D is for Death

by Harriet F. Townson

Genres: Mystery; Historical Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

'A little bit Margery Allingham with hints of Mitford, definite tones of Eva Ibbotson and as delightful as I Capture the Castle, D is for Death is an instant classic. I loved it so much' MARIAN KEYES
'A charming and authentic ode to Golden Age crime fiction and to books in general. In a genre replete with world-weary cynicism, Dora Wildwood makes for an endearingly optimistic feminist sleuth' CHRIS BROOKMYRE

Meet Dora Wildwood: runaway bride, book lover, and aspiring detective.
Likes: solving crimes, peppermint creams, trousers and her own independence.
Dislikes: cracked book spines, tyrannical behaviour, beetroot.

1935. Dora'son the first train to London, having smuggled herself out of the house in the middle of the night to escape her impending marriage. But unluckily for her, Dora's fiance is more persistent than most and follows.

As Dora alights at Paddington station, she is immediately forced to run from the loathsome Charles Silk-Butters. She ducks into the London Library to hide and it is there, surrounded by books, where she should feel most safe, that Dora Wildwood stumbles across her first dead body.

Having been thrown into the middle of a murder scene, it's now impossible to walk away. Indeed, Dora's certain she will prove an invaluable help to the gruff Detective Inspector Fox who swiftly arrives on the scene. For as everyone knows, it's the woman in the room who always sees more than anyone else: and no one more so than Dora herself...

D is for Death heralds the launch of a brilliant historical crime series that marries the quality of Dorothy L. Sayers with the ingenuity of Janice Hallett - and in Dora Wildwood introduces a character with the spark and gusto of Enola Holmes and the detective skill of Miss Marple. It is the debut crime novel from bestselling author Harriet Evans, writing as Harriet F. Townson.

'A glorious, stylish story of passion, poison and peril' LUCY DIAMOND
'What a world, what a plot, what a cast - a masterpiece!' VERONICA HENRY
'So good and funny ... bristling with loveable characters' LAURA WOOD
'I am now a Dora addict ... so wonderful' NATASHA POLISZCZUK

Release date: June 6, 2024

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 304

Sample

1

The contents of a clergyman’s suitcase

London 1935

‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.’

Dora Wildwood never intended to cause trouble.

Yet trouble seemed to find her, ensnaring her in a net, and it was not until she reached the advanced age of twenty-one that she realised it was high time one threw the net off.

One golden, misty October morning, a train from the West Country arrived in London. Dora Wildwood, lost in her favourite novel, happened to glance up out of the window. Though it was several years since she had been in town, she knew instantly that they were on the final approach to Paddington Station; hurriedly she closed Jane Eyre and stood up, removing her cape from the luggage rack so energetically she jabbed an elderly cleric in the chest with her elbow, leaving him wheezing against the carriage door, clutching his heart, hat askew.

‘Please, do forgive me – I am most dreadfully sorry,’ said Dora, helpfully lifting down his suitcase, and inadvertently flicking open the catch. The lid flew open, and the clergyman’s possessions tumbled through the air as if in slow motion, depositing tattered undergarments, long stockings, some rather odd-looking novels with pictures in French, and an orange onto the floor of the carriage.

‘Oh my word,’ said Dora, removing a sock from her shoulder and handing it to him. ‘Sir – once again – I am so very sorry.’

Next to her, a respectably upholstered matron gave a low, scandalised moan, and covered her eyes. The cleric, still unable to speak, gave her a beseeching look. Please, the look said, stay away from me. Dora was used to that look. With a regretful yet polite smile she moved carefully towards the door of the carriage so she might enjoy the last few hundred yards of her arrival into London, hopefully without incident.

She leaned against the cool wood panelling, and watched the city pass by, biting her lip. There was almost too much to see – a manicured green park hemmed with a ribbon of black railings, a tall, Gothic church, a knot of men, unloading barrels from a cart outside a pub. The leaves on the rowan trees lining the white stucco terraces were like coral and yellow flames on black branches against a silver-white sky: just as dramatic, more so in a way, as the rust and mist that crept over the wooded valley below Wildwood House every autumn.

