Over and Doubt , livre ebook

Pneuma Springs Publishing - Julius Falconer

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

102 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Fancy a bit of political theory mixed up with your murder? a group of Danish students with daring plans for a new world order? a scam involving some missing music scores? wolf-ravens in Scandinavian folklore? Then this is the book for you! Inspector Wickfield and Sergeant Hewitt are invited to take on the investigation into the murder of a woman in the St John's Wood area of London. The metropolitan police have arrested her husband, and, although he vigorously protests his innocence, Wickfield, like his colleagues before him, finds it difficult to believe him. The investigation takes a different turn when the inhabitants of a sleepy manor-house in Gloucestershire are outraged by the appearance of a dog's head and a dead rook mounted on a spike in their drive.Follow the inspector in an intricate and baffling investigation in which only a brainwave saves his reputation. Allow the narrator to lead you by the hand (or possibly by the nose) until, it may be, the light dawns on you before it dawns on the inspector.Gracious English, dry wit, learned asides, well-researched background - all the Falconer hallmarks are here.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

Sujets

Thriller

Informations

Publié par	Pneuma Springs Publishing
Date de parution	06 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782283058
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Over
and Doubt

Julius Falconer
Copyright
First Published in 2013 by Pneuma Springs Publishing
Over and Doubt Copyright © 2013 Julius Falconer
Julius Falconer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Mobi eISBN: 9781782283027 ePub eISBN: 9781782283058 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782283089 Paperback ISBN: 9781782282990
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: admin@pneumasprings.co.uk W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
Dedication
Helenae Lawrenson
poetae· latinistae · praeceptori
necnon verborum magistrae
hunc libellum indignum
dedicat auctor
discipulus et quondam feliciter collega
Part I - Over
ONE
The manor stood, yellow-warm and stately, in a fold in the hills, monarch of all it surveyed. The park-land beyond the ha-ha was surrounded by banks of native trees rising from the bow-top metal fence surrounding the deer-park to the top of the slope, a majestic ring of ancient woodland reminiscent of the good taste and elegance which had seen Harding Manor rise from the Cotswold soil in the 1680s. Sir Welford Thirlby had decided to invest his mercantile profits in a house that would impress his acquaintances, among whom Catherine, the daughter and heiress of the Suters, occupied the first place, and the requirements laid down to the architect were that the house should be primarily a home, spacious and graceful, with aesthetic considerations ranking second in order of priority. The house therefore boasted a mixture of rooms, some large and impressive for purposes of entertainment, others smaller and cosy for more intimate family use. There were ample store-rooms and a family wing where the owners would not be disturbed by the comings and goings of the staff. The Thirlbys still occupied this desirable residence nearly three centuries later – with a much reduced staff, of course!

Round the corner of the building strode a tall, ruddy-faced individual in plus-fours with a brace of hares over one shoulder and a broken shot-gun under his arm. He swung his confident way along the front of the building, whistling, a solitary figure in the landscape, and disappeared into the trees at the mansion’s western edge. He had hardly passed out of sight, however, when a girl of fourteen or thereby followed running in his footsteps. She was agitated. Her floral skirt waved wildly round her knees, echoing the consternation of her pretty features puckered into an expression of great alarm. A few minutes later, the man, now without his gun and his game but accompanied by the girl, hurried back along the front of the manor and disappeared whence he had come. Once again the early morning sun illuminated a silent landscape. A short distance from the house, however, not all was well. The girl, on her way to spend the day with a school-friend and sauntering blithely down the back drive, had been startled and distressed by a gruesome sight on the margins of the driveway: the head of a dog mounted on a pole thrust into the soft grass of the verge; hanging by the neck from a string attached to its lower jaw was the body of a rook. The animal was a large one, and the lolling tongue and open eyes staring sightlessly into the sky were extremely disturbing. The game-keeper’s first thought was to remove the offensive objects; his second, to advise the girl to seek human company and stay indoors until the grounds had been further examined; his third, to rouse the house and thereby place the matter in the hands of the proper authorities.

