Fire in the Thatch: A Devon Mystery (A Devon Mystery: British Library Crime Classics) - Softcover

Lorac, E. C. R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1464209677 ISBN 13: 9781464209673

Verlag: POISONED PEN PR, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

"Readers will enjoy watching the conflicts that arise between the wary country folk and the cocktail-drinking Londoners invading their habitat. In sum, this is jolly good fun." —Publishers Weekly

The Second World War is drawing to a close. Nicholas Vaughan, released from the army after an accident, takes refuge in Devon—renting a thatched cottage in the beautiful countryside at Mallory Fitzjohn. Vaughan sets to work farming the land, rearing geese and renovating the cottage. Hard work and rural peace seem to make this a happy bachelor life.

On a nearby farm lives the bored, flirtatious June St Cyres, an exile from London while her husband is a Japanese POW. June's presence attracts fashionable visitors of dubious character, and threatens to spoil Vaughan's prized seclusion.

When Little Thatch is destroyed in a blaze, all Vaughan's work goes up in smoke—and Inspector Macdonald is drafted in to uncover a motive for murder.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

E.C.R. LORAC was a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894-1958) who was a prolific writer of crime fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a member of the prestigious Detection Club. Her books have been almost entirely neglected since her death, but deserve rediscovery as fine examples of classic British crime fiction in its golden age.

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Fire in the Thatch

A Devon Mystery

By E.C.R. Lorac

Poisoned Pen Press

Copyright © 2018 Estate of E.C.R. Lorac
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4642-0967-3

CHAPTER 1

1

Colonel St Cyres stepped out of the French window on to the terrace and drew in a deep breath of frosty air, conscious of the exhilaration of a glorious December morning. He always felt better out of doors. In the open air the worries and irritations of life seemed less immediate, and he felt that he lost a burden when he closed the window behind him.

The prospect before him was one to give a sense of wellbeing to any healthy man, and St Cyres, still in his early sixties, was vigorous enough to enjoy the keen still air and the glory of winter sunshine. Beyond the low wall of the terrace the frost-rimed meadows gleamed and sparkled, sloping down to the river a couple of hundred yards below. On the farther bank the land rose again in a series of gentle ridges, meadow land, plough land, and finally wood land in the distance. Here and there a thatched roof seemed to be tucked into the comfortable folds of the rich Devon valley, and blue wood smoke coiled into the still cold air. Everything was agleam with hoar frost, scintillating in the level rays of a sun which threw shafts of intense light along the valley and made the swift-running river flash back the white beams.

Down by the river some bullocks grazed in the lush grasses which never fail in a Devon pasture. Colonel St Cyres chuckled as a couple of the lusty young beasts horned one another around the pasture — Red Devons, the famous Ruby beef cattle, snorting and blowing in their youthful vigour.

St Cyres thrust some letters into the pocket of his old tweed coat and hastened along the terrace towards the corner where a cluster of outbuildings stood against a larch coppice. In his other hand was a good crust of bread and he munched it appreciatively though with a shamefaced grin. He had done a bolt, he admitted it frankly; he had brought his breakfast to finish out of doors or in the wood-shed, and he knew just why he had done it.

"God knows why he married her, poor chap — but scent at breakfast is more than I can stomach," he said to himself.

The "poor chap" of whom the Colonel was thinking was his son, Denis, now a prisoner of war in Japanese hands. Whether the Colonel's epithet was due to Denis's plight or to the wife he had married was uncertain, but Colonel St Cyres disliked his daughter-in-law as heartily as any well-bred man allowed himself to dislike a woman. The Colonel was a countryman. He loved the country and his own ancestral acres with an unquestioning tacit devotion. He liked country clothes and country ways, the smell of dung, the rich red Devon mud, the slow slurred speech of his humble country neighbours and the inconveniences of an ancient house set miles away from trains or bus routes.

