Death at the Jesus Hospital (33 page)
Read Death at the Jesus Hospital Online
Authors: David Dickinson
‘Huge pile, Lucy, slowly falling down for lack of money. There’s a lake there with an island in the middle. Very romantic, I should say, if you like that sort of thing.’
Powerscourt was well aware that his wife did like that sort of thing, as he put it. Come to that, he would have had to admit that he quite liked that sort of thing too.
‘What of it, Lucy? Are they offering guided tours? Charging coach parties to restore the family fortunes?’
‘Not so, my love, not so at all. They’ve invited us to a ball.’
‘Great God, Lucy, this must be the first time we’ve been invited out by one of my police Inspectors. When is this great event?’
‘It’s at the end of June. It must be round about the longest day of the year.’
‘It seems rather a long way to go, just for a couple of dances, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, but his eyes betrayed him.
‘Francis, how could you? Of course we’ll go.’ Lady Lucy sank into a kind of reverie. Beneath her feet she could feel the sprung floor of the ballroom. Around her glided beautiful people bedecked with tiaras and emeralds, their men wearing sashes of the military, medals shining on their chests. The air was filled with the perfume of the flowers. Strauss’s ‘Emperor’ waltz wrapped them in its rhythms, the dancers circling the floor in time with the music.
‘Oh, Francis, we must go. We can dance until the dawn and watch the sun come up from the island in the lake. It’ll be magnificent, a night to remember in the heart of England!’
Titles in the series
(listed in order of publication)
Goodnight Sweet Prince
Death and the Jubilee
Death of an Old Master
Death of a Chancellor
Death Called to the Bar
Death on the Nevskii Prospekt
Death on the Holy Mountain
Death of a Pilgrim
Death of a Wine Merchant
Death in a Scarlet Coat
Death at the Jesus Hospital
Constable & Robinson Ltd
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First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2012
First US edition published by SohoConstable, an imprint of Soho Press, 2012
Soho Press,
Inc. 853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
www.sohopress.com
Copyright © David Dickinson, 2012
The right of David Dickinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978–1–78033–030–3
US ISBN: 978-1-61695-085-9
US Library of Congress number: 2011039548