Dora pulled her navy beret down over her shining chestnut hair, buttoned up her tweed cape (lined with teal silk, a twenty-first birthday present from her father), and gathered herself, her knapsack, and her small suitcase. She stood with one trembling hand on the smooth brass handle of the carriage, waiting.

Steam engulfed the train; porters scurried along the platform; passengers emerged, rearranging fur coats and tugging down trilbies, shivering in the sudden chill of an autumn morning. The milk carriage was opened, then came the clink and echo of heavy metal churns from Cornwall and Devon, lifted out onto carts to be taken into town. Through the open window the smell of the city assailed her – heavy, metallic, alive – coal smoke and wood smoke and cigarettes and heavy, spiced perfume.

Carefully she opened the heavy door, and stepped onto the platform.

‘Well,’ Dora said to herself, looking up at the great arch of the station. Her heart was thumping: all of a sudden, she didn’t feel brave and excited, just scared and sad. She couldn’t remember at all why she was here, other than that she had always wanted to visit a Lyons Corner House and see a giraffe and neither of these seemed like much of a reason. She hesitated, and turned back to the carriage door, half minded to get back on. Had she made a dreadful mistake?

Already, the memory of her departure was as though from another life: gathering scant possessions hurriedly into a knapsack, nabbing a lift to the station with dear Albert, huddling in the waiting room until the milk train shuddered through the soft night mist into view, she clambering unsteadily aboard unnoticed by anyone but George Fish, porter, one of many people, little though she knew it, who was On Dora’s Side.

‘I say!’ As she passed First Class now there was a knock on the window, and Dora jumped. ‘You! Dora Wildwood! Hi? Dora Wildwood! Is that you?’

The speaker, a brilliantine-haired gentleman in his late fifties of florid complexion and suit of rough tweed, peered out of the open window into the swirl of passengers, newspaper boys, and smoke. ‘Dash it,’ he said to his companion, a listless young woman. ‘She’s gorn. I’d have sworn that was Furlong’s girl, Dora. You know, the one who wrestled the Green Man to the ground last May Day . . . heard she’d eaten the wrong kind of mushroom, what?’

‘Who?’

‘Dora. Wildwood. You know the Wildwoods? Oh – course not. Next village from us. One of the oldest families in the county. All very odd. She’s the only child. Mother died, rather strange circs. The daughter is –’ he popped a mint into his mouth, crunching it furiously – ‘mysterious. That’s the word. Never quite sure if she’s a genius or a cretin.’

‘Jimmy, I’m bored,’ said the listless young woman, pulling a fluffy white mink coat around her. ‘Let’s go. I want to go to Boodles before Quag’s. You promised.’

‘Let me just see where she’s orf to . . .’ He stared along the platform. ‘Yup, gorn. Funny girl; they say she’s run wild. What my aunt Augusta would call a regular hoyden – here, don’t frown, my dear. We’re in London. Hop out, and I’ll take you for a gin cocktail at the Ritz before Boodles then lunch, what? Hah! That’s more like it.’

The faint mist was lifting: morning sunlight shone through the great steel and glass arch, illuminating the last tattered remains of a piece of bunting left over from the Jubilee. No one saw Dora Wildwood leave the concourse. She had a trick of vanishing even those who knew her could never quite explain; Dora liked it that way. As a child she’d believed life was bright and exciting, there for the taking, but more recently events had taught her when trouble came that it was best to stay at the edges, able to ­disappear if need be.

‘Well, hey ho,’ she said, once she was clear of the platform. ‘You’re here now. Best get on with it.’

She took a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket.