June St Cyres was a Londoner. She had been born in a flat in Mayfair, and a flat in Mayfair was her ideal of happiness. She liked fashionable clothes and shoes, French cooking, modern dance music, and what she called Society. She used elaborate make-up, vivid nail varnish, and Coty perfumes. When Denis had been reported as prisoner of war six months ago, Colonel St Cyres had gone up to London to see his daughter-in-law.

"Come down to us, my dear," he had said, "and bring the little chap with you. It'll be better for both of you, and we'll look after you and save you any worries and troubles we can."

Full of kindliness and sympathy, St Cyres persuaded June to give up her flat in town and to come with her small boy to live at Manor Thatch.

June had acquiesced at first. She was lonely and frightened and in debt. June St Cyres was one of those young women who can never live within their incomes, but she was shrewd enough to know that she could live at the Manor without paying anything for her upkeep. Also, she could not get a nurse for small Michael in town, or any domestic help in the flat, and she was very tired of "the damned chores" as she expressed it. At Manor Thatch there were some old servants — and Anne could help with Michael. Anne was Denis's sister, a sensible domesticated creature of thirty — though June always regarded her sister-in-law as a woman of fifty. Anne was a sober, quiet woman, who lived contentedly in the same tweed suit year after year.

June came down to the Manor, bringing five-year-old Michael and a mountain of luggage. She had been there for six months, and it was difficult to say who disliked the arrangement most — June or her father-in-law. Chivalry and a sense of duty prevented Colonel St Cyres from suggesting any other arrangement. With June, it was sheer inertia which kept her at Manor Thatch, coupled to money difficulties. She wanted to go back to London, but the rents asked for any habitation which she called "possible" appalled her. Everything was expensive, and service was unobtainable. Two or three visits to town, staying at the Dorchester, had not assisted her laudable intentions of paying her debts. Bored, grumbling, and discontented, June St Cyres continued to stay at Manor Thatch. Irritated, hurt, but never complaining, her father-in-law tried to keep the peace and to put up with June's untidiness and laziness, her habit of keeping the wireless on all day, and her total lack of consideration for anyone but herself.

2

It was Anne who uttered the warning which sent her father out of doors before he had had his second cup of coffee.

"June is coming down to breakfast. I believe she wants to talk to you about letting Little Thatch to those friends of hers."

Colonel St Cyres choked back his immediate exclamation of "Good God!" and said hastily, "Er ... er ... later in the day will do for that. I've got a letter from a friend of Robert Wilton's ... a naval chap, invalided out. Sounds all right ... I shall be in the wood-shed if you want me, Anne ..."

The wood-shed was the Colonel's favourite refuge. He loved wood and he loved wood fires. At the moment he had two vast logs of ash — the split bole of an old tree — and he wanted to cut them up in his own particular way. "Ash green or ash dry, meet for a queen to warm her fingers by," he murmured as he rolled the wood over to a convenient angle and considered the matter of driving a wedge in to split it. Leisurely in all his ways, he did not hurry. Having arranged his log and chosen his wedges, he lighted his pipe and took his letters out of his pocket. Anne's sentence about letting Little Thatch made Colonel St Cyres anxious to consider the letter he had received that morning. Smoothing out the sheet, St Cyres read:

"Sir, — I am advised to write to you by Commander Wilton, who tells me that you have a small property to let — Little Thatch. I have recently been invalided out of the Navy on account of damaged eyesight, and I am seeking a small holding or house with an acre or more of good fertile land suitable for intensive cultivation. I aim at a market garden combined with an orchard and should be glad to keep a few head of stock if pasture is available. I am very fit and intend to work my own land, and I can housekeep for myself for the time being. If your property is what I am seeking, I should be willing to buy, or to take it on an assured tenancy of some years' duration so that it would be worth while putting work and capital into cultivating the land. I have the opportunity of driving over to see Little Thatch to-morrow morning at 10.30. If I do not hear from you to the contrary by 10 a.m. I shall assume that I can be allowed to view the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: POISONED PEN PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1464209677
• ISBN 13: 9781464209673
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 244
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland