Table of Contents
Cover
Also by Sally Spencer From Severn House
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Part One: Monday 27th October, 1975
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
Part Two: Tuesday 28th October, 1975
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part Three: Wednesday 29th October, 1975
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Part Four: Thursday 30th October, 1975
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Part Five: Friday 31st October, 1975
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part Six: Saturday 1st November, 1975
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Part Seven: 23rd December, 1975
Chapter Thirty-Five
Also by Sally Spencer from Severn House
The Jennie Redhead mysteries
THE SHIVERING TURN
DRY BONES
The Monika Paniatowski mysteries
ECHOES OF THE DEAD
BACKLASH
LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER
A WALK WITH THE DEAD
DEATH’S DARK SHADOW
SUPPING WITH THE DEVIL
BEST SERVED COLD
THICKER THAN WATER
DEATH IN DISGUISE
THE HIDDEN
DEAD END
The Inspector Woodend mysteries
DANGEROUS GAMES
DEATH WATCH
A DYING FALL
FATAL QUEST
The Inspector Sam Blackstone series
BLACKSTONE AND THE NEW WORLD
BLACKSTONE AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
BLACKSTONE AND THE GREAT WAR
BLACKSTONE AND THE ENDGAME
DAUGHTERS OF
DARKNESS
Sally Spencer
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This first world edition published 2020
in Great Britain and 2020 in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2021 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.
eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2020 by Alan Rustage.
The right of Alan Rustage to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs &
Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8949-2 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-716-3 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0437-0 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described
for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are
fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
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PROLOGUE
13th April, 1972
She had never imagined there were such things as buses with only one deck, but that was what this one had.
And that wasn’t the only way in which it was strange – the entrance was in totally the wrong place, too. On London’s big red double-deckers, it was at the back, which was just where you’d expect it to be, but this green single-decker had a door at the front. It was very disconcerting to discover that even such an ordinary thing as a bus could be so different from the ones she was used to, but she’d come this far, and she was not about to lose her nerve now.
She climbed the steps of the bus, and – avoiding looking at the driver – turned left once she reached the top.
‘Oy!’ the driver called after her. ‘Just a minute! Where do you think you’re going?’
She felt her heart sink. She had been so very, very careful – had taken as many precautions as she could – and yet they were on to her almost as soon as she’d got off the train.
Well, they would not take her back without a struggle. She would bite and kick and gouge. She would not stop even if they started beating her with clubs – even if they brought in the dreaded electric shock machine – because she was not going to be turned back now.
‘I said, where do you think you’re going?’ the driver repeated.
Perhaps she could bluff it out, she decided.
‘I’m going to take a seat further down the bus,’ she said.
‘Oh no, you’re not – leastways, you’re not until you’ve paid your fare,’ the driver countered.
‘I will pay my fare,’ she said, with all the icy dignity she could summon. ‘I have every intention of paying my fare. But I will not give it to you – I will pay the conductor.’
The driver chuckled, as if he’d suddenly realized she was not the problem that he’d thought she was going to be.
‘You’ll pay the conductor, will you?’ he asked. ‘Well, sweetheart, it’s a long time since we’ve had conductors working on the country routes. A long time! Where have you been living for the last ten years? In a cave, was it?’
No, she thought, not in a cave.
In something far worse!
And for much longer than ten years!
‘So I pay you, do I?’ she asked, trying to sound as if she’d just understood that she’d made a silly mistake, but really did want to be co-operative.
‘Now you’re catching on,’ the driver agreed.
She returned to the front of the bus, and took out the purse they’d given to her to make her feel normal.
‘How much is it?’ she asked.
‘That all depends on where you’re going,’ the driver told her.
For a second, she went into a complete panic, as she realized she had forgotten what the nice man on the railway station had told her. Then, mercifully, it came back to her.
‘It’s a place called Crocksworth Manor,’ she said.
