Following her father's death Sarah returned to the Elizabethan manor on Exmoor where she had spent a happy childhood. At first it seemed a magical place, but soon she felt a curious foreboding. What was it that Jerome, the heir, did on his visits to the abandoned hunting lodge in the Valley of th...
Helping a woman run a villa in Sicily as a guest house, Kerry finds things not straightforward and is caught up in a sinister plot that leads to a life and death chase through Sicilian mountains.
Depression set in as she realised the complexities of the job ahead of her. All the investigations carried out so far would have to be reassessed, and the enquiry net widened to encompass Prescott’s death. The accountant’s friends, his clients and other contacts, all had to be checked on. She spe...
Naturally enough, the violent death of a member of a prominent local family had aroused great interest. Yet the proceedings themselves held no surprises. After a few desultory questions put to the witnesses, Tim and myself, the pathologist, and a police representative, the verdict was murder by p...
As always, wherever the inspector happened to be, an air of calm and order prevailed. “Am I glad to see you here, Frank. Now I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder for procedural cock-ups.” He chuckled. “Truth to tell, Kate, I was damned glad to get called to this job. It’s a handy excuse ...
And even when we were alone, walking to the car through brightly lit streets, he stayed moodily silent. The Mercedes was parked in the center of a small square. Steve held the door for me, then went around and got in himself. But he made no move to drive off. “Did you mean what you said about hav...
I wondered if he was conscious of it, too. I wondered if it brought back to him, as vividly as it did to me, the other times we had been together. Not that this palatial hotel was anything like the places we had stayed at before. We had chosen sleepy country pubs where we felt shut away from the ...
I followed him across an antechamber into a great hall, where slender pale pink columns, carved in the form of twisted ropes, gave support to an arched gallery. A pair of magnificent crystal chandeliers hung from the intricately molded ceiling, and the floor was of black and white marble in gleam...
More and more the need was in me ... a need, as I saw it, to prove to the boy that he wasn’t without a friend now that Benedict Sherbrooke was dead. Whenever I had an opportunity I strolled up to the chalet. The carved wooden boat still lay on the bed, as I’d left it. But one afternoon, as I walk...
He greeted his womenfolk who were hovering in the hall and followed them into the dining room. After two hours of hard work at the mill Randolph was ready for a hearty meal, and considered he had earned it; porridge and cream on the table, kidneys and bacon waiting under a silver cover on the sid...
My mind made room without recognizing what it was. The tap came again, louder. “Lucy, are you there?” Craig. His voice was gentle, filled with concern, all the fury spent. I scarcely stopped by the dressing table to flick a comb through my hair and smooth my skirt. I almost ran across the room to...
The ancient Saxon building, with pale sunshine slanting through the stained glass windows, possessed an austere beauty that seemed strange after the warm and friendly rotunda of Funchal’s Anglican church. But the order of service was blessedly familiar, the hymns, the prayers, the responses. Even...
I thanked heaven fervently that chestnut twigs could somehow be tortured into shapes actually resembling baskets. Good enough, at any rate, to catch a five-year-old’s fancy. All in all, I reckoned I’d made quite a hit with Jane. Once or twice, when she was completely absorbed weaving the bendy tw...
She’d told him what she wanted him to do, but not how to go about it. This was a challenge which called for a pint of real ale and a lasagne and chips at the Half Moon to set his thought processes going. Well stoked, the sergeant made a phone call then drove to the Croptech premises. At the labor...