Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave

by Antonia Fraser

Genres: Short Stories; Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

Internationally bestselling author Antonia Fraser finds murder and mayhem in the most incongruous places, from sunny island paradises to the opera, in these nine superb short stores—four featuring Jemima Shore, investigative reporter.

Rescued from freezing London by an assignment in the West Indies, Jemima Shore looks forward to sunshine and rum punch, and maybe a little moonlight and romance. Instead she finds herself embroiled in the heated politics of an all-too-extended family in the title story. An impromptu recitation of the ballad “The Tragedy of Sir Patrick Spens” sparks another tragedy in the hallowed halls of academe in “The Blude-Red Wine.”

Antonia Fraser proves herself equally at home exploring the dark hearts and lethal secrets on the other side of the law. In “Out for the Countess,” a jealous wife thrills to the beauty of an operatic tale of betrayal and suffering, while engineering an equally dramatic revenge for the lovers who wronged her. Literate, sophisticated, deliciously witty, these nine stories are a welcome addition to the sleuthing exploits of Jemima Shore and an introduction to other, shadier characters Antonia Fraser creates with great zest.

Release date: May 14, 2014

Publisher: Crimeline

Print pages: 208

Sample

“This-is-your-graveyard-in-the-sun—”
 
The tall young man standing in her path was singing the words lightly but clearly. It took Jemima Shore a moment to realize exactly what message he was intoning to the tune of the famous calypso. Then she stepped back. It was a sinister and not particularly welcoming little parody.
 
This is my island in the sun
Where my people have toiled since time begun …
 
Ever since she had arrived in the Caribbean, she seemed to have had the tune echoing in her ears. How old was it? How many years was it since the inimitable Harry Belafonte had first implanted it in everybody’s consciousness? No matter. Whatever its age, the calypso was still being sung today with charm, vigour and a certain relentlessness on Bow Island; and on the other West Indian islands she had visited in the course of her journey.
 
It was not the only tune to be heard of course. The loud noise of music, she had discovered, was an inseparable part of Caribbean life, starting with the airport. The heavy, irresistible beat of the steel band, the honeyed wail of the singers, all this was happening somewhere if not everywhere all over the islands late into the night: the joyous sound of freedom, of dancing, of drinking (rum punch) and, for the tourists at any rate, the sound of holiday.
 
It was not the sound of holiday for Jemima Shore, Investigator. Or not officially so. That was all to the good, Jemima being temperamentally one of those people whose best holidays combined some work with a good deal of pleasure. She could hardly believe it: Megalith Television, her employers, had actually agreed in principle to a programme which took her away from freezing Britain to the sunny Caribbean in late January. This was a reversal of normal practice, by which Cy Fredericks, Jemima’s boss (and the effective boss of Megalith), was generally to be found relaxing in the Caribbean in February, while Jemima herself, if she got there at all, was liable to be dispatched into the inconvenient humidity of August. Not this time! And a fascinating project to boot. This was definitely her lucky year. Enlarging on the theme, she thought that Bow Island itself was probably going to be her lucky island …
 
“This is my island in the sun …” But that wasn’t of course what the young man facing her had actually sung. “Your graveyard in the sun.” Mine? Or yours? Since the man in question was standing between Jemima Shore and the historic grave she had come to visit, it was possible that he was being proprietorial as well as aggressive. On second thought, surely not. It was a joke, a cheerful joke on a cheerful, very sunny day. But the young man’s expression was, it seemed to her, more threatening than quizzical.
 
Jemima gazed back with that special sweet smile so familiar to viewers of British television. (These same viewers were also aware from past experience that Jemima, sweet as her smile might be, stood no nonsense from anyone, at least not on her programme.)
 
On closer inspection, the man was not really as young as all that. She saw someone of perhaps roughly her own age—early thirties. He was white, although so deeply tanned that she guessed he was not a tourist but formed part of the small loyal European population of Bow Island, a place fiercely proud of its recent independence from a much larger neighbour.
 
