by Annie Dalton
Table of Contents
Cover
A Selection of Recent Titles From Annie Dalton
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
A Selection of Recent Titles from Annie Dalton
For children
ANGEL ACADEMY: LIVING THE DREAM
CHERRY GREEN, STORY QUEEN
FRIDAY FOREVER
INVISIBLE THREADS
LILAC PEABODY AND HONEYSUCKLE HOPE
NIGHTMAZE
WAYS TO TRAP A YETI
For adults
The Oxford Dogwalkers’ Mysteries
THE WHITE SHEPHERD *
WRITTEN IN RED *
* available from Severn House
WRITTEN IN RED
An Oxford Dogwalkers’ Mystery
Annie Dalton
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This first world edition published 2016
in Great Britain and the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.
Trade paperback edition first published
in Great Britain and the USA 2016 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD
eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2016 by Annie Dalton and Maria Dalton.
The right of Annie Dalton and Maria Dalton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Dalton, Annie author.
Written in red.
1. Murder–Investigation–Fiction. 2. Dog walking–
England–Oxford–Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery
stories.
I. Title
823.9’2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8595-1 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-699-2 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-760-8 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described
for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are
fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This ebook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,
Stirlingshire, Scotland.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful thanks to Fiona Ferguson, Jeanette Johnston, Jane Darby and Tim Couché for generously sharing their expertise, and to local dog-walking friends Trish Mallett, Sarah Nash and Marjorie Guichard for walks, talks and ongoing support. Also huge thanks to the real Tim Freemantle and to Helen Vallier, who kindly lent their names to two of our characters.
PROLOGUE
James Lowell emerged into a chilly December dusk relieved to have given his last but one tutorial of the Michaelmas term. Though his rooms were only a few hundred yards away, he was still recovering from a chest infection so he had been forced to wrap up like some old buffer in a tweed coat, cap and muffler. All he needed was a blasted stick, he thought.
Teaching increasingly tired him nowadays, even when he was well, but to his surprise James actually felt reinvigorated by the lively discussion he’d had with his tutees. While he was bundling himself back into his layers, two girl students had come up to wish him a happy Christmas, then rushed off on their bikes to sing carols at Carfax Tower. Older people loved to complain about the young, but each time James saw those fresh young faces looking back at him, he saw himself at their age, exuberant and clueless as a puppy; dangerously clueless, in his case. The thought produced the familiar ache around his heart.
Passing under one of the college’s many medieval archways, he set off up the steep stairway to his living quarters, noticing, as he always noticed, the tight bend where countless unknown scholars before him had steadied themselves against the same solid oak beam. This simple action, repeated across the centuries, had worn a satin-smooth depression in the shape of a human palm. Such a small thing, yet it moved him every time.
Living in an Oxford college, you were constantly reminded that you were just a fleeting presence in a vast historical continuum. Some people disliked Oxford for that reason, chafing against its self-importance and outmoded traditions. But to James, Oxford stood for everything that was humane and good. It was his home, his shelter from the storms of the outside world, his second chance.
He’d first arrived at Walsingham College as an undergraduate to read history and politics. He had somehow achieved a first, despite the fact that he was certainly having some kind of breakdown at the time. Then, after confused years of wandering, James had found his way back and never left. In his early thirties, he had written a book on medieval thought which had earned him the respect of his peers. Since then there had been at least a dozen other well-received books. Currently he was immersed in writing a study of seventeenth-century English radicalism which he believed to be his best work yet.
The thought of the almost-completed final chapter waiting on his laptop made James hurry up the last few stairs. He could almost feel ideas and sentences forming as he felt for his door key. It was the old-fashioned kind with wards, more suited to Bluebeard’s chamber, he thought, than the apartment of a celibate old academic. A tall, straight-backed man, even in his late sixties, he had to stoop to insert it in the lock.
Already mentally at his desk, he almost failed to notice the envelope sticking out from under his door. In the semi-twilight of the landing, the pale paper seemed to glimmer. James picked it up, rubbing his thumb over the expensive stationery, puzzled by the fact that it bore only his name. Post normally entered Walsingham College via the porter’s lodge and was kept in the recipient’s pigeonhole until it was collected. This had obviously been delivered by hand. Equally puzzling was the careful calligraphy. Who bothered with beautiful handwriting nowadays? It was most likely to be some kind of tedious invitation. James loved Oxford but had developed a phobia of hot rooms filled with braying academics.
