PRAISE FOR RHYS BOWEN

  “Rhys Bowen is a gift to all who love great writing, rich and complex characters and a plot that grabs from first words.”

  —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels

  “Thoroughly entertaining.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A truly delightful read.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Keep[s] readers deeply involved until the end.”

  —Portland Book Review

  “Entertainment mixed with intellectual intrigue and realistic setting[s] for which Bowen has earned awards and loyal fans.”

  —New York Journal of Books

  “[A] master of her genre.”

  —Library Journal

  “An author with a distinctive flair for originality and an entertaining narrative storytelling style that will hold the reader’s rapt attention from beginning to end.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Bowen’s vivid storytelling style holds readers enrapt. [She] perfectly develops both narratives with absorbing details about several characters and different geographical environments.”

  —Historical Novel Society

  ALSO BY RHYS BOWEN

  In Farleigh Field

  The Tuscan Child

  The Victory Garden

  What Child Is This

  Above the Bay of Angels

  The Venice Sketchbook

  Where the Sky Begins

  The Paris Assignment

  CONSTABLE EVANS MYSTERIES

  Evans Above

  Evan Help Us

  Evanly Choirs

  Evan and Elle

  Evan Can Wait

  Evans to Betsy

  Evan Only Knows

  Evan’s Gate

  Evan Blessed

  Evanly Bodies

  MOLLY MURPHY MYSTERIES

  Murphy’s Law

  Death of Riley

  For the Love of Mike

  In Like Flynn

  Oh Danny Boy

  In Dublin’s Fair City

  Tell Me, Pretty Maiden

  In a Gilded Cage

  The Last Illusion

  Bless the Bride

  Hush Now, Don’t You Cry

  The Family Way

  City of Darkness and Light

  The Edge of Dreams

  Away in a Manger

  Time of Fog and Fire

  The Ghost of Christmas Past

  With Clare Broyles

  Wild Irish Rose

  All That Is Hidden

  ROYAL SPYNESS MYSTERIES

  Her Royal Spyness

  A Royal Pain

  Royal Flush

  Royal Blood

  Naughty in Nice

  The Twelve Clues of Christmas

  Heirs and Graces

  Queen of Hearts

  Malice at the Palace

  Crowned and Dangerous

  On Her Majesty’s Frightfully Secret Service

  Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding

  Love and Death Among the Cheetahs

  The Last Mrs. Summers

  God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen

  Peril in Paris

  The Proof of the Pudding

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2024 by Janet Quin-Harkin, writing as Rhys Bowen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781662504211 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781662504228 (paperback)

  ISBN-13: 9781662504204 (digital)

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  Cover image: ©Peter Greenway / ArcAngel; ©Cyrille Redor, ©posmguys, ©christinemg, ©Lanova Daria, ©Zoran Pajic / Shutterstock

  First edition

  This book is dedicated to Lisa Brackman, who keeps me in order and keeps me sane.

  And also dedicated to the real Marisa Young, who was the high bidder in a charity auction and lent her name to one of my characters.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  Tydeham, Autumn 1943

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  A LITTLE GIRL

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  A LITTLE GIRL

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  A LITTLE GIRL

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  A LITTLE GIRL

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  A LITTLE GIRL

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  EPILOGUE

  Sunday Express, November 24, 1968

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR BIO

  PROLOGUE

  Tydeham, Dorset, England, September 1943

  There had been no advance warning, apart from an army vehicle that had appeared one blustery afternoon three weeks earlier. This in itself was strange, as there was no proper road to the village, only a lane that became rather muddy after rain. And it didn’t go anywhere, apart from down to the tiny harbour, where there were currently no fishing boats, the war having made fishing too dangerous in these waters. The open-topped Tilly army vehicle had driven down the one street, past the church, the schoolhouse, the pub and the row of cottages, to where the village ended in the overgrown track with steps down to the harbour. An officer, wearing a smart peaked army cap, had climbed out, looked around, and was heard by Mary Norton, who was getting in her washing before it rained, to say, “It will have to do. Luckily there’s nothing of historic value here.”

  She never bothered to pass along this statement, or the inhabitants might have been better prepared when the post office van came sloshing through puddles to deposit the mail at the village post office cum village shop. Mrs Jenkins, the postmistress/shop owner, had looked at the pile of letters bearing no stamps.

  “More rubbish from the government,” she had said to Fred Hammond, the driver. “I wonder what it will be this time?”

  “Probably cutting our sugar ration again,” he said. “Or the meat ration. But I bet that don’t affect you so much out here with your chickens and pigs.”

  “We do all right, I suppose,” she said. “Although the rats keep getting at our eggs, bloody nuisances.”

  “He don’t have to worry too much, do he?” The post office driver nodded up the street. “Him at the big house. Don’t he still have cows?”