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br /> ‘You know how to get there, do you?’ the driver asked, and when it became obvious she had no idea what he was talking about, he added, ‘I mean, when you get off the bus?’
She thought about lying, in case admitting her ignorance sounded suspicious, but if she didn’t admit it she wouldn’t know where to go, so she said, ‘I’m not really very sure.’
‘Then you’re lucky to have me as your driver, because I was brought up near there,’ he said, and he sounded quite friendly now. ‘Most of the other drivers wouldn’t have a clue where it was.’
She didn’t know what to say. She had no idea how to deal with people like this bus driver.
Fortunately, he didn’t seem to require her to speak.
‘It will involve you doing some walking, because the manor isn’t on the bus route,’ he said. ‘There’s not even a bus stop anywhere close to the main gate, but I think that, seeing as it’s you, and we’ve become such good friends’ – he winked at her – ‘we can make an unauthorized stop.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Think nothing of it,’ the driver said, ‘but you’re still going to need to pay your fare.’
‘Of course,’ she replied, fumbling in the purse.
She took a seat halfway down the bus, and examined the change the driver had given her. When she’d set out that morning, she’d thought she had enough money to last for days – possibly even weeks – but everything so far had turned out to be much more expensive than she’d ever imagined it would be, and she was almost out of cash already.
The bus left Oxford and was soon deep in the countryside. It passed through small villages where a post office and a pub were the sum total of the facilities, and for much of the time the bus and its passengers were surrounded by fields.
She was a town girl who had never been into the countryside before – not even once – and it was as strange to her as another planet might have been to most other people. It frightened her because she did not know the rules – did not understand how it worked – and such information was vital to someone about to do something as important as she was.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, the bus stopped in the middle of this alien landscape.
‘Here we are then, love,’ the driver called back to her.
‘What? I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘You still want to go to Crocksworth Manor, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this is as close as I get,’ the driver explained. ‘Do you see that gate by the side of the lane?’
‘Yes.’
‘You go through that and keep walking for about three quarters of a mile. You can’t miss it – because there’s nothing else there.’
The lane was little more than a track – a rutted clay canyon between two tall hedgerows – and walking down it frightened her, as almost everything that had happened that day had frightened her.
But it did not deter her – not for a second – because this was the most important thing she had ever done – or ever would do.
She thought of all those years that had been stolen from her – wasted years, when she’d been barely alive. She could not get any of them back, whatever she did now, but at least it might be possible to get a little satisfaction – to see a little justice done.
She could see the manor house looming up in the distance. The roof seemed to have a vast collection of chimney pots, and at each end of that roof there was a large dormer window.
‘It’s like a chateau,’ she said with awe.
She’d never seen a chateau in real life, of course, but once – and only once – she’d been to the cinema, and she’d seen one then.
The film had been called The Scarlet Pimpernel, and she’d gone with Mrs Clarke, a neighbour, who’d seen, first-hand, the kind of wretched life she lived, and had taken pity on her.
The film was set at the time of the French Revolution, and was about an English gentleman called Sir Percy Blakeney, who went across the Channel to rescue French aristocrats from the revolutionaries.
She had sat there in the darkness and watched as the noblemen and noblewomen were led up the steps to the guillotine, while the mob below them howled. She knew that you were supposed to be on the side of the aristocrats, but she just wasn’t, and as the wicked blade came down to separate their heads from their bodies, it was all she could do to stop herself applauding.
Why shouldn’t they be executed? she had asked herself. They owned nearly everything, but they had still tried to take from the poor what little they had – and what was happening to them now, they had brought on themselves.
She had almost reached the manor. She wished she had brought a knife with her in case she needed it, but that didn’t really matter, because if a sharp blade was required, she was sure she would find one inside.