Dear Dora

I am sorry to hear of your situation. How very unpleasant. It is best you come to London at once. My maid, Maria, will meet you at the station and take your bags back to the house. Given the situation in which you find yourself, I should advise giving her a password: Fun and games. Do be careful upon arrival for PIGEONS.

With very great affection

Your godmother Dreda

Dora looked up and around her.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here I am.’ She ignored the prickling feeling of danger, squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, then jumped, violently, as someone tapped her on the arm.

‘Afternoon, miss. Busy?’

Dora turned around, to find a young man in a loud tweed suit smiling at her.

‘I’m meeting a friend,’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

He bared his yellowing teeth in a rictus grin, and said:

‘No my dear. But I could be if you want me to be. Fancy a walk?’

‘Oh good God,’ said Dora. ‘Do scram, there’s a dear.’

‘Hard to get, eh?’ said the persistent suitor. ‘I say, be friendly.’

‘And I say, do leave off—’

‘Miss Wildwood?’

Dora spun round. ‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘Are you Maria?’

‘Be off with you,’ said the dark-eyed girl, in front of her. She shook her umbrella at the strange gentleman. ‘Here! I’ll call the police, I will. Get away.’

‘Just a bit of fun, my dear,’ said the tweed-suited miscreant. ‘A bit of fun.’ And he raised his hat, flashed his teeth at her again, and melted away into the crowd.

‘Thank you,’ said Dora, after he’d gone.

‘My pleasure, miss.’ There was a slight pause as both women stared at each other.

‘Oh! Yes. What’s the password?’ said Dora and the girl in blue at the same time, and then they smiled at each other. ‘Fun and games,’ they chorused.

‘I’m Maria, Miss, Lady Dreda’s maid,’ said the girl, holding out her hand. She was dressed neatly in a beautifully cut navy coat and skirt.

‘Well, you’re the first person I’ve met in London,’ Dora said. ‘Apart, of course, from the clergyman and that rather noxious specimen in the tweed suit and a ghastly bore who goes hunting with my father who once shot his groom in the foot. You’re the first nice person I’ve met in London.’

‘Thank you, Miss,’ said Maria. ‘Lady Dreda sent me to fetch your bags. She wasn’t sure how much luggage you would have been able to bring with you, if you’ll excuse me.’

Dora held out the small suitcase and gestured to the knapsack. ‘I don’t have much. It’s awfully kind of you to come and meet me, but there was no need.’

‘Lady Dreda sees danger everywhere,’ said Maria without expression, ‘and she was worrying about you travelling on your own from Somerset, and in such haste, that she thought it would be wise to make sure you reached us safely.’

There was something about the use of the word ‘us’ that made Dora stop, and blink. Maria took the suitcase from her, and they walked towards the exit. ‘I hope your journey to town was comfortable?’

‘Very,’ said Dora. ‘Trains are so exciting, aren’t they? I was foolish, however, and didn’t realise the one I caught stopped to pick up the milk and the mail and then deposit it, too. We spent an awfully long time offloading milk churns in Middlesex. I leapt off to help at one point, actually.’ She gestured at her slightly sodden navy twill skirt. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting.’

Maria inclined her head politely. ‘It couldn’t matter less.’

‘Thank you. It’s almost eleven however; I could have stayed in bed a little longer and got a later train. I do hope—’ She narrowed her eyes as they emerged onto Praed Street, taking in the white stucco buildings, the trundling bright red buses that seemed to hurtle out of the smog. ‘I know it sounds awfully childish, but you can’t imagine how exciting it is to be here.’

Maria smiled. She had not minded waiting; her cousin worked in a patisserie within sight of the station, and she had sat in the window, sketching dress ideas and eating free cakes for two hours. Each time they announced another train was coming into the station she’d hop up to go and see if it was the one she wanted. ‘Dora’s an unusual girl, but she’s not one to make a fuss,’ Lady Dreda had told Maria. ‘If she says she needs to come and stay, mark my words, Furlong will have done something utterly idiotic again. Or – something else. Her mother, you know . . .’ And she had trailed off, biting her lip, and Maria knew not to ask any more questions when she got that look in her eye.

