prepared speech that he’d spoken at events around the world for over twenty years; one so well rehearsed that he could alter it on the fly.
‘When my cousin Luke and I started the Magpies, it was to prove that our milkman wasn't a killer,’ he explained. ‘We couldn't even conceive the global phenomenon that it would become. But Reginald Troughton did. He believed the stories he would write about us would become famous. Would make us famous.’
He paused, thrown for a moment.
There was a gap at the back of the crowd that shouldn’t be there, and a cryptic message he’d had earlier that day suddenly made sense.
‘Uh... Unfortunately Reginald can't be with us today as he's suffering from a head cold in Scotland,’ he continued on, recovering. ‘But he sends his regards to all of you.’
He looked to Jane who, realising what he was about to do, started shaking her head.
‘But that's not to say I'm the only one from the Magpies here today,’ Thomas smiled, pointing to her. ‘I’d like to introduce to you another member of the Magpies, my good friend Jane Taylor!’
As the audience, surprised at such a celebrity in their midst, looked to Jane and applauded, Thomas took a deep breath, grateful to her for the distraction.
Because Reginald Troughton wasn’t in Scotland and didn’t have a cold.
He was supposed to have appeared, out of nowhere, from the back of the audience. It was a ‘surprise appearance’ skit that he’d performed for years, and one that was as far from a ’surprise’ as you could get these days.
So where the hell was he this time?
Reginald Troughton sat in the office of his Temple Inn apartment, facing his desk and MacBook with an air of frantic desperation. He was on a deadline, and he was failing it. He remembered some kind of anecdote by Douglas Adams about deadlines and whooshing noises, but it didn’t really help that as far as he was concerned, Adams was a hack who could write a novel in a week, while he, the great and lauded Reginald Troughton couldn’t write a sodding children’s book in a month.
His agent had called earlier that day, passive aggressively demanding the finished manuscript by the end of the week, or else the advance was being taken away. Reginald had taken the scolding before pointing out that he only heard from her when she needed something, and where the hell was the auction for his adult thriller series she’d been promising. However, as he’d already spent the pittance the publisher had sent him months earlier, and he didn’t have it to give back, this meant that he had to buckle down and finish the bloody thing which meant he couldn’t go to the Waterstones event.
Which was fine by him; now in his mid-sixties, he wasn’t interested in fanboy totty anymore, and Thomas Williams was an insufferable bastard to be around, who’s only income was milking people’s nostalgia for pennies. He’d passed the message that he wasn’t attending down the line, but he’d left it vague in case he managed to actually make it.
He hadn’t.
And now he was finishing up the ‘lost’ Magpie adventure, trying to work out how to say what he wanted to say without shitting the bed too much. It was supposed to be called The Adventure of the Blacksmith’s Apron, but halfway through he’d had a revelation. He was going to write the truth. And so the book had been re-titled The Adventure of the Blatant Lie, and instead of some made-up bollocks about a blacksmith in a Devonshire village, the book was now the truth about the bloody Magpies, and why they’d been formed. He knew it’d piss people off, but quite frankly he didn’t care. The contract didn’t state what the novel had to be about, and they didn’t pay him enough to keep silent anymore.
There was the sound of a sudden crack in the other room, as if a stone had been thrown at a window, breaking it, and Reginald rose wearily from the chair. The bloody teenagers were buggers for smashing windows on the estate—
He didn’t finish the thought, as a man entered the doorway to the office. That was, it looked like a man because of the full-head latex mask of a bald man that the figure wore. The black clothing, a hoodie, gloves and cargo pants were shapeless and could have been of either sex, but the one thing that was obvious was the intention, shown by the rusty tyre iron that the bald man held in their left hand, likely the item that had made the glass cracking noise as they’d forced entry.
Reginald swallowed nervously.
‘So,’ he whispered. ‘Which one of you finally had the balls to face me?’
The ‘bald man’ didn’t reply as they moved in, striking down hard with the tyre iron.
The audience laughed as Thomas finished reading aloud from the first of the books, The Adventure Of The Rusty Crowbar. He’d learned many years ago that they’d eat up anything he said, and it was easier to read books they knew by heart than to actively work on something original. Looking up at them, he grinned.
‘I think you all know what happens next,’ he finished. The audience nodded and murmured in agreement, before applauding.
Of course they knew what happened next, he thought to himself, as the manager leaned past him, a little too close as she brushed his arm on her way to the microphone. They’ve read everything.
‘And now if you bring your purchased books to the signing table, Thomas will sign them for you,’ she gushed with excitement.
