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Overview
“Whip-smart” (Louise Penny) amateur sleuth Samantha Clair returns in A Howl of Wolves, a mystery from Judith Flanders, the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of A Murder of Magpies.
Sam Clair figures she’ll be a good sport and spend a night out at the theater in support of her upstairs neighbors, who have small parts in a play in the West End. Boyfriend (a Scotland Yard detective) and all-round good sport Jake Field agrees to tag along to what is apparently an extra-bloody play filled with dramatic, gory deaths galore. So Sam expects an evening filled with faux fatalities. Until, that is, the curtain opens to the second act, revealing a dummy hanging from the rafters, who’s been made up to look suspiciously like Campbell Davison, the director of the production.
When Sam sees the horrified faces of the actors onstage, she realizes that this is indeed not a dummy, but Davison himself—and this death is not part of the show. Now everyone wants to know: who killed Campbell Davison? As Sam learns more about the murdered man, she discovers that he wasn’t all that well-liked amongst the cast and crew, so the suspect list grows. The show must go on—but Sam knows a murderer must be apprehended, so she sets out to find out what happened, and why.
New York Times bestselling author, Judith Flanders once again brilliantly fuses mystery with humor in the fourth installment of her critically acclaimed Sam Clair series.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250087850 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2018 |
| Series: | Sam Clair Series , #4 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 772,089 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
JUDITH FLANDERS is an international bestselling author and one of the foremost social historians of the Victorian era. Her book Inside the Victorian Home was shortlisted for the British Book Awards History Book of the Year. Judith is a frequent contributor to the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Spectator, and the Times Literary Supplement. She lives in London.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
"There are thirteen dead people here." Jake was accusing.
I didn't think it was my fault. "I know. I told you that," I reminded him.
"I thought you were making it up."
"I don't make up dead people." I replayed the sentence in my head. It sounded worse the second time around. "I mean, I didn't need to make them up. Thomas Kyd already did." It wasn't as if I'd gone out and hired a special offer, baker's dozen hit man.
Jake didn't respond, his head bowed, turning the pages of his programme ferociously, as though, if he could just find the right place, a play that had been written more than four hundred years ago would suddenly have a different ending.
"Why are we doing this?" Jake brought me back to the present.
"We're doing this because we're nice people."
In truth, he's nicer than I am. Don't get me wrong, I'm a nice person. I don't race old ladies to the last seat on the bus, or at least, not too often. I pat the heads of small children, if they happen to stroll past. And — I couldn't think of anything else I did that made me a nice person. I'd like to believe I'm a paragon of virtue, someone who is always late because she stopped so frequently to rescue small furry animals from random perils. In reality, I became an editor in a publishing house for a reason. I spend so much time inside my own head that imperilled animals would have to claw their way up my leg, sit on my shoulder, and bat at my nose before I looked up from my book long enough to notice them.
We were in a theatre, though, so the odds of small furry animals requiring assistance were slim. "It's not just for Kay, it's for Bim," I said firmly.
Kay and Anthony were my upstairs neighbours. They were actors, successful enough that they were regularly cast in big parts in small productions outside London, or in small parts in big productions in London. This was one of the latter, a West End company fronted by one television star and one film star–slash–theatrical legend. Kay was only playing the lead actress's maid, but, as she said cheerfully, she got to die in a pool of blood onstage. Each to her own, of course, but dying bloodily eight times a week had never been my ambition. Especially since Bim, Kay and Anthony's son, also had a part in the play. I hadn't realized that six-year-olds watching their mothers die wreathed in gore was in the good parenting guide. But apparently it was, as Bim had acted it out for me with relish, several times. He knew every nuance, since he played the same leading lady's page, and was onstage when Kay was killed.