  “No, they’re long gone,” she said. “Government took them. Now he don’t have that much more than we do. A couple of pigs and chickens. But a fine lot of fruit and veggies, and I must say he’s good enough to share with us.”

  “Well, he should, seeing as you’re his tenants, right? You pay him every month to live here, don’t you?”

  “We do, I suppose.” Mrs Jenkins smoothed down her apron. “Now I better get that lazybones Ned to take these around.”

  It turned out that the letters were not about the sugar ration. Instead they said:

  To the inhabitants of Tydeham. This is to inform you that His Majesty’s armed forces have need of your village to further the war effort. It has been requisitioned for invasion drills, commencing October 8th, 1943. You have two weeks to remove your belongings and vacate the village.

  Every adult occupant of Tydeham is required to attend a meeting at the village hall on September 24th, at eight p.m., where there will be further explanation and questions will be answered.

  “Bloody ’ell,” Ed Jenkins muttered when his wife showed him the letter. “They’ve got some nerve, haven’t they? Turning folks out of their homes? Homes they’ve lived in for generations?”

  “I suppose it is for the war effort, Ed,” Mrs Jenkins said, trying to be brave but not really any happier with the news than her husband had been. “They’ll have to rehouse us, won’t they? They can’t just turn us out into the street?”

  Ed shrugged. “I hear that’s what they’ve been doing in the cities that were bombed. Oh, your house just got flattened. Too bad. Don’t you have a relative to live with?”

  “We could go to my sister in Dorchester,” Mrs Jenkins said. “They have that spare bedroom now that young Jack . . .” She did not complete the sentence. Young Jack had go
ne down with his ship.

  “They’ll have to rehouse us,” Ed said firmly. “What about my vegetable patch, eh? I haven’t harvested half the stuff yet, and there’s the taters and onions I’ve put in.” He stood up resolutely. “I’m going to have a word with Mr Bennington. If anyone can set these army blokes straight, he can.”

  He grabbed his jacket and shoved his cap on to his head, then stomped off up the street, past the church and along the narrow path that led to what locals called “the big house.” Its real name was Tydeham Grange. It was an elegant stone manor house, set in grounds that had been manicured before the war. Now the croquet lawn had become a veggie patch. There were sheep grazing on the parkland behind the house, and a pigsty had been built beyond the stables. Ed met Mr Bennington himself coming out of one of the barns, carrying a pitchfork.

  “You’ve read the letter, have you?” Ed called to him.

  “I’m afraid I have. And I’ve already been on the telephone to London. It seems there’s not much we can do, Ed. They have to practice invasion tactics somewhere, and we seem to fit the bill. Come inside and have a cup of tea.”

  Ed followed him into the flagstone hallway of the manor house. The kitchen at the back of the house was warm, with the wood stove now taking the place of gas. At least there were still plenty of fallen trees on the estate. Mr Bennington put the kettle on.

  “Take a seat,” he said.

  Ed sat at the round kitchen table. “It didn’t say anything about compensation, did it?”

  “Not so far.” Mr Bennington took down the tea caddy in the shape of an Indian temple. His family had had connections to India for generations, and he himself had served in the Bengal Lancers as a young man.

  “They’ll have to give you something, won’t they? You own all this land. You own the bloody village, for Pete’s sake. Do they expect you to move to a council house?”

  Mr Bennington shrugged. “I expect we’ll be able to return after the war if they haven’t damaged the place too badly. They’ll give us money to rebuild and spruce the place up.”

  “That is, if we win,” Ed said drily. He accepted the mug that Mr Bennington handed him.

  “Oh, I think the tide has definitely turned. They wouldn’t be practicing invasion tactics if they weren’t hopeful of going across the Channel. And look at the success we’ve had in North Africa. Egypt, Malta, Sicily and now Italy. And how about those Dambusters? Marvellous stuff. Oh, we’ve got Hitler rattled all right.”

  “What does your wife say about this?” Ed asked.

  Mr Bennington looked worried. “She doesn’t know yet. She’s taken young James to Sherborne to look at the school. It’s about time we put his name down for a school somewhere, although I went to Marlborough, so he’d get in there easily enough. But Amelia doesn’t want him too far from home, in fact she doesn’t want him to go to boarding school at all. She’s become so anxious since the war started. Especially after Simon . . .” He paused, gave a sort of cough in his throat to hide emotion, then went on. “She never was the strongest of women to start with. I’m afraid this will really unsettle her. She does love her home.”

  “It will unsettle us all,” Ed said. “I reckon almost all the families have been here for hundreds of years, haven’t they? Working your land or fishing. It’s only the schoolmistress and the vicar who are outsiders, and they don’t live here, do they?”

  Mr Bennington sighed. “I suppose all we can say is that it’s a damned sight better than what those poor blighters are going through in Burma or on the Italian beaches.”

