ALSO BY T E KINSEY

  A Quiet Life in the Country

  In the Market for Murder

  Death Around the Bend

  Christmas at the Grange

  A Picture of Murder

  The Burning Issue of the Day

  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. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by T E Kinsey

  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 Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542016056

  ISBN-10: 1542016053

  Cover design and illustration by Lisa Horton

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  When you’re packing for a holiday, even Sunday can be a source of joy. I’ve never been overly fond of Sundays and I usually try to put off getting up to face the day until the last possible moment. But this Sunday we were preparing for a week away, and I was up and doing long before my usual hour. The local birds were still mid-chorus by the time I had the range lit and the kettle on. We were going to the seaside and I wanted everything to be ready.

  Notwithstanding our comparative nearness to the coast, and in spite of my repeated requests, we had spent a little over two years at Littleton Cotterell without once having been to the seaside. At least twice a month I suggested that we should jump into the motor car and see the sea. With the same frequency, Lady Hardcastle agreed and then promptly did nothing about it. When challenged about this inaction in the winter, she would say, ‘I know I said we should, but don’t you think it’s just a little too cold?’ In the summer she would say, ‘Of course we shall – I promised, didn’t I?’ But some other project or obligation invariably got in the way.

  By the end of June 1910, I had begun to despair of ever visiting the seaside again. It came as an extremely pleasant surprise, then, when one day, entirely out of the blue, Lady Hardcastle announced over breakfast that she had booked us into the Steep Holm View Hotel in Weston-super-Mare.

  ‘I know it’s only Weston, and we should probably be going to somewhere scenic in Devon or Dorset, but the hotel itself comes highly recommended.’

  ‘By whom?’ I said.

  ‘Gertie Farley-Stroud,’ she said. ‘I asked her if she knew anywhere fun to stay in Weston and she came up with a few places. Then she called me back later in the day and said that we absolutely had to stay at the Steep Holm View. It seems someone had just recommended it to her. Less imposing than the Grand Atlantic, but a little more elegant and refined, they said. “Cosy” was the word she used, I believe.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Will there be toffee apples? Cockles? Sticks of rock with “Weston-super-Mare” written all the way through?’

  She laughed. ‘There might well be. Although I think sticks of rock are more of a northern thing, aren’t they? Blackpool and the like. There will almost certainly be brass bands, though, as well as at least one orchestra, and probably a Pierrot show. Punch and Judy, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘There’s a pier, isn’t there?’

  ‘The “Grand Pier”, so the literature assures me.’

  ‘And donkey rides?’

  ‘Famously, donkey rides are offered on the beach at Weston, yes.’

  ‘Then put me on the list of attendees,’ I said. ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Monday morning,’ she said.

  It was Friday.

  ‘As a matter of interest,’ I said. ‘When did you make the booking?’

  ‘What, dear?’ she said absently, having already picked up the morning post and moved on to other things. ‘The booking? A couple of weeks ago, I think. I thought it would be a nice surprise.’

  For my part, I thought it would have been nice to have more than a weekend’s notice of the trip, but I decided it would be churlish to say so.

  And so it was that Sunday 3 July 1910 was spent in a familiar frenzy of packing. Evening dresses were selected, along with afternoon dresses, morning dresses and a selection of outdoor clothes. The summer weather had been grey and unseasonably cool thus far, and the newspapers glumly predicted that this would continue for the foreseeable future. That the future foreseen by the weather forecasters at the Met Office seldom stretched beyond the coming twenty-four hours didn’t stop the newspapers bemoaning another lost summer. I packed mackintoshes, just in case it rained, but I decided against heavy boots and coats – it was a seaside holiday, after all, and I’d definitely be speaking up against any day-trip proposals that entailed trekking in the wilderness.

  As usual, I was also instructed to pack watercolours and a portable easel – ‘just in case I get the urge to paint’. Lady Hardcastle was an accomplished artist, but most of her artistic energies were devoted to the making of ‘animated’ moving pictures, usually involving tiny hand-made puppets. Nevertheless, she felt herself to be under-packed and unprepared if she set out on a journey to somewhere scenic without her paints.

  Field glasses, it was suggested, might be needed for the observation of birds, and for looking out to sea at passing ships on their way to and from the docks at Bristol. I never objected to the packing of field glasses, having retained the childlike glee of seeing distant objects brought within touching distance by the mystical magic of precision-made German lenses.

  ‘No need to bring the golf clubs,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘The links are lovely, I’m told, but I can’t imagine being invited to play. Do you think we’ll need tennis rackets?’

  ‘We have room in the motor car,’ I said. ‘It would be no trouble.’

  ‘No, let’s save room for souvenirs. You never know what delights we might find.’

