‘The Inheritors of Moonlyght Tower’ by J. C. Briggs

Published by The Sapere Books,
23 December 2015.  
ISBN: 978-0-85495563-1 (PB)

The prologue to this distinctly Gothic novel is set in 1936, as is the conclusion, but most of the story takes place during World War I and the years immediately afterwards. Jessie Sedgewick, whose story it is, lives at Swarthgill Farm in northwest England with her sick mother and brute of a father. Her brother, Josh, is away fighting at the front. Jessie’s father wants her to marry the older and violent Ted Gorman, a man who frightens her. There is little to keep Jessie at home, but when her mother tells her that she has arranged for Jessie to be employed as a maid at Moonlyght, a house some distance away, Jessie is reluctant to go out of concern for her mother. The housekeeper at Moonlyght, Mrs Cobb, is a relative.

When Jessie arrives at Moonlyght, she is overwhelmed by the gloom of the place. Her fears are hardly helped by meeting a former maid, Ethel Widdop, who tells Jessie to leave as soon as she can. The household is as gloomy as the house. Lady Emmeline de Moine, a widow after the death of the General, has taken to her bed ever since her elder son plunged to his death from the tower in an as yet unexplained incident, and barely communicates, even with her business-like nurse. Her other son is away at the front. Mrs Cobb is brusque. Visitors are few and far between. The only person sympathetic to Jessie is a local farmer, the lovely Mr Turner. Before long Jessie learns that her mother has died and is already buried. Now she has nowhere to go even if she manages to leave Moonlyght. Her only hope is that her brother stays alive. To make matters worse, in the night she hears footsteps in an empty room above her own.

The household is enlivened by the arrival of Miss Caroline, said to be the orphaned daughter of a cousin of the General’s. Initially rather snooty, she gradually takes to Jessie who does more and more for her. Lady Emmeline’s other son Alexander and his cousin Charles return on leave, finding the body of Ethel as they do so. She was pregnant – who was the father? Alexander seems to be suffering from shellshock, and Charles takes a shine to Jessie although she is initially wary of him. Miss Caroline imagines, without foundation, that she is engaged to Charles. There are more unexplained deaths, as well as pregnancies. Dark secrets abound.

The tipping point of the story is when Jessie decides she must get away from Moonlyght. She runs away extremely early one morning to board a train, but (to the angst of this reader) bumps into Charles on the platform as he is returning from leave. If only he hadn’t come back on that particular train! She is persuaded to return to Moonlyght with him (her absence still undetected by Mrs Cobb), from which moment the machinations of others lead Jessie into a downward spiral in the following years. It is difficult to say more without giving the game away.

Briggs writes with affecting sensitivity and conviction about both Moonlyght and the war. There is a genuinely yearning sense of the period and its deprivations, both actual and potential. The fear of the arrival of a telegram is ever present, for instance. The tower at Moonlyght looms over this story in every sense. Why does it seem to be connected with death, and what secrets are the family hiding? Jessie, like the reader, notes that ‘the pieces didn’t fit’. This is a novel whose revelations are made gradually. Jessie’s clouded and disturbed memories are jogged eventually by lines by Housman and a newspaper obituary, and close to the end she sees her past ‘with absolute clarity.’

Although not the most cheerful of reads, this is a novel thoroughly worthy of your attention – particularly if you enjoy atmospheric mystery. It is well written and plotted and retains interest, even (particularly?) when one wonders where it is leading. It is also moving, and I confess to a slight prickling in the eyes at the very end. Lovely Mr Turner.
------
Reviewer: David Whittle 

J. C. Briggs taught English for many years in schools in Cheshire, Hong Kong, and Lancashire. She now lives in a cottage by a river in Cumbria with a view of the Howgill Fells and a lot of sheep, though it is the streets of Victorian London that are mostly in her mind when she is writing about Charles Dickens as a detective. There are eleven novels in the series so far, published by Sapere Books. The latest, The Jaggard Case, came out in October 2022. Number eleven, The Waxwork Man, comes out on September 15^th. Another novel will come out at the end of 2023. This is a new departure, a novel about an empty house called Foulstone in the old county of Westmorland, a house with secrets kept since the First World War.

She was Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association (2018-2022), is still a board member of the CWA, a member of Historical Writers’ Association, the Dickens Fellowship, The Society of Authors, and a trustee of Sedbergh Book Town.  

jcbriggsbooks.com 

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.