Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave Read online

  MORE RAVES FOR JEMIMA SHORE AT THE SUNNY GRAVE:

  “For readers who like their murder British and civilized, their crime spiced with malice but not messy, this book—like Fraser’s other works—won’t disappoint.”

  —Dail Willis, Associated Press

  “This compilation of short stories shows the true talents of Ms. Fraser as a mystery writer. The stories are diverse, never allowing the reader to become bored. She is creative, taking both male and female perspectives. Her characters work well with the easy-to-follow plots that have much irony and unexpected turns. A smooth writing style and a vibrant imagination have turned this collection of short stories into a potential classic.”

  —Rendezvous

  “The stories abound with eccentric characters, taking twists and turns that cause chuckles in spite of their gruesomeness.”

  —Dayton Daily News

  PRAISE FOR ANTONIA FRASER:

  THE CAVALIER CASE

  “[LADY ANTONIA] WRITES BOTH HISTORY AND MYSTERY WITH ZEST AND VERVE.… ANTONIA FRASER IS A WONDER, AND SO IS THE CAVALIER CASE.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “[THIS] BESTSELLING AUTHOR SLEEKLY WEAVES ALL HER PASSIONS TOGETHER.… WITTY, DROLL, AND A DELIGHTFUL BLEND OF SEX, HISTORY, SCHOLARSHIP AND DETECTION.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  YOUR ROYAL HOSTAGE

  “A PLAYFUL ROMP … NOT ONLY IS THE BOOK HILARIOUS, IT’S BRILLIANTLY OBSERVED AND A WELCOME RETURN TO THE COMPANY OF THE VERY SMART AND LIKABLE JEMIMA SHORE.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “SHARP, SOPHISTICATED, LITERATE, YOUR ROYAL HOSTAGE IS A BOOK FOR THOSE WHO LIKE THEIR MAYHEM STYLISH RATHER THAN STRIDENT AND SHOULD APPEAL TO ROYAL WATCHERS AND ROYAL KNOCKERS ALIKE.”

  —Reginald Hill

  A SPLASH OF RED

  “JEMIMA WORKS IT OUT IN ASSERTIVE, OFTEN WITTY STYLE … MOST ENJOYABLE.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  QUIET AS A NUN

  “A JUDICIOUS MIXTURE OF PUZZLE, EXCITEMENT, AND TERROR.”

  —P. D. James

  JEMIMA SHORE AT THE SUNNY GRAVE

  A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with the author

  CRIME LINE and the portrayal of a boxed “cl” are trademarks of Bantam Books a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd edition published 1991

  Bantam hardcover edition / February 1993

  Seal hardcover edition / February 1993

  Bantam paperback / February 1994

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1991 by Antonia Fraser.

  Cover art copyright © 1992 by Tom Hallman.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-21605.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books

  ISBN 0-553-56498-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-5251-8

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036. Seal Books are published by McClelland-Bantam, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Seal Books” and the portrayal of a seal, is the property of McClelland-Bantam, Inc., 105 Bond Street, Toronto, Ontario M5B 1Y3, Canada. The trademark has been duly registered in the Trademark Office of Canada.

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  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  1. Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave

  2. The Moon Was to Blame

  3. The Blude-Red Wine

  4. House Poison

  5. Getting to Know You

  6. Cry-by-Night

  7. Dead Leaves

  8. Out for the Countess

  9. The Twist

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  These stories first appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies in England and the United States: The Compleat Imbiber edited by Cyril Ray; Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine edited by Eleanor Sullivan; The John Creasey Collection edited by Herbert Harris; the London Evening News; Sisters in Crime edited by Sara Paretsky; Suntory Magazine; Winter’s Crimes edited by Hilary Hale; and Woman’s Realm.

  I am extremely grateful to all the editors who commissioned and published them.