‘Look at that conductor in the peaked cap, ringing the bell. Don’t you love buses?’ Dora was saying.

‘I do, Miss.’ Maria said, nodding, and she gave a small, secret smile. ‘My most favourite thing about them is if I’m quick enough I can nab the single seat on the top deck, right at the back, next to the stairs. It’s like being in a little cabin.’

‘I’ll try that,’ said Dora, smiling at her. ‘Thanks.’

‘You haven’t been to London before?’

‘My mother and I used to come and stay with Dreda – but that was an awfully long time ago,’ said Dora. ‘There was the time Albert – that’s my greatest friend back at home in Combe Curry, Albert Jubby – and I ran away to London to see a giraffe, because we simply didn’t believe it, but we only got as far as Ealing. Very interesting place, Ealing.’

‘Really?’ said Maria, who had been born within the sound of Bow bells, rather doubtfully..

‘Oh yes. The suburbs, all those lovely new houses. Quite marvellous. But Albert’s toe started playing up – his big toe,’ she clarified, as if Maria might have prior knowledge of other, problematic toes belonging to Albert Jubby. ‘It got run over by a mower and it’s entirely flat, the cartilage was destroyed and he can roll it up, like – like a brandy snap, you see? It’s a marvellous trick, he rolls it out every year at the village fete and the children scream and it makes heaps of money for the Deserving Poor, but it’s enormously painful when it’s about to rain. Of course something that entertaining must come at a price. Don’t you agree?’

‘No, of course, yes,’ said Maria, utterly lost but completely fascinated.

‘Anyway, there was no point after that and so I never saw a giraffe, and I still don’t really know if they’re real or not – I know they are, but sometimes you have to see things with your own eyes.’ Dora nodded. ‘Forgive me. I have a dreadful habit of rabbiting on. Father sent me to boarding school to cure me of it, and it only made it much worse. I’m most awfully grateful to you for coming to meet me.’

Maria said gently, ‘Well, Miss, Lady Dreda’s glad you’ve come to stay. We’ll be back home in no time and you can have breakfast and then unpack and decide what you’re going to do.’

‘Oh, I know what I’m going to do,’ said Dora. ‘I’m here to find out who murdered my mother.’

‘I – see,’ Maria said, after a pause. A throng had gathered by the road, waiting for a traffic policeman to signal it was safe to cross. ‘But I thought—’

‘I ran away because I couldn’t stay and go through with it, the business at home.’ Maria had to strain to hear what Dora was saying. ‘But really, you know, I have to discover what happened to Muzz. I feel her near me all the time, she’s restless. She wants me to get to the truth. Don’t worry, Lady Dreda won’t find out, I’ll be ever so discreet.’ She turned and gave Maria a brief, sweet smile. ‘I sound crackers, I am aware of that, and maybe I am. And – oh!’ She broke off.

‘The bus,’ said Maria brightly. ‘I know!’

Dora screamed again; and this time the sound made Maria turn around. ‘Miss Wildwood’

A long arm, clad in black cloth, had extended itself into the crowd and grabbed Dora’s wrist in a vice-like grip. The other hand clamped itself over her mouth: the knuckles gleamed white in the dark melee of bodies, and coats. Pedestrians swelled around them on the pavement, rushing across the road: Maria lost Dora for a second, then the crowd parted for a moment, and she saw her, biting the hand pressed against her face, yanking herself desperately away.

‘Oh hell!’ she shouted. ‘Maria, I’m most dreadfully sorry about this—’

‘Here!’ Maria yelled. ‘Let her go!’

Dora wriggled through the knot of people, working her way to the edge of the group.

‘Dora!’ a man’s voice shouted from behind them. ‘I say! Dora! Come back, damn you!’

