by Sara Rosett
“So Mr. Busby knew Mayhew was the author of the Lady Eileen books?”
Mr. Hightower shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. The only people who knew Mayhew was the author of those books were myself and Mr. Pearce. The inspector asked if Mr. Pearce could have told Mrs. Pearce, but I don’t think he would have. Mr. Pearce wasn’t the type to share business confidences with his wife—or his secretary either. By the way, we finally received Mayhew’s original manuscript. It arrived in the post on Saturday. Mr. Pearce sent it on with a cover letter apologizing for the delay. By that point, Leland was already here in Hadsworth.”
I frowned, trying to work out the timing. “But Mr. Busby must have discovered Mayhew’s identity as a Hightower Books author,” I said.
“I believe so,” Mr. Hightower said. “I understand Mr. Busby had access to Mayhew’s cottage . . . ?”
“Yes, that must have been how Mr. Busby figured it out.” I thought of the notes and manuscripts in Mayhew’s desk. “He probably found something in Mayhew’s desk that indicated Mayhew wrote the Lady Eileen books, so he used Mayhew’s typewriter to type up notes to delay the discovery that Mayhew was missing.”
“Yes, that seems to be the case,” said Mr. Hightower. “At that point, Leland must have thought the manuscript for Murder on the Ninth Green was already on my desk. It must have given Leland a fright when he worked out exactly who Mayhew was and realized he’d killed off his livelihood.”
“But then Mr. Busby must have sorted out that Anna was ghostwriting the books and sent off the note to her with instructions to keep at it,” I said. “There was plenty of evidence of their collaboration in the drafts.”
The distinctive tones of Lady Holt’s voice drifted out of the open window of the drawing room. Mr. Hightower glanced over his shoulder, then picked up the pace of his words. “Shocking. The whole thing is dreadful. As I said, I know it’s not possible to make up for what you’ve been through, but that envelope contains more than we agreed on.” He glanced at my pocket. “I feel it’s only fair we increase your remuneration, considering what happened.”
“That’s kind of you, and unexpected but greatly appreciated.”
He pushed back his chair. “I should be getting on.”
I stood and held out my hand. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Hightower.”
He shook my hand. “If I have need of a discreet investigator in the future, I’ll contact you.”
“I’d be delighted.”
As I walked with him into the entry hall, I asked, “What will happen with Lady Holt’s etiquette book?”
“Oh, we’ll publish it,” Mr. Hightower said. “We signed the contract. Hightower Books follows through on its promises.”
Lady Holt came striding across the entry hall, her long arms swinging. “Mr. Hightower! Delighted you could join us here at Blackburn Hall. You’ve no idea the mess your associate made of things. Such a disgrace. I’m afraid there’s no way we’ll be able to keep Blackburn Hall out of those ghastly gossip sheets. But I assure you it does not impact my feelings toward Hightower Books. I’m still determined to make the best of things and do everything possible to make sure the etiquette book is successful.”
“Excellent. Glad to hear it.” Mr. Hightower raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch at Bower, who stood near the door with Mr. Hightower’s hat. At the signal from Mr. Hightower, Bower began to make his way across the parquet floor. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Lady Holt, but I cannot stay. I must—”
Lady Holt halted Bower with a flick of a wrist, then she clamped a hand on Mr. Hightower’s arm. “You must stay for lunch. It’s so fortunate you’re here. I have a few small details that must be sorted.”
Bower reversed course, and Lady Holt propelled Mr. Hightower into the library. He threw a last gaze over his shoulder. I raised a hand and mouthed, good luck. I hoped he escaped before dinner, otherwise Lady Holt would keep him at Blackburn Hall for days.
I returned to my room to gather my hat and gloves, but before I picked them up, I ripped open the envelope from Mr. Hightower. It contained a check for one hundred pounds.
I pressed the piece of paper to my chest. One hundred pounds. Mind-boggling. I could pay my rent for many, many months. And have actual meals for dinner instead of crumbly buns. And maybe even a winter coat.
I folded the check solemnly and tucked it away in my handbag. I put on my hat and gloves. I passed Serena’s workroom on my way downstairs and stopped to tap on the door. She looked up from her seat at one of the tables and waved me in. “Look. I think I’ve done it.” Her hands were covered in black smudges.
“Made a mess?”
“No. I’ve invented a new kind of pen. The felt works wonderfully well. Here, try it.”
“It looks like a fountain pen without the nib.”
“It is. But I modified it, and the ink is different. Better use this to hold it.” She wrapped a rag around the inky exterior of the pen, then cleared pots of ink, scraps of fabric, and several dismantled pens out of the way. She pushed a stack of paper across the table to me. I signed my name. “Very nice.”