  “This-is-your-graveyard-in-the-sun—”

  The tall young man standing in her path was singing the words lightly but clearly. It took Jemima Shore a moment to realize exactly what message he was intoning to the tune of the famous calypso. Then she stepped back. It was a sinister and not particularly welcoming little parody.

  This is my island in the sun

  Where my people have toiled since time begun …

  Ever since she had arrived in the Caribbean, she seemed to have had the tune echoing in her ears. How old was it? How many years was it since the inimitable Harry Belafonte had first implanted it in everybody’s consciousness? No matter. Whatever its age, the calypso was still being sung today with charm, vigour and a certain relentlessness on Bow Island; and on the other West Indian islands she had visited in the course of her journey.

  It was not the only tune to be heard of course. The loud noise of music, she had discovered, was an inseparable part of Caribbean life, starting with the airport. The heavy, irresistible beat of the steel band, the honeyed wail of the singers, all this was happening somewhere if not everywhere all over the islands late into the night: the joyous sound of freedom, of dancing, of drinking (rum punch) and, for the tourists at any rate, the sound of holiday.

  It was not the sound of holiday for Jemima Shore, Investigator. Or not officially so. That was all to the good, Jemima being temperamentally one of those people whose best holidays combined some work with a good deal of pleasure. She could hardly believe it: Megalith Television, her employers, had actually agreed in principle to a programme which took her away from freezing Britain to the sunny Caribbean in late January. This was a reversal of normal practice, by which Cy Fredericks, Jemima’s boss (and the effective boss of Megalith), was generally to be found relaxing in the Caribbean in February, while Jemima herself, if she got there at all, was liable to be dispatched into the inconvenient humidity of August. Not this time! And a fascinating project to boot. This was definitely her lucky year. Enlarging on the theme, she thought that Bow Island itself was probably going to be her lucky island …

  “This is my island in the sun …” But that wasn’t of course what the young man facing her had actually sung. “Your graveyard in the sun.” Mine? Or yours? Since the man in question was standing between Jemima Shore and the historic grave she had come to visit, it was possible that he was being proprietorial as well as aggressive. On second thought, surely not. It was a joke, a cheerful joke on a cheerful, very sunny day. But the young man’s expression was, it seemed to her, more threatening than quizzical.

  Jemima gazed back with that special sweet smile so familiar to viewers of British television. (These same viewers were also aware from past experience that Jemima, sweet as her smile might be, stood no nonsense from anyone, at least not on her programme.)

  On closer inspection, the man was not really as young as all that. She saw someone of perhaps roughly
her own age—early thirties. He was white, although so deeply tanned that she guessed he was not a tourist but formed part of the small loyal European population of Bow Island, a place fiercely proud of its recent independence from a much larger neighbour.

  The stranger’s height, unlike his youth, was not an illusion; he towered over Jemima and she herself was not short; in fact, having long legs, she always surprised her television fans by how tall she was in real life. He was also handsome, or would have been except for an oddly formed, rather large nose with a high bridge to it and a pronounced aquiline curve. If the nose marred the regularity of his features, the impression left was not unattractive, in a man at least; it was not a nose that a woman could have easily carried off—an ordinary woman that is. The stranger was wearing whitish cotton shorts, like more or less every male on Bow Island, black or white. His orange T-shirt also bore the familiar island logo or crest: the outline of a bow in black, and a black hand drawing it back. Beneath the logo was printed one of the enormous variety of local slogans—cheerful again—designed to make a play upon the island’s name. This one read: “THIS IS THE END OF THE SUN-BOW!”

  No, in that friendly T-shirt, he was surely not intending to be aggressive.

