Josephine Bell

A suicide, a derelict barge, and floating pink chiffon nightdresses... When the San Angelodrifts into port in the Pool of London, telephones begin to ring across the capital and an intricate series of events is set in motion. Beset by dreadful storms in the Bay of Biscay, the ship, along with the "mixed cargo" it carries, is late. Unaware of the machinations of avaricious importers, wayward captains, and unscrupulous traders, docklands residents Harry Reed and June Harvey are thrust together by a riverside accident, before being swept into the current of a dark plot developing on the harborside. First published in 1938, this early novel from one of the great Golden Age mystery writers skillfully delivers a compelling tale of murder set against a gritty portrayal of life alongside the Thames. This edition also includes an Introduction by series editor CWA Diamond Dagger-Award winning author Martin Edwards.

The Port of London Murders

In these four stories, Josephine Bell traces the consequences of too great an adherence to the slogan 'Safety First': on Muriel and Arthur, who go to Cornwall on holiday with their sons Ronald and Barry; on Jim, who takes his yacht Seaspray on a cruise while his wife Evie is expecting their longed-for child; on the local and county society who try to obtain a Birthday Honour for Winifred Batten; and on Sam and Marie-Claire Chilwood whose marriage had been so good until the War. With characters set firmly into the background of everyday contemporary life, these stories displays a sure knowledge of the complacency, muddled motives and timidity which guide most people in their search for security.

Safety First

Rose Lawler was a retired schoolmistress but, fortunately for her on at least two occasions, still in very good shape. The charter tour of Italy which was meant to be so easy and relaxing turned out quite otherwise. For the English party were being used as cover for Gwen Chilton, luckless tool of a criminal, and it was soon being shadowed by another character whose motives were dubious. Rose’s wide sympathies and alertness brought her under suspicion of knowing too much.

A Pigeon Among the Cats

The Winter Queen in exile . . . All England is in mourning for King James; First of England and Sixth of Scotland. In the days following the monarch's demise, the new King Charles grants an audience to a young man who wishes to serve his country as a soldier. Francis Leslie is a boy when we begin our story; a man by the time it is told. On the way he battles foes, loses his heart, and faces death from all angles. All around him is scheming and political intrigue. Steeped in historical fact, Josephine Bell's beautifully drawn and atmospheric novel takes us to the royal courts of 17th century Europe where we follow Leslie from the Palace of Whitehall, to the low lands of Holland. There, having been moved by her tragic story, he vows to serve King Charles' gentle sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia; the exiled Winter Queen. “An imaginary historical whodunit, written in a refreshingly sparse style.” Manchester Evening News

To Serve A Queen

Josephine Bell tells of the romantic and gripping early career of John Churchill, later to become the first Duke of Marlborough. His youth was spent in the Courts of Charles II and James, Duke of York; glittering, reckless Courts, with their gambling, dancing, duelling, love-making and luxury. He was a man of fearless action and served in the army of the Duke of York in France with great distinction and rapid promotion – but his loyalty to the Duke was destroyed after the latter’s succession to the throne. When William of Orange landed at Brixham to take the throne of his Protestant wife, Mary, John Churchill, already in peril of his life, left his post to join him. No doubt the outstanding love affair of his life was with Sarah Jennings, later to become his wife. For her he rejected the bawdy, promiscuous life at Court for a marriage which was to be a life-long, loving devotion. This is Josephine Bell at her skilful and romantic best.

A Question of Loyalties

Haltingly, a boy tolls his fearful story to Scotland Yard officials – how he alone had witnessed from the vantage point of his commuter train a scene of terror in a dingy room . . . a blood-chilling tableau framed in a lighted window, glimpsed for a moment between patches of fog, and then gone. Chief-Inspector Johnson listens tolerantly, yet official credence can hardly be given to such a tale. Terry Byrnes is an impressionable, imaginative lad. No crime of violence has been reported in the Battersea area, and if the boy has witnessed murder, where is the corpse? But if Scotland Yard is not worried, Janet Lapthorn is; and sometimes a fretful woman can be a powerful agent in the processes of justice. She has a number of questions which demand answers. Why have her letters to her close friend, Felicity Hilton, gone unanswered? Why has Felicity abandoned her husband, Alastair? Why has Alastair lied about his wife’s whereabouts? To come straight to the point, where is Felicity Hilton? The evidence is disjointed. The clues are scattered. But slowly the mists of conjecture dissolve – as the police, like patient archaeologists themselves, reconstruct the hideous form and face of an unspeakable crime.

