Tempt Not the Stars

Julius Falconer

Description

The Hon. Mr and Mrs Bede Lambton, of Abberton Hall in Worcestershire, persuade their nephew Gregory to enter a competition run by the Syrian Ministry of Tourism. Gregory, a student in the archaeology department of Bristol University, produces a paper called 'The Syrian Sapphire', but it is a housemate of his, Sheena Morrison, who submits it in her own name and under a changed title, 'The Star of Syria'. The day after being told that her entry has won, Sheena is murdered. There appears to be nothing in Sheena's life or in the competition entry to justify such savage action. Inspector Wickfield and Sergeant Hewitt find themselves baffled by a seemingly motiveless murder. Had the killer mistaken his victim? Was the murder a burglary that had gone wrong? Had the recent theft in New York of the fabulous sapphire known as the Star of India anything to do with the case? You are invited to accompany Inspector Stan Wickfield and Sergeant Hewitt on their grim journey of discovery into the motivation of an astute and determined killer. You will be given every item of information accessible to the investigating team: are you clever enough to read the runes? Julius Falconer's erudite and sophisticated stories are a byword for urbane and stylish entertainment. In this case you have the added benefit of learning the basics of Syriac, if you so desire!Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Pneuma Springs Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 juillet 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782281542
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Tempt Not
The stars


Another Case for Inspector Wickfield



Julius Falconer
Copyright
First Published in 2010 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
Tempt Not the Stars Copyright © 2010 Julius Falconer
Mobi eISBN 9781907728839 ePub eISBN 9781782281542 PDF eISBN 9781782280675 Paperback ISBN: 9781905809950
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.
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: [e-mail] W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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.
Dedication

Tempt not the stars ... thou canst not play with the severity of fate.

The words of the philosopher Tecnicus
in John Ford’s The Broken Heart [1633],
Act I, scene 3, lines 1-2



This book is dedicated to
Miss Jessica Heslop
whose friendship over the years
has enriched my life
The Novel
One
Little stirred in the breakfast room at Abberton Hall. The only sound without was the subdued moan of the wind in the elms that bordered the gravelled drive. Within, only the gentle mastication of food vied with the rustle of that day’s Times and the occasional turning of a page of a collection of O.Henry’s short stories. Edelina and Bede – the Hon. Mr and Mrs - Lambton were at breakfast. It was a cold day in early December, and since neither breakfaster had urgent plans for the morning, there was an air of unhurried calm about the meal. A large wolfhound, seemingly partial to the tranquillity, lay stretched out on the hearth-rug, immobile, its chest gently rising and falling to the rhythm of its unpretentious canine life. That the morning was about to give birth to events that would convulse the Hall was apparent to no one.

Edelina and Bede Lambton were enjoying what they liked to consider the prime of life. The former, scion of a well-to-do Worcester family, was an attractive woman in her early forties, slender, elegant, of an agreeably equable temperament. The rosiness of her cheeks testified to her passion for galloping on horseback round the estate and the lanes and bridle-ways that surrounded it. Her auburn hair, usually trained in a stylish French braid, hung this morning in an unruly cataract of curls over her shoulders. As well as duties associated with her position as wife and mother, Edelina spent time supporting the village church of St Eadburgha and community activities both at Abberton itself and in the neighbouring villages of Flyford Flavell to the north and Bishampton to the south. Her social conscience was well-developed. Her talents included the harp, photography – collections of her wild-life scenes had been published nationally – and haute cuisine (of which her husband was appreciative, but less so than she thought it warranted!). Her management of the household staff, which comprised a single char-lady, was exemplary in its efficiency and kindliness.

Bede, on the other hand, was large of frame and bony of countenance. Beetling and bushy eyebrows added a touch of mild eccentricity to what was already a rugged face rendered mahogany by daily acquaintance with the fresh air of the Abberton estate. He too rode, and to minimise the toil associated with horses, the couple employed a part-time groom. There was also a game-keeper, shared with the estate nearby at Ragley. Bede was assiduous in the management of his own domain: the home farm, the tied cottages, the shoot, the holiday lets. He was a silent man, not out of lack of things to say, but out of conviction that the world was already overflowing with idle talk that added nothing to the quality of daily life. His pastimes included antique clock-repairs, which he conducted in an attic workshop, and gardening. In sum, the Lambtons were cultivated members of the landowning class who admirably fulfilled the role of such in the local area.