  Earlier that year, we had taken delivery of a brand-new motor car, designed and built by Lady Hardcastle’s friend, Lord Riddlethorpe – known to his friends as ‘Fishy’. He owned a motor-racing team and had been toying with the idea of building road-going versions of his racing motor cars. The idea was to provide enthusiasts with the thrill of owning a powerful racer in a machine that could also be used to potter down to the country for the weekend loaded with a wife and her impedimenta.

  A prototype had been designed and Lady Hardcastle had been given the job of testing it out, being someone who was both keen on driving and who also had extensive knowledge – by virtue of actually being one – of what the modern lady required from a motor car.

  It was a lengthy beast, powered by a racing engine of Lord Riddlethorpe’s own design. It had only two seats, but unlike almost all other vehicles of the day, both the driver and passenger sat together in an enclosed compartment, protected from the elements. Having travelled many miles in our old Rover 6, shiveringly exposed to whatever horrors the English weather had chosen to throw at us, I considered this innovation to be worth most of the price of admission on its own.

  Its capacious boot, too, was about to prove its worth. There would be space enough within to carry all our baggage and still leave room, as Lady Hardcastle said, for souvenirs. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what manner of souvenirs we might bring back from Weston-super-Mare, but it was pleasing to know that there would be space for them if we found them.

  It was around forty miles from Littleton Cotterell to Weston and even in the new motor car – with its terrifying top speed of nearly sixty miles per hour – the journey would take more than two hours once we had weaved our way through the traffic in Bristol. Accordingly, we had agreed to set off as early as we could to maximize our time beside the sea.

  Miss Jones, Lady Hardcastle’s cook, and Edna – whose official title was housemaid, though she also carried out many of the duties of a housekeeper – had been given the week off, so it was up to me to organize breakfast before our early start. The range was lit, the bacon sizzling, and I took Lady Hardcastle a tray of morning coffee and a round of buttered toast to get her started.

  ‘Good morning, my lady,’ I said brightly to the human-sized lump under the covers.

  An indistinct croak emanated from somewhere near the pillows – ever since I had known her it had been Lady Hardcastle’s habit to sleep entirely under the bedcovers. A hand appeared, tentatively pulling down the sheet and exposing blinkingly unready eyes to the muted daylight.

  ‘It’s a lovely day,’ I said. ‘Well, when I say “lovely”, obviously you have to put that into the context of o
ur otherwise disappointing summer. It’s not raining, at least.’

  ‘I smell coffee,’ she said. ‘And toast.’

  ‘Your elegantly ladylike conk serves you well,’ I said. ‘I thought you could get a head start on breakfast while I put the finishing touches to the main event downstairs. It’ll be on the table in ten minutes, with or without you.’

  I would have preferred to set the tray on her lap, but she was still some minutes from being able to sit upright and I was conscious that the bacon would be burning soon, so I left the tray on the floor beside the bed and slipped out. A hoarse, ‘Thank you, dear,’ followed me down the stairs.

  It took another twelve minutes for me to get breakfast to the morning-room table, and fifteen for Lady Hardcastle to appear in her dressing gown, still yawning and rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  ‘Whose idea was it to get up this early?’ she said as she sat down.

  ‘Yours,’ I said. ‘You insisted that we be on the road by nine so as to enjoy as much time as possible “eating ice cream and paddling in the sea”.’

  ‘I dimly recall saying something of the sort. Why didn’t you stop me?’

  ‘I tried. You said, “Pish and fiddlesticks, Florence Armstrong. We shall have our fun and plenty of it. We can be in Weston in time for lunch if we get our skates on.” You insisted that you would have no trouble rising in time for breakfast and a nine o’clock start. My protestations were thereafter in vain.’

  ‘That sounds familiar, too. I should pay you more heed.’

  ‘I try to tell you that often,’ I said. ‘But you pay me no heed.’

  ‘Must try harder. Are we all packed?’

  ‘Just a few last-minute bits and bobs,’ I said. ‘And I’ll need a hand heaving the trunk into the boot – it’s a two-man job, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We’ll manage. I say, that bacon looks good.’

  We ate our breakfast and made speculative plans to do seasidey things.

  ‘I, for one, want to stroll along the prom,’ I said. ‘And if there’s no brass band playing tiddley-om-pom-pom I want my money back.’

  ‘I’m sure we can manage that,’ she said. ‘Oh. Wait. Is the car fully fuelled?’

  ‘I topped it up yesterday while you were fiddle-faddling about in the orangery.’

  ‘I like to think of it as “making moving-picture history”,’ she said. ‘But fiddle-faddling is as good a description as any. What about the oil?’

  ‘Oil and water checked. Battery checked. Windscreen cleaned. We really are very ready.’

  ‘Then all that remains is for me to dress more appropriately for polite society and we shall away.’

  Less than an hour later, she was dressed in her travelling clothes and we had hoisted the trunk into the car.

