A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1)

by Fliss Chester

  ‘So it’s one of Arthur’s clues…’ James thought out loud.

  ‘Yes. Right, let’s think.’

  They both stood there for a bit, shifting their weight from foot to foot.

  ‘Ah,’ Fen took the letter back from James and pointed to the words, careful not to damage her precious letter with her grubby finger. ‘Knocked about. Could be an anagram, but the word in makes me think it’s something hidden actually in the words.’

  ‘Knocked about…’

  ‘Ah, about, like turn about, or backwards… A ha!’

  They both made the connection and saw the answer staring at them. With one look, they confirmed that they were on the same page, and with no further ado, James gestured out towards the opening in the broken wall. ‘Ladies first…’

  Twenty-Nine

  Although he’d given her a head start along the tunnel and up the steep staircase, James easily caught up with Fen and ran along at her side as she bounded up the broken stone steps of the terrace and along the wall of the château. There was no need for torches now as the moon had broken free from the clouds and was illuminating their path beautifully.

  Fen slowed down by the time she got to the gate into the courtyard and finally stopped, resting her hands on her hips and panting slightly, as she stood looking up towards the central tower of the old building.

  ‘See?’ she asked James, waving her hand up towards the very top of the roof. ‘TURRET.’

  ‘Spelt out backwards inside the words Greater Rutland.’ James wasn’t panting as much as Fen was and allowed her to get her breath back before questioning her further. ‘So? Now what?’

  ‘Now we go and find that relic.’

  ‘You think we might have seen it before, if it was just on the staircase?’ James pointed out.

  ‘I remember now,’ Fen cut across him. ‘The first day I arrived. I was standing here, in the courtyard and something glinted from the very top of one of those little turrets. It’s not lying on the staircase, you loon, it’s right up there.’ She waved her hand, still holding the letter, right up at the topmost window.

  Like two children at the start of a race, they barely waited for starter’s orders before tearing across the grass, onto the stone pathway towards the inconspicuous wooden door at the bottom of the tower. James got there first, and heaved it open.

  The clattering of their boots on the stone stairs filled the spiral staircase with noise, but neither of them cared or slowed until they had passed the normal landing that led to the ladies’ and family bedrooms, then reached the topmost floor, where James and Hubert, and back then Arthur, had had rooms.

  ‘So where are the turrets?’ asked Fen, turning on her torch and running her hands around the solid stone walls. The steps stopped at this floor and the only door out of the circular room was the one that led to the attic bedrooms.

  James answered her by tilting his head and looking up to the ceiling. It was flat and obviously false, as the tower from the outside had a decidedly pointed top. There was a trapdoor in the wooden struts above them and James reached up, fruitlessly, for the catch.

  ‘Gah,’ he shouted as, for the third or fourth try, he was unable to snag the small piece of leather that acted as a handle.

  ‘Here, hold me up.’

  Fen put her torch down and let James lift her up. One big heave and she caught the leather strap and gave it an almighty tug. A cloud of dust crowned them both and Fen coughed as she accidentally breathed it in.

  ‘Blimey, how dusty is it up there?’ Fen brushed the dirt from her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t think Arthur took the feather duster with him when he hid it,’ James remarked.

  Fen ignored his sarcasm and continued, ‘Can you see anything?’

  ‘No, you’re going to have to go up. Ready?’

  Fen was anything but, seeing that she was still in her nightdress, nevertheless when James knelt down, she knew she was expected to stand on his knee and prepare to be catapulted into the roof space. She gave a quick prayer of thanks for her sensible knickers and stepped up to the task. A few attempts later and she hoisted herself over the edge of the trapdoor and was able to sit, safely, with her legs dangling down, on the edge of the wooden floor.

  ‘What can you see?’ James passed her torch up to her as he stood on the floor below.

  Hopefully more than you can… she thought as she tucked her nightie between her legs. Then she shouted down, ‘What looks like another case of wine… Here, wait a moment.’ She leant across and pulled the wooden case towards her. ‘It’s terribly light. No wine in here.’ She manhandled the box onto her lap, held the torch in between her teeth and gently pulled off the top, which was easy enough as the nails that usually held the wooden lid down were barely hammered in at all.

  She laid the lid down next to her and peered inside the box. It was full of sawdust and wood shavings, and sitting plum in the middle of the box was another envelope, addressed to her in Arthur’s writing. She slipped it out and hid it up her sleeve, hoping the general darkness around her meant James hadn’t seen; she wanted her last letter from Arthur to be private.

  ‘Anything?’ James voice echoed up to her.

