Antonia Darcy and Major Payne Mystery
2 total works
It promised to be the perfect holiday every modern convenience, exotic terraced gardens complete with an 'English' folly, thirty-eight varieties of ice-cream, cocktails with names like 'Widow's Wink' and 'Mumbay Mule'. Antonia and Hugh Payne never seriously imagined they would encounter anything worse than extravagance in this idyllic setting...
But an uninvited guest at the garden party given in their honour makes Antonia Darcy his confidante. Not only does he claim to have witnessed the strangling of beautiful, wayward Marigold Leighton, he also insists it was their host Roman Songhera, the 'uncrowned king of Goa', who had committed the murder. 'You are the kind of woman who lets her imagination run riot', the Hon. Mrs Depleche warns Antonia - but then the murder witness mysteriously disappears and later turns up dead.
And so, rather reluctantly, Antonia and Major Payne decide to set aside their pleasure-filled days, and investigate.
Praise for R.T. Raichev's Previous Novels
'Fascinating and surreal.' Lady Antonia Fraser
'Clever and complex.' Francis Wyndham
'Splendidly oldfashioned sleuthery ... skilfully probes the surface smoothness of country houses ...couldn't put it down.' Hugh Massingberd
'This auspicious first in a new mystery series from Raichev... Agatha Christie fans will find much to like in this traditional whodunit.' Publishers Weekly
Lord Remnant's eccentric parties on his privately owned Caribbean island of Grenadin are the stuff of legend... but then the 12th Earl suddenly dies in the course of an amateur production of The Murder of Gonzago, the play within a play in Hamlet.
The Times obituary gives the cause of death as 'heart attack' but an anonymous video tape come to light showing Lord Remnant's final moments, making it very clear his demise was far from natural.
As happens so often, Antonia and Hugh Payne get involved in the sinister events surrounding Lord Remnant's death. Was ithis drug-addicted stepson Stephan? Was it Aunt Hortense, whose past contains a dark and shocking secret? Was it Clarissa, his beautiful and very much younger wife? Or was it the elusive Mr Quin, who is left a vast amount of money in Lord Remnant's will for no apparent reason...