Felicity's Gate

Book 1: Rounder Brothers Series

by Julian Cole

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Private Investigators

Synopsis

When Jane's body is found, the chief suspect is her friend and lover, Moses Mundy. Chief Inspector Sam Rounder soon discovers that there is more to this murder than meets the eye. To make matters worse, his own brother, Rick, a private eye, has been hired to prove Moses' innocence.

Release date: May 10, 2011

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

Felicity's Gate

CHAPTER ONE
MOSES Mundy could not have picked a finer day for his life to fall apart. All the good years came to an end under a clear blue November sky. As he stood in the cemetery he could hear the leaves falling from the copper beech tree. These dead things crackled as they turned in the air. In his hand he carried a large square parcel; on his back a rucksack he had packed earlier. In the distance he could hear a siren and he knew they were coming for her. Moses stood before the gravestone and his fingers traced the familiar inscription as if he were reading Braille. He smiled at the name and heard her speaking it in everyday moments, asking him if he wanted tea, or to go for a drink; and he heard her cry out his name when passion was carrying her away. "God, Moses, you've worked out what to do at last."
He turned and walked beneath the high wall until he reached the padlocked gate. You could see the house from here. Craning his neck, he saw the attic skylight window. He liked to sit under that window and look over the serried gravestones, her half-completed paintings behind him. He loved the woman yet found her creativity unsettling. How could someone paint? Such mysteries were contained in the act of capturing something on paper. He never understood how she managed it. "That's because you're a big old ignoramus," she said, laughing, teasing, and putting a blob of paint on his nose.
The sirens were getting closer, so he turned away from the house and carried on. The sun picked out his profile, emphasising the large nose, the broad forehead and the shaved greying stubble of his head. There was stubble on his chin too, where once an impenetrable beard had grown, and a tear threaded through these rough facial hairs. He paused by her special spot and managed a smile. "Moses – someone will see. We can't have sex here." But they did, after he spread a blanket on the chilly night ground ("Like in that country song," she said, laughing, before pulling him down). As he walked, more quickly now, he saw her smile, saw her hand pushing back her strawberry-blonde hair with painted fingers. He saw her younger self and he saw her middle-aged self, a few grey hairs now, and he loved them both.
A ginger cat, not much more than a kitten, curled on the path in the sun. He didn't much like cats. His foot swung on a pendulum of rage, but the cat was quick, all sudden liquid motion, and flowed between the gravestones and up on to a garden fence.
Old instincts, long dormant but stirring, told him not to head the obvious way to the station. They would be looking for him. So he walked along the main road in the wrong direction until he found the unprepossessing street with a second-hand Volvo garage at the end. A path led to the Millennium Bridge, built to mark the occasion of its name, and vandalised soon afterwards. In the middle of the span he looked down at the River Ouse, its broad flow impervious to his or anybody else's problems. Then he headed back towards town on the opposite bank. People walked their dogs, jogged, cycled or wandered; didn't they know what had happened? He scowled at the sun-gilded river and the handsome houses on the opposite bank that stood tall and proud, even if their feet were nearly wet.
At the station he remembered the day when he got off the Edinburgh train on impulse, liking the look of York. He never got back on that train. Now the wary sensibilities were stirring, the watchfulness and the waiting. He had been out of the game for a long time. His new life had been so complete it had blocked out the past. He had moved on and remade himself. Now he would have to do it all over again.
FELICITY'S GATE. Copyright © 2009 by Julian Cole. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.