The Murders at Fleat House
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| Author | Lucinda Riley |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Country | UK |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel, Crime thriller |
| Publisher | Macmillan Publishers International |
Publication date | 26 May 2022 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 978-1529094961 Search this book on  . |
The Murders at Fleat House is a novel by Northern Irish author Lucinda Riley, published in 2022 with the help of her son, following the author's death in 2021.
Plot[edit]
Detective Jasmine Hunter (Jazz) moves from the city of London to coastal Norfolk to digest her recent divorce from Patrick Coughlin, a fellow detective who has cheated on her and undermined her career because of his own insecurities.
In a nearby boarding school, a pupil named Charlie Cavendish dies in his bedroom in Fleat House of what initially seems to be an epileptic fit. The PM, however, reveals that Charlie had ingested two Aspirin pills instead of his anti-epilepsy medication, causing an allergic reaction and an anaphylactic shock. Jazz is tracked down by her boss in London and asked to end her leave of absence in order to investigate the case.
Jazz initially interviews the headmaster of the boarding school, who seems to routinely fail to rise to the occasion when difficulties come about. Mr. Jones, the headmaster, is anxious to write the case off as an accident, but Jazz, together with her partner DS Miles from London and DS Roland from the local police department, begin to suspect that there is more to the story than one had previously thought.
Multiple subjects are interviewed on and off the premises. Sebastian Frederiks, the housemaster of Fleat House, seems to have an unusually high opinion of late Charlie, who is quickly revealed to have been a bully rather disliked by most residents of the school. Frederiks reveals that, on the night of Charlie's death, he had left the school for a few hours – an act he was legally not allow to commit under the existing rules. He refuses to provide any details on his whereabouts that evening, raising Jazz's suspicions.
Madelaine Smith, the matron of Fleat House, expresses her strong disliking of Charlie, despite believing one should not speak ill of the dead. Speaking with an Australian accent, she reveals she has been living in Australia and the USA before returning to her native UK and accepting a temporary position at the school where she had already worked many years prior.
Adele Cavendish, Charlie's mother, seems distraught over more than her son's death alone. The fabric of her marriage to Charlie's father William – a successful barrister – seems to have been rending for a while. She makes a suspicious phone call to an unknown person after Jazz has left her house.
It turns out that, on the night of Charlie's death, both Madelaine Smith and Sebastian Frederiks were absent, with Madelaine having a regular night off and Sebastian sneaking away. The only adult present to supervise was Hugh Daneman, Fleat House's tutor and renowned British Latin scholar. Just as Jazz heads to interview him in his house, she and DS Miles find him dead in his easy-chair, having committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. In his hand, they find a faded photo of a beautiful young woman, to whom Hugh toasted virtually immediately before washing the pills down with a glass of brandy.
In the meantime, broker David Millar is drowning his feelings in alcohol after discovering his socialite wife Angelina had been lying to him about having a second baby, slapping her and subsequently going through a hasty divorce. It is revealed that Angelina has a new lover, a successful local solicitor Julian Forbes, who is now living in David's house, having bought it from him in Angelina's name. David and Angelina's son, young and feminine Rory Millar, is a pupil at the same school where Charlie has died. Moreover, he is revealed to have been mercilessly bullied by Charlie back when he was alive. David is in a lot of distress over Rory's wellbeing because, right around the time Charlie's death occurred, Rory gave him a call sounding very stressed and scared. After the headmaster refuses to allow David to visit Rory in Fleat House, Rory is admitted to the sanatorium with stomach issues, and subsequently runs away and finds his father in the cabin he is renting. The two embark on a trip to the mountains, David notifying Angelina that Rory is alright, but refusing to reveal their exact location.
Prior to David's disappearance with Rory, he threatens Julian in the middle of a busy street, and Julian is also terrified when he sees a person on the premises of the boarding school, which he had also attended as a young boy years ago. In distress, Julian has an email exchange with someone whose identity is not revealed, which only elevates his anxiety.
Jazz visits her parents at Cambridge. Her father, a former pastor and university professor, now disabled after having been shot by a parishioner's jealous husband, calls his friend to get some details on late Hugh Daneman's past. It is revealed that the young woman in the photo found on the site of Daneman's suicide is, in fact, a young man named Corin, the late heir of a local noble family who died some 40 years ago after binging on drugs and alcohol. Corin was Hugh Daneman's lover and, having been his student, he was the reason why Hugh had lost his prestigious position at Oxford and started working as a humble teacher at the boarding school. Having lost his beloved Corin to substances, Hugh had never gotten over his death and led the life of a hermit, having few contacts and devoting himself to raising the boys at the school.