Bones in the Barrow

Fall Over Cliff

Sally Fulton is a hospital almoner, who left the job, for which she had a genuine vocation and aptitude, to marry a radiologist, Tony. The marriage was a failure and she has never understood that the chief cause of this was her deadly inclination, all too common among professional women, to bring her professional technique into her private life and to its problems. Tony leaves her, and she subsequently divorces him. Returning to her former job, though in another hospital, she is haunted by guilt, for the only fault she has been able to recognise in her own past conduct is her former jealousy of a girl lab assistant who had attracted Tony’s attention. Unexpectedly Tony is brought to the hospital as a surgical emergency, dangerously ill. Sally now begins to learn how desperately wrong she was about him, and about herself. After their divorce he had not married the little ‘lab’ girl, but someone quite different. Sally’s guilt is increased, and she is further confused by the fact that she now loves and is loved by one of the surgical registrars at the hospital. In an overwhelming impulse to atone in some way for the past before beginning a new life, she gets into touch with the ‘lab’ girl, Hazel, finds her in very poor circumstances, and gets her a job at the hospital. But Hazel is a born delinquent, a type quite beyond Sally’s experience and comprehension. As Hazel sinks further and further Sally goes on trying frantically to save her. Her obsessive conscience and her trained zeal in following up this ‘case’, very nearly wreck her engagement. Sally crashes blindly along the path of Hazel’s redemption, only to find that it leads straight into a pit of despair and death. From that pit she herself emerges, freed of her obsession, to find happiness but at a terrible cost, for two people die as a result of her innocent, essentially well-meaning interference.

Hell's Pavement

A fiercely exciting story of cat-and-mouse tactics, played out against the drama of a suicide attempt by a beautiful girl. As far as the river police are concerned, the attempted suicide is a routine matter. Nothing too special, just a girl throwing herself off Hammersmith Bridge in a fit of desperate remorse. But when she is admitted to the West Kensington Hospital, she finds herself coming under the scrutiny of Tim Long, the surgical registrar. Out of kindness of heart, then out of grim necessity Tim and the rest of the hospital staff find themselves caught up in the pitiful life of a girl for whom there seems to be ultimately no escape except death.

No Escape

Having resigned his Army commission when his brother’s criminal activities were uncovered, Benedict Wilberforce now lives on the beautiful Caribbean island of San Fernando. But his peaceful existence is rudely shattered by the arrival of two vicious and utterly ruthless men both claiming to be George Wilberforce, his brother’s son, entitled to receive his estate. By the time his niece Alison arrives for a visit, Uncle Ben has disappeared and murder has already erupted. Faced with this macabre situation, Alison is determined to remain on the island until the mystery is cleared up. An added inducement is her revived interest in Peter Grant, the young lawyer sent out from England. Superintendent Graham with the Fernandan police investigate, is helped by the two young people and by the Fernandan waiter at Uncle Ben’s hotel, who has for a long time known more than anyone else about the Wilberforce legacy. ‘Tumbledown Caribbean setting, solid puzzle and highly neat twist. Reads like taking a good walk, covering plenty of miles with lots to see.’ The Times

The Wilberforce Legacy

The trouble at St. Edmunds Hospital has not actually begun when Miss Enid Hallet, retired ex-Sister Hallet, is admitted there to Hunter Ward. But it starts soon after the lift door closes behind her, in the baleful face of Joe Wells, the militant hall porter. For Hunter Ward, at the top of the building, is an amenity ward including four pay beds, and the lay staff, striking against supposed privilege, are determined to ensure that all essential services to the top floor come to a halt. The nursing staff do their best in the ensuing chaos, as the dirty linen piles up in the corridors and relief catering is smuggled in via the fire-escape. Then ex-sister Hallet dies, a death unlamented for several good reasons by various people, but a death for which it is very difficult to offer any satisfactory explanation. And that was only the trouble in Hunter Ward.