  ‘Yes.’ Nestled in all the wood shavings and sawdust was a small tin, not much bigger than the sort of thing sardines came in. Fen passed it to James and peered down as he prised it open. Inside was a small, red velvet pouch.

  James looked up at Fen, who shone her torch on the small cloth bag. He released the cord around the neck of the pouch and let whatever was in it drop into the palm of his hand. It was a small, desiccated piece of wood. Fen had half expected a choir of angels to sing, or at least Raphael and Gabriel themselves to make a cameo. But there was no heavenly fanfare, no clouds parting to unleash the hand of God, only a small piece of wood, now carefully being put back into its little velvet pouch.

  ‘Well then,’ James said, ‘let’s get you down from up there, shall we?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Fen was shuffling her bottom across the floor towards James’s outstretched arms when something caught her eye. ‘Oh!’ She stopped and stared across at the little turret window, one of four that was letting the moon’s beams into the top of the tower. Dangling from a thread in front of the glass was a silver photo frame. It caught the moonlight as it twirled this way and that in the draughts from the windows and the open hatch.

  Fen was mesmerised and watched it dance for a second, before pushing herself away from the trapdoor and scrambling over to it. It must have been what she’d glimpsed as she’d looked up towards the tower; the object that had been glinting in the sunshine. She recognised the photo frame then, and gasped. It was the one she had given Arthur the day he had left Midhurst, and the face illuminated by the moonlight coming through the window was her own.

  Epilogue

  Fen clasped the letter to her chest. She’d read it through dozens of times now and she feared that if she took it out of its envelope, unfolded and then folded it one more time, it would start to fall apart.

  She placed it very carefully on her pillow as she continued packing her sturdy brown suitcase. Her stay had been a short one, though you could never argue that it had been uneventful. As she folded her jumpers and work overalls up, she ran over in her mind what had happened since they’d uncovered the murderer in their midst.

  Sophie had been taken away to Beaune, where she would stand trial for murder. There had been a riot of sorts outside the gendarmerie in Morey-Fontaine before she was transferred, and Sophie had been hauled out in front of the baying crowd and, although not torn limb from limb, she had been branded with swastikas and had her head shaved – like the poor woman Fen had seen from the bus in Paris. A tondue, as they called them – a shaved one. Still, the shame would no doubt be short-lived as the gallows would see to that.

  Clément was a man bereft. The war had taken two of his sons and his daughter-in-law had murdered the third. If there was any good to have come of the situation, it had been that the two si
des of family, the Bernards and the Ponsardines, were now more fully reconciled and Hubert had moved into one of the smarter ‘family’ bedrooms in the château.

  And, to Clément’s credit, he still bounced young Benoit on his knee, his fondness for the little chap not lessened now he knew he wasn’t a Bernard by blood. Perhaps his father would come back one day and claim him, but for now Fen felt sure that his grandfather and newly named Uncle ‘Hubie’ would do their very best for him, and Jean-Jacques of course.

  Fen had wondered, as she emptied her clothes from the chest of drawers, whether Estelle would set her cap at Hubert, but for now she seemed to be up to her eyeballs just running the house, looking after the boys and cooking for the men. Fen had been tempted to stay and help her, but then she couldn’t shake the memory of that woman’s hands around her throat. Any warm feelings Fen might have had towards her had evaporated in that moment.

  Plus, James had that look in his eye – restless, searching. Now Arthur had been revenged he’d been talking about moving on. His Baker Street HQ had wired him permission to take some leave and Fen felt inclined to join him. She closed the lid of her suitcase and snapped the catches shut. They would both need to be witnesses at the trial at Beaune, but after that, who knew? Paris perhaps, the City of Lights, a new start.

  Fen sat down on the bed and winced as the springs did their best impression of caterwauling felines.

  One more time, she told herself. With that, she carefully unfolded the letter and read Arthur’s words again…

  France, August 1944

  My darling Fen,

  Well, here it is, the little relic. A great deal in a small place – multum in parvo after all! I knew you’d find it – and only you. Get it back to Father Marchand and he’ll restore it to the church. If you have no idea who I’m talking about, then give it to Clément Bernard – he’s a good sort, as is Hubert his cousin, despite his boorish exterior and habit of drinking a bit too much of the communion wine.

  In fact all of the Bernards are first-rate people, except… well, let us give her the benefit of the doubt, but if I’m betrayed by anyone around here, then my money’s on Sophie. She’s been sniffing round our plans and skipping off to see the Weinführer at every opportunity – if there’s a sabotage we’re planning, the Hun are one step ahead each time and I’m pretty sure her youngest son isn’t a Bernard by blood, if you catch my drift. Still, enough gossip.