PART ONE
Monday 27th October, 1975
ONE
I am sitting in my office on the upper story of a two-storey building at the unfashionable end of the Iffley Road, awaiting the arrival of a potential client. Over the phone, she said her name was Julia Pemberton, but when I asked her reason for seeking an appointment with Oxford’s only redheaded private investigator with an Upper Second in English Literature (I didn’t really say all that, of course) she was distinctly cagey. I suppose I could have insisted on knowing exactly why she wanted to see me before agreeing to the meeting, thus ensuring that she was not wasting my time. I’m sure there are many private investigators who would have done just that. But time is something I seem to have an abundance of (money is what I lack!) and I didn’t want to put her off when she might just be bringing me a lucrative piece of work.
I hear the street doorbell ring, but I don’t move. I have an arrangement with Gloria, the secretary at the exotic rubber goods company downstairs. She answers the door, and directs the visitor upstairs when appropriate, and I slip her a couple of pounds when I’ve got them.
I hear the staccato click-click-click of Gloria’s stiletto-heeled shoes as she crosses the corridor, then her screeching voice announcing, ‘She’s at the top of the stairs. You can’t miss her.’
People dream of winning big on the football pools so they can buy sports cars and villas in Spain, where they can sit drinking champagne from glass slippers as the sun gently sinks behind the hills. If I won the pools, I’d hire a personal secretary with a soft voice and sensible shoes.
I make it a habit of listening to the prospective clients’ footsteps as they climb the stairs, because often the way they handle the stairs can give me some idea of what to expect.
Julia does not take the stairs at a rush (as if wanting to reach the top before losing her nerve) nor at a slow pull (thus temporarily postponing the inevitable). Instead, her steps suggest both competence and confidence.
She stops as she reaches the door. It is, in my opinion, a door worth studying. The upper half is frosted glass and engraved in that glass (at great expense) are the words:
Jennifer Redhead
Private Investigator
It is undoubtedly the most impressive thing about the whole office.
She knocks.
‘Enter!’ I say (because I think it sounds a little more impressive than plain, ‘Come in.’)
She is a good-looking brunette woman in her early to mid-thirties. She is wearing a conservative – but stylish – blue skirt and jacket, which don’t have even the merest whiff of a chain store about them. In her left hand she holds an expensive handbag, in her right an untipped cigarette.
She enters the office, we identify ourselves (it turns out we are both who we are supposed to be), and she accepts my invitation to sit down opposite me.
She looks down at the desk. ‘Do you have an ashtray?’ she asks.
I open my drawer, take out my ancient Souvenir of Blackpool ashtray – pictures of the Tower, the South Pier, the Pleasure Beach, all the usual sights – and slide it across to her. Most people, I’ve observed, will examine the ashtray you’ve supplied,
as if it will give them some insight into your character, but apart from registering its location, she hardly gives it a glance. Instead, she takes a packet of American Pall Mall out of her handbag and extracts a single cigarette, which she lights from the butt of the one she’s already smoking, then she stubs the original one out on Blackpool beach.
‘I would have offered you a coffin nail, but since you had to reach in your drawer for an ashtray, I assume you don’t smoke,’ she says.
She, on the other hand, seems to have a real habit, although I see no evidence of yellow nicotine stains on her fingers. What I do see, however, is that her nails, while short, are beautifully manicured.
The picture I have built up so far is that she is someone who takes a real pride in her appearance, and that whatever job she has is well paid, and probably involves working with Americans or in America itself. It is also probable that her work involves using her hands, but not in a hard-labour, pan-scrubber way, so maybe she is a doctor or a successful dentist.
She leans back as far as her chair will allow her to – which is novel enough to be almost shocking. What my potential clients usually do is hunch forward, as if they’re either about to make a confession (and sometimes they are) or else reveal a deep hidden secret (and they do that, too).
‘How can I help you?’ I ask, and I’m thinking that since she doesn’t look the type to go to a private investigator to find her missing cat, she probably wants me to dig up dirt on a troublesome neighbour or some rival at work.
‘I would like you to find out who killed my mother,’ she says, calmly and evenly.
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