A Debt Owed To Death
Managing a love affair across two centuries and running a business make life hard enough without a skeleton turning up at the latest project.
Natasha’s builder partner Vic is seriously spooked, but more worryingly Matthew, her lover-across-time, is strongly opposed to Tash investigating who it is and who killed him.
Discovering why a body could be left in a bank’s strong room for over two hundred years is bad enough without vanishing bankers, dysfunctional families, Matthew’s troublesome relatives, Hector the dog “assisting” and the distraction of her friends’ romantic relationships, both flourishing and floundering.
And then there’s another death.
Somehow a murderer has to be found and her relationship with Matthew must be put on a strong new footing before it too becomes a victim.
Book 7 of the Clock House Mysteries.
Excerpt
Gold.
The thing about gold is that it gleams. It glitters. It is incorruptible. Bury it in Egyptian sands, sink it in a Danish bog or hide it under the mattress and yet when it is exposed to light again there is no tarnish, no decay. The shine is mesmerising and has generated desire and greed for centuries.
It stopped us in our tracks now, and this gold had only been concealed for two hundred years or so.
The light from Vic’s torch wavered. ‘Bloody hell. Is that what I think it is?’
‘It’s not chocolate coins, that’s for sure.’ I took a gulp of very stale air.
‘Does it belong to us now?’ she asked, her voice a trifle shaky.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. My voice wasn’t exactly steady either. ‘We’ve exchanged contracts, the money’s been paid and the sale was for building and contents. It’s one for Frank.’
Frank Ponsonby’s my friend and solicitor and the building in question was the old Twyson and Freeman bank in Grape Lane, Welhampstead.
It had been one of those small local Georgian banks that had existed in virtually every town of any size, had got into trouble at some time in the early nineteenth century and closed down. Then an incredibly complex issue over inheritance had left the numerous squabbling heirs stuck with the building and stubbornly living in it for generation after generation on ever-declining incomes until it was finally abandoned and boarded up some time after the Second World War.
Finally everyone died off except for one distant relative left standing as the heir, and he was in Australia. Vic and I had recently bought it for a song. (Well, a small opera to be exact, but even so, a good price).
Vic backed off and leaned against the jamb of the outer door of the vault. ‘Knowing our luck, it will cause endless trouble. At least it isn’t another body.’
Vic Williams is a builder. I’m Tash, owner of Natasha Rowlands Property. I restore and renovate property and Vic works with me, sometimes in partnership on a project, sometimes as my builder. We had found a skeleton in the grounds of one house we worked on, which had made Vic’s crew jumpy. It hadn’t done a great deal of good for my nerves either.
There wasn’t that much gold, I realised, now I had my breath back. At least, all I could see was a small scatter of coins. Sovereigns? Guineas? Whatever they were, with the price of gold what it was, it would be a very nice bonus. If we were its new owners.
I moved the torch beam past the gold, illuminating the dark space behind the glitter. Was that… a boot? Yes, and there was another. A pair, soles towards us and lying as though they were occupied and their owner was on his back. Boots don’t do that of their own accord.
‘I wouldn’t bet on no bodies, Vic,’ I said, amazed that my voice stayed almost steady, because my pulse rate certainly wasn’t. ‘I really wouldn’t bet on it at all. Call Frank. And then the police.’
