Murder at the Spring Ball: A 1920s Mystery by Benedict Brown (simple ebook reader txt) 📕

“I told you before, Chrissy. There are so many adventures I still wish to have and I’d like you there alongside me.” He looked at me then, expecting a response. Even though we were only going five miles an hour, I wished he’d keep his eyes on the road. “What do you say? Are you game?”

I was obviously flattered and couldn’t think what else to say, so nodded profusely.

He bellowed out a laugh as we pulled onto the main drive. “Fantastic! I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

My helmet restricted the view, but I could tell that he was grinning. He looked back at the road and I felt rather wonderful about the world. Despite far too many dead relatives and one diabolical old lady, life was just grand.

“I’ve always wanted to have a go on one of these things,” Grandfather said and I suddenly didn’t feel so positive.

“You mean you’ve never ridden a motorbike before?”

“No, but I’ll soon learn!” He revved the engine and sped away up the drive with a mischievous look on his face.

“Wait, Grandfather. I think I’d rather walk.” We pulled onto the road and he immediately accelerated. “Grandfather, let me out!”

The End (For Now…)

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About this Book

This book is special to me for a number of reasons. I wrote it for my father, Kevin, who is surely responsible for getting me into crime fiction in the first place. Dad died in 2014 having already suffered with Alzheimer’s for fifteen years. He had long since lost the ability to read, but carried a book with him wherever he went and talked about them as special treasures he had to keep safe.

As Mr Kevin Brown died aged seventy-four, I thought it was rather fitting to start this book on Lord Edgington’s seventy-fifth birthday. It almost felt like I was writing a fantastical sequel to Dad’s life. Except for the silvery hair and love of nice suits, my father was nothing like Lord Edgington. He was born in an absolutely miniscule house in South London, close to where my family still live. His parents were Alice, who had come over from Ireland to find a job as a domestic worker, and Harry, an engineer who, by all accounts, was extremely Victorian in his parenting. Despite having a father who communicated no affection to him, my dad was the kindest, most affectionate man I’ve ever met. I once went into our local bank and the manager introduced me around to all the staff as ‘Kevin was simply the nicest customer we have.’ When Dad died, there was standing room only at the funeral and people we hadn’t seen for thirty years turned up. My mother made everyone laugh with the eulogy, my brother made everyone cry, and there was even some dancing – but that’s another story.

My father was, and still is, very much loved, so this is for you Dad. I hope you get a kick out of having your very own country house mystery.

The stories which we tell in my family – from both the Welsh and Irish/English sides – influence everything about my writing. Dad’s mum made notoriously inedible meals (in my mother’s words, “she could even overcook salad”) and so her influence is there in both the young maid, Alice, and the eccentric cook. I’m glad to say that my family are nothing like the Cranleys. On the plus side, we rarely plot against one another, though, less positively, we also lack their sprawling estate and car collection.

Cranley Hall is based on a number of houses my history teacher mother dragged my brothers and I too when we were kids. If you’d like to see a similar Neo-Palladian estate, take a look at Chiswick House in the west of London or Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. The house on the front cover is Wollaton Hall in Nottinghamshire, which is a truly stunning Elizabethan property (and has doubled for Wayne Manor in the Batman films). It doesn’t quite fit the architectural style of Cranley Hall, but it’s difficult to find images which you can legally use for book covers and my wife Marion has worked wonders to make it look just perfect.

There are two songs included in the book which I did not write. ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow’ was written in 1892 by English songwriter Joseph Tabrar and there is even a Toulouse-Lautrec painting of a famous singer performing it. And ‘Come, Gentle Night!’ was a poem written by Clifton Bingham, which the popular English composer Edward Elgar set to music in 1901.

I chose the name Cranley as it’s a place which existed once but no longer does, so I thought it fitted rather nicely. The village now known as Cranleigh in Surrey changed the spelling of its name in the 1860s to avoid confusion with the nearby town of Crawley. I think it’s a funny story and so I brought Cranley back to life in approximately the same place. In my book, Cranley Hall and the village of St Mary-Under-Twine are located in the, also fictional, Hundred of Edgington. Starting in the middle ages, a ‘hundred’ was a division of a larger area, like a borough or district today. I recently discovered that my home town of Wallington once had its own hundred which covered a large swathe of Surrey and South London, so I borrowed the largely forgotten term to give The Marquess of Edgington an ancestral estate. History is a fascinating thing and I’ve enjoyed combining different elements to create the book you’ve just read.

The “Murder at the Spring Ball” Cocktail

If anyone would like to make the ‘Hanky-Panky’ cocktail, which that versatile chap Todd mixes for Marmaduke, the recipe is:

1 1/2oz (45 ml) dry gin

1 1/2oz (45ml) sweet