Death Comes to the School (Kurland St. Mary Series #5)

by Catherine Lloyd

Overview

In the English village of Kurland St. Mary, few things are worse than having one's reputation besmirched. A struggling marriage is one. Murder is another . . .

Three years have passed since Major Sir Robert Kurland and Lucy Harrington, the rector's daughter, became husband and wife. Having established a measure of contentment among the local gentry, the couple lately have found an unsettling distance grown between them. But when the small-village peace is disrupted by an anonymous letter accusing Lucy of witchcraft, her as yet unfulfilled desire to be a mother becomes the least of her worries, especially after she learns she is not the only one to have received such a malicious letter.

Speculation only escalates when the village schoolteacher, Miss Broomfield, is discovered murdered at her classroom desk. Was the unlikeable teacher the letter writer, and if so, who killed her and why? Despite her husband's objections, Lucy offers to help out at the school until a replacement can be found, hoping the children might inadvertently reveal a clue, but by doing so she may be putting her own life at risk . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496702104
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Series:	Kurland St. Mary Series , #5
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Catherine Lloyd was born just outside London, England, into a large family of dreamers, artists, and history lovers. She completed her education with a master's degree in history at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and uses the skills she gained there to research and write her historical mysteries. Catherine currently lives in Hawaii with her husband and four children. Her website is located at www.catherine-lloyd.com.

Editorial Reviews

10/16/2017
Set in 1820, Lloyd’s enjoyable fifth Kurland St. Mary mystery (after 2016’s Death Comes to the Fair) opens with Maj. Sir Robert Kurland and his wife of three years, Lucy, preparing Kurland Hall for Christmas. Depressed from a recent miscarriage, Lucy is dismayed to receive a venomous poison-pen note predicting that she will die alone and childless—and to learn that others are receiving similar notes. Further unpleasantness ensues. Soon after Lucy meets Martha Broomfield, the cruel mistress of the village school she and her husband have endowed, Miss Broomfield is found dead at her desk, stabbed through the eye with a quill pen. In her effort to learn more about the victim, Lucy contacts the schoolmistress’s former employer and discovers a cache of costly jewelry and a mysterious key in Miss Broomfield’s quarters that suggest possible motives, but she remains unsure whether the murder and the poison-pen letters are linked. The liveliness of Lloyd’s many secondary characters and the marital tensions arising from Lucy’s fertility woes add richness to the well-plotted puzzle. Agent: Deirdre Knight, Knight Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

2017-09-28
A pair of married sleuths find their lives disrupted by murder and misdeeds in 1820.Lucy, Lady Kurland, has not recovered physically or mentally from the two miscarriages she's suffered in the past six months. Her husband, Sir Robert, who still has ongoing pain from an equestrian mishap at Waterloo, is never easy to deal with, and Lucy fears that her inability to provide an heir is the reason he has not sought her sexual favors. When Lucy receives a poison-pen letter, she's deeply disturbed; when more people receive similar letters, they become a riddle she hopes to solve. But not before a more important riddle: the murder of Miss Broomfield, the woman who was hired at the last minute to teach in the village school the Kurlands endow. A visit to the school convinces Lucy that Miss Broomfield is not at all suited to teach young children. She not only seems to dislike them, but also displays a religious mania for sulfur and brimstone that makes Lucy wonder if she's the poison pen. The woman was killed by being stabbed with a long hat pin; there was also a quill pen stuck in her eye. Inquiries reveal that Miss Broomfield was dismissed from her prior job and that she may have come from a wealthy background, if indeed all the valuable jewelry Lucy finds at the schoolhouse is legally hers. Robert, who serves as the local magistrate, is not eager for his fragile wife to become involved in another investigation (Death Comes to Kurland Hall, 2015, etc.), but he also knows that strong-minded Lucy doesn't always heed his advice.A romance of married life intertwined with a murder puzzle featuring a heroine suitable for a Jane Austen novel.

Kirkus Reviews