Nevertheless, a book there had been, and a book there might still be. When I spoke to Emilie at the funeral, I didn’t quite realise how little had already been written – a few scenes, a nearly complete outline, a copious quantity of notes. I knew something of it from phone conversations, and one or two fellow authors had been her sounding boards.
From this, A Matter Of Loyalty came into being. I knew her style inside out, I knew her plans for the book, and something of her intentions for the rest of the series. I made some editorial decisions at the outset. There were one or two plot developments I thought had come in the wrong place, and had intended to raise with her; I cut some surplus relationships; and I introduced one character who hadn’t been in the outline. Other than that, the book you’ve just read is, as far as human power permits, the book she intended to write in those last few weeks.
This will be the last Selchester book, and the last book of her career. It was written to honour her valiant effort, and to ensure that one, at least, of all the stories she still wanted to tell would see the light of day. A few years before her death, she told the Oxford Times that she had far more books in her than time to write them; this proved all too true. I knew enough of this one to write almost the book she intended, but I can’t do justice to the remaining books in the series. They should exist as her creations, or not at all.
Before I take my leave with words from two of my mother’s favourite authors, I owe thanks to more than the usual array of people, and for more than the usual run of reasons.
Those who lent their aid during those awful weeks and days in early 2016, and who gave comfort to my mother as she faced the last and most terrible of life’s mysteries. In particular: Bridget, Jonathan, and Theresa Rowland; the Fathers of the Oxford Oratory; Tessa Caldecott; Amy Mason; Andrew and Anne Wilkinson; William Maddock; Daniel Dolley; Lyn Whiting; the nurses of the John Radcliffe Short Stay Medical Ward, in particular Alice, Jade, and Mauro, and a fellow patient named Sandy whose last name I never learned; St Hilda’s College, Oxford, which laid on its alumna’s final farewell.
Those who helped bring the book first into being, and then to completion: Nancy Warren and Elizabeth Jennings, fellow authors and good friends; Emilie Marneur and Jane Snelgrove, who encouraged me to finish it and brought it to publication; Susan Opie, who did a first-rate job with the editing; William Edmondson and Tony Harker for advice on physics and many related things beside; Jean Buchanan for her expertise on the fifties; Stephen Edmondson for being an excellent godfather.
To those whose love, strength and support were, and are, a light in darkness and a comfort in adversity, in particular Von Whiteman, Naomi Harries, my sister Eloise, and Katherine Richardson.
Last of all, to the co-author of this book, who can no longer hear my words: Thank you.
‘It is only a novel . . . or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.’
—Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
‘. . . But your nightingales live on; Death who takes all things cannot lay his hand on them.’
—Callimachus, Elegy for Heraclitus
About the Authors
Photo © David Morgan
Elizabeth Edmondson (1948–2016) was born in Chile, educated in Calcutta, London and Oxford, and worked in EFL publishing before turning her hand to writing novels. She had more than thirty books published in a variety of genres, but her lifelong preoccupation was on the one hand with English manners and eccentricities, and on the other with the conflicts of the thirties, the Cold War, and espionage, in all of which her family had been involved. The Very English Mysteries, her last series, brought all of these preoccupations together in stories of the fictional cathedral city of Selchester, full of spies, gossip, and goings-on.
A lifelong nomad, she lived in five countries and six English counties, founded a youth orchestra, rode horses, rang bells, enjoyed Baroque music, and was never without an enormous collection of books, a wardrobe of sleek clothes, and the latest gadgets.
A Matter Of Loyalty, left unfinished at her death in January 2016, was finished by her son Anselm Audley, also a published novelist.
Photo © Katherine Richardson
Anselm Audley is a fourth-generation writer whose antecedents include authors, linguists, spies, and even a dictator. He grew up chiefly in cathedrals, has lived in an assortment of historic English towns and landscapes, and was educated at Oxford and the British School at Rome. His passions are stories, landscapes and the past, with honourable mentions for making music, ringing bells, and sailing the ocean blue. He now lives in yet another cathedral city.
He is the author of four fantasy novels with a historical twist. More recently he has written three non-fiction Kindle Singles, combining storytelling with historical understanding to bring the real predicaments of historical figures to life. He also worked as editor and informal story consultant on the two previous Selchester books.
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