He also spent a lot of his time running around my garden, quavering "My deeeeear," in an affected, high-pitched voice. Then he mimed reading a script, daintily licking his ring finger before turning each page with it, peering over an invisible pair of reading glasses in a manner that Kay swore could easily have him mistaken for the director's twin, if twins came in sets where one was half the height, and less than a tenth the age, of the other. Nonetheless, he was having a good time, and attending the first night of a play wasn't exactly a hardship, even without friends in the cast.
Jake wasn't quite as convinced. The play was The Spanish Tragedy, and I'd made the mistake of looking it up and attempting to pass on the plot summary when the evening was first planned. After I'd described the first couple of deaths, Jake had begun to mumble about not going to the theatre to watch the same sort of thing he saw at work all day.
I considered asking what the CID estimated the annual rate of death by rapier at, but I'd bitten it back. Then I lost points for that heroic suppression of snark by patting myself on the back. Smug wasn't a pretty look, even mentally.
While Jake read, I watched a couple two rows ahead of us. They were greeting, and being greeted by, half the audience. They didn't look like actors. The man was in his seventies, I guessed, and gave the impression he'd rather be spending his evening in front of the telly with a hot drink. The woman didn't look any more like a performer, but she was exactly where she wanted to be, at the centre of attention. She was probably a decade younger than her partner, although she was dressed as if she hoped everyone would think it was two, or even three: a lot of Polyfilla had gone into both her face and farther down. I didn't feel unkind staring at her chest, since her dress was cut lower than most bikinis: pay and display.
I was pulled away from my supercilious judging of total strangers by a hand on my shoulder. I turned, and there was Anthony, together with a couple he introduced as Kay's parents. We did polite London chitchat — did you come far, isn't traffic terrible this evening — and some parental stuff — did they get a chance to see Kay perform often, wasn't Bim adorable in his page's costume — and then the lights went down. I settled in. There's nothing I like better than an onstage bucket of blood.
Jake appeared not to agree, if his shifting about was any indication. And initially I could see his point. The first act seemed to be entirely made up of people telling each other what had already happened, and the director and designer had only upped the difficulty by setting the production in the twentieth century, in what looked to be a Soviet courtroom. I could see no obvious reason for that decision, while the uniforms made it hard to tell the characters apart.
Then the play captured me. The important things — in the sixteenth century, a Soviet courtroom, or now, in a West End theatre — were still the same: betrayal, love, revenge. By the time the interval came, Jake's arm must have been black and blue where I'd grabbed it every time a weapon came out.
In the second half, he reached for my hand as the lights went down, either in a show of empathy, or to try to ensure he retained some circulation in his arm as the bodies began to pile up onstage. Kay was number four to go, and I discovered that Bim's garden re-enactments had been uncannily accurate, so much so that I was surprised to hear her own deep voice, rather than a high-pitched six-year-old's reciting the lines.
We were, by my count, up to the tenth body when things went astray. According to the story, the tenth body wasn't in reality the tenth at all, but belonged to a character who had been killed before the interval, whose body was now being displayed by his anguished father, who drew back a curtain to reveal it hanging from a rafter, all green and mildewed and nasty, one hand clawing outward in a ferocious death-spasm, fingers splayed and frozen in the air.
Certainly, to modern eyes it was ludicrous, and you would expect the odd nervy giggle in the audience. But it was in fact the cast that started it. They worked hard to cover things up, but the moment the curtain was pulled back, everyone onstage stuttered and stumbled, all of them refusing to look at one another, shoulders silently shaking.
It spread quickly. These were regular first-nighters, theatre people themselves, or the families and friends of theatre people. Whispers and not-so-smothered snickers buzzed through the house.
Jake turned to me. Without taking my eyes from the stage, I shrugged. I had no idea what was happening. Then Anthony leaned forward from the row behind. "The dummy's been made up to look like Campbell Davison," he whispered.
I shook my head. Who? the headshake said.
"The director. Someone is playing a practical joke." He paused. "And someone is going to get sacked." He sounded amused and appalled in equal measure.