David and Rory show up at the police station in Norfolk, whereupon David confesses to having killed Charlie Cavendish. According to his confession, he substituted Charlie's Epilim with his own Aspirin pills. Sensing severe plot holes in the confession, Jazz finds out via Angelina that David is also severely allergic to Aspirin, making the story of him using "his own" pills to poison Charlie in the rush of the moment highly implausible. Jazz releases David, whereupon he disappears without a trace despite a police officer patrolling the premises around his cabin.
Jenny Colman, the headmaster's secretary, who has recently returned to work after a medical procedure, spots matron Madelaine Smith in the room during a staff gathering. The two women reunite and are revealed to have been childhood friends. Madelaine tells Jenny that, having never gotten over "the tragedy", she had to leave her job at the boarding school and move abroad. She was subsequently trained to be a nurse, and has worked in Australia and recently also in the USA.
As Jazz's father falls ill and is hospitalized, she makes her way back to Cambridge, assisted by her ex Patrick who showed up uninvited to try and reconcile with her. In the meantime, criminal psychologist Issy interviews young Rory and gains his trust, only to find out that the reason he called his father in distress was because, having been bullied by Charlie, he had subsequently been molested by Hugh when he had come to his study to confide his worries in him. The motive for Hugh's advances on Rory could have been his uncanny resemblance with late Corin, Hugh's ex lover.
Having interviewed Corin's younger brother, the current lord of the estate, Jazz finds out that Charlie Cavendish was related to the family and was, in fact, the only rightful heir to the estate. Adele, Charlie's mother, is revealed to be Corin's younger sister.
Angelina reports her lover Julian as having gone missing. Soon after that, a horrifying discovery is made by a plumber in Fleat House as he finds Julian's dead body in Rory Millar's trunk in the basement. Julian has died of severe trauma to the back of his head inflicted with an axe, cleaver knife or a similar weapon.
Patrick, who is now actively participating in the investigation, the fact of which irritates Jazz, is in a hurry to locate David Millar and accuse him of both murders. According to him, his motives are clear: Charlie had been bullying Rory, and Julian was his ex-wife's much-hated new lover. Additionally, David had already confessed to having killed Charlie and had also publically threatened Julian Forbes's life.
Knowing she is running out of time and sensing strongly that David Millar is not the right person, Jazz locates and interviews Corin's mother, the aging lady of the lord estate. Lady Emily reveals to the detective that, despite being in a same-sex relationship with Hugh, Corin had also had relations with numerous women during his stormy years leading up to his death. One of these women had been Jenny Colman, the boarding school's secretary. Jenny is revealed to have had a baby with Corin, whom she gave up for adoption soon after the boy's birth some 40 years prior to the current events. On the day of the adoption, Jenny slipped Corin's family crest ring into the baby's diaper.
Jazz realizes that she has seen Sebstian Frederiks, the housemaster of Fleat House, wear a ring identical to Emily's. Also, late Hugh Daneman has left almost his entire fortune to Frederiks who had never liked Hugh in particular, having always been uncomfortable with gay men. Jazz grows suspicious that Frederiks might be Jenny Colman's long-lost baby. If he is indeed Corin's son, then he would have had a motive to get rid of Charlie Cavendish: with Charlie gone, Sebastian would remain the only living heir to the lord estate and get his hands on some serious money. For Hugh, it would have made sense to see the ring on Sebastian's finger and believe he was his beloved Corin's son, prompting him to alter his will in favor of Frederiks a couple of months before the current happenings. As far as Hugh's death is concerned, his suicide is unrelated, given the fact that he was a lonely aging man who had lost control and made a disgraceful pass on a teenage pupil due to his resemblance with Corin.
Jazz secretly obtains a sample of Sebastian's hair and has its DNA be compared with that of Corin's and Rory's. In the meantime, David Millar turns up drunk and is hastily arrested by Patrick. Jazz has less than 24 hours to pursue her lines of enquiry before Millar is officially charged. The DNA test comes back, and it is revealed that Sebastian Frederiks is not related to the noble family, but Rory is undoubtedly Corin's grandson.