“See how it evens out the flow of ink? It won’t need a refill, and it dries quickly,” Serena said. “Now I just have to fashion a cap for it so the pen doesn’t dry out.”
I touched one of the letters with a gloved fingertip. It came away clean. “That is an improvement. What will you call it?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps a felt pen? The felt material worked the best.”
I handed back the pen. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you. And congratulations to you too. For exposing Mrs. Pearce and Mr. Busby. Who would’ve thought a passionate affair would be going on in our quiet village?” She began to put the lids back on the pots of ink. “Give me my predictable and methodical science. Nothing is ever as messy as human relationships.”
Thinking of Jasper’s early-morning disappearance, I had to agree. “Unfortunately, that’s often true.”
“What will you do now?” Serena asked.
“I don’t know.” Perhaps Jasper was right that I did focus too much on the moment and didn’t think ahead. “Return to London and find a new client, I suppose.” I’d have money in the bank, and I could be choosy about who I worked for—at least for a while.
“Well, let me know if you ever want to play another round of golf. You showed promise.”
“Thank goodness for your lessons. They came in quite handy.”
“Glad it was useful.” She walked with me to the door.
“Where’s Zippy this morning?” I asked. “I should say goodbye to him before I leave.”
“He’s in Sidlingham, and he’s not keeping it a secret from Maria anymore. This morning at breakfast, he said if Blackburn Hall could survive the scandal of a double murder and a salacious affair, his interest in a barmaid should be completely innocuous.”
“And how did Lady Holt react?” I asked as Serena came downstairs with me.
“She forbade him to go, of course. But Zippy stood up to her, wonder of wonders. He said he’d reached his majority and he could do whatever he liked. Of course Maria threatened to withdraw his allowance, and Zippy said that was fine, he’d sell his Bugatti so he would have funds to live on.”
“Really? I thought he was fond of the car.”
“Oh, he is. That gave Maria a bad turn. She was wise enough to stop there. Later, I told her to give it a few days. If she presses, I’m sure Zippy will dig in his heels. If she lets it go, he’ll probably lose interest and move on to someone else. Half of the lure of a relationship like that is the thrill of the secrecy.”
“That’s probably true.”
Serena lifted a shoulder as we reached the entry hall. “It’s basic human nature. Messy, as I said, but often predictable.”
Bower met us as we stepped off the last stair. He held a tray with a letter. “For you, Miss Belgrave.”
Serena said, “I hope it’s not bad news.”
“When did it arrive?” I asked Bower, studying the envelope. It was addressed to the boarding house in London, but I recognized my landlady’s left-handed script where she’d redirected the note here.
“By the morning post.”
I ripped it open and felt my eyebrows shoot up when I read the signature. “It’s from Lady Agnes Wells.”
“The Egyptian curse,” Bower breathed. Both Serena and I turned to look at him.
The usual impassive blankness was gone from his face. It was alive with curiosity, and he’d leaned forward to get a glimpse of the note. He cleared his throat and stepped back. “Pardon me.”
“It’s all right, Bower,” I said. “What’s this about a curse?”
“It’s been in the newspapers. The—um—lower staff has been quite interested.”
“Go on,” I said. “What do the papers say about it?”
“As I understand it, Lord Mulvern, Lady Agnes’s uncle, was an Egyptologist. He sponsored a dig and brought back antiquities.”
“Including a mummy?” Serena asked.
Bower nodded. “Several, apparently.”
“And now there’s a curse?” I asked.
“That’s what the newspapers say killed him.”
“Good heavens.” I skimmed the note.
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Dear Miss Belgrave,
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I am in a difficult spot, and my friend Sebastian Blakely suggested I contact you. He says you are a lady detective, and that is exactly what I need. You may have read about our family recently in the newspapers. I assure you the real story is not as lurid as they make out, but it is most disturbing. I would like to discuss the situation with you. Perhaps you could call at Mulvern House on Monday at ten o’clock in the morning.
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Yours truly,
Agnes Curtis
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“Sounds like you have a new case,” Serena said. “If you’re interested in curses and mummies and all that.”
“Who isn’t interested in Egyptology? It’s fascinating.” My gaze flew to the date at the top of the note. “Monday. That’s tomorrow.” I stuffed the letter in my handbag and turned to Bower. “Have my motor brought around immediately. I must get back to London.”
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The Story Behind the Story
I hope you enjoyed Olive’s second case. Murder at Blackburn Hall was a fun book to write. I always love delving into 1920s research, and with the added angles of ghostwriting and authorship as themes, I was one happy writer!