Without turning on any lights, he dropped the communication unread on a cluttered coffee table on his way to rescue the fire which had burned down almost to ashes. Something felt subtly different about the room, though he felt sure it looked the same as when he’d left. Exactly the same in fact, he thought, down to the familiar and well-loved smells: wood-ash
, old leather-books and ancient timber mixed with liberal quantities of wax polish, and that unique composite fragrance which was the signature scent of Walsingham itself.
Crouching by the hearth, James took small logs from a basket and threw them on to the faintly glowing embers. Still uneasy, he glanced around the small apartment. At the far end were two further doors. One led to a galley kitchen with rudimentary cooking facilities, the other to a monkish little bedroom with bathroom attached. It was ridiculous to think someone had been in his rooms. ‘You’re going gaga,’ he told himself irritably. He wasn’t normally given to nervous fancies. In bed at night he’d hear the medieval building creak and shift but the sounds never bothered him. If any ghostly scholars were watching over him as he went about his solitary routine, they probably recognized him as a fellow lost soul, he thought. Once again, he felt that familiar sorrowful ache.
One of the logs caught with a loud crackle. Fresh flames leapt, illuminating his surroundings with their orange flicker. It was a few minutes past six, but it might have been midnight. This time of year, his rooms, with their tiny leaded windows, were almost dark by two in the afternoon. With the lights off, the only visible sign of the twenty-first century was the blinking light on James’s laptop. As an historian he knew it was ridiculous to imagine that life in medieval times had been somehow simpler or nobler than his own, yet the fantasy persisted: a childish dream of a golden time and place where he could have been the man he’d always longed to be, a good and honourable man.
Hauling himself to his feet, James went around switching on lamps. Like some Dutch old master, the subdued lighting tenderly picked out domestic details here and there: the gilded titles on the spines of books, the gleam of a button on the cardigan cast over the back of the old chesterfield, the metal trim on his Dansette record player kept for sentimental reasons since he now owned a state-of-the-art music system.
He was safe at home with everything he held dear, yet he still felt strangely on edge. He decided it must be the mysterious letter. Putting on one of the several pairs of cheap reading glasses he kept around his apartment, James seated himself by the fire and slit open the envelope, drawing out a sheet of folded cream-coloured paper.
The shock of the words inside robbed him of all sensation. He sat numb, unseeing, as the letter slowly slipped from his hand. He’d persuaded himself that the danger had passed. Fifty years had gone by. In a few years, he would die of some tedious old person’s ailment and his secret would die with him. He had hidden himself away in this most cerebral of cities. He had lived, or tried to live, a blameless but intellectually productive life. Now some fiery whirlwind out of the Old Testament had torn off the roof from above his head, exposing him as a hypocrite and a sham. For an instant, he saw himself as a tiny squirming figure, a terrifying vortex of divine wrath overhead.
James stood up, dazed, and went to pour himself a whiskey, but all he could see were those patiently executed words, like something one might copy out for a child who was learning to read – assuming you wanted to give them nightmares. You must Cleanse this Foul Darkness from Your Soul, or You will Burn in Hell for Eternity. In the style of an old illuminated manuscript, each of the capital letters was inscribed in red as if to underline the theme of purgatorial fire.
Still standing, James took a burning gulp of his whiskey. He had never told another soul what had happened that day. The only people who knew were James and Tallis.
Tallis. After all this time, the name still held its old ambiguous charisma. It was not impossible that he was still out there somewhere, lurking in the shadows. But though Tallis might conceivably still be alive, James couldn’t believe he’d written the letter. Tallis had made James feel that his guilty conscience was a pathetic indulgence, a weakness. As an individual, James was utterly insignificant, Tallis had said. The important thing was to limit the damage, or James would have destroyed everything their group had been working so hard to achieve. By this time James was doubtful if they’d achieved anything at all, but he was still recoiling from the terrible thing he’d done, and so he’d agreed to let Tallis clean up his mess.
James felt the gooseflesh rise on his arms as he remembered the chilling efficiency with which Tallis had acted to do just that …
He set down his glass and went to his desk. The surface was littered with notebooks and papers, crucial references for the last leg of his book, the book he’d hoped might be his legacy and which now seemed pathetically unimportant. Bending to open a deep drawer James pulled out an old leather-backed album. He took the album and the glass of whiskey to a small table beside the chesterfield. About to sit down, he abruptly changed his mind, and went to search through his stash of LPs. He found the one he was looking for, slid it out of the tattered sleeve, placed it on the turntable of his ancient record player, selected the track and softly lowered the needle.
The twanging opening chords of ‘Time Is on My Side’ filled the room, and instantly he was back in the stale little booth in the music shop, the two of them sharing one set of headphones.