  Ed nodded. “You’ve got something there. I can’t tell you how happy I was when they said I was too old to join up.”

  “They didn’t want me,” Mr Bennington said. “I had rheumatic fever when I was in India. It’s affected my heart. I’m supposed to be taking it easy, although mucking out pigsties, digging up vegetables and picking apples because the young lads are off at war can hardly be described as a quiet life, can it?”

  Ed drained his mug, savouring the taste of sugar at the bottom. Sugar was a luxury these days, and Betty only allowed him one small spoonful in his tea. He stood up. “Well, I’ll be getting along then, sir. I’m right sorry that you’ll be losing this lovely place, too. But I can tell you I’ll be giving those army fellows a piece of my mind at the meeting. We’re not going to give up without a fight.”

  Charles Bennington watched him go, shaking his head. “They can fight all they want,” he muttered, “but they are not going to win.”

  The fighting sentiment was echoed at the Golden Hinde pub that evening.

  “First it’s no bloody whisky, then it’s bloody beer that’s watered down, and now it’s no bloody house to live in,” Bert Thatcher said, banging his pint mug on the counter for emphasis. “When we get to that meeting, we’ll just tell them we’re not going to take it. They can practice their invading somewhere else. I’m not leaving my cottage, and that’s that.”

  “You tell ’em, Bert!” said Tom Pierce, the landlord of the village pub, but he was smiling and shaking his head. “If the army listens to any of us, they’ll listen to you.”

  Bert was a strapping chap, over six feet tall and quite broad. He’d tried to join up but at forty-eight was considered too old. And, as a land worker, too valuable.

  The tiny village hall stood behind the church on the south side of the village street. To access it, you had to walk through the churchyard, past the graves of generations of ancestors, which the villagers had never paid attention to until now. On the evening of September 24, Ed Jenkins paused on his way to the hall.

  “Come on, Ed. We don’t want to have to sit at the back.” Betty tugged his arm.

  “I’m just wondering if they plan to move my poor old mum and dad,” he said, gazing down at the tombstone. “And my grandparents, too. I don’t like the thought of them being disturbed in their graves.”

  “It can’t do them too much harm now, can it?” Betty was always pragmatic. “It’s us I’m worried about.”

  The hall was packed. Not just the adults of the village were in attendance, but parents had brought young children, and men had brought their dogs. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and an angry muttering echoed. The Benningtons had seated themselves on the front row. Mr Bennington was in a blazer and slacks; Mrs Bennington was wearing a smart hat and kid gloves, as befitted the occasion. Six-year-old James beside her looked at all the angry and anguished faces and wondered what it was all about. His mummy had been upset all the time, ever since his brother had been killed in the RAF. And now everyone else in that hall looked the same.

  The vicar came in through a side door and stood off to one side. He was still a youngish man, and he surveyed his congregation helplessly.

  “So you reckon a few prayers would do any good, Vicar?” Tom Pierce asked, having spotted him. As a well-known atheist, he was only goading, but the vicar shook his head.

  “I don’t think prayers seem to be very effective in this war, Tom. I’m afraid we’ll all have to make the best of it and presume that God has a long-term plan.”

  “It’s all right for you,” Bert Thatcher said. “You don’t even bloody live here.”

  The vicar nodded in acknowledgement of this. He was in charge of two small churches, ten miles apart, and lived at the rectory of the further one. “But I’ve grown very fond of this place, and its inhabitants, you know. I’ll be sorry to lose you all.”

  “As if it’s not bad enough having our men off and fighting,” Joan Lee said from the row behind the Benningtons. She was a tiny woman in her forties who had produced two very large sons. “And they’ll be wanting my boys before you can say Jack Robinson. Of course they’re raring to go, silly sods. Aren’t you?” She nudged one of the strapping lads sitting beside her. The boy gave an embarrassed grin. She turned to Amy Pierce, whose own son, a gangly boy who seemed all arms and legs, was engrossed in a small glass puzzle box. “You’re lucky your Freddie will be out of it.”

  Amy grunted. “That’s right. Lucky old us,” she said. She was about to say more but broke off as two army officers came in. A hush fell as the men walked up to the front dais and stood, surveying the crowd.

  “Right,” one of them said, not looking as if he was going to enjoy the next few minutes. “It’s good of you all to come.”

  “The bloody notice said we had to,” muttered a voice from the back.

  “I’m sure this has come as a big shock to you all. You are, after all, being asked to leave your homes. And we would not be doing this if it were not absolutely essential to the war effort. We have to practice for the eventuality of an invasion, you see. And the terrain here is ideal for what we need. Tricky cliffs beyond the village. Buildings that we can pretend are occupied by the German army. We looked at several sites and felt that yours presented the least disruption. Only eight families displaced, and fishing is temporarily banned, so not enough work here.”