The list of female writers using male pen names is long and ranges from Victorian writers like George Elliot and all three Brontë sisters to modern authors like J.K. Rowling, who writes her mysteries under the name Robert Galbraith. One female author who was published in the 1920s actually did masquerade as a male to fool her publisher. I ran across the story in Martin Edwards’s nonfiction book, The Golden Age of Murder. Author Lucy Beatrice Malleson thought she’d be taken more seriously if her publisher thought she was a man and submitted her manuscripts under male names, including Anthony Gilbert. When her publisher asked her for a publicity photo, she sent in a photo of herself “disguised as an old man with a beard,” according to Edwards. Malleson wrote nearly seventy mysteries under the Gilbert pseudonym. Her short stories and novels were adapted for television and movies.
Malleson’s story became my inspiration for the character of Ronnie Mayhew, but since Mayhew was so withdrawn from village life and used a tin mask to hide her appearance in the village itself, she needed an even bigger reason to hide her background. When I read an article about the Cottingley Fairies, I knew I’d found the inspiration for Mayhew’s backstory.
In 1917, two young cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, photographed themselves with paper fairies that they’d traced from a book. They used a camera that belonged to Elise’s father. Her father developed the pictures and recognized it was a prank—and he didn’t lend his camera to the girls again. His wife, however, was interested in psychic phenomena and showed the pictures at a meeting of like-minded individuals. From there, interest in the fairy sightings spread and caught the attention of the public, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a spiritualist. He wrote an article about the fairies for The Strand magazine, declaring the existence of the fairies would help people to believe in other psychic phenomena. The girls played along with the psychic phenomena investigators. In a 1983 interview, the cousins admitted they’d faked the photographs. Once Doyle was a part of the story, they felt they couldn’t reveal the truth. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Cottingley Fairies, the girls said, “Two village kids and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle—well, we could only keep quiet.”
I used the Cottingley story as a jumping-off point for Mayhew’s backstory, changing it quite a bit and creating a situation where an unscrupulous parent was more concerned about money than his daughter, which caused Mayhew to bury herself in a quiet English village.
I was researching asthma and read an article about asthma cigarettes, which, as a mystery writer, I found incredibly intriguing. Mystery writers are always on the lookout for a good poison, and once I learned that the cigarettes contained belladonna and datura stramonium and anyone could buy them at a chemist, I knew I’d found the murder weapon for Murder at Blackburn Hall. As strange as it sounds today, asthma cigarettes were a popular and accepted treatment for people who experienced breathing problems.
The character of Serena Shires was a fun one to write. I wanted her to be scientifically-minded and interested in innovation, but I had a hard time finding something for her to invent. Serena is a practical type and would be interested in something that would improve efficiency in the home or the workplace. I was surprised to learn that many of the inventions I assumed occurred in the early 1900s actually happened quite a bit earlier. For instance, paper clips, staplers, drinking straws, ball point pens, erasers, vacuums, clear tape, and refrigerators were all invented long before 1923. The felt-tip pen, however, wasn’t, which is why Serena is so interested in pens and ink. The real inventor of the felt-tip pen was Walter J. De Groft, and he applied for a patent in 1944. Yukio Horie created the modern felt-tip pen in 1962. Check out the Murder at Blackburn Hall Pinterest board to see more details about character and location inspiration.
Olive’s next case is The Egyptian Antiquities Murder. If you’d like news about upcoming books, exclusive content, and members-only giveaways, sign up for my updates at SaraRosett.com/signup. I’d love to stay in touch with you!
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Sara Rosett writes fun mysteries. Her books are light-hearted escapes for readers who enjoy interesting settings, quirky characters, and puzzling mysteries. Publishers Weekly called Sara’s books, “satisfying,” “well-executed,” and “sparkling.”
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Sara loves to get new stamps in her passport and considers dark chocolate a daily requirement. Find out more at SaraRosett.com.
Connect with Sara
www.SaraRosett.com
Also by Sara Rosett
This is Sara Rosett’s complete library at the time of publication, but Sara has new books coming out all the time. Sign up for her updates at SaraRosett.com/signup to stay up to date on new releases.
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High Society Lady Detective
Murder at Archly Manor
Murder at Blackburn Hall
The Egyptian Antiquities Murder
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Murder on Location
Death in the English Countryside
Death in an English Cottage
Death in a Stately Home
Death in an Elegant City
Menace at the Christmas Market (novella)
Death in an English Garden
Death at an English Wedding
On the Run
Elusive
Deceptive
Suspicious
Devious
Treacherous
Ellie Avery
Moving is Murder
Staying Home is a Killer
Getting Away is Deadly
Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder
Mint Juleps, Mayhem, and Murder
Mimosas, Mischief, and Murder
Mistletoe, Merriment and Murder
Milkshakes, Mermaids, and Murder
Marriage, Monsters-in-law, and Murder
Mother’s Day, Muffins, and Murder