  In that case, the odd thing about the whole encounter was that the stranger still stood absolutely still in Jemima’s path. She could in fact glimpse the large stone Archer Tomb just behind him, which she recognized from the postcards. For a smallish place, Bow Island was indeed remarkably rich in historic relics. Nelson in his time had visited it with his fleet: like its neighbours, Bow Island had found itself engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars, faraway naval battles fought against an exotic West Indian background helping to decide the European contest. Two hundred-odd years before that, first British, then French, then British again had invaded and settled the islands, which had once belonged to Caribs and before that Arawaks: finally into this melting pot Africans had been brought forcibly to work the sugar plantations on which its wealth depended. All these elements in various degrees had gone to make up the people now known casually among themselves as the Bo’landers.

  The Archer Tomb, the existence of which had in a sense brought Jemima across the Atlantic, belonged to the period of the second—and final—British settlement. Here was buried the most celebrated governor in Bow Island’s history, Sir Valentine Archer. Even its name commemorated his long reign: Bow Island had originally been called by the name of a saint, and while it was true the island was vaguely formed in the shape of a bow, it was Governor Archer who had made the change: to signify ritually that this particular archer was in command of this particular bow.

  Jemima knew that the monument, splendidly carved, would show Sir Valentine Archer himself with Isabella his wife beside him. This stone double bier was capped with a white wood structure reminiscent of a small church; it was either done to give the whole monument additional importance—although it must always have dominated the small churchyard by its sheer size—or to protect it from the weather. But Jemima had read that there were no Archer children inscribed on the tomb, contrary to seventeenth-century practice. This was because, as a local historian delicately put it, Governor Archer had been as a parent to the entire island … Or in the words of another purely local calypso:

  Across the sea came old Sir Valentine

  He came to be your daddy, and he came to be mine.

  In short, no one monument could comprise the progeny of a man popularly supposed to have sired over a hundred children, legitimate and illegitimate. The legitimate line was, however, now on the point of dying out. It was to see Miss Isabella Archer, officially at least the last of her race, that Jemima Shore had come to the Caribbean. She hoped to make a programme about the old lady and her home, Archer Plantation House, alleged to be untouched in its decoration these fifty years. She wanted also to interview her generally about the changes Miss Archer had seen in her lifetime in this part of the world.

  “Greg Harrison,” said the man standing in Jemima’s path suddenly. “And this is my sister Coralie.” A girl who had been standing unnoticed by Jemima in the shade of the arched church porch stepped rather shyly forward. She was very brown, like her brother, and her blonde hair, whitened almost to flax by the sun, was pulled back into a ponytail. His sister: was there a resemblance? Coralie Harrison was wearing a similar orange T-shirt, but otherwise she was not much like her brother. She was quite short, for one thing, her features being appealing rather than beautiful; and—perhaps fortunately—she lacked her brother’s commanding nose.

  “Welcome to Bow Island, Miss Shore—” Coralie began. But her brother interrupted her. Ignoring his sister, he put out a hand, large, muscular and burnt to nut colour by the sun.

  “I know why you’re here and I don’t like it,” said Greg Harrison. “Stirring up forgotten things. Why don’t you leave Miss Izzy to die in peace?” The contrast of the apparently friendly handshake and the hostile—if calmly spoken—words was disconcerting.

  “I’m Jemima Shore.” Obviously he knew that, but she did not, under the circumstances, add the word “Investigator.” It was only how she was billed in her television series, after all, but might here give the wrong impression of a detective (as it sometimes did to the public at large). “Am I going to be allowed to inspect the Archer Tomb? Or is it to be across your dead body?” Jemima smiled again with sweetness; once more, experienced viewers might have recognized the expression as ominous.

  “My dead body!” Greg Harrison smiled back in his turn. The effect, however, was not particularly warming. “Have you come armed to the teeth then?” Before she could answer, he began to hum the famous calypso again. Jemima imagined the words: “This is your graveyard in the sun.” Then he added, “Might not be such a bad idea that, when you start to dig up things that should be buried.” He gestured loosely round to the other lesser graves; but she doubted whether he had that kind of vandalism in mind.