‘Miss Wildwood!’ Maria called, a catch in her voice. ‘Dora! I say! You! Leave her be!’ And in a frenzy, she pushed back at the man trying to shove her out of the way.

‘Who the blazes are you?’ he said, fury twisting his handsome face. ‘Get out of my way. She’s coming back home with me. Now.’

And he pushed Maria viciously again, knocking her against a surprised, well-upholstered matron who hooked the man with her umbrella and started to give him a piece of her mind about young gentlemen on the streets of London. Maria saw Dora, eyes darting round, looking for escape and whilst the stranger was apologising and untangling himself, she broke free of his hold on her wrist.

‘Don’t go!’ said Maria impulsively. ‘Stay with me and I’ll see you to Lady Dreda’s and—’

Dora smiled. ‘Awfully sorry. Can’t risk it. Got to take off—’

‘Take these sandwiches, at the very least!’ Maria said. She fumbled in her pockets. She wanted to cry. ‘You must be—’ She took something out of the right pocket, and pressed it into Dora’s hand. Dora looked down at it in surprise. ‘Odd sandwiches,’ she said with a smile, but she tucked the package into a pocket and Maria watched as she made her escape down London Street.

The stranger, having now raised his hat to the angry old matron, turned back. He was a young man in a dark suit, trilby on his head, black hair. He shouted after Dora. ‘Help!’ he said, looking round wildly. ‘A girl in a beret has just run orf! She’s mad! Very dangerous! Help me catch her!’

‘That way!’ a balding, barrel-chested man said, pointing south. ‘There, you see her, sir?’

Maria, pushing her way through the crowd onto the road. She could just make out Dora, her long legs flying, beret jammed tightly on her head, knapsack on her back, with the tall, dark-haired man in hot pursuit.

The policeman signalled; the pedestrians crossed the road.

For a moment, no traffic went past. Maria could hear a bird singing in a nearby birch tree. She blinked, took a deep breath, and stuffed one hand into her pocket. And then she froze.

‘Oh no,’ she said, as her fingers closed over a small, soft package, and she drew out a waxed parcel of egg and cress sandwiches. ‘I’ve given her – oh no,’ she said.

She looked ahead, blood draining from her face. There was no sign of either of them. ‘Oh . . . dear.’

For instead of giving her the sandwiches Lady Dreda had asked her to make up for her – ‘She’ll be famished, poor girl, I’ve never known anyone with an appetite like Dora’s’ – she had handed over the pistol Lady Dreda had asked her to dispose of – ‘I’ve no idea how it came to be in the spare room, Maria dearest, but it absolutely can’t be in the house. Wrap it in paper and drop it in the nearest canal, but let that be an end to the matter.’

Dora Wildwood had got off the train but, almost immediately, had disappeared, pursued by a vengeful stranger, having accidentally acquired a gun instead of a packet of egg and cress sandwiches.

Slowly, Maria made her way to the bus stop. She realised her mouth was completely dry. Looking down, she saw she still had Dora’s suitcase. It had been less than ten minutes since Dora had arrived in London.

2

Lady Dreda’s breakfast is disturbed

‘Vanished? What do you mean, vanished?’

‘I mean, my lady, she just disappeared, and a tall, dark man was chasing her. I searched everywhere for her. I’m dreadfully sorry –’ Maria stood in the breakfast room, panting, and then mopped her face – ‘There wasn’t time to ask her where she was going to go. I don’t think she knew.’

A dollop of marmalade fell from the spoon in Lady Dreda Uglow’s hand onto her plate.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I knew she’d cause trouble. I simply knew it.’

An hour ago Lady Dreda had been sitting in the yellow and black little breakfast room overlooking Lloyd Square in Clerkenwell, idly finalising the seating plan for her intimate dinner soirée that evening, and flicking through the Illustrated London News, marvelling at Vivien Leigh’s gun-metal grey silk evening dress and matching bolero jacket with the darling pageboy collar, at the shock of reading about Wallis Simpson dining at the Savoy in a group with the Prince of Wales, tutting sympathetically at the unemployment figures, a picture of some barefoot children in rags in South London, picking over litter. The scent of polished wood, of fresh coffee, of lingering warmth and spice in the air from the window, opened just a little on this crisp, beautiful morning.

