Returning from a stifling hot London, Fran Calvert looks forward with relief to reaching her cool house, Watersplash, an award winning modernist arrangement of glass, designed by her architect husband Mark, set in a forest clearing below Membery Place, home of the Calvert family for a hundred years.. But the cool relaxing evening is denied her, when wondering down to the waterfall, she discovers the body of Biba.
Bianca (Biba) Morgan has always carried with her an air of secrecy, ever since Chip the eldest of the three Calvert sons, brought her and her young son Jasie to the family home. Now with her death the family realise how little they knew about her previous life. Initially, the family members are sure that the killer must be an outsider, but as Inspector Dave Crouch and Sergeant Kate Colville investigate her death, links between Bianca and the other brothers are revealed. Jonathan Calvert International cello soloist and his partner Jilly, and Mark who absence now begins to trouble Fran as she realises that she doesn’t know exactly where her husband is, or how to get in touch with him.
Slowly the cracks beneath the family facade begin to show. Is Chip as adept at controlling the family finances as he says he is? Is Alyssa, Mrs Calvert senior, really so dedicated to the Membery Place gardens, once her pride and joy, are they perhaps now becoming too much, and staunch Jane Arrow, who has always been there, as a prop, and considers the Calverts her family, what will happen to Jane if Alyssa accepts her beau Humphrey.
Of more immediate concern is the whereabouts of Biba’s nine year old son Jasie, who seems to have disappeared. Did he see the murder? Has he been abducted?
Once again Marjorie Eccles provides her readers with a rich tapestry of family
life with all the complexities of a murder investigation that peel away the
layers to reveal a killer.
------
Lizzie Hayes
Marjorie Eccles is the author of the Inspector Gil Mayo series.