The stranger’s height, unlike his youth, was not an illusion; he towered over Jemima and she herself was not short; in fact, having long legs, she always surprised her television fans by how tall she was in real life. He was also handsome, or would have been except for an oddly formed, rather large nose with a high bridge to it and a pronounced aquiline curve. If the nose marred the regularity of his features, the impression left was not unattractive, in a man at least; it was not a nose that a woman could have easily carried off—an ordinary woman that is. The stranger was wearing whitish cotton shorts, like more or less every male on Bow Island, black or white. His orange T-shirt also bore the familiar island logo or crest: the outline of a bow in black, and a black hand drawing it back. Beneath the logo was printed one of the enormous variety of local slogans—cheerful again—designed to make a play upon the island’s name. This one read: “THIS IS THE END OF THE SUN-BOW!”
 
No, in that friendly T-shirt, he was surely not intending to be aggressive.
 
In that case, the odd thing about the whole encounter was that the stranger still stood absolutely still in Jemima’s path. She could in fact glimpse the large stone Archer Tomb just behind him, which she recognized from the postcards. For a smallish place, Bow Island was indeed remarkably rich in historic relics. Nelson in his time had visited it with his fleet: like its neighbours, Bow Island had found itself engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars, faraway naval battles fought against an exotic West Indian background helping to decide the European contest. Two hundred-odd years before that, first British, then French, then British again had invaded and settled the islands, which had once belonged to Caribs and before that Arawaks: finally into this melting pot Africans had been brought forcibly to work the sugar plantations on which its wealth depended. All these elements in various degrees had gone to make up the people now known casually among themselves as the Bo’landers.
 
The Archer Tomb, the existence of which had in a sense brought Jemima across the Atlantic, belonged to the period of the second—and final—British settlement. Here was buried the most celebrated governor in Bow Island’s history, Sir Valentine Archer. Even its name commemorated his long reign: Bow Island had originally been called by the name of a saint, and while it was true the island was vaguely formed in the shape of a bow, it was Governor Archer who had made the change: to signify ritually that this particular archer was in command of this particular bow.
 
Jemima knew that the monument, splendidly carved, would show Sir Valentine Archer himself with Isabella his wife beside him. This stone double bier was capped with a white wood structure reminiscent of a small church; it was either done to give the whole monument additional importance—although it must always have dominated the small churchyard by its sheer size—or to protect it from the weather. But Jemima had read that there were no Archer children inscribed on the tomb, contrary to seventeenth-century practice. This was because, as a local historian delicately put it, Governor Archer had been as a parent to the entire island … Or in the words of another purely local calypso:
 
Across the sea came old Sir Valentine
He came to be your daddy, and he came to be mine.
 
In short, no one monument could comprise the progeny of a man popularly supposed to have sired over a hundred children, legitimate and illegitimate. The legitimate line was, however, now on the point of dying out. It was to see Miss Isabella Archer, officially at least the last of her race, that Jemima Shore had come to the Caribbean. She hoped to make a programme about the old lady and her home, Archer Plantation House, alleged to be untouched in its decoration these fifty years. She wanted also to interview her generally about the changes Miss Archer had seen in her lifetime in this part of the world.
 
“Greg Harrison,” said the man standing in Jemima’s path suddenly. “And this is my sister Coralie.” A girl who had been standing unnoticed by Jemima in the shade of the arched church porch stepped rather shyly forward. She was very brown, like her brother, and her blonde hair, whitened almost to flax by the sun, was pulled back into a ponytail. His sister: was there a resemblance? Coralie Harrison was wearing a similar orange T-shirt, but otherwise she was not much like her brother. She was quite short, for one thing, her features being appealing rather than beautiful; and—perhaps fortunately—she lacked her brother’s commanding nose.
 
“Welcome to Bow Island, Miss Shore—” Coralie began. But her brother interrupted her. Ignoring his sister, he put out a hand, large, muscular and burnt to nut colour by the sun.
 
“I know why you’re here and I don’t like it,” said Greg Harrison. “Stirring up forgotten things. Why don’t you leave Miss Izzy to die in peace?” The contrast of the apparently friendly handshake and the hostile—if calmly spoken—words was disconcerting.
 
“I’m Jemima Shore.” Obviously he knew that, but she did not, under the circumstances, add the word “Investigator.” It was only how she was billed in her television series, after all, but might here give the wrong impression of a detective (as it sometimes did to the public at large). “Am I going to be allowed to inspect the Archer Tomb? Or is it to be across your dead body?” Jemima smiled again with sweetness; once more, experienced viewers might have recognized the expression as ominous.