Death's Own Door (the Lydmouth Series)

  • ISBN: 9780340696026
  • Author: Andrew Taylor
  • Description:
    When the body of Rufus Moorcroft, a middle-aged widower with a distinguished war record, is found in his summerhouse, the verdict is suicide. But both reporter Jill Francis and her lover, Detective Richard Thornhill, approaching the case from different angles, discover there's more to it than that. The key to the mystery stetches back to a highly-charged summer before the war, and back to another death. A local asylum plays a part, as do a moderately famous artist and his wife; Superintendent Williamson, now retired and loathing it; Councillor Bernie Broadbent - a man with more pies than fingers to put in them; a Cambridge don; an aristocratic unmarried mother, now gleefully drawing her old-age pension; and - to Thornhill's surprise and growing horror - his own wife, Edith. About the Author Andrew Taylor has worked as a boatbuilder, wages clerk, librarian, labourer and publisher's reader. He has written many crime novels as well as children's books and lives with his wife and their two children in the Forest of Dean, on the borders of England and Wales. Excerpted from Death's Own Door by Andrew Taylor. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Edith did not listen to the words he was saying. For all she knew or cared he might have been reading the weather forecast. She heard his voice, though deeper and firmer than it had been. The rest of the service flowed around her as if it were a stream and she were a rock in the middle of it: and in time the softest water wore down the hardest stone. Jack Graig can't be here. His uncle had died only a week ago. He couldn't have come back to England in that time, surely? And Rufus Moorcroft had only been an uncle, not a father. They wouldn't have sent him home on compassionate leave for an uncle. She felt angry while she stood, knelt, sat, sang and prayed angry with herself for giving way to a sentimental impulse, angry with fate, and most of all angry with Jack Graig for having the gall to turn up after all these years. The mourners followed the coffin and the priest into the sun-filled churchyard. Edith had wondered whether they would allow Rufus Moorcroft to lie here. She and Randolph Haughton fell in at the end of the procession which wound between the gravestones to a part of the churchyard near the northern boundary. There were few headstones here, and a pair of trees, a whitebeam and a yew, created a partial screen. Perhaps this was where they put people like Rufus Moorcroft. She kept on the fringe of the crowd around the open grave, making sure that she was behind Jack Graig. Probably he wouldn't know her from Adam or, rather, from Eve, but she did not want to put it to the test. She recognised the perpetually frowning features of old George Shipston, the senior partner of the solicitors' firm in Castle Street. Another familiar face belonged to a middle-aged woman in a squashed felt hat.`Morning, Mrs Thornhill,' said a man's voice at her shoulder.Startled, she turned her head. `Brian.'Detective Sergeant Kirby smiled at her and raised his hat, a new bowler which had left a welt across his forehead. He wore a dark suit with padded shoulders which made him look broader than he was, almost like a spiv. The gay green pattern of his tie clashed with the green silk handkerchief peeping from the breast pocket of his jacket. He was bursting with colour and energy, like an exploding firework.`Just keeping a watching brief,' he said. `Not the only one, either.' He had a Londoner's voice, perhaps a generation removed from pure cockney. His eyes flicked away from her, and she followed his gaze to a plump, elderly man trying half-heartedly to suppress a phlegmy cough on the other side of the grave. `Know who that is? Ivor Fuggle, works for the Post.' Kirby murmured the words in such a low voice that only she could hear him. He smiled and nodded, as though they were casual acquaintances, and moved a yard or two away. Edith had been a policeman's wife for long enough to know exactly what he had been saying, both with and without words.
  • Pages: 396
  • Format: Paperback
  • Genre: Crime
  • Rating: Not yet rated

Listed Copies of this Book

Details Price See More Buy
Condition: Excellent
Seller: lyzzys (100% positive/17 ratings)		 £0.75
£1.99 (inc p&p)		 View this item Buy this copy
Condition: Excellent
Seller: lyzzys (100% positive/17 ratings)		 £0.75
£2.38 (inc p&p)		 View this item Buy this copy

Buy new from Amazon

Some Other Books by this Author

  • Stain On The SilenceYou can run from a guilty conscience, but you can't hide...James wasn't much more than a child when he had an affair with Lily. And now, twenty-four years later, Lily confesses to James that their affair led to a daughte...
    No. of listed copies: 1
  • The American BoyEngland 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to a young American boy and the boys sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to Frant's beautiful unhappy mother, Thomas becomes cau...
    No. of listed copies: 1
  • The Mortal Sickness (a Lydmouth Mystery)When a spinster of the parish is found bludgeoned to death in St John's, and the church's most valuable possession, the Lydmouth chalice, is missing, the finger of suspicion points at the new vicar, who is already beset ...
    No. of listed copies: 1
  • The InvaderThriller
    No. of listed copies: 0

see all books for Andrew Taylor

Other Books in this Genre

See all listings in Crime

REVIEWS

This book has not yet been rated

Rate this book:

Login or register to review this book.