Recalled to Life
‘The story is expertly told, skein by skein, with a new knot to be untied just when you think everything is clear’ Sunday Telegraph1963. It was the year of the Profumo Scandal, the Great Train Robbery, the Kennedy Assassination – and the Mickeldore Hall Murder.The guests at the Hall that weekend included a Tory minister, a CIA officer, a British diplomat – and Cissy Kohler, a young American nanny who had come to England for love. And love kept her in England for nearly thirty years. In jail. For murder.Revisiting the case many years later, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel finds his certainty over Cissy’s guilt is shaken – a rare state of affairs. And it looks as if not only is his old boss’s reputation at stake, but his own too…
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REGINALD HILL
RECALLED TO LIFE
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers in 1992
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1992
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 9780586217320
Ebook Edition © MAY 2013 ISBN 9780007386239 Version 2015-06-23
âYou had abandoned all hope of being dug out?â
âLong ago.â
âYou know that you are recalled to life?â
âThey tell me so.â
âI hope you care to live?â
âI canât say.â
Contents
The epigraph and all chapter headings come from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
âI tell thee that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming.â
It was the best of crimes, it was the worst of crimes; it was born of love, it was spawned by greed; it was completely unplanned, it was coldly premeditated; it was an open-and-shut case, it was a locked-room mystery; it was the act of a guileless girl, it was the work of a scheming scoundrel; it was the end of an era, it was the start of an era; a man with the face of a laughing boy reigned in Washington, a man with the features of a lugubrious hound ruled in Westminster; an ex-Marine got a job at a Dallas book repository, an ex-Minister of War lost a job in politics; a group known as the Beatles made their first million, a group known as the Great Train Robbers made their first two million; it was the time when those who had fought to save the world began to surrender it to those they had fought to save it for; Dixon of Dock Green was giving way to Z-Cars, Bond to Smiley, the Monsignors to the Maharishis, Matt Dillonto Bob Dylan, l.s.d. to LSD, as the sunset glow of the old Golden Age imploded into the psychedelic dawn of the new Age of Glitz.
It was the Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three, and it is altogether fitting that this crime of which we speak should have been committed in one of Yorkshireâs great country houses, Mickledore Hall, and that its dénouement should have taken place in that most traditional of settings, the Old Library â¦
The library door burst open. A man came running out. For a second he paused. The main doors stood ajar, spilling golden sunlight across the old flagged floor. He took a half step towards the light, a voice called, âGet him!â and he turned and started up the broad sweeping staircase. He was beautifully balanced, with the tapering figure of an athlete, and his long, easy stride devoured three treads at a time.
A second man came out of the library now, almost as tall as the other, but dark where he was fair, burly and muscular where he was rangy and loose-limbed. He too glanced at the sunlit doorway for a moment. Then with unhurried pace he began to climb the stairs, taking one at a time, heavy lips pulled back from yellowing teeth in the anticipatory rictus of a hungry bear.
On the first-floor landing the fleeing man turned right without hesitation, then right again into the first room he reached. Moments later the burly man arrived in the doorway. The room led through into another, through whose open door a double bed was visible. The fair man made no effort to go any further but stood defiantly by a huge mahogany wardrobe, his shoulders tensed for battle.
âNay, Sir Ralph, no more laking. Your fancy womanâs waiting. Murderâs one thing, but youâll not want accused of bad manners too.â
