Read A Finer End Online

Authors: Deborah Crombie

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense

A Finer End

BOOK: A Finer End
9.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

PRAISE FOR DEBORAH CROMBIE’S
A FINER END

“Crombie has laid claim to the literary territory of moody psychological suspense owned by P. D. James and Barbara Vine. Superbly creepy and melodramatic.”
—The Washington Post

“Crombie … has evolved into a masterful novelist.”
—The Denver Post

“Very richly written.”
—Deadly Pleasures

“A master of the modern British mystery … one writer who gets better with every book.”
—The Patriot News

“A really splendid book.”
—Booknews
from The Poisoned Pen

“Intricately layered.”
—The New York Times

“Careful plotting, the development of characters and the evocation of place are hallmarks of Crombie’s writing and the current book is no exception.”
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

“A clever, cunning series.”
—Book Barn Gazette

“Superbly creepy and melodramatic. Like
The Hound of the Baskervilles
, one of those rare mysteries in which titanic forces clash.”
—Washington Post Book World
, Fiction Raves 2001

“The atmosphere … is perfect.”
—Booklist

KISSED A SAD GOODBYE

“Atmospheric … absorbing … haunting.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“Crombie never stumbles as she maneuvers her way through her complicated plot as skillfully as she handles the ongoing romance between her two detectives. The result is an Anglophile’s delight.”
—The Sunday Denver Post

“Deborah Crombie is an American mystery novelist who writes so vividly about England, she might have been born within the sound of Bow bells. [She] gets better with each book.… Lyrical, biting, and evocative.”
—The Plain Dealer
, Cleveland

“An engaging, richly peopled, satisfying mystery.”
—Houston Chronicle

“Compelling from start to finish. Another winner from a dependable and gifted pro.”
—Kirkus Review
(starred review)

“[A] beautifully executed story of murder and revenge … With each volume, Crombie grows in the understanding of her characters and hones her writing and creative skills with verve and elan.”
—Booknews
from The Poisoned Pen

“Gripping. Highly recommended.”    —
Library Journal

“Readers … who loved Deborah Crombie’s
Dreaming of the Bones
will not be disappointed with
Kissed a Sad Goodbye.…
Outstanding.”
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

DREAMING OF THE BONES

A
NEW YORK TIMES
NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

NAMED ONE OF THE CENTURY’S BEST MYSTERY NOVELS BY THE INDEPENDENT MYSTERY BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION

NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR AND THE AGATHA AWARDS FOR THE YEAR’S BEST NOVEL

“Fascinating … multilayered.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A definite recommendation for fans of Elizabeth George, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell.”
—Library Journal


Dreaming of the Bones
will make you cry and catch your breath in surprise.” —
Chicago Tribune

ALSO BY DEBORAH CROMBIE

All Shall Be Well

A Share in Death

Leave the Grave Green

Mourn Not Your Dead

Dreaming of the Bones
*

Kissed a Sad Goodbye
*

And Justice There Is None
*

*
Available from Bantam Books

A FINER END
A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition / May 2001
Bantam paperback edition / June 2002

Map illustration by Laura Hartman Maestro

All rights reserved.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Samuel Weiser, Inc. for permission to reprint material from GLASTONBURY: AVALON OF THE HEART by Dion Fortune (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 2000). Material used by permission.

Copyright © 2001 by Deborah Crombie

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78940-2

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

v3.1

For my mother, who has always believed in me

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my writer’s group once again for their unstinting support and patience: Steve Copling, Dale Denton, Jim Evans, John Hardie, Viqui Litman, Diane Sullivan, and Rickey Thornton. Added thanks to Diane Sullivan, RN, BSN, for advice on medical matters, and to Dr. Davis Wortman, director of music, St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, Texas, for his advice on the complexity of Gregorian chant.

I am also indebted to Marcia Talley and Carol Chase for their suggestions and additional readings of the manuscript; to my editor, Kate Miciak, for making this a better book; and to my agent, Nancy Yost, for her encouragement.

And last but certainly not least, thanks to Rick and Katie, for providing me a firm foundation.

Contents

PART I
CHAPTER ONE

Imagination is a great gift, a Divine power of the mind, and may be trained and educated to create and to receive only that which is true
.
—F
REDERICK
B
LIGH
B
OND
,
FROM
T
HE
G
ATE OF
R
EMEMBRANCE

T
HE SHADOWS CREPT
into Jack Montfort’s small office, filling the corners with a comfortable dimness. He’d come to look forward to his time alone at the day’s end—he told himself he got more done without phones ringing and the occasional client calling in, but perhaps, he thought wryly, it was merely that he had little enough reason to go home.

Standing at his window, he gazed down at the pedestrians hurrying along either side of Magdalene Street, and wondered idly where they were all scurrying off to so urgently on a Wednesday evening. Across the street the Abbey gates had shut at five, and as he watched, the guard let the last few stragglers out from the grounds. The March day had been bright with a biting wind, and Jack imagined that anyone who’d been enticed by the sun into wandering around the Abbey’s fishpond would be chilled to the bone. Now the remaining buttresses of the great church would be silhouetted against the clear rose of the eastern sky, a fitting reward for those who had braved the cold.

He’d counted himself lucky to get the two-room office suite with its first-floor view over the Market Square and the Abbey gate. It was a prime spot, and the restrictions involved in renovating a listed building hadn’t daunted him. His years in London had given him experience enough in working round constraints, and he’d managed to update the rooms to his satisfaction without going over his budget. He’d hired a secretary to preside over his new reception area, and begun the slow task of building an architectural practice.

And if a small voice still occasionally whispered,
Why bother?
he did his best to ignore it and get on with things the best way he knew how, although he’d learned in the last few years that plans were ephemeral blueprints. Even as a child, he’d had his life mapped out: university with first-class honors, a successful career as an architect … wife … family. What he hadn’t bargained for was life’s refusal to cooperate. Now they were all gone—his mum, his dad … 
Emily. At forty, he was back in Glastonbury. It was a move he’d have found inconceivable twenty years earlier, but here he was, alone in his parents’ old house on Ashwell Lane, besieged by memories.

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he sat at his desk and positioned a blank sheet of paper in the pool of light cast by his Anglepoise lamp. Sitting round feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to do a bit of good, and he had a client expecting a bid tomorrow morning on a residential refurbishment. And besides, if he finished his work quickly, he could look forward to the possibility of dinner with Winnie.

The thought of the unexpected entry of Winifred Catesby into his life made him smile. Besieged by arranged dates as soon as his mother’s well-meaning friends decided he’d endured a suitable period of mourning, he’d found the effort of making conversation with needy divorcées more depressing than time spent alone. He’d begged off so often that the do-gooders had declared him hopeless and finally left him alone.

Relieved of unwelcome obligations, he’d found himself driving the five miles to Wells for the solace of the Evensong service in the cathedral more and more frequently. The proximity of the cathedral choir was one of the things that had drawn him back to Glastonbury—he’d sung at Wells as a student in the cathedral school, and the experience had given him a lifelong passion for church music.

BOOK: A Finer End
9.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Heart of Glass by Zoey Dean
Thirsty 2 by Sanders, Mike, Art, Nuance
Mystery of the Queen's Jewels by Gertrude Chandler Warner
The Truth by Karin Tabke
Blackstone (Book 2) by Honor Raconteur
Colin Meets an Emu by Merv Lambert
Chill of Night by John Lutz
Just Like Fate by Cat Patrick, Suzanne Young