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.