A gloomy person by nature, Lady Dreda very much enjoyed autumn: every year at about this time she reread Childe Harold, Mariana, Goblin Market, and any other appropriately Gothic poems featuring innocence ravished, death, decay, and leaf mould. She had looked out The Lady of Shalott to peruse on this day in hopes the east wind might pick up, necessitating a day indoors, and had just helped herself to a fourth piece of toast when the front door had slammed so ferociously and Maria had burst into the room so dramatically that Lady Dreda had dropped it, butter-side down.

Lady Dreda had not seen Maria with a hair out of place in the five years she had worked for her but now her hat was askew, her face flushed. She regarded her with surprise, then horror, as Maria told her the dreadful news: that Dora had vanished.

‘A tall dark man chased her away? You – you did meet her though, Maria? You gave the password?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Maria’s eyes were huge; Lady Dreda slid a half pint of Guinness, which she normally drank with her toast, over towards her. Maria gulped it down, gratefully.

‘Did she say why she was coming to London?’

‘Thank you. No, my lady.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Maria appeared to be struggling with what Dora had told her. ‘Well, she said something about having to get away, and how she’d always wanted to see some giraffes—’

‘Some giraffes? What are you talking about?’

‘Oh, and her friend,’ said Maria desperately. ‘The one with the toe that rolls up—’

‘Maria,’ said Dreda sharply. ‘My dear girl, you’re babbling. Did you give her the sandwiches?’

‘Oh, Your Ladyship –’ Maria, normally so calm and collected, so grave, so sensible, let out a panicked howl – ‘I’m so awfully sorry. I – I gave her the gun, by mistake,’ she said.

‘Instead of the sandwiches?’

‘Instead of the sandwiches.’

Lady Dreda contemplated the magazine, the ruined breakfast, the cosy fire. She closed her eyes briefly.

‘I’ll – I’ll go without pay, my lady, I’ll—’

‘Now, then, dear Maria. Calm down,’ Lady Dreda said firmly. ‘Don’t panic. Really. We’ve no idea why the gun was under the floorboards in the spare bedroom. We only decided to get rid of it. I think – well, it’s one of those things, isn’t it? Nothing to be done about it. And well, Dora is a sensible girl.’ She said this confidently, but could not quite meet Maria’s eye. ‘No, she is. Don’t worry.’

Maria took a deep breath, and pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘She was awfully interesting. I’ve never met anyone like her.’

‘No,’ said Lady Dreda thoughtfully. ‘No, you’re probably right. I haven’t seen her for a while, but you’re right. Her mother was the same. Fascinated by everything.’

Lady Dreda still remembered with a shudder her final Saturday-to-Monday at Wildwood House with her dear friend Elizabeth, Dora’s mother – it must be the last time she’d seen Dora, when she thought about it. The whole thing was something of a blur – she could recall with any clarity only a house so glacial in temperature she had worn her fur to bed. And a bird that had flown into the conservatory and spoiled Dreda’s new delicious peacock kimono. And Mrs Lah Lah – yes, that was really what they called her – the woman was a housekeeper yet was most forward, making utterly inappropriate jokes about the family dog and its relationship with a dining chair, which Lady Dreda, who liked to think of herself as broadminded, had found beyond the pale.