  Among the many new and exciting features added to the motor car by Lord Riddlethorpe and his engineers was one that had been especially designed to save me from exhausting effort and to remove the risk of barked shins and broken wrists. Once running, an internal combustion engine is a modern marvel that turns petroleum spirit into work. I was convinced that it would change the world, but only once it was running. Until then, it was a recalcitrant lump of iron that had to be coaxed into operation by the vigorous cranking of a heavy handle. When the engine had thus been brought to life, it was possible for the starting handle to spin wildly, whereupon it assumed the most famous of a swan’s many attributes: it could break a man’s (or woman’s) arm. Lord Riddlethorpe’s technical magicians had added a small electric motor that was able to undertake this perilous cranking operation at the press of a button, saving me from exertion and injury.

  Once we were settled in the comfortable cabin, Lady Hardcastle pressed the button. The engine started first time. We were on our way to Weston.

  The new motor car was officially named the Riddlethorpe Shinatobe, after the Japanese goddess of the four winds. Lady Hardcastle’s report on the vehicle began with her firm assertion that no one would know how to pronounce the name, nor would they know who or what Shinatobe was even if they managed to say it correctly.

  She had no better suggestions, though, and had named the motor car ‘Phyllis’ for reasons I couldn’t fathom. Whatever her name, she loped easily along the Gloucester Road towards Bristol. She was a noisy creation but the roaring of her oversized engine did, at least, warn other road users of our approach. Horses were particularly discomfited by the sound, and we found that incidences of fist-shaking and shouted admonishments from their owners had increased dramatically. Few had been pleased to see the old Rover, it’s true, but there was something about Phyllis that seemed to annoy almost everyone.

  We passed through the centre of the city without incident and were soon out into the countryside on our way towards the Mendips and the sea.

  ‘Do you know what I find strange about Phyllis?’ said Lady Hardcastle as she changed gear to climb another hill. ‘Not having to get togged up to drive her. Part of me misses all the palaver of hats, goggles, and gauntlets.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But a larger part of me doesn’t miss the wind, the rain, and the biting cold. This is much more civilized.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Oh I say, look. The cows are lying down. And you know what that means.’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘It means they’re tired.’

  She laughed. ‘We’ve known each other far too long,’ she said. ‘But it still might rain.’

  ‘It might. But I packed umbrellas and mackintoshes. We’ll be fine.’

  The countryside wound by in a seemingly endless procession of hedgerows, fields and cattle. It was oddly mesmerizing and I found myself being lulled into a comfortable doze. It seemed as though barely any time had passed before we saw a signpost telling us that we were less than five miles from Weston-super-Mare.

  The town, when we arrived, seemed very fresh and new. As a child, I’d visited seaside towns all over the country – there were few places the circus hadn’t been to. But my memories were of old fisherman’s cottages, markets selling the day’s catch, and huge sheds for drying nets. Weston gave the appearance of having been built overnight at the end of the last century by the same builders who had shaped the outer suburbs of Bristol – sturdy houses fronted with undressed stone with decorative sandstone at the corners and around the windows.

  I made a mental note to find out the correct architectural terms for these features, but my train of thought was derailed by a sudden, ‘Whoops! Oh dear. I do hope he’s all right,’ from Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘Who?’ I asked, turning to look out through the small back window.

  ‘Nothing, dear,’ she said breezily. ‘Chap on a bicycle. I’m sure he’ll be fine.’

  I returned to my contemplation of Weston-super-Mare. There were older buildings here and there, but it had the appearance of a young, bustling town. It looked like a town with confidence, a place of pleasure and possibility. As we wove our way through the residential streets, past busy little shops and into the crowded centre, there were people everywhere. Traffic was heavy, too, with carts and wagons of all shapes and sizes carrying essential supplies to and fro, and even the horses looked young and energetic. There were a few motor cars, as well, but nothing as outlandish as Phyllis.

  It wasn’t long before we found ourselves on the seafront, heading towards the pier. To our left were small stretches of grass. Beyond them, the promenade, bounded by the sea wall. Beyond the sea wall was a smooth, sandy beach. And beyond that . . . mud. Endless miles of mud.

  ‘Where’s the sea?’ I asked plaintively.

  ‘Out,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘What, “out” as in “gone to visit some friends in Ireland, back next week” out?’

  ‘It’s the Bristol Channel, dear,’ she said. ‘When the tide goes out, it really, really goes out.’

  ‘Does it ever come in?’

  ‘Twice a day, just like everywhere else. Some high tides used to flood the town.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m not slightly dismayed,’ I said. ‘We can only paddle at high tide?’

  ‘Were you really intending to paddle?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I confessed. ‘But it would have been nice to have the option.’

  She laughed. ‘There’s the Grand Atlantic on our right,’ she said. ‘It is rather grand, isn’t it? That’s the pier on our left, do you see?’