The constable sent out from Stow-on-the-Wold was young, fresh-faced and keen. He drew up at the front of the house and walked briskly to the front door, but before he could reach for the imposing knocker, a man came out to receive him. They spent little time on introductions before the man led the constable round the side of the house to see for himself the site of the macabre exhibit, the head itself and the game-keeper, requested to hover to meet this eventuality. The constable asked questions, took notes, looked helpful and then, at a suggestion from the owner, accompanied the game-keeper on a rapid tour of the main accesses to the house to verify whether other tokens of hate – or menace - had been left in the grounds. Nothing transpired, and the constable left to make his report at the police-station. The gist of it read as follows:
PC Samuel Latimer. 6 August 1965. I was called out at 09.50 this morning to attend to an incident at Harding Manor near Wyck Rissington. A severed dog’s-head and a dead rook had been found on the back drive, stuck on a pole. I interviewed the owner of the house, Sir Welford Thirlby, the game-keeper, Mr Mark Penhaligon, who had dismantled the offensive object, and Miss Gratia Thirlby, the owner’s daughter who had first come across the head.
The head was of an Alsatian, or Alsatian-type dog, and had been severed at the base of the neck. The pole was a broom-handle that had been sharpened at both ends. I examined the ground where the stick had been placed upright but could see neither incriminating footsteps or tyre-marks nor other evidence that might lead to the identity of the culprit. The site chosen was not visible from the house but conspicuously obvious to anyone coming up or down the drive, by car, on foot or on a bicycle.
Sir Welford confessed himself completely baffled. He had heard of nothing like it before, either at Harding or elsewhere. He could conceive of no reason why anyone should wish to frighten the household in this manner, and he had no explanation to offer. I asked him about enemies, of him or of members of his family or perhaps members of his staff, and he could think of nothing relevant. The family had only one pet, a Norwegian deerhound (called Mirabella, or Bella for short), and he could not identify the animal from which the severed head came. It was a total mystery to him.
The game-keeper knew of a number of Alsatian dogs kept in the neighbourhood but could not identify this animal in particular. He testified that he had been taking some hares to his shed at the back of the stable-yard, when he was warned by young Miss Gratia that there was something dreadful on the back drive. He hurried over and quickly dismantled the exhibit, hiding it straightway amongst the trees in case other members of the family or employees on the estate were caught unawares. The rook was not so bad, but the dog’s head ... He next ran up to the house to tell Lady T – sorry, Lady Thirlby – who said she would take the matter up from there but that she would be grateful if he did not wander far, as her husband was sure to want to see him. The witness could think of no reason for such a tasteless prank on the Harding estate. He had never experienced the like in all his years as a game-keeper there. I asked him for the names and addresses of neighbours who had Alsatian dogs. I later followed this information up but found that none of those named had lost their pet.
Finally, I took a statement, with her parents’ permission, from young Miss Thirlby. She had set off after breakfast to visit her friend Lucy in the village. They met daily in the holidays and often followed the same routine. This time it was Gratia’s turn to go into Wyck Rissington, where she was expected a little before ten. She set off down the back drive as usual but was brought up abruptly when she saw at a distance what looked like a carnival mask on a pole. Thinking only that it was a curious thing to find at that hour of the morning and in that place, she walked on, until the horror of what she saw impinged without a shadow of a doubt. Having just seen Mr Penhaligon disappearing towards the house, she ran after him and told him about it. No, she could think of no reason whatever behind the dreadful thing.
Having talked to members of the family and the game-keeper, I walked round the village inquiring about unusual traffic movements that morning or the night before, but nobody had seen anything relevant. Harding Manor is isolated, and I satisfied myself that an intruder bent on mischief could approach it from a number of directions without fear of being seen or heard, particularly after dark.
End of report.

The Thirlby household consisted of Sir Welford and Lady Roxana Thirlby, who were both in their forties; their three children, Lawrence, Chloe and Gratia; Lady Thirlby’s aging mother, Mrs Daniella Charnaud; a former governess of Lady Thirlby’s, Mlle Christiane Charpentier; the cook, Mrs Susan Fernihough; and the butler-cum-chauffeur, Mr Sidney Potton. Then there were the part-time gardener, Jenkins, who lived in the village, and the part-time game-keeper, whom the reader has already met. He too lived in the village. This may sound like a busy household, but, except in holiday time, it was not. Mrs Charnaud and Mlle Charpentier were elderly and staid. Mrs Fernihough was not often seen outside her kitchen; Sir Welford worked in Oxford, where he lectured in mathematics; Lady Thirlby administered Snowshill Manor, a few miles away, on behalf of the National Trust. The Thirlby mansion therefore effortlessly retained its immemorial tranquillity and charm – for most of the year.

Meanwhile, other events were taking place in Acacia Road, St John’s Wood, north-west London, which troubled the equanimity of one Hortensia Larchb