The Serpent Dance (eBook)

A Twisty Murderous Midsummer Read

Sofia Slater (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
288 Seiten
Swift Press (Verlag)
978-1-80075-256-6 (ISBN)

Infos

'The Wicker Man meets Rebecca, with darkly beautiful surroundings and mysterious, brooding locals - this is the perfect summer holiday read' Fiona Leitch, bestselling author of the Jodie 'Nosey' Parker cozy crime series 'Intriguing contemporary whodunnit ... profoundly unsettling' Crime Fiction Lover 'The Gothic environment, at times evocative of some of the tales of Daphne du Maurier, is powerfully etched' Crime Time IN THE HEART OF CORNWALL, A MURDEROUS MIDSUMMER BEGINS ... At midsummer the Cornish villagers of Trevennick dance around bonfires and make offerings to the river. It's not the sort of thing that appeals to Audrey Delaney, who is very much a city mouse. But when her (sort of) boyfriend Noah whisks her away on a surprise trip to the West Country, she's determined to do the best she can to enjoy herself, if that's what it takes to remove the question mark from their relationship. Then their first night ends in tragedy, and Audrey finds herself embroiled in a police enquiry and unsure who to trust. She'll have to untangle the mysteries of this insular community quickly, though, because people are dying fast.  THE RIVER WILL HAVE ITS DUE ... READERS WHO JOINED THE DANCE - 'I loved the mix of old folklore/rituals, (giving off The Wicker Man vibes), with a locked door mystery, that I didn't expect ... phenomenal' - 'One of my favourite books of the summer ... really excellent' - 'Perfect midsummer read' - 'This book had me quickly turning the pages, eager to know what might happen next' - 'I was instantly hooked ... Add this to your TBR!' - 'An atmospheric tale that kept my attention from start to finish'

Sofia Slater was raised in the American West, and lived in France, Scotland and Oxford before settling in London. As well as writing fiction, she translates from French and Spanish. Her debut novel, Auld Acquaintance, was published in 2022 to great acclaim; The Serpent Dance is her second.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

With hindsight, she could see that the whole set-up was an invitation to bad luck. They wouldn’t be able to get away for their first anniversary – that fell during a major new install at Noah’s gallery – and he wanted to make it up to her. So they were popping the champagne a little early, with a long weekend away after ten months together, location to be revealed.

Never celebrate something before it’s happened.

At the time, though, she’d been excited, and happily set about proving to herself that they were, as she hoped, going to Paris. It was the obvious choice: within easy reach of London, and full of museums – trawling through museums and galleries already being how they spent most of their weekends. She’d never been, in spite of how close it was, and Noah knew it was on her bucket list. She found the epithet reassuring, too: the City of Light. No night-time panics likely there.

Not that she’d voiced this to him explicitly. But she’d dropped hints. And he’d smiled knowingly every time she teased him about the surprise, clearly certain she’d be happy with what he had planned. She was sure it was Paris, and, for a few weeks, she spent the time she should have been working on illustrations for the new book staring out of the window instead, blind to the bus stop and the overflowing bin that made up the view. She saw instead her and Noah feeding each other little forkfuls of something buttery at a bistro, their table overlooking a cobbled square. Her and Noah crossing bridges arm in arm, while an accordion played faintly in the background. Her and Noah being visibly in love. Paris would make it obvious. Paris could make it certain.

She couldn’t get to sleep the night before they left, and stayed up late double-checking her passport was in date and trying to decide which little silk scarf would look most French when tied around her neck. She chucked a fresh sketchbook into her bag too; lately she’d been a little lazy about keeping her sketch diary. All the drawing she did was for work, and she was feeling stale. Paris would surely refresh her creativity, with its gorgeous architecture and decadent food, not to mention the Louvre, the d’Orsay and all the romantically bare garrets once home to artistic greatness.

Still dreaming of oozy cheese and floodlit churches, she woke early. A last check of the luggage, a last look in the mirror. A faint hope that she’d have transformed, overnight, into someone who looked the romantic part. But no, hers was still just a presentable face: dishwater hair cut in a fringe, hazel eyes, cheeks tending to the round. Ah well. Beautiful or not, someone was still taking her to Paris for the weekend.

Noah picked her up in a cab, and she leaned in for a long kiss, blushing a little when he looked bemused. She wasn’t usually one for public displays of affection. But the taxi turned west, not north towards St Pancras, and a faint shadow of misgiving fell over her heart. ‘Where are we headed?’ she asked Noah.

‘Patience, patience,’ he replied, coy, still playing the romantic game. She tried to smile back, to keep the flirtation going. But when they got out of the cab at Paddington and Noah pulled two tickets to Cornwall out of his pocket with a flourish, she couldn’t help but feel crestfallen. She could tell from the disappointment in his face that the disappointment in hers was hurtfully clear.

Settled in their seats on the train, she tried to improve the atmosphere, chattering as she unpacked the sandwiches he’d bought, cheerfully reading out crossword clues. But her heart wasn’t wholly in it. The truth was, she hated the countryside, and she resented Noah for not knowing this. Also, she’d put so much effort into believing what she wanted; she felt stupid, and resented him for that, too. She might have been happier with Cornwall if she hadn’t expected Paris.

