Decline in Prophets
Read Decline in Prophets Online
Authors: Sulari Gentill
A note from the publisher
Dear Reader,
If you enjoy riveting stories with engaging characters and strong writing, as I do, you’ll love
A Decline in Prophets.
Historical crime fiction at its best, Sulari
Gentill brings together art, money, crime, religion and… murder in an extraordinary tale set in 1932 on the luxury cruise liner
RMS Aquitania.
The second book in the Rowland Sinclair
Series, it’s the sequel to
A Few Right Thinking Men.
She had me hooked from her very first page, and I couldn’t put the story down.
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A Decline in Prophets.
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Happy reading,
Alison Green
First published in 2011 by Pantera Press Pty Limited
www.PanteraPress.com
Text Copyright © Sulari Gentill, 2011
Sulari Gentill has asserted her moral rights to be identified as the author of this work.
Design and Typography Copyright © Pantera Press Pty Limited, 2011
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This is a work of fiction, though it is based on some real events. Names, characters, organisations, dialogue and incidents are either products of the author’s
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A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.
ISBN 978-0-9807418-9-6
eBook ISBN 978-1-9219970-1-3
Cover and internal design: Luke Causby, Blue Cork
Front cover image: © Getty Images, Hulton Archive [#JE2886-001]
Back cover image: © Getty Images, Hulton Archive [#JC8953-001]
Typesetting by Kirby Jones
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To all the prophets and profiteers I have known.
CONTENTS
Prologue
DEATH WORE A DINNER SUIT
9
Speech by Houdini, the great Mystifier
18
SYDNEY WELOMES THE RMS
AQUITANIA
26
INTERVIEW WITH COLONEL OLCOTT
28
The Book of Constitutions of the Ancient Grand Lodge of England
Prologue
DEATH WORE A DINNER SUIT
H
is manners were perfect. Murder made sophisticated conversation while dancing the quickstep. He was light on his feet.
Annie Besant shuddered and closed her eyes. How clearly she saw the spreading crimson stain on the starched white dress shirt. That much was revealed… but no more. She surveyed the room.
So many immaculately tailored men—all dashing, some charming, at least one was dangerous.
An old woman now, her celebrated clairvoyance was not what it once had been. The foresight was vague, useless for anything but tormenting her with a premonition of violence. The feeling was
furtive, an occasional glimpse of a deep predatory darkness that lurked amongst the gaiety and cultured frivolity of the floating palace. A cold creeping certainty that one of the elegant gentlemen
who gathered to dine, intended to kill.
1
RMS
AQUITANIA
The RMS
Aquitania
is like an English country house. Its great rooms are perfect replicas of the fine salons and handsome apartments that one finds in the best of
old English manor halls. The decorations are too restrained ever to be oppressive in their magnificence. There is no effort to create an atmosphere of feverish gaiety by means of ornate and
colourful furnishings. The ship breathes an air of elegance that is very gratifying to the type of people that are her passengers.
The Cunard Steam Ship Company Ltd
I
t was undeniably a civilised way to travel… particularly for fugitives.
Overhead, crystal chandeliers moved almost imperceptibly with the gentle sway of the ship. If the scene over which they hung had been silent, one may have noticed the faint tinkle of the
hand-cut prisms as they made contact. As it was, however, the Louis XVI Restaurant was busy, ringing with polite repartee and refined laughter as the orchestra played an unobtrusive score from the
upper balcony.
The tables in the dining room were round, laid with crisp white linen and a full array of cutlery in polished silver. Each sat twelve, the parties carefully chosen from amongst the first class
passengers of the transatlantic liner. Waiters wove efficiently and subtly through the hall. Though neither as large nor as fast as the newer ships in the Cunard Line, the RMS
Aquitania
boasted a luxury and opulence that was unsurpassed. Her passengers cared less about arriving first than they did about doing so in the most elegant manner possible.