Book Excerpt
THERE WAS A message engraved in the locket.
To my darling Siddy with all my heart.
The glass was cracked, but I did not need to read the flowing Connie to know that the picture was of my mother. And – not for the first time – I wondered that I did not look like either of my parents.
‘Give that back.’
I hardly heard the words but, when I looked up, I saw the curl at the corner of his mouth that I had seen in our twin reflections. ‘Dear God in heaven,’ I cried. ‘Are you my father?’
‘Where did you get that locket?’
‘It fell on the steps when you were stabbed.’
‘You had no right to keep it.’
‘I forgot about it with everything else going on.’ I clipped the locket shut. ‘And you had no right to keep it from me.’
This was the closest that I had ever seen my guardian to panic. He lunged over the table, catching it with his knee and scattering our afternoon tea.
‘What?’ I closed my fist around the locket. ‘Will you prise it from my fingers like a clue from a corpse?’ I pulled back just in case. ‘Why did you take me in?’ I struggled to control my voice. ‘By your own admission you are not a kind man.’
‘You are my goddaughter.’
‘You do not even believe in God and why would my mother be sending you love tokens?’
Sidney Grice sank back into his chair. He closed his eyes. ‘I am not your father,’ he said quietly. ‘Your father was your father.’
I had never known Sidney Grice to tell a lie and I could not believe that he was doing so now. ‘What are you hiding from me?’ I looked at him.
My guardian’s right eyelid was losing its tone and he had trouble closing it properly. His glass eye stared blindly back at me. ‘No more than I am hiding from myself,’ he answered carefully.
His plate lay in the ashes, broken from when he had dropped it, all those long minutes ago when I thought perhaps I knew him.
About the Book
‘Delightful and original…a series that could well become a cult.’ Daily Mail
‘Pure amusing enjoyment.’
New Books Magazine
‘Funny, fresh and sharply plotted… a detective duo to rival Holmes and Watson.’ Goodreads
London, 1884: Sidney Grice – London’s foremost personal detective – is restless. Having filed his latest case under ‘S’ for ‘Still To Be Solved’, he has returned to his book, A Brief History of Doorstep Whitening in Preston, to await further inspiration. His ward, March Middleton, remains determined to uncover the truth.
Geraldine Hockaday, the daughter of a respected Naval captain, was outraged on the murky streets of Limehouse. Yet her attacker is still on the loose.
But then a chance encounter in an overcrowded cafe brings a new victim to light, and it seems clear March and Grice are on the trail of a serial offender.
A trail that will lead them to the dining room of a Prussian Prince, the dingy hangout of an Armenian gangster, and the shadowy ruin of a once-loved family home, Steep House…
THE GOWER STREET DETECTIVE SERIES
The Mangle Street Murders
The Curse of the House of Foskett
Death Descends on Saturn Villa
The Secrets of Gaslight Lane
Dark Dawn over Steep House
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About the Author
M.R.C. Kasasian was raised in Lancashire. He has had careers as varied as a factory hand, wine waiter, veterinary assistant, fairground worker and dentist. He lives with his wife, in Suffolk in the summer and in Malta in the winter.
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