The Trouble in Hunter Ward

When his wife's friend, Rachel, writes to tell of the peculiar murder of a young woman in her sleepy market town, Dr. David Wintringham is intrigued enough to leave his usual top secret medical work for Her Majesty's Government to pay a visit to Shornford, where the local police are struggling to make sense of events. Together with Inspector Staines of the local constabulary, he tries to unravel the curious case of Ursula Frinton and why anyone would want her dead. As David is slowly pulled into a web of intrigue that stretches far beyond Wakeley Manor, Shornford, and its inhabitants, what started out as a flight of curiosity becomes a fight for a much larger truth, and death waits around every corner.

Death at the Medical Board

A Perennial British Mystery

Curtain Call for a Corpse

Easy Prey

When Reg and Mavis Holmes advertised for a lodger, several applicants retreated as soon as they heard there was a young baby in the house. But Miss Trubb’s reaction was different: ‘When she had seen the pram in the hall and Mavis had told her about Joy, her stern, rather lifeless features had glowed with a sudden radiance, an inner happiness that shone in her faded eyes and trembled in her voice.’ But the peaceful, happy days of this young couple and their baby are soon to be shattered. How can Miss Trubb’s interest in their new baby be as innocent as it seems? For Reg and Mavis soon learn that they’ve entrusted their blooming 6-month-old daughter to the protection of a convicted child killer . . .

It is summer in 1920s England and a group of friends are enjoying one of many weekends at Mayfield, the Wyndham family’s country home. Amid the gaiety of punting on the river, tea on the lawn and lavish parties, a love triangle emerges: Caroline, thought by everyone to be heading for engagement to George, surprises everyone by agreeing to a Philip’s sudden proposal, leaving George distraught. Six months later Caroline and Philip marry but it is not long before she realises that people are not always as they appear and that Philip has been hiding a secret . . . As the years slip by Caroline’s marriage is plagued by fears that she made a horrible mistake and a tragic turn of events takes her life down an unexpected path.

Compassionate Adventure

The Hunter and the Trapped

Two men meet to conclude a very private business transaction in the empty store room of an NHS hospital. A patient sees them as they leave and believes she recognises the face of a one-time notorious murderer. But the patient is Miss Amy Tupper, dutifully prowling the ward to exercise her newly repaired varicose veins, and Miss Tupper, a retired actress, is known for the power of her imagination and the relish with which she follows the press reporting of lurid crimes. The store room from which the two men emerged is found, however, to be far from empty. In a cupboard is the strangled body of a young foreign nurse. The police very quickly acquire a prime suspect. But Michael Beddoes, a consultant surgeon at the hospital, is convinced the young pharmacist taken into custody is incapable of murder, and begins asking his own questions. At the same time a local councillor, Gerald Nubb, is feeling his way cautiously but unswervingly towards the exposure of extensive corruption involving the town council and the top heavy bureaucracy of the local Health Service. And of course there’s still Miss Tupper, whose idiosyncratic view of the case isn’t taken seriously until it’s almost too late. Josephine Bell is brilliant at describing and exposing small town graft and the faceless machinations of hospital administration, and into this she has woven an excellent murder story.

Wolf! Wolf!

The summer music school at Falconbury proves to be more eventful than any of the students or the lecturers could have imagined. The school is in the country, but many of the pupils and their instructors have travelled from the Royal School of Music in London. Derek Fox and his fiancée Belinda Power fail to turn up on time and nobody knows where they are. When the body of Belinda is discovered inside one of her own timpani, suspicion falls on Derek, who turns to Dr David Wintringham for help. But Derek is not forthcoming with information leaving David with little to go on. What is Derek hiding? And who killed Belinda if Derek is innocent?

Josephine Bell

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