Jazz interviews Adele Cavendish in the cottage she is renting after having left her husband William following their son's death, and she reveals that she is Sebastian Frederik's lover, which explains why Frederiks had been so forgiving of Charie's bad behavior in school. Also, Adele tells Jazz that she had given Frederiks her family crest ring to wear as a reminder of their relationship while on duty. It is also revealed that Adele and Sebastian had a romantic evening together on the day Charlie died, which seals Frederik's alibi.
With the Frederiks line of investigation having come to a dead end, Jazz turns in desperation to the possible motives behind the death of Julian Forbes, apart from David Millar's jealous drunken rage which she dismisses as a plausible cause for the murder. The basement where Julian was killed is also the place where a young boy had died many years ago, giving rise to a local rumor about a ghost haunting Fleat House. Jenny Colman, who has worked at the school for decades, is very reluctant to talk about the boy, only mentioning that his name had been Jamie Smith. Curiously, the night Julian Forbes died (according to the PM), he had had an evening meeting with a client also named Smith. The forensic officers break into Julian's computer, and Jazz reads his final email exchange with one of his former school buddies. It turns out that, much like Charlie Cavendish, Julian had been a notorious bully back in his school days. He had a gang of four healthy young men eager to dominate the school premises. In his email to one of his three gang members, Julian mentions his terror from having seen "Le Forgeron" in the school yard. His friends writes back revealing he is now residing in France, and that the other two "gang" members are no longer alive. One was murdered in Australia under mysterious circumstances, in the hospital he had worked at as a surgeon. The other fell to his death out of his office window in the USA just a year ago.
While reading the email, the word "Le Forgeron" catches Jazz's attention. "Le Forgeron", meaning "blacksmith" in French. "Smith" as in Jamie Smith, the boy who committed suicide in the basement where Julian was killed immediately after having had a meeting with a client named Smith in his office. Young Jamie Smith took his life because he had been bullied relentlessly by Julian and his friends. One of his friends had been murdered by an unknown perpetrator in a hospital in Australia, where former Fleat House matron Madelaine Smith had been working as nurse. A few years later, a second friend dies in the USA, where Madelaine Smith happens to be living at the time. Madelaine Smith returns to the boarding school for the winter term of 2005. Soon after, young Rory's bully Charlie Cavendish is murdered, and Julian Forbes is next. The final victim, the last living member of Julian's gang, is in Provence.
Even though Fleat House is sealed, Jazz enters it and force-opens the door into Madelaine's quarters. An unconscious Jenny Colman is found on the floor, poisoned with antifreeze-infused tea by Madelaine after having grown suspicious her old friend had been involved in the murders. No trace of Madelaine can be found, her personal belonging gone, as well. Jazz telephones the police department and instructs them to patrol all nearby airports for a quadruple murder suspect Madelaine Smith, presumably heading for France.
Madelaine Smith is apprehended before boarding her France-bound flight, on her way to murder the last member of Julian's gang. She confesses to all four murders across the three countries and shows no remorse. On the day her son had taken his life, she had promised Julian and his three friends that a day would come for them to pay for the suffering they had brought upon her. The only regret she has is that she has not been able to finish what she had pledged to do.
David Millar, who had been adopted as an infant, is reunited with Jenny Colman, his biological mother. He and his son Rory are introduced to their lost noble family, and David inherits the estate as the only remaining male heir. Angelina has to cope with the loss of Julian and the fact that her ex-husband is now a nobleman, someone who could give her what she has always wanted but who has no feelings left for her. Jazz's father recovers and is released from the hospital. Having been undermined again by Patrick in her investigation, Jazz realizes the divorce was the right decision and starts dating Jonathan, a young PhD student who had previously interviewed her about criminal justice in the UK. She also works on establishing a local investigative office for the Yard in Norfolk.
References[edit]
Riley, Lucinda (2022). The Murders at Fleat House. Macmillan Publishers International. ISBN 978-1529094961.
External links[edit]
- The Murders at Fleat House the book homepage.
- The Murders at Fleat House on Lancashire Post.
- The Murders at Fleat House at GoodReads.
- The Murders at Fleat House book review.
- The Murders at Fleat House book review on Waterstones.
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