Other memories came back. The cream was fresh, but there was dung in it. And poor dear Elizabeth, swathed in ancient knitwear, her hair actually fastened with a pencil, laughing and finding the whole situation hilarious. (She had seemed happy, truly happy. What on earth had gone wrong there?) And in the midst of it all, a small, determined child with curly brown hair who kept a pet kitten in one of her large pockets, a supply of peppermint creams in the other, and kept reading pages aloud from Jane Eyre whilst an extraordinarily dirty young boy from the farm down the lane, unbelievably, had sat next to Dreda, counting out small pine cones into a sort of bowl that appeared to be fashioned from mud. He had glared at her whenever she glanced at Dora, over whom he clearly felt protective. On Sunday night, after this juvenile guardsman had been persuaded to return home, Dora had somehow climbed into the attic, become entangled in a bedsheet and fallen half out of the hatch, and when the dreadful Mrs Lah Lah found her, dangling upside down, utterly encased in Irish linen but for her rather long nose poking out, her shoulder dislocated, Dora had said she was practising at being Tutankhamun. And of all things Elizabeth had simply laughed, wrenched the shoulder back into place, and given her small daughter a brandy. Dreda was appalled, and left as soon as possible after breakfast (she would have gone before, but as we have seen breakfast was her favourite meal of the day, and Elizabeth’s forward housekeeper’s devilled kidneys were particularly good, the bacon from the despised farm down the road, and Lady Dreda was at that time trying something called a Bacon and Offal cure which entailed eating only those two and the broth derived from them).

But Elizabeth was dead now these four years and her daughter motherless and alone, her hopeless father off with that dreadful French woman, and Combe Curry still as strange and unsuitable a place as ever, particularly for a young woman wishing to acquire a patina of maturity and sophistication. All because Elizabeth had gone on a walking holiday.

So Lady Dreda had not believed her goddaughter when she asked to impose herself on her but confidently asserted there would be no trouble, even though the tenor of the letter had given her pause.

Dear Dreda

Please may I come and stay with you? I should like to visit London again, and very much want to see the giraffes at the zoo. And I find myself in a situation re: marriage from which I should be glad to disentangle myself. There will be no trouble, I promise, but I am quite alone aside from you, and Muzz left me a note which said that were I to need help I should go to you. I am not able to say more at this time. I am quite desperate.

With love

Your goddaughter

Dora Wildwood

Dreda disliked trouble. However, she had stood at the font of St Cyprian’s church in Combe Curry all those years ago and promised to protect her godchild against any manner of sin and the devil and she would never be accused of shirking her duty.

(Reading up on the ancient, tiny church later, she had discovered St Cyprian was the patron saint of occultists and the panels around the church which she took to be of Christians conquering the devil were in fact of an orgy during Roman times. Various scenes, including one of a man with a bowl of figs and a lady devil, she supposed one would call her, kept coming back to Lady Dreda for months, whenever she closed her eyes.)

Lady Dreda sighed. She looked hopefully at the piece of toast, but found her appetite had quite gone.

‘My lady, what should I do?’ Maria had removed her coat, folded it, and stood, awaiting a decision.

‘Do?’ snapped her mistress. ‘I’ve absolutely no idea. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. I suppose we have to wait for her to turn up again. And hope in the meantime she comes to no harm.’ They looked at each other, each unwilling to say what she thought. Lady Dreda slumped a little in her chair, and Maria nodded and turned to go, but as she reached the door Mrs Bundle, the housekeeper, appeared, waving a telegram.

‘My lady, a telegram for you.’ She gave Maria a covert glance. The glance said: more trouble. Have extra toast on standby.

Lady Dreda gave a small moan, like the Lady of Shalott, as Mrs Bundle bustled forwards, slapping the thin paper down on the breakfast table. ‘Well, as I expected,’ Lady Dreda said, scanning it. ‘It’s from her father. Hopeless.’

Maria leaned over and stared at the paper.

TO: UGLOW

FROM: WILDWOOD

IS DORA WITH YOU STOP SHE HAS VANISHED STOP LEFT A NOTE SAYING COULDN’T GO THROUGH WITH IT STOP ONLY CLUE AS TO WHEREABOUTS SHE TOLD LOCAL IDIOT WHO STYLES HIMSELF DRUID SHE WAS GOING. . .