The sprawling house in which they lived and brought up their three children was a seventeenth-century construction on an earlier foundation: mellow and aristocratic and homely in a grand sort of way. Scattered trees punctuated the village, but beyond the immediate village boundaries, the landscape was a patchwork of pasture and cultivated fields. A single lane enabled the inhabitants to drive to other destinations, north-east or south-west. On three sides (if one may so speak of the circumference of a circle), Abberton was ringed by a brook which rose to the north-west and circled clockwise to join the Whitsun Brook to the south-west.

Sharing this harmonious and seductive retreat was, at the time of these events, a nephew of the owners, one Gregory Lambton, son of Bede’s eldest brother. He was a third-year student of archaeology at Bristol, and on his way home to Bedford he had decided to spend a few days with his uncle and aunt at Abberton. He was a spare, lanky individual with a mop of mousey hair and a guileless face, who twitched and plunged round the university in a blur of deep academic thought. He lived for the ancient, the arcane, the exotic, and he was particularly attracted to the countries of the Middle East as seats of mysterious and forgotten learning forged in the swirl of empires and the movements of peoples. It was his undoing. On this Tuesday he had not yet descended to breakfast, but he was on his way.

Perhaps this would be a suitable point to identify your narrator. If you thought you were reading Julius Falconer, I regret that I am about to disabuse you. The author of these lines used to be a detective inspector with the Worcestershire force. I lived, and still do, in Worcester with my wife Beth, and I was assisted in this case by young Hewitt, who had worked with me since his promotion to sergeant two years before. (Sergeant Hewitt was a Cornishman born and bred, in his early thirties, married, with two daughters, one at secondary school and one still at primary. His wife worked as a primary school teacher in Stourport. Unlike his ‘line manager’, as today’s parlance has it, he was always impeccably turned out: a sartorial credit to the force.) My surname, Wickfield, was necessarily handed down from my ancestors, but why my parents should choose to christen me Stanley I am not quite sure. Now blessedly retired, I have decided to bypass the services of Mr Julius Falconer in laying before you the fatal events surrounding Gregory Lambton’s efforts to promote a knowledge of Christian Syria. I should perhaps explain that I am not totally dissatisfied with Mr Falconer’s efforts to bring to a wider public some of my sleuthing experiences, although I sometimes think that he has too lively a penchant for homing in on my small, very small, slip-ups at the expense of the wider accomplishments of my career. However, he is otherwise engaged – the result of a dispute with an intractable lamp-post – and he has graciously invited me to proceed without him. (If you knew him, you would realise that this is no small token of his mellowing. Usually he begrudges me the penning of a single word, on the grounds that I am not a ‘proper’ writer, only an amateur hack blowing his own trumpet. You shall judge for yourself.)

In due course Gregory tumbled into the breakfast room, with muttered apologies for his late appearance. He helped himself to sausage, black pudding and scrambled egg from the hot-plates on the side-board and a cup of coffee from the pot and sat down beside his uncle, accidentally nudging the latter’s elbow and causing him to spill his tea.
Silence reigned again, to be broken by Bede’s peremptory tones.
‘Greg,’ Bede said, ‘here’s something right up your street. It might just get you focussing your ungainly mind.’
‘Yes, uncle,’ was the only response.
‘Listen to this.’ Edelina too looked up, wondering what it was that had distracted her husband from working purposefully through the paper.
‘The headline is, “Win Yourself a Fabulous Prize!” I should explain that it’s an advertisement, not the words of a reporter who’s wandered from his script; and this is what it says:




‘There, Greg,’ Bede continued, ‘that gives you over two months to dream up something suitable, and then you can nominate your favourite uncle and aunt to pick up the prize! What could be more dutiful than that?’
‘I’m not sure - ’ Gregory replied, ‘ - the first bit, I mean, not the second. For one thing, it’s quite a hefty work-load at uni this year, and for another, there are bound to be lots of entries focussing on archaeology, so it’s going to be pretty competitive in my own field.’
‘Well, maybe, but it can’t do any harm to write away for the details and see what transpires, can it?’
‘No, perhaps not,’ the young man admitted reluctantly.

Acknowledging the sagacity of at least taking a closer look at the competition, Gregory Lambton wrote away for details, and a week later, still at Abberton, he received an A4 sheet in perfect English, below a photograph of the citadel at Aleppo, which read as follows:
Dear Sir or Madam
We should like to thank you for your interest in our competition. The rules are few and simple.
In the first instance, entries should be typed on A4, one side of the sheet only, and should not extend to more than 3000 words. Please be assured that at this stage we are looking for ideas only: if your entry is one of the international winners, you will be given ample opportunity to develop it.
In the second instance, your entry should focus on one idea only, in a relevant area of your choice. There is no proscribed area.
In the third instance, your audience is to be your own countrymen: it is they