As Thomas closed the book on the lectern and walked across the event space to the table that had been set aside for his signing, a woman moved in front of him, effectively blocking his way. She was in her late thirties, scarily thin and with her hair scraped back into a bun, giving her the look of a stern governess a good decade older.
‘Mister Williams, before you start, can I have a moment?’ she asked.
‘I have a signing,’ Thomas smiled politely. ‘I can write whatever you want when—‘
‘Oh, I’m not one of them,’ the woman replied, glancing around in disgust. ‘My name’s Louise Hart. I’m doing a piece on Reginald Troughton. You said he was in Scotland?’
‘I believe so,’ Thomas glanced around for the manager, hoping that she could step in, do her bloody job and move this woman away. He didn’t want to move her; someone could always misconstrue such things in this day and age.
‘I spoke to him yesterday,’ Louise replied. ‘In London. And he didn’t seem to have any flu-like symptoms then.’
‘Well, all I can go on is what my publisher told me,’ Thomas really wanted to move on now as he faked a concerned expression for the woman. ‘I’ll check on him later today. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, if I can just ask—‘ God, the woman simply wouldn’t take a hint.
The smile faded, and Thomas moved closer.
‘Look, I’ve had a very long day, Miss Hart, and I don�
�t have time for interviews. If you want to talk to me, you can get me through my talent agent…’
He stopped as he looked at Louise properly for the first time. ‘Have we met before?’
‘Yes, we have,’ Louise’s face was emotionless now. ‘Not that you’d remember, or give a damn about. Have a nice day, Mister Williams.’
And as quickly as she’d arrived, Louise Hart left, Thomas now standing alone and confused where he knew her from. The audience were now patiently lining up before the table, each with books in their hands, but before he could move towards them, Jane now approached. Thomas looked towards the manager, nodding apologetically, and she smiled and nodded back at him in a ‘no worries’ manner. The last thing she was going to do was stop two members from the Magpies from chatting to each other in her store. This was something that hadn’t happened in years, and she could see that the audience, while waiting for the signature, were very aware of the history happening beside them.
‘Thanks for outing me,’ Jane smiled.
‘It was the least I could do,’ Thomas said, shrugging. ‘So what's it been, five years?’
‘Seven.’
‘Wow. How’s—‘
‘He's fine,’ Jane interrupted. ‘We both are.’
One fan, a middle-aged lady with a book in her hand, who simply hadn’t garnered the basic fact that you left the talent alone, walked up to them, breaking the moment.
‘Hi, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was hoping you could sign this?’ she said to Jane. ‘You're Jane Taylor, right?’
‘Actually, it's Ashton now,’ Jane replied, glancing to Thomas as she said so.
‘Oh, like Luke Ashton?’
‘Exactly like that.’
The lady paused at this sudden revelation. ‘Oh. Wow.’
Thomas forced a smile as he leaned in.
‘I’m sorry, we haven't seen each other for a while and only have a moment before I start my signing. Over there. Where you should be queuing,’ he showed the line of now irritated women. ‘Do you mind?’
As the lady finally got the hint and reluctantly left them, Thomas looked back to Jane.
‘Can you wait around until after?’ he asked softly. ‘Catch up?’
Jane nodded, as Thomas grabbed and squeezed her hand before walking over to the signing desk to more applause.
Jane, meanwhile, pulled out her phone and, after reading a recently arrived text on it, turned it off.
The office in the Temple inn apartment had never been tidy, but now it looked like a bomb had hit it. Or, more accurately, that a fight had occurred there, a vicious beating of a sixty-five-year-old man.
A photo frame, one that held the same publicity photo that Waterstones had used of the Magpies, was now discarded, broken on the floor, the glass smashed by the impact of a shoe’s heel on it. A red smear of blood had been wiped across the broken glass, covering all the faces in the photo, smeared by the blood covered hand of Reginald Troughton, whose glassy, dead eyes stared vacantly ahead, as he lay face down on the carpet, his arm, stretched out rested beside the frame, as if his last act had been to smear the photo with his own blood in some kind of message, or act of defiance.
Beside his body, the killer had also left the bloodied tyre iron on the floor, the end slick with the author’s blood.
Reginald Troughton would never finish his tell-all adventure.
And the Magpies no longer existed to solve his murder.
Released 6th June 2021
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Before LETTER FROM THE DEAD…
There was
Learn the story of what really happened to DI Declan Walsh, while at Mile End!
* * *
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Acknowledgements
Although I’ve been writing for three decades under my real name, these Declan Walsh novels are a first for me; a new name, a new medium and a new lead character.
* * *
There are people I need to thank, and they know who they are. To the ones who started me on this path over a coffee during a pandemic to the ones who zoom-called me and gave me advice, the ones on various Facebook groups who encouraged me when I didn’t know if I could even do this, who gave advice on cover design and on book formatting all the way to my friends and family, who saw what I was doing not as mad folly, but as something good. Also, I couldn’t have done this without my growing army of ARC readers who not only show me where I falter, but also raise awareness of me in the social media world, ensuring that other people learn of my books, and editors and problem catchers like Maureen Webb, Chris Lee, Edwina Townsend, Maryam Paulsen and Jacqueline Beard MBE, the latter of whom has copyedited all five books so far (including the prequel), line by line for me.
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But mainly, I tip my hat and thank you. The reader. Who took a chance on an unknown author in a pile of Kindle books, and thought you’d give them a chance, whether it was with this book or with my first one.
* * *
I write Declan Walsh for you. He (and his team) solves crimes for you. And with luck, he’ll keep on solving them for a very long time.
* * *
Jack Gatland / Tony Lee,
London, March 2021
About the Author
Jack Gatland is the pen name of #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Tony Lee, who has been writing in all media for over thirty years, including comics, graphic novels, middle grade books, audio drama, TV and film for DC Comics, Marvel, BBC, ITV, Random House, Penguin USA, Hachette and a ton of other publishers and broadcasters.
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These have included licenses such as Doctor Who, Spider Man, X-Men, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, MacGyver, BBC’s Doctors, Wallace and Gromit and Shrek.
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As Tony, he's toured the world talking to reluctant readers with his 'Change The Channel' school tours, and lectures on screenwriting and comic scripting for Raindance in London.
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An introvert West Londoner by heart, he lives with his wife Tracy and dog Fosco, just outside London.
Locations In The Book
The locations that I use in my books are real, if altered slightly for dramatic intent. Here’s some more information about a few of them…
* * *
Hurley-Upon-Thames is a real village, and one that I visited many times from the age of 8 until 16, as my parents and I would spend our spring and summer weekends at the local campsite. It’s a location that means a lot to me, my second home throughout my childhood, and so I’ve decided that this should be the ‘home base’ for Declan.
* * *
The Olde Bell is a real pub in the village too, although owned by a hotel chain rather than man named Dave. It was founded in 1135 as the hostelry of Hurley Priory, making it one of the oldest hotels (and inns) in the world. There is a secret tunnel, that was used by John Lovelace to overthrow royalty, although it’s not as traversable as I’ve claimed here. It was also used as a meeting point for Churchill and Eisenhower during World War II. The Library in the Malthouse also exists.
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Temple Inn Golf Club exists, and my dad used to play many rounds there when I was a kid. The sixteenth hole is exactly where I state it is in the story. The course was designed by the 1887 and 1889 Open Champion Willie Park Jr in 1909, and it was indeed built on land once owned by the Knights Templar.
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The Crypt at Hurley Priory is real; founded by Geoffrey de Mandeville in 1086 in memory of his first wife, the Priory was central to the life of the village for 450 years until Henry VIII’s reforms swept it away in 1536. Believed to also be the site of an Anglo-Saxon church founded by St Birinus as he converted the Thames Valley in the 7th century, Editha, the sister of Edward the Confessor, is rumoured to have been buried in the church, and therefore near the crypt. In the 16th Century the Lovelace family took the manor, buildi
ng Ladye Place, and it was here in 1688 that John, the 3rd Lord Lovelace played a significant role in the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution. The crypt became a centre of plotting and its said that fellow aristocratic conspirators would enter by way of underground tunnels that led from the river or The Olde Bell to avoid detection. This crypt, which still stands in private grounds on the old monastic estate at Hurley, was also visited by both William of Orange and George III.
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Finally, the Dew Drop Inn also exists, and was actually a pleasant surprise; when writing book one I had a totally different area for Patrick Walsh’s car crash and death, but when revisiting the scene I realised that it wouldn’t have worked. Picking the junction of Honey Lane as a new location, I realised very quickly that forensically, the crash could only have happened if he travelled from a different direction, and I decided to use the Dew Drop Inn as a location, not realising how important it would become in the tale. The building itself dates back to the 1600's and is steeped in history owing to its reported use by the infamous highwayman Dick Turpin and his horse Black Bess, who would stable in the cellar. Which is lovely as a story, but Black Bess was a fictional creation used in the novel Rookwood, and as such wouldn’t have actually been there. There is proof that Turpin did move around Berkshire though, so there’s every chance that he (and whatever horse he really rode) visited there.
