by Eric Reed
“The doctors call it a mental breakdown,” Wallace mused. “I hope headquarters finds someone to replace him soon. If I have to deal with one more frightened woman demanding we demolish what remains of that bloody temple I’m going to have a breakdown meself.”
“I gather Mr. Rutherford isn’t going to be treated too harshly?”
Wallace shrugged. “He’s a old man who thought he was doing his bit for Blighty. Mona was a tart, so he’ll likely just get a slap on the wrist for tampering with a corpse. He’s already paying a fine for his mystical nonsense in the shape of smashed windows. I advised him to move but he won’t leave his temple, as he put it.
“Mavis Arkwright isn’t being charged for black marketeering,” he went on. “We can’t make a convincing case. She not only insisted those ration books weren’t hers, you yourself confirmed none could be found in her maisonette. The only evidence we have they belonged to her is Stu’s word and what’s the word of a murderer worth?”
“Then there’ll be no further investigation into that?”
“There’s not the time or manpower to look further into it, Grace. Nothing to be gained. Courts have bigger fish to fry when it comes to black marketeers.”
It struck Grace that Wallace was oddly vehement that the matter would be pursued no further.
“Besides,” Wallace went on, “she helped clear up Ronny’s death.”
“You mean she blamed it on Hans! There’s nobody to contradict what she said happened that night, is there? That he came back through the unlocked back door, saw Ronny beating her, had some sort of murderous fit, picked up the kitchen poker, and whacked him on the head. Hans disposed of the body in the way I had guessed. After that she was too afraid to come to us in case Hans turned on her too. Or so she claims,” Grace replied, angry with herself for saying too much and giving her former landlady valuable information she had used to protect herself.
“Not much we can do about it, Grace, especially given your own statement concerning what the Dutchman told you practically in his dying breath.”
I didn’t step into a fairy tale in Newcastle, Grace thought, as she stared at Saltwell Towers. Then she realized she and Wallace were standing near the spot where Mona and her friend had been the day they’d had their photo taken, the snapshot the young woman had carried in her handbag.
The thought gave her a chill.
Was it a coincidence?
What about the séance? Baines had been told he was forgiven. About what? His absence when his family were killed, his being unfaithful to his wife?
Hadn’t Grace’s grandmother’s communication said “home”? Grace’s lodgings with Mavis were, indeed, where she had located Ronny’s murderer. Or by home, assuming the message was genuine, had she been advising her to return to Shropshire?
Had the messages been contrived by Mrs.Llewellyn? The words “forgiven” and “home” would mean something to everyone.
The apparent concentration of evil happenings around the temple must surely have been coincidental.
“Cat got your tongue, eh?”
Wallace’s question made Grace realize she had been standing silent, lost in a brown study.
“You’ve had a terrible introduction to Newcastle,” he continued. “I expect you’ll be wanting to return to the countryside where things are familiar and quiet.”
Grace looked away from Saltwell Towers and toward Wallace. “You still underestimate me, don’t you, Arthur?” She pulled up her collar against the wind. “It’s time we should be gannen. It’s parky out and I’m clamming.”
Afterword
Many World War II mysteries are set in London, often during the Blitz. So it was only natural for us (the husband-and-wife team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, writing as Eric Reed) to send our protagonist, Grace Baxter, up to Newcastle-on-Tyne at the opposite end of England. Why keep repeating what’s been done so many times before? Especially when one of the coauthors spent her early life in Newcastle. The northeastern city did not suffer the amount of bombing other large industrial centres endured, perhaps because Hitler hoped to preserve its factories for his own eventual use. In 1941, however, residents must have gone to sleep every night wondering whether they would wake up under an all-out attack by the Luftwaffe.
We have taken poetic license—or perhaps we should say poetic building permit—to place two imaginary streets, Chandler and Carter, just south of Newcastle’s West Road and west of Condercum Road. Today easily accessible census records show who lived in every house on every street in the area. By placing characters at a precise location we feared inadvertently press-ganging real World War II city residents into service on the fictional ship Ruined Stones.
Otherwise the city is depicted as it was in 1941 and the scanty ruins we describe still exist. During the 1930s, casts of the temple altars replaced the originals now displayed in the Great North Museum in Newcastle. Antenociticus was a Celtic god, unknown aside from the Benwell temple, although in 2013 a sculpted head with similarities to the one discovered in Benwell was excavated at Binchester Roman Fort in County Durham.
We admit to not being able to verify any deaths at the ruins. These must be chalked up to that invaluable trait of historical mystery writers, sheer bloody cheek.
We did not, however, invent the Cone of Power which Cyril Rutherford so patriotically attempted to perform. It has been claimed that such a ritual was performed in August 1940 in the New Forest. It was intended to prevent the Nazis from invading Britain and, judging by history, it succeeded.
Finally, the reader will notice a smattering of Geordie dialect, as much a part of Newcastle’s atmosphere as its sooty fogs in the period in which the book is set. We have included just enough words and phrases to provide a bit of ambience. The American half of the writing team can attest that to an outsider Geordie sounds like a foreign language.
Concise Geordie Dictionary
The development of Tyneside’s Geordie dialect is considered to have been heavily influenced by the language of Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians who arrived in the area centuries ago. Some terms given here are also shared with Scotland.
There is an ongoing argument about who can be classified as a Geordie. Purists maintain only those born in Newcastle-on-Tyne are true Geordies, while others claim the nickname also applies to residents of Gateshead (across the River Tyne from Newcastle) and other towns lying along the river, both north and south of it.
Bairn: Baby or toddler
Bonny: Good-looking, attractive.
Braying: Hitting or smacking
Broon: Local nickname for Newcastle Brown Ale
Bubbling: Crying.
But: Verbal full stop to a sentence.
By: Single word often beginning a sentence
Canna: Can’t
Canny: Nice, pleasant, good; can also refer to large amount of something
Chare: Narrow riverside alley
Clamming: Hungry
Crack on, cracking on: Talk, talking
Didna: Did not
Divn’t: Don’t
Eeee: Exclamation of surprise, excitement, or other strong emotion
Eeyem: Home
Fash: To be bothered about or annoyed by
Gan, gannen: Go, going
Gan canny: Go carefully, mind how you go
Harraway: Get away.; also an expression of disbelief
Howay: Come on
Hoy: Shout used to attract attention; can also mean to throw something
Hinney: Term of endearment
Ken: Know
Lops: Fleas
Man: General term used to address either gender
Marrer: Friend; sometimes used to mean a work-mate
Netty: Backyard outhouse
Nowt: Nothing
Owt: Anything
Parky: Cold
Sneck: Latch
Stotting: Downpour of rain
Tab: Cigarette
Wor: Our
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