It was the closest he’d ever been physically to a girl. He had both wanted it to last for ever and also to immediately flee back to his room so he could process the devastating, soul-wrecking sensation of first love. She had been comically horrified that he’d never heard of the Stones, while James had been stunned that a girl – this heart-stoppingly beautiful girl – could relate to something so savage, so raw. With typical generosity – she was carelessly generous to everyone she allowed into her inner circle – she’d bought him the record as a gift.
‘Someone’s got to drag you into the twentieth century, James, darling,’ she’d said mischievously. Helplessly smitten, he’d played the song whenever he was alone in his room, to re-evoke the pleasurable torture of loving her.
Sitting on his chesterfield, his glass in one hand, James turned the pages of the album with the other, leafing past pictures of smiling young people in sixties’ clothes. The pictures were just old black-and-white Kodak snaps, yet whenever he looked at them he always saw their real colours. How formal young people had looked then: the boys in tweeds and cords like headmasters in training, the girls with matching twinsets and backcombed hair. He smiled at the photo of Isadora in an unflattering fluffy sweater failing to look relaxed in a punt. With one of her endearing hoots of laughter, she’d confessed that she didn’t know how to swim. How touchingly young she was then; the youngest undergraduate of her year. Their paths had crossed of course over the years. Oxford academia was a small and incestuous world. Once he’d looked up feeling her eyes on him from across the room. But they’d never once spoken. Tallis had seen to that.
He turned a page and his hand stilled. It was the only photo he possessed of them all together. Piers had acquired an old London cab of which he was enormously proud and in which he tirelessly drove everyone around. In the picture they’d all taken up poses against the taxi’s gleaming black flanks, except for Piers who hung out of the driver’s window, waving and grinning at the camera. The photograph captured the ebullient confidence of the times so perfectly it could have been for a sixties’ photo shoot.
James turned to the next page and felt his mouth go dry as he came to the photograph that always brought such mixed joy and pain. Random sensations assailed him: her gentle fingers stroking his hair, exploring his skin, the scent of her perfume mingled with the cigarette smell that had gradually impregnated everything he wore. She smoked, so James did too. If he couldn’t win her love he could at least earn her approval.
It hurt to see her so young and lovely. She’d been the first of the girls to grow her hair long, not artfully layered the way long hair was styled today but falling like a pale straight curtain around her face, with a thick fringe that hung almost in her eyes. He remembered how the smallest movement could bring that silky curtain swinging across her cheekbones, veiling her feelings from view. In the picture she was wearing a simple shift dress that she’d bought on one of her mysterious disappear
ances to London. Almost as soon as she’d got it she gave it away to Catherine, one of the other girls. ‘I’ve gone off it,’ she’d said abruptly. ‘Here, take it!’
‘But it’s by Mary Quant,’ Catherine had said in awe.
She’d had extraordinarily lovely blue-grey eyes, lovely yet utterly enigmatic. As if her brows and lashes weren’t already dark enough, she would outline them Cleopatra-style with some sooty cosmetic. A year later all the girls were doing it. She’d been ahead of her time, he thought, rushing recklessly into some magical future of love, peace and universal freedom – a future that never came. James had been too young then to understand the damage that ran through her like a fault line. The things she did. The risks she took. He’d imagined he could save her, cherish and protect her, but instead …
‘You’ll come running back,’ Mick Jagger threatened. ‘You’ll come running back to me …’
James felt an infinitesimal change in the air of his room. At the same moment he heard a faint creak. Too late, adrenalin surged as something smashed down on the back of his skull, followed by agonizing pain that penetrated right to the roots of his teeth. Doubled over by the impact, half blinded by the blood streaming into his eyes, James looked up at the indistinct figure that was suddenly standing over him and he knew that the letter-writer was right.
It was time for him to pay.
ONE
It was a few minutes after eight on a bright frosty morning and Anna Hopkins was walking her dog on Port Meadow. She was dressed in her old parka, jeans, muddy boots and a knitted scarf with a repeat motif of Jack Russell terriers. It had been given to her by her friend Tansy ‘as a ridiculously small thank you for letting me stay at your place till I sort myself out!’ All the terriers were bright pink, except for one tiny black Jack Russell that faced stubbornly in the opposite direction. Tansy had watched anxiously as Anna unwrapped her gift from its layers of tissue. ‘It’s meant to be a joke?’ she’d explained. ‘Because of us being the dog walking detectives? Don’t feel you have to wear it. I know you’re more of a monochrome girl.’