Noah must have been able to sense the insincerity of her smiles, because he barely responded to her, just yanked the culture section out of the paper and fixed his eyes on the reviews. Audrey watched from the window as London petered out around them, and, remembering last night’s excitement, felt a tiny bit like crying.

Occasionally, with Noah, there were these… gaps. They’d met ten months ago, both swiping to match, and at first she’d felt wildly lucky. Finally life seemed to be turning into what it was always meant to be. He was ostentatiously good-looking, with high cheekbones and glossy dark hair that fell over his forehead. She started sketching that perfect face now, in the margin of the paper, cross-hatching a shadow to bring out his full lower lip. It was sometimes a source of worry, the distance between them in this regard. He was markedly beautiful; a little skinny maybe, but that fit the part – an art world denizen, stick-thin and draped in beautiful clothes – whereas Audrey had long ago admitted to herself that she was entirely average. Which wasn’t to say she couldn’t brush up nicely. But her prettiness ebbed and flowed depending on things like her mood, the time of the month or the effort she’d put in on a given day, whereas she’d never been out with Noah and not seen someone, man or woman, checking him out. Nevertheless, he seemed to find her plenty attractive, and the sex was good. Good enough, anyway.

And they had plenty in common professionally. They might be playing in different leagues, but the sport was the same. Noah worked in a big-name gallery, the kind where he and all his colleagues wore black and got invitations to private views and VIP openings at art fairs and museum retrospectives. Audrey toiled at the more commercial end of the art world, in graphic design and illustration. It had been the practical option; she had needed to make a living straight out of university and had started freelancing several years ago while she was still a student on the sensible, useful graphic design course her parents had pressured her to choose over art college. There had been no funds and no time for experimenting or waiting-and-seeing-how-things-go, but she’d never let go of her childhood dream of being an artist. A real one. Who drew and painted things because they haunted her head, not because a textbook needed a diagram of the kidneys, or a new restaurant wanted a logo.

She couldn’t deny that the world Noah gave her access to had been part of his attraction. At the start, she’d pictured them together at all those private views. He’d introduce her to his colleagues, and they’d laugh together over wine, and she, too, would be dressed in black and wearing interesting jewellery. Maybe, eventually, she’d show him some of the work she did for herself in her spare time, and he’d be amazed, and want to show her at the gallery, and her whole life would be different.

So far it hadn’t worked out like that.

He did take her to gallery events at first, and she did drink the free wine, but she never seemed to say quite the right thing; his colleagues gave her thin smiles and found ways to leave the conversation. Most of the time, Noah didn’t want to go to openings. ‘Done one, done them all,’ he said whenever she asked. So now they spent more evenings in than out, with a takeaway and the telly. Like anybody, Audrey thought. But she wanted to be somebody. When she’d dug what she thought of as her ‘dark drawings’ out of a drawer and showed him, he just nodded slowly and then turned to the commissioned illustrations scattered across her desk, picked one up and said, ‘I love this, though!’ It was a drawing of a dodo.

That wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t that she wasn’t in love with Noah. He was the handsomest man she’d ever get the chance to be with. It was just… these little gaps.

And, oh God, there it was, on the train, that stupid dodo, staring at her from across the aisle. She prayed Noah wouldn’t notice and fixed her eyes resolutely on the fields, cows, hedges, fields which had repeated endlessly since they exited the London sprawl.

‘Look, Audrey, it’s your book!’

She gave a tight smile to acknowledge he’d spoken, but said nothing in reply. Her turn not to play along with his attempts to cheer her up. He was oblivious, or pretended to be.

‘Excuse me. Excuse me? My girlfriend illustrated that book,’ he said, leaning across the aisle, gesturing at Audrey and giving a full-wattage smile to the mother who was holding the book open, pointing out the different animals to her toddler. All he got in return was another vague smile and nod. She was clearly more concerned with keeping her kid quiet than with meeting the book’s creator.

‘Stop, it’s embarrassing,’ said Audrey in an undertone.

‘What did The Times say? “Equal parts urgency and enchantment”? Baby, it’s brilliant. You should be proud!’

‘I was just working to a brief.’

‘Come on! Every time I see that dodo, it makes me smile to think you drew it.’

She shrugged and turned back to the cows, hedges, farms, fields. Noah raised his hands in a little gesture of exasperation, and the strained atmosphere descended again. When she was sure he was looking away, Audrey began to obliterate the drawing she’d done of him next to the crossword, scratching it out one heavy line at a time.

He had quoted correctly. Equal parts urgency and enchantment. The book, a children’s compendium of extinct species, had recently been released and was selling unexpectedly well. With barely any text, just the names and death dates of a series of animals, along with a few facts about each, Audrey’s illustrations had been given all the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.6.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Schlagworte: Agatha Christie • Cornwall • Daphne du Maurier • Feast of St John’s • Golowan • Midsummer • Midsummer’s Eve • Murder Mystery • summer solstice • Trevennick • West Country
• ISBN-10: 1-80075-256-3 / 1800752563
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80075-256-6 / 9781800752566