  I know you might question why I’m risking my life for a piece of wood, but it’s important to me that, on any level, the Nazis cannot win. It’s not that I believe God can be harnessed by Hitler and Himmler, but they do, and I can’t let them take one more precious religious artefact from a local church where it does nothing but good, to a place where it can do nothing but harm, even if that harm is just strengthening the pseudoscience of the Nazis.

  And I respect these people. It’s been day after day, hour after hour of skirmishes, gunfights and ambushes and, through all of that, the people of this small town have got on with their lives and shown strength that I admire more than anything. Fracan keeps baking, even though often enough his entire batch is ‘requisitioned’ by a passing German platoon; the children still play in the Place de L’Église while their mothers gossip in huddles by the church door; there’s not much in the way of food, and the school has no heating through the winter, they can’t even burn the textbooks to keep warm – the Nazis got there first. Men disappear in the night and single gunshots are often heard. We live on our nerves, but there is always a smile and a laugh, a cigarette to be shared and a story to be told. Life goes on.

  I will try and send a letter to you at Mrs B’s in case I don’t make it home from here; I don’t want you to be left wondering. I can’t send you this letter – what I’m about to tell you now would be redacted to hell, but I want you to know what I’m doing out here. I’m part of what we call the Special Operations Executive. We’re a roguish bunch of codebreakers and linguists, all handy with a pair of pliers and hopefully able to disrupt the occupation as much as possible.

  I was so tempted to enlist you too, although I wanted to save you from all of this danger. I hope you have survived the war and are as beautiful and bonny as when I left you. I hope you’ve met James Lancaster now too – you know you met him that night at the Spread Eagle? If he’s here and I’m not, I think you two should try and look after each other, if you can. Plus he’s filthy rich.

  I love you, I love you, I love you… forever yours,

  Arthur

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  A Letter from Fliss

  Dear reader,

  I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read A Dangerous Goodbye. I hope you loved dipping into Fen’s world and helping her solve her first mystery as much as I loved writing it. Did you guess who it was from the clues?

  If you want to keep up to date with all of my latest releases, please sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.

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  I dedicated this book to my adventurous great-aunt, and although, as far as I know, she didn’t solve any murders, she was a real character who worked around the world from the 1930s through to the 1980s! I like to think that a little bit of her has rubbed off on Fen and because of that her spirit will continue adventuring as long as I keep writing.

  If you enjoyed A Dangerous Goodbye, and I really hope that you did, I’d be incredibly grateful if you could write a review and tell me what you think of my first Fen Churche mystery, plus you’ll be helping new readers to discover one of my books for the first time.

  I love hearing from my readers – you can get in touch on my Facebook page, through Twitter, Instagram or my website.

  Thanks,

  Fliss

  www.flisschester.co.uk

  Books by Fliss Chester

  The French Escapes Romance Series

  Love in the Snow

  Summer at the Vineyard

  Meet Me on the Riviera

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my husband, Rupert, not only for all the support you always give me as I write my books, but also for your wine expertise and rather worrying knowledge on how many ways you could kill someone in a winery. You also proposed to me all those years ago in the best possible way – with a personalised cryptic crossword! Thank you, my love.

  Huge thanks to my stepsister Penny Lawson, who not only taught me how to do cryptic crosswords, but infected me with her love for them too. Our two heads together are always better than my one. For those of you without my stepsister on hand, do try the late Colin Dexter’s Cracking Cryptic Crosswords, it’s the best book for cryptic crossword beginners and will teach you the language needed to work them out.

  Much of my historical wine research was found in Wine & War by Don and Petie Kladstrup. It’s a genuinely fascinating book full of thrilling stories and anecdotes from France’s great wine-producing families. Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba is a wonderful biography of the women of Paris before, during and immediately after the Second World War. It’s a treasure trove of research and information and a rich source of inspiration. By chance, I met Anne at a party at the London Library and was able to blurt out, ‘Your book! It’s on my desk!’… So thank you, Anne, for not only not looking at me too oddly that night, but for writing such an interesting piece of historical non-fiction.

  Authors aren’t the only ones who have a hand in creating the work you’ve just read, and it wouldn’t be the book it is without the help of my agent, Emil
y Sweet, and my editor at Bookouture, Maisie Lawrence – your insights and advice are much appreciated and I hope you’ve enjoyed working on this novel as much as I did!

  Lastly, my thanks to my family, my mum especially, who are incredibly supportive of my writing and don’t glaze over too much as I talk about plots and murderous things. Mum – you’ve given me so much, but perhaps most poignantly and most recently a shoebox full of my great-aunt’s pre-war love letters from her fiancé; so Great Aunty Glen and Great Uncle Mac, this book is for you.

  We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.

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