A hissed "Shhh" had me turning guiltily back to the stage. So the dummy was Bim's My deeear man come to life. Or, rather, to death. Kay had implied he wasn't universally loved, and this prank suggested that she wasn't alone in that view.
The cast doggedly continued, but no one was paying any attention anymore. All eyes were glued to the figure swinging at the rear. I had no idea what Campbell Davison looked like, my entire knowledge of the man being based on Bim's imitation, but I could see now that the dummy bore no resemblance to the young actor from the first half. This body was stockier, an old man's shape, and, under the green mould makeup, the face was older too. The hair, which at first sight had appeared blonde, was grey, and longer than the brutal 1930s buzz cuts sported by the men in the cast.
In theory, this was the climax of the play. But even the ghost of revenge, who summed up the moral after the lead committed suicide, promising eternal torment for those who caused misery to their fellow men, could make no impact on the so-carefully-not-laughing actors and the smirking audience.
That is, until the curtain came down. In the few seconds between the blackout and the curtain rising for the cast bows, the performers had sobered, some now looking downright frightened. I imagined that they realized that while physically they were facing a delighted audience, tomorrow's reviews would be very different.
When I turned to Jake, though, he was as sober as the actors, checking his phone hurriedly rather than joining in the applause. A shake of his head, and he put it in his pocket. "Come on," he said, pulling me up. "We need to go."
We did? I would have stayed to the end, if only to say the right things to Kay's parents and Anthony, but getting up the endless stairs before the crowd wasn't a bad idea. I bent and whispered a few She was marvellous sentences to them, but Jake had my coat, my umbrella, my bag, and me — he really wanted out.
"Mr. Hustle," I grumbled at his back as he sped up the stairs two at a time, phone out once more.
"There's no signal down there," he replied, as though that were an answer.
I knew that there wasn't any football, or he would have dodged out at the interval to check, so I had no idea what had made this mad dash necessary.
"Do you know where the stage door is?" he asked, before continuing without waiting for a reply. "You'll be all right going home on your own?" Going home on my own? I was about to repeat that out loud, when he pushed open the street door. Three police cars, lights flashing wetly in the damp night air, were double-parked in front of us. Another two were lined up in an alley beside the theatre.
Jake steered us over to the nearest one, pulling out his warrant card as he went. "Field, CID," he said to the uniformed constable blocking the alley. "I was in the audience. I saw it."
I stumbled to a halt.
"Oh god, he was really dead, wasn't he? That was Campbell Davison. That wasn't a dummy."
CHAPTER 2Jake didn't get home all night. I slept sitting up on the sofa. I'm not quite sure why, but going to bed seemed frivolous, a sign that I didn't care about what had happened. And since I didn't know what had happened, but I did care, well, I slept sitting up on the sofa.
Jake had handed me over to a constable in the street. "She doesn't know anything," he said, "but you can process her quickly now, and it's one less for you."
There's really nothing I like better than being spoken about as though I weren't present, much less having it announced that I'm entirely ignorant of whatever it was, but in this instance Jake was right, I didn't know anything.
He kissed me absent-mindedly and said, "You'll be all right on the bus home?" I nodded, too shocked to respond as I normally would have — No, of course I won't be all right on the bus that I take every day of my life. Everyone knows I need a keeper and three assistant keepers to get me onto public transport.
"Processing" me turned out to be police-speak for taking my name and contact information. Once that was done I was told politely that they wouldn't keep me any longer, which I easily translated back into English: Now, would you please get out of our hair?