  Jemima decided it was time for vigorous action. Neatly side-stepping Greg Harrison, she marched firmly towards the Archer Tomb. There lay the carved couple. She read: “Sacred to the memory of Sir Valentine Archer, first Governor of this island, and his only wife Isabella, daughter of Randal Oxford, gentleman.” She was reminded briefly of her favourite Philip Larkin poem about the Arundel Monument beginning “The Earl and Countess lie in stone …” and ending “All that remains of us is love.”

  But that couple lay a thousand miles away in the cloistered cool of Chichester Cathedral. Here the hot tropical sun burnt down on her naked head (she found she had taken off her large straw hat as a token of respect and quickly clapped it back on again). Here too there were palm trees among the graves instead of yews, their slender trunks bending like giraffes’ necks in the breeze; in contrast to the very English-looking stone church with pointed Gothic windows beyond. She had once romantically laid white roses on the Arundel Monument; it was as the memory of the gesture returned to her that she spied the heap of bright pink and orange hibiscus blossoms lying on the stone before her. A shadow fell across it.

  “Tina puts them there.” Greg Harrison had followed her. “Every day she can manage it. Most days. Then she tells Miss Izzy what she’s done. Touching, isn’t it?” But he did not make it sound as if he found it especially touching. In fact there was so much bitterness, even malevolence, in his voice that for a moment, standing as she was in the sunny graveyard, Jemima felt quite chilled. “Or is it revolting?” he added; now the malevolence was quite naked.

  “Greg,” murmured Coralie Harrison faintly, as if in protest.

  “Tina? That’s Miss Archer’s—Miss Izzy’s—companion. We’ve corresponded. For the moment I can’t remember her other name.” She might as well see what was to be derived, of possible use in the programme, from this odd encounter.

  “She’s known as Tina Archer these days, I think you’ll find. When she wrote to you, she probably signed the letter Tina Harrison.” Greg Harrison looked at Jemima sardonically but she had genuinely forgo
tten the surname of the companion; it was after all not a particularly uncommon one.

  “Greg! Darling.” This time Coralie Harrison’s voice was only just audible.

  They were interrupted by a loud hail from the road: Jemima saw a young black man at the wheel of one of the convenient roofless Minis everyone seemed to drive around Bow Island. He stood up and started to shout something.

  “Greg! Cora, you coming on to—” She missed the rest of it. Something about a boat and a fish. Coralie Harrison looked suddenly radiant, and for a moment even Greg Harrison actually looked properly pleased; he waved back.

  “Hey, Joseph. Come and say hello to Miss Jemima Shore of BBC Television—”

  “Megalith Television,” Jemima interrupted, but in vain. Harrison continued. “You heard, Joseph. She’s making a programme about Miss Izzy.”

  The man leapt gracefully out of the car and approached up the palm-lined path. Jemima saw that he too was extremely tall, like Greg Harrison. And like the vast majority of the Bo’landers she had so far met, he had the air of being a natural athlete. Whatever the genetic mix in the past of Carib and African and other things that had produced them, the Bo’landers were certainly wonderful looking. He kissed Coralie on both cheeks and patted her brother on the back.

  “Miss Shore, meet Joseph—” But even before Greg Harrison had pronounced the surname, the mischievous expression had warned Jemima what it was likely to be. “Meet Joseph, Joseph Archer. Undoubtedly one of the ten thousand descendants of the philoprogenitive old gentleman at whose tomb you are so raptly gazing.” All that remains of us is love, indeed, thought Jemima irreverently, as she shook Joseph Archer’s hand; pace Larkin, it seemed that a good deal more remained of Sir Valentine than that …

  “Oh, you’ll find we’re all called Archer round here,” murmured Joseph pleasantly; unlike Greg Harrison he appeared to be genuinely welcoming. “As for Sir Val-entine,” he pronounced it syllable by syllable like the calypso. “Don’t pay too much attention to the stories. Otherwise how come we’re not all living in that fine old Archer Plantation House?”