So I did. I headed to the bus stop, where the first group of theatre-leavers stood waiting, and eavesdropped shamelessly. They, like me, hadn't known anything was wrong until after the performance, when they were stopped at the exit by police taking names and addresses of everyone in the audience. No one would say what had happened, referring to it vaguely as an "incident," and the guesses ranged from blackmail to some sort of theatrical sabotage (which was, I gathered, like industrial sabotage, but with costumes and gossip websites). While they spoke about the dummy as though it were part of the sabotage, oddly, none of them seemed to think that the dummy might not have been a dummy. And once I realized that, I also realized that Jake hadn't replied when I'd asked. He hadn't said it wasn't Campbell Davison, and so I had assumed I was right. I had also assumed that the number of police responding to the "incident" meant it was more serious than sabotage or blackmail, no matter how high-profile those involved were. But maybe not. Jake was right: I didn't know anything.
Once I was on the bus, I texted Anthony: If you need me to look after Bim, or anything else, let me know. He hadn't replied by the time I got home, so I decided to leave a note on their door. That way Kay's parents would see it if they came back without Anthony. I wrote out my phone numbers, and that I was in the flat below, and added an arrow pointing down, in case they weren't sure where "below" might be.
Then I stood on the landing for a moment. I had no idea why, since I knew perfectly well I wasn't going back downstairs. I looked at my watch. Nearly 11:30. I headed quietly up to the top-floor flat, to see if Mr. Rudiger was awake.
That he was home wasn't in question, since Mr. Rudiger never went out. Not rarely, but never. He was already living in the house when I had moved into my flat twenty years before, and in all that time, as far as I knew, he'd been downstairs perhaps half a dozen times, and he'd only gone past the front door three times — two of those times being when we all had to leave because of a fire. He was probably in his seventies, but he wasn't ill, or frail. He just didn't go out. He had been a famous architect decades earlier, before he retired in his forties and, as far as I knew, had lived in the top-floor flat of my house, peacefully minding his own business ever since.
Well, our business too. The man had hearing like a bat, and always knew who was coming and going in the house. Tonight was a coming and going he'd definitely want to know about.
I could see a light shining under his door, but still I tapped lightly. He might have fallen asleep reading, or, for all I knew, he might leave his hall light on all night. But no. Within seconds of my knock, steps could be heard.
"It's me," I called. "Sam."
He opened the door, no more surprise on his face than if I'd dropped by on a Saturday to see if he wanted me to pick up something at the market. "Coff —" he began, then looked more closely, and modified his offer. "A drink?"
"I think someone was killed. In the play. The one Kay's in. And Bim." I blurted.
"Camomile tea," he decided, as though what one drank after watching a play in which someone had been killed, with one's friends in the cast, had been formally and statutorily laid down in a handy pamphlet, a copy of which he kept by his front door.
Once I had my hands wrapped around the cup, I realized that even if there wasn't a pamphlet, he was right: a hot drink was exactly what I needed. Death was cold, and its ripples spread. Herb tea couldn't ward off death, but it could warm the edges of those it had touched.
I sat in my regular spot in Mr. Rudiger's cosy sitting room, its rich burgundy curtains pulled against the night, a single lamp illuminating the matching burgundy sofa and a fat, welcoming chair as I told him everything, both what I'd seen, and what I thought I'd seen: that I'd made a guess, from Jake's reaction, that Campbell Davison had been killed and somehow had ended up hanging from a meat hook, in a spotlight.
I rubbed my forehead. "It doesn't make much sense. Why would anyone want to highlight his death, rather than hide it if it were ..." I searched for a neutral world, and settled on "purposeful." I couldn't quite bring myself to say "murder." "Or maybe — maybe someone found him — maybe he'd had a heart attack and ..." I trailed away. If he'd died of a heart attack and someone painted him in green makeup and strung him up then it might be even worse.
Mr. Rudiger didn't respond. He didn't say much in general, and never chat for the sake of chat. If he didn't know something, he stayed silent.
"I looked up Davison on my phone on the way home." I waved it in his general direction, in a do-you-want-to-look gesture, but went on immediately. "Apart from loads of theatre, he did a few films." It went without saying that Mr. Rudiger didn't go to the theatre, so he wouldn't have seen any of the plays, but he surprised me.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Howl of Wolves"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Judith Flanders.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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